This was quite a coincidence.
His younger sister Su Xiaoyan shared the exact same birthday as him.
So their birthday banquets were combined into one.
Of course, this grand birthday banquet centered mainly on him, introducing the circle to their new “great young master.”
The birthday banquet was held at a luxurious hotel.
After more than half a year of learning, Su Ziyan performed appropriately at the event and left a fairly good impression on the guests.
It was only after the banquet ended and Su Ziyan returned to his room that he let out a long sigh of relief and lay down weakly on the bed.
For no particular reason, he remembered how Xu Duyan would buy him chocolate-flavored cake every year for his birthday.
Although it was definitely not as delicious as the luxurious multi-layered cake at today’s banquet, it made him feel nostalgic for some inexplicable reason.
Fine, he just missed his sister.
Thinking this, he gave himself a hard slap, feeling that he was nothing but a pretentious jerk.
He was just about to get up to wash up when the bathroom door in his room was suddenly pushed open.
Su Xiaoyan walked in wearing a purple evening gown.
Because it was her birthday, her face had light makeup personally applied by Mother Su.
Although she was only twelve years old, she was already a perfect little beauty in the making.
But what caught Su Ziyan’s attention was not her appearance.
It was the way Su Xiaoyan kept her head lowered, her evening dress somehow torn and ragged, revealing large patches of snow-white skin.
“Xiaoyan, what happened to your clothes?” Su Ziyan asked.
He quickly grabbed the coat beside him and draped it over her shoulders.
“Did someone bully you? I’ll take you to find…”
“Don’t call me that!”
Su Xiaoyan reached out and grabbed Su Ziyan’s wrist, lifting her head to look him in the eyes.
“I have always hated you. I hate you so much!”
Su Ziyan was stunned.
There was a faint smell of alcohol on Su Xiaoyan.
Her normally beautiful and lively eyes looked like a pool of dead water.
“Did you drink?”
“No, I just ate two pieces of liqueur chocolate from my birthday gifts.”
Su Xiaoyan was momentarily stunned by the question before she continued, “I was just saying that I hate you! Did you not hear me?”
“I heard you,” Su Ziyan said as he shook off her hand and firmly buttoned the coat around her.
“If anything, it would be strange if you did not hate me…”
For a moment Su Xiaoyan had nothing to say.
She simply lowered her head and struggled hard, breaking free from Su Ziyan’s hands and letting the coat fall to the floor.
“Then who are you putting on this act for right now!”
Su Xiaoyan’s voice was muffled and heavy.
“I don’t want to keep pretending with you anymore, so you don’t have to pretend either… You should hate me too, right?”
“Why would I hate you?”
Su Ziyan felt a bit bewildered.
“It’s normal for you to hate me. After all, I’m the bad guy who ruined your family.”
“How could you not hate me?”
Su Xiaoyan looked up and glared at him fiercely.
“Just like I hate you for taking away my family, you must hate me for taking away your mother, right?”
“How did you know?”
“I’m not stupid. You call Mom ‘Mother’ but you only call Dad ‘Uncle Su.’”
Su Xiaoyan said with a serious expression.
“So you must only be related to Mom.”
“And our birthdays are only one year apart. That’s also unusual for a mother. So you must be Mom’s child with someone else…”
Su Xiaoyan’s voice began to tremble slightly.
“That means… I probably shouldn’t be Mom’s child at all…”
“Plus some gossip from the servants at home made me even more convinced of this idea. So just like I hate you for taking away my father’s and mother’s love, you should also hate me for taking away your mother…”
“I see…”
Su Ziyan understood the reason after listening.
He then explained, “I can understand why you hate me, but I really don’t hate you. Because until half a year ago I had never even met Mother, so I don’t have even the slightest bit of affection for her.”
“The reason I came to this family is simply because my father—your mother’s ex-husband—died. So…”
“Why can you be so calm!”
Su Xiaoyan interrupted Su Ziyan directly and grabbed his collar.
“Doesn’t this just make me look like I’m making a fuss over nothing?”
Otherwise?
Su Ziyan felt a little helpless inside, but he still tried to explain properly.
“I just…”
“You’re always like this, acting so sensible and like you don’t need anything!”
Su Xiaoyan interrupted him again, her eyes red as she shouted, “Whether it’s motherly love or the birthday banquet, you’re always like this! Everything I wanted was given to you, and you don’t cherish any of it!”
“Do you know how much I hate you? Not a single day goes by when I don’t think about driving you out of this family!”
As Su Xiaoyan spoke, she could no longer hold back her tears.
“But after I gave you attitude on the first day, Dad scolded me. It was the first time he ever scolded me. He told me to stop causing trouble…”
“I wanted to be a good child. I wanted Dad and Mom to love me. I didn’t want them to think I was unreasonable… So I could only say I understood, and starting the next day I called you brother…”
“I hated you so much in my heart and wanted to drive you out… Calling you brother made me feel so disgusted I almost wanted to throw up, but I still called you that…”
As she spoke, Su Xiaoyan seemed to lose all her strength.
She slid down weakly and lowered her head, pressing her forehead against Su Ziyan’s chest.
“Later I gradually learned the truth, but the thought of wanting to drive you away never disappeared.”
“Clearly I’m also the one who took your mother away, yet I’ve been rightfully enjoying the motherly love that shouldn’t belong to me and even complaining that you ruined my family…”
“But I just can’t help it. Clearly I also hate people who steal from others, and I hate my own thoughts right now…”
Su Ziyan was stunned for a moment.
For no reason, he thought of himself back when he watched Xu Duyan drop out of school yet could not help feeling secretly glad inside.
He clearly had not wanted things to be this way, but he had naturally accepted her kindness toward him and secretly acted like an ostrich…
“It’s not like that.”
He reached out and hugged the crying girl, comforting her.
“Blood ties are not the standard for measuring family affection. Shared experiences are. Mom… Aunt has married Uncle Su. You have long been one family. So many years of experiences cannot lie.”
“Whether in her behavior or in her heart, she treats you as her real daughter. So all this talk about you stealing my motherly love is nonsense.”
But Su Xiaoyan did not respond to his explanation.
Instead, she stepped forward and hugged Su Ziyan tightly.
Her mouth, carrying the scent of alcohol, leaned close to his ear and breathed out warm air.
“You know what? I just cut up my clothes myself in the bathroom. I wanted to frame you by making it look like you tricked me into your room and tried to molest me…”
Feeling Su Ziyan’s body stiffen, Su Xiaoyan smiled faintly and continued.
“But I couldn’t do it. Even though I had mentally prepared myself countless times and personally cut up my own clothes, when the moment actually came… the family education I received wouldn’t allow me to do something like that…”
“You’re right. I really did grow up in a family full of love… That’s exactly why I feel even more sorry toward you…”
What Su Xiaoyan did not realize was that Su Ziyan’s body had stiffened not because of her “vicious plan,” but simply because the tears on her face had rubbed against his ear.
It made him feel very sad.
Clearly he was the interloper who had ruined her family for his own selfish desires.
He was the extra one.
So why was it Su Xiaoyan who was crying?