“I don’t know anyone named Su Yao. If you have nothing else to say, Miss Mu, I’ll take my leave.”
Mu Nanqiu reached out and grabbed Jiang Yun’s wrist, pulling her forcefully, not letting her just walk away.
“What are you doing? I told you, I don’t know her anymore!”
“You don’t?”
At this moment, Jiang Yun’s face did not look good. Hearing Mu Nanqiu’s words, she hesitated for a split second—enough to make her lose the upper hand. Even so, she still didn’t want to talk about this with anyone. She shook her hand hard but couldn’t break free from Mu Nanqiu’s grip.
Looking at the hand gripping her wrist so tightly, Jiang Yun’s expression darkened as she said,
“Miss Mu, your behavior is quite rude.”
Mu Nanqiu was clearly unmoved by such words. She showed no sign of letting go. Instead, she took her phone out of her bag with her other hand. Without even unlocking it, she just tapped the screen to light it up right in front of Jiang Yun’s face.
Jiang Yun looked confused at first, but when the screen lit up, her face went from white to red. Anger flashed in her eyes as she glared at Mu Nanqiu, who only tilted her head slightly and let out a soft laugh.
Jiang Yun reached out with her other hand, intending to snatch the phone from Mu Nanqiu. But she’d underestimated Mu Nanqiu’s reflexes. The moment she moved, Mu Nanqiu had already noticed and retracted her hand, releasing Jiang Yun’s wrist and stepping back a little.
“……”
Jiang Yun felt as though she’d been toyed with—by a young girl, no less. It was a blow to her dignity. But how could she not be agitated by what she’d just seen? Looking at Mu Nanqiu’s calm face, Jiang Yun desperately wanted to just leave, but no matter how angry she was, she could only sit down. Compared to before, her arrogance had lessened, replaced by a cold indifference.
Her watery eyes fixed on Mu Nanqiu, lips pressed tightly together as she gritted her teeth in hatred.
It was at this moment that Mu Nanqiu looked Jiang Yun straight in the eye and said,
“Can we talk properly now?”
Jiang Yun bit her lip lightly and replied coldly,
“What do you want?”
“From the way you reacted, you know her current name is Su Yao, and you know who she’s living with. I asked around. You and Su Yao’s father, Su Yuan, graduated from the same school. You and Su Yuan have a connection, don’t you? But now you’re a rich man’s wife. I’m very curious—why did you leave her back then?”
Jiang Yun felt a headache after hearing Mu Nanqiu’s words. Who questions people like this? So direct! Everyone she’d talked to in the past had always hinted at their intentions gently, with polite words, tiptoeing around the topic, digging for information bit by bit.
But this Miss Mu not only grabbed her and wouldn’t let her leave, she even used what sounded like a half-threat, and then threw a blunt, uncompromising question at her.
No wonder Jiang Yun hated dealing with these young people nowadays!
After straightening her posture, she refused to look at Mu Nanqiu, whose very presence irritated her. Turning her gaze instead to the distant sky beyond the glass wall, Jiang Yun spoke slowly.
“Many years ago……………”
Su Yao stood at the entrance of the neighborhood, took a deep breath of the cold air, and after walking in, she didn’t go straight home. Instead, she found a bench in the small park below and sat down.
This was where children usually played. Everywhere she looked, the snow was a mess, trampled and misshapen. She saw two little girls building a snowman, but before they could finish, some kids running around in a snowball fight accidentally destroyed it.
One of the little girls started crying, and the boys, frightened, ran off in a hurry.
After crying for a bit, the girl wiped her tears and, together with her friend, started building a new snowman in the same spot.
Su Yao sighed softly and looked down at her own black leather boots, smoothing the hem of her dress with her hand.
She took out her phone and searched her contacts for that number.
After dialing, she waited a few seconds before the other side answered with a “Hello.” Su Yao exhaled a small cloud of white breath and said quietly,
“Uncle, I have a question I want to ask you…………………”
Uncle Su was still at work, but things were relatively quiet and lunch break was approaching, so taking a call was no problem. He thought it was a client calling to discuss business, but when he saw the caller ID, he realized it was Su Yao.
