Near noon, Mama Wang finished cooking and placed everything on the dining table.
“Rourou, call your sister for lunch.”
Bai Yurou was lying on the living room sofa looking at news about Bai Mo on her phone when her mother called her over to work.
“Okay.”
Bai Yurou obediently nodded.
Today was a weekday.
Big Brother and Father were at the company, while her singer older sister was staying home as a shut-in because it was her rest day.
Bai Yurou went up to the second floor, arrived in front of Bai Mo’s room, and gently knocked on Bai Mo’s door.
“Sister, it’s time to eat,” she said while knocking.
She repeated it several times without stopping her hand, yet there was still no response from inside the room.
“Sister, I’m coming in.”
Bai Yurou thought her older sister was still sleeping in, so she said this as she pushed the door open and walked in.
Bai Yurou walked to the side of Bai Mo’s bed and discovered that the person was not there.
Bai Mo’s room, like hers, was one large room with two small compartments.
One was the bathroom, and the other Bai Yurou was not sure about, but she speculated it should also be a walk-in closet.
Unlike Bai Yurou’s room that was filled with posters and 2D figures, Bai Mo’s room was arranged much more simply, with only a bookshelf and a desk.
Bai Yurou curiously walked over to the position of the bookshelf.
In the very middle compartment of the bookshelf sat a trophy.
Bai Yurou recognized it. That was the championship trophy Bai Mo had won when she participated in Voice of Dreams.
It was precisely that championship that made her older sister famous throughout the country and also made their parents decide to support her on the path of becoming a singer.
To her older sister, this trophy must have extraordinary significance, so it was placed in the most conspicuous position.
In the several compartments next to the trophy were filled with various albums. Bai Yurou casually picked up a few to look at.
They were all works released by her older sister over the six years since her debut.
However, she discovered there was still one compartment in which none of the albums belonged to Bai Mo.
Bai Yurou picked one up to look.
It was… Ye Xuan’s?
Just like Bai Mo’s own, it contained all the albums from Ye Xuan’s debut until now.
So her older sister still listened to Ye Xuan’s songs?
Bai Yurou felt that she, as a top fan, had discovered an extraordinary secret.
Although Ye Xuan and Bai Mo were recognized as rivals in the entertainment circle, and the fans of the two sides had always torn into each other.
The two of them had basically never appeared in the same frame.
But Bai Mo, the person involved, had never really responded much to Ye Xuan.
Whenever a program or interview asked her how she viewed that junior who imitated her style and also claimed to be her fan.
Bai Mo always gave the formulaic answer: “I’m very happy that Miss Ye can like me. I look forward to collaborating with her.”
Bai Mo’s fans had therefore always blasted Ye Xuan, saying that their family’s Momo doesn’t even pay attention to you, yet you still shamelessly cling on.
As a result, her older sister had actually been secretly paying attention to Ye Xuan all along?
Bai Yurou felt shocked. She hurriedly put that album back and fled from her older sister’s room as if escaping.
Only after leaving the room did Bai Yurou remember her main quest—calling her older sister for lunch.
Just now she had been secretly looking at her older sister’s collection and completely forgotten that she still hadn’t found Bai Mo.
Bai Mo was not in her own room, so she could only be in one place.
Bai Yurou went up to the third floor, to the doorway of the recording studio.
Sure enough, she heard her older sister’s energetic singing voice coming out from the recording studio.
She was singing the song that had won her the championship back then and exploded in popularity nationwide—Butterfly Breaking the Cocoon.
The lyrics told of the metamorphosis of a cocoon, silently struggling in the darkness, enduring the pain of tearing, and finally biting through the cage, spreading its wings, and becoming a butterfly flying toward the light.
Even separated by a door, Bai Yurou could feel that butterfly in the chorus climax breaking free of its restraints and rushing out, as if flying right beside her.
In the end, when Bai Mo finished singing, Bai Yurou was still immersed and had not reacted.
Her older sister’s songs were just this infectious.
Bai Yurou recalled that when she was hospitalized in the past, her older sister would often sit by the hospital bed and sing various songs from her debut until now for her, hoping that she could recover soon.
After Bai Mo finished singing, she put down the headphones and opened the room door.
Discovering her little sister standing blankly in front of the door, she asked in confusion, “Rourou?”
Bai Yurou was instantly pulled back to her senses by Bai Mo’s “Rourou.”
“…Sister, Mom told me to call you for lunch. Just now I went to your room and didn’t see you, so I came up to look for you.”
“Mm. Thank you, Rourou. Let’s go downstairs to eat,” Bai Mo said as she took her little sister’s hand and walked downstairs.
Zhou Wanting was already sitting at the dining table. The porridge in her bowl was almost finished.
“You two finally came down. One after another dragging on for so long. Young people need to eat on time, do you know that?”
Hearing her mother’s complaint, Bai Mo immediately acted spoiled.
“Sorry, Mom. I was too absorbed in singing just now and didn’t notice the time. Rourou was also waiting for me, so that’s why she called late.”
Zhou Wanting looked at her second daughter acting spoiled toward her and didn’t say anything more. She only told the two to hurry and eat.
Then she herself finished the remaining porridge, left the dining room, and returned to the sofa in the living room.
Although the one she doted on the most was her youngest daughter Bai Yurou, her love for the other two children was not the least bit less.
Toward Bai Sihan, she was more strict—because he was the eldest son and would inherit the Bai family in the future, so he had been strictly required since childhood.
Toward Bai Mo, it was guilt.
When Bai Mo wanted to become a singer, she had firmly opposed it precisely because she herself had mixed in the entertainment circle before and knew how deep and murky that pool of water was.
She did not want her precious child to also jump in and suffer.
As a result Bai Mo still insisted on going, so she heartlessly refused to give her any help, making her work part-time while competing and suffer quite a bit.
As a result, Bai Mo had taken the championship under those circumstances and proven herself.
Only then did Zhou Wanting regret it and turn to fully support her daughter’s dream, but those were all later matters.
Those days of letting Bai Mo suffer alone could ultimately never be erased from her memory.
Precisely because of this, she had always wanted to find opportunities to compensate.
The two sisters saw that their mother did not say anything more, so they obediently sat on the chairs and ate.
The meal Mama Wang had made today was still very sumptuous.
Bai Mo used her chopsticks to pick up a piece of duck meat and placed it into Bai Yurou’s bowl.
“Rourou, your body is weak. Eat more.”
“Mm. Thank you, Sister.”
Bai Yurou obediently accepted her older sister’s feeding.
Then the two fell into their own silent states of eating again.
Bai Yurou ate while secretly glancing at Bai Mo beside her.
That lively appearance of hers that was the same as usual did not look the least bit like someone who had just occupied a page of the trending searches.
Bai Yurou ultimately could not hold back and asked in a soft voice:
“Sister?”
“Mm? What’s wrong, Rourou?” Bai Mo’s hands did not stop. She peeled a shrimp and put it into her little sister’s bowl as she casually responded.
“You made it onto the trending searches. You’re really not worried?”
“Afraid? What am I afraid of?” Bai Mo looked completely relaxed and peeled another shrimp for herself.
“Your older sister has debuted for so many years. I’ve never been afraid of things harder than this. What does this count as?”
She was clear in her heart that this matter would pass after making a fuss for a while and would not be able to stir up any big waves at all.
What’s more, she was not in the wrong in the first place.