Chapter 1 At the School Gate
I stood in front of the school gate and froze as my eyes met Gu Cheng's.
A photocopy of the withdrawal application was already tucked in my pocket.
Was I still one step too late?
I was eighteen then. Gu Cheng was seven.
"Sister?"
Seeing I did not respond, Gu Cheng tugged at my clothes again.
I only stared at him.
Stared at those eyes that held nothing but confused attachment now—yet ten years later would hold only cold indifference.
Cold enough to hand me a bank card himself.
He had said:
"Here is five hundred and twenty thousand. I've repaid every bit of kindness you showed me. From then on, we're even."
He had said:
"The money and power you love are too vulgar for me. They cloud my thinking. So don't come looking for me again. Thank you."
Always that same look—cold, world-weary, looking down on everyone.
Including me.
I had known since childhood that I was only ordinary.
But my little brother Gu Cheng—he was a genius.
Our parents were the most old-fashioned country folk. They favored sons over daughters and had no idea what a genius was.
They only understood "heaven envies the gifted," terrified their son was too clever and would be taken early by the heavens.
So they had spoiled Gu Cheng at home from the start, and superstitiously left him a thin little braid, saying it could "lock his soul."
Thus Gu Cheng's first seven years had already been a pearl buried in dust.
That was why, in my past life, the moment our parents died suddenly, I brought Gu Cheng to the city and shouldered both our lives alone.
Why, for his single sentence—"I want to study"—I had swallowed my pride and borrowed from relatives to put him in the best private school.
—I did not want Gu Cheng's gift buried under poverty and my own mediocrity.
So even? How could we be even?
He was giving me back that five hundred and twenty thousand now.
What about the family bond I had treated as my spiritual pillar, the one that got me through countless humiliations?
The stomach I ruined with drink, the smiles I sold out in nightclubs, those nights I hid in the restroom and retched after being groped......
What did those absurd, ridiculous ten years of mine count for?
The life I could have had—who was going to give that back to me?
But I had forgotten. Gu Cheng was sharp by nature, even at only seven.
Gu Cheng seemed to sense the abnormal shift in my mood.
The fingers clutching my hem stiffened, then loosened bit by bit.
He stepped back. His long, thick lashes lowered, and his whole self seemed to pull away.
Like a pitiful child living under someone else's roof. That careful wariness made guilt rise from deep in my chest.
I only forced out a laugh.
What was that old saying again......
An ungrateful wolf you can never raise.
I thought again of the day Gu Cheng and Lu Congzheng first met.
Gu Cheng was sixteen that year, right at the most rebellious, sharp-tongued age.
My secret relationship with Lu Congzheng had already lasted two years.
I had been truly happy that day.
I had thought I was the happiest person in the world.
I had a genius little brother, my entire pride and hope;
I also had a gentle lover who had promised me a future.
Now I was finally bringing the two people I loved most in this world into the same home.
How happy. How very happy.
I remembered the doorbell ringing. I could not free my hands in the kitchen, so I had Gu Cheng open the door.
I waited full of expectation for their warm greetings.
Waited for Gu Cheng to call out "Brother-in-law."
But the entryway was dead silent.
I wiped my hands on my apron and walked out of the kitchen with a full smile. "Why don't you come in......"
Only to see a tall man and a shorter one standing inside and outside the entryway, locked in a wordless standoff.
The atmosphere was just as frozen.
Lu Congzheng stood outside the door, posture straight.
In his left hand he held a large bouquet of tulips; in his right, a black gift box stamped with a luxury brand logo.
On his face, that usual mild expression was mixed with rare surprise and guilt.
Across from him, Gu Cheng was a head shorter than Lu Congzheng.
His back in the school uniform was stretched ramrod straight, like a tough pine.
Gu Cheng just blocked the doorway—would not step aside, would not speak.
And the look he fixed on Lu Congzheng was icy, sharp, cold almost to the point of......
Hatred?
Why?
A nameless unease seized my heart.