His niece was calling him?
Frowning slightly, he stood up from his desk, went outside to find a quiet place, and answered. When he heard Su Yao’s question, he paused for a while.
“About my parents—do you know something? You said you held me when I was little. You knew my mom very well. You must’ve noticed something, right?”
Uncle Su fell silent for a long time, pondering whether or not to tell Su Yao. After all, these were old stories—whether she knew or not didn’t really make a difference. That day, caught up in emotion, he’d said a lot to Su Yao in a rush as he was leaving. Remembering the past, he wondered if perhaps it would be better not to tell her.
It was a gloomy day when he heard that his sister had given birth—a boy, apparently. But Su Yuan and Chen Ye didn’t seem to have any intention of returning to their hometown, so Uncle Su hadn’t seen his little nephew for quite a while.
His family also had no plans to travel all the way to such a distant big city. A married daughter is like water spilled out—the child’s surname was Su, not Chen. If they came back, they could pay a visit, but making the long trip just didn’t seem worth the trouble.
That was how the older generation of the Chen family thought, but Uncle Su was different. Driven by curiosity, he bought a train ticket during summer vacation and set off for the big city. The train ride was so long he fell asleep—if it weren’t for a fellow villager riding with him, he might’ve missed his stop.
After getting off, he wandered around before finally finding the place Su Yuan had rented at the time.
Su Yao’s parents’ new home was still being renovated and couldn’t be lived in for a while. Uncle Su had only a vague idea of their address from brief text exchanges with Su Yuan and Chen Ye, and had to ask around to find their place.
He knocked on the door, heart pounding with excitement—he hadn’t seen his sister in ages, only occasionally during holidays, so of course he was thrilled.
Chen Ye opened the door. At first glance, Uncle Su barely recognized her—she looked terribly thin and pale. If it weren’t for the glimmer in her eyes, he would’ve thought she was seriously ill.
Out of concern, he asked, only to be told, “It’s nothing, just from giving birth.”
Whether that was true or not, Uncle Su could tell his sister didn’t want to talk, so he didn’t press further. He’d assumed Su Yuan hadn’t taken good care of her.
But after going in and seeing Su Yuan washing vegetables, Uncle Su’s discontent vanished.
Su Yuan looked a mess—disheveled, unshaven, nothing like the scholarly young man he used to be. Seeing that, Uncle Su even started to think maybe not getting married was best.
But watching his sister and Su Yuan getting along so well, he found himself longing for marriage anyway.
He put down the things he’d brought, chatted a bit with his old friend, and when he finally saw the baby, he was surprised. It wasn’t the over-one-year-old nephew mentioned in the messages, but a four-month-old niece.
Neither Su Yuan nor Chen Ye would say a word about it, and Uncle Su didn’t press. He simply pretended nothing was amiss, had a meal with them—three dishes and a soup, which tasted quite good.
After hugging the adorable baby, Uncle Su got ready to leave.
He’d come just to see how his sister was living and what the child was like. Now that he’d seen both, it was time to go.
Su Yuan asked him to stay overnight, but Uncle Su felt that, even as a relative, he was still an outsider, so he didn’t stay. He bought the last train ticket for that day and was home by the next morning.
After that, until the accident happened, Uncle Su hadn’t gone to visit them again.
When the memory ended, he cautiously asked Su Yao a question.
“Su Yao, are you trying to find your birth parents?”
“No, I don’t plan to look for them.”
After listening to Uncle Su recount what he’d seen, Su Yao felt a little melancholy. After all, what others described was just their side of things. Time had filtered those events, turning images into words, and nobody could ever really know what truly happened back then.
“After I graduated, I was with that man. But ever since I got pregnant, he would disappear every few days. At first I thought he was just busy, but then one day he vanished completely—no one knew where he went, leaving me all alone.”
“I nearly broke with my family for him, I was determined to stay with him, and yet he let me down.”
