☆ 13. She is not her…

A faint smile, the corners of her lips lifting slightly, lacked the previous attempt at flattery, appearing clear, bright, and poised.

Her waxy yellow face became lively under the soft glow of the streetlights, clean and vibrant.

“Did you ever think about the consequences of being discovered when you put that note in the lunchbox?”

Su Cheng fixed his gaze on Ji Meng for a moment, then suddenly spoke.

“In the carriage, you’re familiar only with the crew members. If they were suddenly searched and caught, the first person they’d suspect is you. Aren’t you afraid of retaliation?”

“Did you see everything?” Ji Meng’s expression changed slightly.

She had approached to greet him just by chance and had previously mistaken him for Qiuqiu’s father, which made her somewhat curious.

She didn’t expect that everything she did was being observed clearly from the side.

Ji Meng tightened her grip on the suitcase and woven bag, feeling a chill in her heart.

If he could see that, what about those two human traffickers in the opposite bunk?

If those people aren’t all sentenced to death this time, or if there are any that slip through the net, will she… be hunted for revenge?

That day on the train, she had called for Xu Qiaoyun and Wu Fang. If those people used the crew to investigate…

Would she still be scared?

Ji Meng’s reaction was clearly one of lingering fear, the blood had drained from her face, and she stood there in a daze for a long time, unable to collect her thoughts. Su Cheng observed her with his complicated gaze and inscrutable.

He didn’t intend to appear before her like this.

Earlier, he had left the carriage after placing her luggage and had planned to return quietly to take another look at his daughter, grabbing his backpack to go to the hard seat area to find someone to exchange tickets.

But he happened to catch her in the act of comforting her daughter while confronting the old lady opposite from her.

He understood her to some extent.

She was snobbish yet maintained a sense of superiority, she was formidable at home but would become meek when encountering difficult people outside, masking her cowardice with a disdainful expression.

Such a person could see through the old lady’s tricks at a glance and held her own in a verbal clash, which was truly unexpected.

And she had noticed him.

She observed that his gaze wasn’t intense, but he was always sharp and still sensed it.

He suddenly changed his mind about avoiding her carriages, wanting to see what her plans were if she recognized him.

Would she continue to play the role of the commander’s wife, or would she pretend not to recognize him and hurry back to marry her sweetheart…

To his surprise, she didn’t recognize him but did notice something was wrong with the human trafficker and had the audacity to put that information in the lunchbox to notify the crew.

In the past, she would have never paid attention to those around her, much less painted her face yellow or dressed in a low-profile disguise, and gotten involved in such dangerous matters.

“Mom.”

Beside her, Qiuqiu tugged at Ji Meng’s icy hand while also warily glancing at Su Cheng.

She was too young to fully understand what the adults were saying, but she sensed that this stern and scary uncle had frightened her mother, and her mother was afraid.

Gathering her courage, she shouted at the man, “You bad guy! You scared my mommy!”

At this moment, there were quite a few people on the platform, and they all turned to look upon hearing her voice, and two of them even started discussing it curiously.

In the 1970s, the scene of a man and a woman confronting each other was hard to ignore.

“Qiuqiu.”

Ji Meng called out to Qiuqiu to stop her, but at this moment, she suddenly no longer felt afraid.

What was done was done, being scared wouldn’t change anything.

Besides, it wasn’t necessarily the case.

If the other party discovered what she had done, they wouldn’t have let her go from the very beginning.

Even if there were still some who slipped through the net on the train, they couldn’t possibly know the specifics.

It wasn’t her who had taken action to catch them.

“Sorry, my daughter…”

“She’s fine.”

Su Cheng interrupted Ji Meng, he didn’t want to hear her blame her daughter.

Qiuqiu was only trying to protect her mother, and if she ended up getting scolded, she would be heartbroken.

“I should be the one to apologize, I didn’t make myself clear.”

Su Cheng looked down at his daughter, who was clearly afraid of him yet stubbornly holding back, and after a pause, he added:

“I was the only one who saw it.”

“You don’t need to worry anymore. Even if those people don’t receive the death penalty, their sentences won’t be short. There shouldn’t be any loose ends on the train, the arrests were quite thorough.”

Now, the only ones left uncaught now are those under Sister Hong in the provincial city.

But now that they’ve captured this group, the other side’s arrests will follow soon.

“That’s good.”

Ji Meng sighed in relief at this news, it was a good sign. Although her daughter had given her the courage to face things, it was best to avoid trouble altogether.

“I admit I’m reckless in this matter. I hesitated at the time, but I couldn’t just sit by and do nothing.”

Ji Meng paused and continued, “I don’t know if I’m being overly sensitive, but I feel like they had their eyes on my daughter.”

“Thank you for this. If you hadn’t intervened, even if they were caught smoothly, they would have figured out that this matter was related to me.”

Ji Meng realized that if it weren’t for this person suddenly stepping in, once the train attendants intervened to arrest the culprits, the middle-aged woman and her group would have definitely guessed that she was somehow involved. Given the way the others had retaliated, they might have sought revenge on the spot.

