Soon, the two cups of warm water were brought over.
Xie Dingyuan casually touched them, testing the temperature.
Then he pushed one in front of Jiang Fuyue. “Just right. Drink.”
Under the table, Jiang Fuyue lightly scratched his thigh with her finger, meaning: thank you.
The man suddenly sat up straight, the muscles in his thigh instantly tensing.
Xie Yunqian: Heh heh.
Are you two pretending I can’t see this?!
“Ah Yuan,” she smiled gently, her expression calm, “This place only sells drinks, no desserts. Knowing you were coming, I booked a cheesecake in advance at the bakery across the street. It should be ready to pick up about now. Here’s the receipt, could you help go get it?”
“Let me say this first, it’s not that I want to slack off. It’s just too hot outside, and the UV is strong. Yueyue and I are both girls, we really shouldn’t suffer like that. You men have thick skin and tough flesh, not afraid of the sun.”
That “Yueyue” almost made goosebumps erupt all over Jiang Fuyue.
“Alright,” Xie Dingyuan didn’t refuse. Before leaving, he even reminded Jiang Fuyue, “Don’t run around, and don’t drink anything randomly. I’ll be right back.”
He really treated her like a disobedient child to be managed.
Jiang Fuyue suppressed the urge for her mouth to twitch wildly and replied, “Okay.”
After Xie Dingyuan left, the atmosphere gradually grew tense.
The two women sat facing each other, their gazes meeting like clashing blades.
“How long have you been with Ah Yuan?” It was ultimately Xie Yunqian who couldn’t hold back and spoke first.
“I haven’t counted. Sister should ask him, he remembers more clearly than I do.”
Why clearly?
Because he cares.
Why care?
Because Xie Dingyuan likes her!
Xie Yunqian sneered. “You seem quite smug?”
Jiang Fuyue shot back, “Is being liked by Xie Dingyuan not something worth being smug about?”
The woman choked. “…Then do you know that he and I grew up together as childhood sweethearts?”
“Huh? Can siblings also be described as childhood sweethearts?”
Xie Yunqian lifted her chin slightly, the corners of her lips rising. “You might not know, Ah Yuan and I aren’t real siblings. We’re not related by blood.”
“Oh, so you’re not actually a Xie family child,” Jiang Fuyue nodded, as if suddenly enlightened. “No wonder the other Xie sisters all married into major domestic elite families, while you had to leave your hometown and drift overseas.”
As she spoke, sympathy couldn’t help but show in her eyes.
“It really shows that biological and non-biological children are, in the end, still different.”
The speaker had no intention, but the listener was stabbed straight in the heart.
Back then, Xie Yunqian married abroad in a fit of anger because she felt the Xie family treated her unfairly.
Although the old madam always said she regarded her as her own, once she found out about her feelings for Xie Dingyuan, didn’t she still oppose it coldly, even going so far as to warn her not to harbor thoughts about Xie Dingyuan anymore?
All that talk of “no favoritism” and “equal treatment” was all lies!
And they still said they treated her like their own?
Ridiculous!
Later, she hastily married, angrily went abroad, and the old master, the old madam, indeed the entire Xie family, never contacted her again. That attitude was as if they wished she’d go farther away, best never come back.
Since they were all so ruthless, why should she keep throwing herself at them? Might as well completely cut off contact, let’s see who’s more ruthless.
Over time, the Xie family’s indifference and the old madam’s unfairness became a thorn lodged deep in Xie Yunqian’s heart.
She couldn’t think about it, couldn’t touch it, any movement hurt!
Yet Jiang Fuyue tore it open with just two sentences, spreading it bloody under the sunlight.
“You know nothing at all! The past between Ah Yuan and me is something no one can participate in or intrude upon!”
“Tsk, your past? You mean playing with mud together before age six? Or flying kites? Or jumping into the pool to see who could hold their breath longer?”
Xie Yunqian stared in shock. “You, ”
“How do I know?” Jiang Fuyue asked for her. “Of course because Xie Dingyuan told me. Otherwise, was I supposed to guess?”
“He actually told you even these things?!”
“What’s so untellable about these things? They’re not some painfully untouchable emotional scars or extraordinary memories. Just ordinary plots, plain past events, things to share as childhood anecdotes during an after-dinner walk. What’s there that can’t be said?”
In Xie Dingyuan’s eyes, of course there wasn’t.
He even hoped Jiang Fuyue would ask more, because that meant she was interested in him, eager to learn even about his childhood.