“Even then, I still foolishly hoped he’d come back, that someday he’d return, but until……………
“In my darkest moment, Su Yuan found me. Back in college, we’d had a brief relationship, but we broke up soon after.”
“I thought he would pull me out of the mud………….but in the end, he told me, ‘I can adopt your child—you can’t take care of her alone.’”
“I agreed, because he was right.”
“But I hated him!”
Jiang Yun finished her story, her words filled with emotion. Out of breath, she looked utterly exhausted. After resting for a moment, she got up to leave.
People can only see the side they want to see. What Jiang Yun said wasn’t necessarily the truth. Mu Nanqiu didn’t stop her from leaving. The woman’s eyes were filled with hatred and anger, but also sadness and pain. Who could tell which was an act and which was real?
After Jiang Yun had walked some distance, Mu Nanqiu called out to her back.
“Aunt Jiang, I hope you won’t appear in Su Yao’s life again. It would be better for her.”
Jiang Yun’s steps faltered for a moment, angered by those words, but in the end she said nothing and walked away.
Before leaving, she bought a book—the very one she’d just been reading.
Mu Nanqiu glanced at her phone, sat for a few more minutes, then finally got up and left the bookstore.
Elsewhere, Su Yao was sitting in a small eatery. The New Year had passed, and with the shopkeepers returning from their hometowns, the street shops were gradually reopening. But things were still far less lively than in the summer and autumn. At this hour, only Su Yao and a couple—who looked like high school students—were in the shop. When she came in, the couple had sized her up.
The two of them staring together made Su Yao feel quite uncomfortable in her seat.
She hadn’t eaten much in the morning and was now a bit hungry, so she planned to fill her stomach before heading home at a leisurely pace.
As she walked up the steps and passed by the security booth, the security guard called out to her.
“Hey girl, that young lady who came looking for you before is back—she’s already gone upstairs, probably waiting for you.”
“Huh? Okay, thank you.”
Su Yao was stunned for a moment, but after hearing what the security guard said, the happy smile from her full stomach vanished at once, replaced by a pouty expression—an adorable look of “I’m already very angry.”
“Damn Bai Jianlian, you’re back again? Since that’s how it is, let’s settle everything today!”
With that, Su Yao strode toward her apartment building.
But as soon as she’d climbed two flights, her legs gave out—thighs weak, calves sore, panting for breath.
After resting for a while, she continued upstairs.
Looking up at the floors above, Su Yao knew today would be the end of everything. Each step was an act of courage. When she reached halfway, she saw the girl with long, straight black hair standing there—her face showing no hint of fear.
Bai Jianlian bit her lip. She’d been waiting bitterly for days.
Step by step, Su Yao walked up until she was just over a meter away from her own door, facing Bai Jianlian.
“You’re here?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“I’m already here.”
“But in the end, you still came…………”
“In the end, I still came……………
The two stood in silence for a long time, until Su Yao finally broke it.
“Bai Jianlian, you’re just my past. Since you’re the past, why keep chasing me?”
“The past? I’m just the past? Why?”
“We were only high school classmates. Maybe—maybe we were friends for a while. But in the end, it all ended. Those three years are gone with the exam, left in the past.”
“I don’t accept it!”
Bai Jianlian panicked. She felt something quietly changing, an unfamiliar sensation. Memories in her mind began to shift. She reached out to grab Su Yao, but Su Yao dodged easily. She began to question herself, to recall her real past.
She remembered the last words they said to each other back then.
Let’s break off. From now on, let’s never have anything to do with each other!
With that final sentence, everything became different. Bai Jianlian looked at the familiar yet strange Su Yao in front of her and felt odd.
“Su Yao, I……” “Go, go, go, you’re not welcome here!”
Su Yao glared at her.
Bai Jianlian understood—Su Yao hadn’t forgiven her for her reckless behavior back then. Feeling dejected, she walked downstairs like a defeated soldier.
Watching Bai Jianlian’s retreating figure, Su Yao realized this matter seemed to have ended in a rather strange way.