Chapter 76: Real and Fake
Seeing Yu Yuan enter the bedroom behind Yu Xin, Jiang Chuchu raised her eyebrows. “You actually brought her along too?”
Yu Yuan froze, as if waking from a dream, and suddenly shook off Yu Xin’s hand.
The bedroom door closed behind her. Going back out would be abrupt, so she just stood at the doorway, motionless.
Yu Xin didn’t pay attention to her hand being shaken off and simply explained to Jiang Chuchu, “I was afraid of leaving her alone. Yu Jinxi is going to scold her soon.”
That statement hit a sore spot for Yu Yuan. She stiffened—but her voice wasn’t loud, as if she feared touching some taboo.
“What’s there to be afraid of? If it weren’t for you guys, how could my brother have scolded me? Just now it was your fault I got blamed!” Yu Yuan said angrily.
Jiang Chuchu rolled her eyes; she could already see through Yu Yuan’s self-deception.
Gu Qinghuan thought for a moment. “You’re right.”
Yu Yuan hadn’t expected her to agree and was momentarily stunned.
“You really were affected by us. Yu Jinxi thought you couldn’t get along with us, but he didn’t expect we could actually talk normally,” Gu Qinghuan said calmly, looking at Yu Yuan. “If I hadn’t talked to you, if I hadn’t asked you to play the piano, we wouldn’t have had this conversation, and you wouldn’t have been scolded.”
No, that’s not exactly it.
Yu Yuan’s lips moved slightly. She wanted to say something, but her throat felt blocked.
Gu Qinghuan had only started talking to her to ask where she could get some water, yet Yu Yuan had deliberately made things difficult for her.
Afterward, Gu Qinghuan didn’t get angry. She poured her some water, spoke to her normally, and even listened while she played the piano.
Even though she had no real appreciation for it, just saying things like “sounds nice,” “this part is lively,” or “like it wants to dance,” and humming along—off-key at that—it was genuinely fun.
Yu Yuan had never, ever hosted friends at home before.
Plop. Big tears rolled from Yu Yuan’s eyes onto the floor, hitting with a loud sound.
“I hate you,” she sobbed, letting her words all spill onto Yu Xin. “Why can you host friends at home? Why can you have friends like that? Why are your grades so good…?”
“Why… why are you real, and why did you get brought back…?”
“Why… am I fake…?”
The room was so quiet that only Yu Yuan’s sobs could be heard.
Sesame, the cat, jumped down from the bedroom bed and went to the living room. Seeing another person in the room, it was no longer unusual.
It padded over to Yu Xin’s feet, arched its back, rubbed against her, and meowed affectionately: Mom, the cat’s slept well, the cat wants a snack!
Hearing the cat, Yu Yuan seemed to break down even further. She wiped her tears fiercely and continued, “And the cat… the cat too! They… they wouldn’t let me have a cat back then. I wasn’t even fake yet, and they wouldn’t allow it. Why could you?”
“My cat… it was really good. Black, always followed me around. When I called it, it came. I could hold it, and it wouldn’t bite me…”
“I named it Tan… Tan Tan. The day Mom threw it away, I… I was in arts and crafts class. I made it a ribbon, wanted to put it on it…”
Talking about the cat made Yu Yuan cry even harder, her words failing mid-sentence.
Jiang Chuchu felt pity for her. Seeing Yu Yuan still crying, she couldn’t bear it. She grabbed a few tissues from the coffee table and pressed them to Yu Yuan’s face.
Yu Yuan, with tears and a runny nose, instinctively took the tissues and wiped her eyes.
She had crumpled several tissues wiping her tears. When she heard Yu Xin say, “Here, for you,” she thought it was more tissues and reached out to take them—but instead, something fluffy was pressed into her hands.
She jumped in surprise. Through her blurry, tear-filled eyes, she met the wide, alert gaze of Sesame, the cat, staring back at her.
“Don’t drop Sesame,” Gu Qinghuan interjected.
Yu Yuan reflexively reached out with her other hand, using both hands to gently hold Sesame.
With no hands left to wipe her tears, she just stood there dazed, until Yu Xin handed her more tissues and wiped her face.
“I…” Yu Xin hesitated, then resolved herself to speak. “At first, I also disliked you.”
“I didn’t understand why I was the real daughter, but Mom and Dad didn’t like me. Their eyes looked at me as if I were some item to be sold, like my foster mother, full of calculation.”
“My hands were rough, my skin dark, and I was skinny. But you weren’t like that—you could play the piano, spoke confidently, dressed up like a princess for competitions. I really envied you, especially thinking that I should have been like you originally—it made me even sadder.”
“No matter whether it was Mom, Dad, or Brother, they all preferred you, not me. I always thought it was because I wasn’t good enough, so I worked hard, trying to be like you…”
Here, Yu Xin paused, glanced at Gu Qinghuan and Jiang Chuchu, then turned her head back and spoke firmly: “But now I don’t think that way anymore, because I’ve realized that my own family didn’t truly love me. They just assessed me with the same eyes used to evaluate products.”
“For those ‘why’ questions, I can answer you now—because I worked hard, because I achieved good results, because I became friends with the daughter the father valued from the Jiang family.”
“He never cared for me because I was his daughter. He only treated me well because there was profit in me; that’s why he invested in me.”
Yu Xin spoke with force, as if scraping away some old grime with a steel brush.
“So now, I don’t dislike you anymore. You’re not my enemy. You’re just like me, constrained by family.”
“I even think you’re more pitiable than me, because you haven’t realized this fact yet. You’re still hoping to be loved by your family.”
“With that kind of hope, you’ll eventually be used by the Yu family, your value exploited to become part of their foster system, won’t you?”
Yu Yuan stood motionless for a while, then came back to her senses and handed Sesame into Yu Xin’s arms. “I don’t believe it! That’s not what you said! You’re just trying to pit us against each other!”
“You’re the pitiable one! I’m not pitiable at all!”
After saying this, Yu Yuan yanked open the door and ran off. Gu Qinghuan could hear the sound of the door slamming shut as Yu Yuan returned to her room.
She closed the door, then turned to Yu Xin, looking bewildered. “Did I come across as too arrogant?”
“No,” Jiang Chuchu said immediately. “It’s just that she can’t accept it herself. I think what you said was very reasonable.”
Gu Qinghuan nodded as well. “For things like this, words alone aren’t enough. She has to see reality for herself.”
But from what Yu Yuan had said, Gu Qinghuan felt that Yu Yuan wasn’t entirely blind to the truth. She just didn’t want to accept it.
She knew clearly that she was the fake daughter, that everything she had now was built on the foundation of the Yu family. If she clashed with them, she would have nothing.
They were all still high school students, and reality wasn’t like a novel where you could buy a lottery ticket and instantly achieve financial freedom—especially since minors can’t even buy lottery tickets.
Yu Xin stroked Sesame in her arms and said earnestly, “I will try again.”
Her words might not have been powerful enough, but she believed in her own ability to act.