Thinking of this, Ji Meng felt a sense of survival after a disaster. She looked up at Su Cheng and asked:

“Comrade, what’s your surname? Let me treat you to breakfast as a thank you.”

“No need,” Su Cheng replied calmly.

His actions weren’t for her benefit.

“I have other matters to attend to.”

“Alright then, if we have the chance to meet again, I’ll treat you then.”

Since he had matters to attend to, Ji Meng didn’t want to press him. After hesitating for a moment, she spoke again and couldn’t help but steal another glance at Su Cheng.

He looked somewhat messy now, the middle-aged woman had splattered white ash on him, the most of it landing on his hair and face. He might have been too busy recording his statement to clean up. His skin tone was on the darker side, giving him a mix of black and white appearance at this moment, but the cold, sharp aura surrounding him remained unchanged.

Looking into his eyes, she still felt a resemblance to Su Cheng.

However, after witnessing how the man before her apprehended the human traffickers and noticing his keen observation skills, Ji Meng began to understand why.

It was possible that the person in front of her was also a soldier.

That explained why he shared the same piercing gaze and aura as Su Cheng.

“Thank you so much for today. It’s really thanks to you that we caught those two traffickers, otherwise, we wouldn’t know how things would have turned out,”

Soldiers not wearing uniforms could either have personal matters to attend to or might have received some kind of mission. Ji Meng felt it was inappropriate to engage in too much conversation, so she expressed her gratitude once more and prepared to leave.

“Then, we’ll be on our way now. Goodbye!”

“Mm.”

He was not a man of many words—he was taciturn and somewhat aloof.

Having drawn her conclusion, Ji Meng said goodbye again, switched the bag to the hand holding the suitcase, and took her daughter’s hand, leading her away.

The suitcase was heavy, and with the large woven bag added, it was difficult to carry. It made her walk awkwardly, but she still held her daughter’s hand tightly, showing no intention of letting go.

Su Cheng stood in place, watching the figures of the mother and daughter fade into the distance. After a moment of contemplation, he turned and walked toward the phone booth, he needed to double-check everything.

He could be certain of one thing, she was not who she appeared to be…

—

“What’s wrong, Qiuqiu?”

After following her mother a few steps, Qiuqiu couldn’t help but look back again. Ji Meng noticed her movement and couldn’t help but ask.

“It’s nothing, Mom.”

Qiuqiu shook her head, retracting her gaze. After a while, she bit her lip and said, “Mom, did I do something wrong just now?”

She had misunderstood that uncle who looked like her dad and had even snapped at him.

Moreover, she had forgotten to apologize.

Qiuqiu had always been taught by her grandmother to be a polite child. This was her first time acting like this, and she felt lost and as if she had made a mistake.

Especially since that uncle’s gaze reminded her of her father’s, which made her feel uncomfortable.

Ji Meng didn’t expect Qiuqiu to remember what had just happened. In the matter of raising and teaching her child, she felt like she was ^[1]“Crossing a river by feeling for the stones” is a Chinese idiom (摸着石头过河) that means tackling a situation cautiously, step by step, especially when the outcome or path is … Continue readingcrossing a river by feeling for the stones, finding it quite challenging.

“It’s not necessarily a mistake to make mistakes,”

Ji Meng thought for a moment and turned her head to look at Qiuqiu.

“Qiuqiu is just protecting Mommy, and that’s not wrong at all. Mommy is very happy and especially likes it.”

“Next time, when you want to do something, it would be even better if you first clarify whether it’s what you think it is.”

“Don’t think too much, either. About what just happened, that uncle didn’t blame you. Let’s just consider it a thing of the past. But if we see that uncle again next time, you can apologize to him or give him a small gift to express our gratitude. After all, he protected us on the train, didn’t he?”

When Ji Meng said this, she deliberately slowed down her speech so that Qiuqiu could digest it bit by bit.

Qiuqiu listened attentively and nodded seriously after a while: “Mom, I understand. Next time I see the uncle, I will apologize to him and thank him.”

“Good girl. Now, let’s stop thinking about it and go eat breakfast.” Ji Meng gently patted the little girl’s head, smiling as she took her into the nearby breakfast shop.

The small shop, about a dozen square meters, had three tables and was kept relatively clean. The variety of food offered was quite rich, including fried dough sticks, tea eggs, steamed buns, soybean milk, and congee…

Compared to current prices, the items were not cheap, so Ji Meng didn’t buy too much.

She ordered two servings of congee, a steamer of dumplings, and took out the boiled eggs prepared by Fang Aihua.

At this time, even the breakfast sold at the train station was quite substantial.

Ji Meng and Qiuqiu didn’t eat much of the food prepared by Fang Aihua and were both full.

After breakfast, they sat for a while, and it was just past four o’clock.

When the time was right, Ji Meng took Qiuqiu to the bus station.

