Chapter 2

Chapter 2

On the day she was recognized and taken back to the Marquis Manor, I just happened to be catching toads to scare her. Instead, I fell into a ditch and ended up covered in mud.

By the time I crawled out, she was already sitting in the carriage.

I was so angry that I cried all night.

Only a fool would miss her!

I was just upset because she had stuffed a cricket down my collar the day before. I had lost that round to her and hadn’t had the chance to get my revenge before she ran off.

I’ve held that grudge for over a decade.

The Marquess’s Wife didn’t answer my question. Her lips began to tremble, and tears fell silently down her face.

The Marquess turned his face away, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

Suddenly, something felt wrong.

“Where is she?”

The Marquess’s Wife finally couldn’t hold it back anymore. She covered her face and sobbed aloud. “Ah Ruan… after she gave birth to Ah Qiao, she suffered a hemorrhage… they couldn’t save her…”

My head buzzed, and I reflexively protested.

“That’s impossible!”

Bad seeds live forever. How could Gu Ruan just die like that?

“You’re lying to me.”

“Is the Marquis Manor hiding her? Is she planning some other trick to mess with me? When she was little, she loved to fake cry to lure me into her traps-”

The Marquess’s Wife cried even harder, and the maids nearby all fell to their knees. The room was filled with the sound of stifled weeping.

The Marquess took a letter from his sleeve and handed it over. “Ah Ruan left this. She said… if you ever came here, it should be given to you.”

I stared at the letter. On the envelope, four characters were written in a crooked scrawl: *To be opened by Xiaoxiao.*

It was Gu Ruan’s handwriting.

I recognized it.

Before she was six, my mother taught her how to write. Her horizontal strokes weren’t level and her vertical ones weren’t straight; it looked like earthworms crawling.

The Marquis Manor had raised her for over ten years, yet they somehow hadn’t managed to make her handwriting look any better.

I reached out and took the letter.

Opening it, I found a single piece of drawing paper inside.

[Stupid Xiaoxiao! Fooled you again!]

I let out a sigh of relief. “I knew you were lying!”

“Where’s my sister? Tell her to come out.”

The Marquess’s Wife wiped away a tear.

“Ah Ruan is really gone…”

“Ah Qiao has never spoken before… You are the first person she has ever called out to.”

I looked down at the little thing still clinging to my leg.

“Auntie.”

She called out again, smiling to reveal two tiny baby teeth.

My throat suddenly felt as if something were blocking it.

I remembered an afternoon when we were six, the day Gu Ruan was taken away by the Marquis Manor.

She poked her head out from the carriage and looked back at me.

I thought she was going to say something, but instead, she stuck her tongue out at me and ducked back inside without looking back.

I was so angry that I chased after the carriage for a long time, cursing as I ran: “Gu Ruan, you just wait! Sooner or later, I’m going to the Marquis Manor to settle the score with you!”

She lifted the carriage curtain and shouted back from a distance, “Come then! Who’s afraid of who?”

…