But to Xie Yunqian, those experiences were precious shared memories between the two of them, treasured recollections that still made the corners of her lips lift when she thought back on them years later.
Yet now, Jiang Fuyue treated them as casual after-meal chatter?
In that instant, her heart was fiercely clenched in pain.
It was as if everything in the past had just been her own wishful thinking.
However, Jiang Fuyue wasn’t finished yet. She calmly took a sip of warm water and continued, “And not just that, he talked quite a bit about things after age six too. Want to hear?”
Xie Yunqian’s gaze flickered slightly.
“Then I’ll just casually pick a few things to talk about. For example, your academic performance wasn’t very good. You often took very childish questions to ask him, but after he explained once, you didn’t understand. Twice, you still didn’t understand. In the end, he really didn’t want to waste time repeating the same thing, so he asked the old madam to hire you a private tutor…”
“Xie Dingyuan even once suspected that male and female brain structures might be different. Otherwise, why would there be such a big gap in intelligence? Problems so simple that he could get the answer at a glance, girls had to ask over and over, and still didn’t understand in the end.”
“Later, when he saw that other girls had normal intelligence and could infer by analogy with ease, he completely dismissed that guess. Thinking about it, it should have only been his eighth sister who was different.”
Boom!
The woman’s cheeks flushed red.
Back then, she really did like bringing math problems to ask Xie Dingyuan, but not because she couldn’t solve them. It was because she wanted to be with him, to talk more.
Later, the family hired her a private tutor, and she no longer had an excuse to go look for him often. She never imagined it was because Xie Dingyuan was impatient and asked the family to arrange it.
Jiang Fuyue: “As for the issue you raised about participating in and intruding upon the past, I think it’s necessary to correct your mistaken view from a scientific perspective. Although three-dimensional space in mathematics allows forward and backward movement, in four-dimensional spacetime, movement is only forward. So time doesn’t enjoy that kind of all-directional freedom.”
“I can’t return to the past, that’s an established fact. Naturally, participating in or intruding upon your memories doesn’t hold.”
Xie Yunqian was already dizzy from this long string of rhetoric.
“Even taking ten thousand steps back, even if it were possible, I wouldn’t want to participate. Two little brats playing stupid games all day, what’s there to join?”
Playing with mud together? Or hide-and-seek?
Give me a break.
Xie Yunqian’s face turned green with anger.
Suddenly, she reacted. Her sharp gaze fell on Jiang Fuyue’s face, sizing her up meaningfully a few times, then she suddenly smiled, “So you’re not as silly-sweet as you look on the surface. You just put on a good act in front of Ah Yuan.”
Jiang Fuyue tilted her head slightly, smiling, putting on the most innocent and pure expression.
Xie Yunqian gritted her teeth. “Does Ah Yuan know your true colors?”
“So what if he does? And so what if he doesn’t?”
“Then it seems he doesn’t. I’ve seen plenty of girls like you, thinking that climbing onto a big tree will let you soar to the skies in one step. Heh, naive!”
“Whether I can soar, I don’t know. But Xie Dingyuan is solid and strong, waist is waist, hips are hips, he really is very easy to climb.”
“You, shameless!”
Jiang Fuyue’s smile faded. “Then eighth sister, spouting a whole series of green-tea remarks at your younger brother’s girlfriend, is that having face? I don’t think so.”
Xie Yunqian nearly choked on her breath!
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to stay calm, then slowly raised her right hand.
The back of her hand faced Jiang Fuyue.
The latter waited calmly, seeing what other tricks she could still pull.
Xie Yunqian: “As you can see, there’s no wedding ring on my hand.”
Jiang Fuyue raised an eyebrow.
“I’m divorced.”
“So?”
“I will fight for Ah Yuan again, and there will no longer be a place for you by his side!”
Jiang Fuyue looked at her like she was looking at a lunatic. “Sister, I’m really curious, where does your confidence come from?”
Xie Yunqian smiled with certainty. “I’m the white moonlight in his heart. You’re a woman, you should know what white moonlight means to a man, right?”
Jiang Fuyue’s expression was hard to describe. “You? White moonlight?”
“That’s right!” Confidence radiated.
“Alright then,” Jiang Fuyue glanced behind her, “say it yourself, who is your white moonlight?”
Xie Yunqian’s whole body stiffened instantly.
And behind her stood Xie Dingyuan, cake in hand, who knew how long he had been there.
When Sister Yue opens her mouth, ghosts get scared.
Old Xie: Me, an unshakable steel-straight man!
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