"Baby."
Lu Congzheng saw me first. The astonishment on his face vanished in an instant, and that tender, affectionate gentleness returned. "This is your......"
Gu Cheng only then snapped back and cut Lu Congzheng off stiffly:
"Gu Yan, this is the boyfriend you found?"
He turned to look at me and mocked without mercy: "I thought your taste would be better. Do you know that he—"
Gu Cheng's words stopped dead. He frowned hard, and in the end only spat out two words:
"Forget it."
As if explaining anything to someone of my intelligence was too much trouble.
Then Gu Cheng completely ignored Lu Congzheng, walked straight back to the sofa, picked up a German book, and shut us out.
The smile on my face froze.
That unease in my chest grew stronger.
Lu Congzheng, though, seemed completely unaffected.
He walked up to me and handed me the flowers and the gift.
"Happy anniversary, Baby...... I love you."
As he spoke, Lu Congzheng leaned down slightly and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead.
From the sofa came an immediate, harsh rip—
The sound of a page being torn—
"Si-Sister, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you talking?"
Seemed he could not bear the silence. Gu Cheng, still wearing the soul-locking braid, could not help speaking.
He pulled at my hem again, this time with clear urgency:
"You...... don't want me to study?"
Only then did I pull free of the memory and look at Gu Cheng.
He was still as I remembered—clean, fragile, like a blank sheet of paper.
But my heart had already been stained black by the ink of ten years later. It could never return to that pure past.
Ungrateful wolf.
I thought of that word again.
I had been reborn. What was I reborn for?
To raise him all over again? To give him another chance to tear a piece of flesh from my heart?
"Study?" I said. "Fine."
Gu Cheng's eyes lit up at once.
But I did not stop: "You can go back to the town and attend the public elementary school there, same as I did back then."
Gu Cheng's eyes dimmed at once.
"But Sister, I heard there are private international schools in the city. The teachers there are better......"
"I know. But we have no money and no power."
I cut him off bluntly, sealing his words shut.
In his world right now, "money and power" were probably as vague and unreal as clouds on the horizon.
Maybe in another ten years, those things would still be nothing but vulgar trifles to a genius like him.
Whose fault was that?
Mine, I supposed—for rather sinking into the mud myself than building him a clean paradise.
"Gu Cheng, you're very smart, so can you help me imagine something?"
I crouched down to meet his eyes.
"Suppose I drop out now to work for you, take the fastest-paying job at the most profitable nightclub—things like drinking with people, selling smiles—and use that money to put you in the best school. When you become someone great in the future—what would you do?"
I could not help it.
My rebirth had come too timely, and too hastily.
So hastily I did not even know how I had been reborn, or what had happened right before.
So fast I had no time to ask the one person I truly should have questioned a single "why?"
And seven-year-old Gu Cheng froze, just as expected.
Even as a genius, he could not understand this.
He only caught a few words that made him uneasy.
"Selling smiles...... Sister, who are you going to sell smiles to?"
I said, word by word: "To people I hate."
Gu Cheng's face went pale.
He pressed his lips tight. His gaze dropped, then snapped up to look straight at me.
"Then I won't study."
He said it, voice sharp and loud. "I won't study anymore. I don't want Sister going to sell smiles to people she hates!"
I froze.
The Gu Cheng of my past life had never said anything like that.
He had only silently accepted everything I gave him, then climbed over my flesh and blood as if it cost him nothing.
"......Not study?"
I asked him back. "If you don't study, you won't get into the university you want, won't enter the lab you want, won't become the genius everyone chases after. Is that fine with you too?"
Gu Cheng was stumped by my question.
He stood there blankly, not knowing how to answer for the first time.
After a long while, he finally found his voice again. It was no longer loud, thick with nasal congestion:
"I don't know...... but I don't want Sister to be unhappy."
The boy lifted his head. Tears finally slid down along his thick lashes.
His voice grew smaller still, unable to hide the grievance.
"Sister, the way you looked just now—it was scary."