The earliest bus was already waiting, and Ji Meng and Qiuqiu boarded the bus smoothly.

Not long after, more people gradually boarded the bus, and when the time came, the vehicle started moving.

On the earliest bus, there was no morning rush hour, and the journey was smooth.

At 6:30 in the morning, the bus arrived at the city center.

In the city center, tall buildings became more common, resembling a small county town a few decades later. The difference was that there weren’t many cars or taxis visible from the bus, mostly public buses and bicycles, with the occasional taxi or small car passing by.

At this time, the provincial capital had not yet become a tourist city and still belonged to an industrial type of city.

There were relatively more factories, especially in the city center, including machinery factories, steel factories, hardware factories, textile factories, and clothing factories.

These were all large factories in the provincial capital, each employing thousands of people, with some having nearly ten thousand workers.

With so many people, there were many residential buildings like tube-shaped apartments, and correspondingly, the commercial sector was somewhat developed here.

There were several commercial streets.

All the buildings were constructed after the establishment of the country, and they looked quite new, mostly three or five stories high, with fewer buildings reaching seven or ten stories. There were shops in the front and residences in the back.

The Ji family’s traditional Chinese medicine clinic was located in the innermost part of an old street. The Ji family didn’t live inside the clinic but in an alley behind the old street, which, like the clinic, was ancestral property.

“Qiuqiu, are you cold?”

The provincial capital was warmer than the village, but in March in the south, spring was unpredictable, and the mornings were still quite chilly, with a wind that carried a bit of cold sting.

As soon as they got off the bus, they felt a chill on their cheeks and necks.

Children are not as resistant to the cold as adults, and Ji Meng was somewhat worried that Qiuqiu might be cold.

“I’m not cold.”

Qiuqiu shook her head, gazing at the unfamiliar and wide street she had never seen before, with buildings that were taller and newer than those in the county town. A brief look of confusion appeared in her eyes as she looked up at Ji Meng and asked,

“Mom, does Grandpa live around here?”

“Yes, we will see Grandpa soon.”

Ji Meng reached out to pat Qiuqiu’s head and relied on the few memories from the original body as they made their way across the street.

At this time, it was still early, and aside from the breakfast shop, very few stores were open on either side of the street. The street was mostly filled with pedestrians rushing to work and hurried shoppers heading to the morning market to buy vegetables, giving it a somewhat quiet feel.

This old street was even quieter, with hardly anyone in sight. Ji Meng found her father’s traditional Chinese medicine clinic, Xishan Tang, at the corner.

The clinic was closed, compared to the nearby shops that were well-decorated and eye-catching, Xishan Tang appeared somewhat worn. An old sign hung above, and cobwebs were visible under the eaves. A sign reading “Temporarily Closed” hung on the peeling old wooden door.

Ji Meng stared at the sign for two seconds before leading Qiuqiu into the alley.

The alley was somewhat complicated, built during the Republic of China era, with one street after another, each built in a similar style.

The original body had been away from home for too long, and the memories of home were a bit blurry. It seemed that some renovations had taken place, many of the iconic features were no longer visible.

As Ji Meng entered the alley, she felt somewhat lost and couldn’t figure out exactly where to go.

After thinking for a moment, Ji Meng stopped a woman returning from grocery shopping to ask for directions.

“Excuse me, ma’am, how do I get to Ji Qinghe’s house?”

“You want to go to Ji Qinghe’s house? What do you need him for?”

The old lady was of medium height, around fifty years old, and very tidy. She had slightly grayish short hair that was meticulously styled. She was carrying a basket filled with vegetables, which seemed a bit heavy, causing a deep indentation in the thin cotton jacket she was wearing.

When she was stopped to ask for directions, she put the vegetable basket down, looked Ji Meng up and down, and after a moment, slightly furrowed her brow, hesitating before saying,

“Hey, why do you look so familiar to me?”

… “Sansan, doesn’t this person seem familiar to you?”

The downside of having fragmented memories was that Ji Meng couldn’t remember everyone that the original body had known but who didn’t appear in the memory fragments. It required her to dig through her mind for quite a while, and since so much time had passed, even if the person had appeared in the fragments, their face was often blurred.

【It’s very possible, don’t worry, host. It’s normal for the original body not to remember neighbors after being away for over ten years. You can just improvise.】

“Ma’am, I’m Ji Meng,” she said, ignoring the useless Sansan and smiling at the woman.

“You’re Xiao Meng?”

“You’re back!”

In an instant, the woman’s eyes widened. She looked at Ji Meng and then at Qiuqiu beside her, as if she had discovered something incredible. She even forgot about the vegetable basket on the ground and hurried to knock on the door of the third house next to them.

“Old Ji, Old Ji, your Xiao Meng is back!”

“You little girl, it’s been so many years! You come back and can’t even find your own home!”

The woman continued to knock on the door while turning around to speak loudly to Ji Meng.

A few other aunties who were buying vegetables passed by, heard the commotion, and ran over:

“What? Old Ji’s little girl is back?”