Shen Yi pressed close to her.
She knew Shen Sixing had a habit of scattering listening devices everywhere.
Her second brother, Shen Ruxu, had exactly the same habit as Shen Sixing.
That was why Shen Yi had deliberately burrowed into Wen Ya’s arms to talk.
All Shen Sixing could hear was the two of them whispering.
He bit his lip gloomily, realizing that Shen Yi clearly had something she didn’t want him to know.
…Damn it. If only I’d known, I would’ve planted the bug on Shen Yi.
What a bad kid.
Shen Sixing desperately wanted to know what they were talking about.
All he could hear were Wen Ya’s startled exclamations: “Really?” “You’re kidding, right?” “What?”
The whole exchange sounded like something out of a suspense drama.
What on earth were they discussing?
…
Wen Ya crouched in front of Shen Yi, though her sharp gaze was busy examining the little girl’s face.
“How do you know all this?”
Wen Ya really did enjoy growing flowers, and her flowers never managed to survive.
What was more, from her codename to her current age and even her plans for retirement, Shen Yi had gotten every detail exactly right.
These things were secrets to Wen Ya. Now that a child she had met only once had exposed them, she felt a chill run through her.
“Little girl,” she lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Can you read minds?”
Shen Yi tilted her head. “No. It’s because I know you, Mommy.”
The word “Mommy” made Wen Ya’s fingertips tremble.
“Wh-why are you calling me Mommy?” Wen Ya asked in shock.
She instinctively tightened her grip on Shen Yi’s hand.
The girl’s hand was small and delicate, and her whole body looked like a newly hatched chick.
“You’re my mommy. I came from the future.” Shen Yi nestled into her arms. “I know a lot about you.”
“…”
The absurd claim left Wen Ya’s thoughts frozen for several seconds.
However, her mind had never worked quite like other people’s.
At that moment, Wen Ya’s first reaction was not the slightest bit of suspicion that this little girl knew her codename and might be a spy.
Instead, her thoughts were filled with absurdly novel ideas like, “She called me Mommy,” “I’m her mother,” and “So I really will have a child in the future.”
“Am I married in the future?”
Her eyes lit up.
Shen Yi nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
“Are you my daughter?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Shen Yi had originally prepared a whole speech. She planned to let Wen Ya be shocked first, then slowly explain where she had come from, using the process to test Wen Ya’s attitude.
But it turned out she didn’t need any setup at all. Wen Ya had immediately run with the conversation herself.
She asked excitedly, “You believe me now, Mommy?”
Wen Ya said, “No.”
The girl’s expression visibly fell, and Wen Ya quickly added, “That just sounds too strange. Why would you be my daughter? And what about him?”
She pointed toward the bathroom. “What is he to you?”
“He’s my daddy.”
“Daddy and Mommy—”
Shen Yi raised two fingers and pressed them together, grinning as she made a little gesture.
“That’s right. You two are a couple.”
Wen Ya was stunned for several seconds.
Unable to resist, she turned Shen Yi’s face toward her and examined it carefully.
“You don’t look much like me.”
Wen Ya had the kind of face that looked elegant without makeup and strikingly alluring with just a touch of lipstick.
As for this little girl, there had to be some foreign ancestry in her family line. She had enormous eyes and long, curled lashes.
Her skin was as white as snow. Shen Sixing was also very fair, so perhaps Shen Yi had inherited her complexion from her father?
In an instant, Wen Ya imagined an entire series of stories.
After wavering for two seconds, she asked the crucial question.
“Then do you know where my family home is?”
“Of course I do,” Shen Yi replied.
“Where?”
“It’s in a very remote place,” Shen Yi said. “First, you have to take a plane to the provincial capital in the south. Then you transfer to a train to a small county town, and from there you take a long-distance bus to a town.”
“Once you arrive in the town, you still have to hire a motorized tricycle and ride along a bumpy road for forty minutes. Finally, you get off at the foot of the mountain and walk along a narrow field path that’s only wide enough for one person until you reach the village.”
Every trip home involved crossing mountains and rivers. It was practically a journey to the West.
“…”
Wen Ya stared blankly for two seconds before murmuring, “Did I even tell you all that?”
Shen Yi clasped her hands beneath her chin. “Yes.”
“Your next-door neighbor, Auntie Li, often gossips about you. Every time you hear about it, you get extremely angry.”
“After you get married in the future, you hardly ever go home. Everyone thinks you have terrible judgment and are too love-struck. If you go home, they’ll all criticize you, so you stop going back.”
“…”
When Wen Ya had gone home for New Year’s before, she’d heard Auntie Li under the big locust tree at the village entrance, gossiping with a group of old women. They’d said she had worked in the big city until she’d become stupid, that she looked dull and wasn’t clever, and a whole host of other things.
She covered her face in disbelief. When she recovered, she stared at the child.
In a soft voice, she said, “Ah, Auntie Li? Yes, she does like to gossip. But…”
Perhaps Wen Ya could have suspected she was some sort of spy or agent when Shen Yi mentioned her codename.
But when Shen Yi brought up her troublesome neighbors and gossip-loving relatives, Wen Ya finally believed her.
Wen Ya held Shen Yi by the neck and leaned closer.
“Your daddy has a stable job, doesn’t he? Why do they still look down on me? Is his job not good enough?”
In Wen Ya’s understanding, a stable job was the most important criterion when choosing a partner.
She had had enough of living with her life on the line. All she wanted was to find an ordinary man with a nine-to-five job and weekends off, then spend the rest of her life in peace and stability.
Shen Yi did not hesitate to praise him.
“Yes, he has a stable job. It’s a family business.”
Strictly speaking, the pile of industries owned by the Shen family did count as a family business, even though most of them operated in the darker sectors. They did have several legitimate companies on the surface.
“He’s also a technical person. He can fix computers, televisions, and refrigerators!”
That wasn’t a lie, either.
Shen Sixing really could fix them. He had taken apart countless electronic devices, and his technical skills were even better than those of professional repairmen.
“He’s kind of like an amazing… Oh, right—Big Big Wolf.”
Shen Yi was very pleased with this comparison.
Listening to her description, Wen Ya couldn’t help laughing.
“So he’s an engineer type?”
Shen Yi nodded.
She had actually thought about whether she should tell the two of them each other’s true identities.
For example, Shen Sixing’s family background and Wen Ya’s codename.
But after thinking it over, she rejected the idea.
No.
That wouldn’t work.
Shen Sixing’s personality was too difficult, and he was far too suspicious. If he learned about Wen Ya’s profession, he would probably suspect that she had approached him for a mission, and that their meeting from beginning to end had all been a deception.
And Wen Ya’s original goal clearly hadn’t been to marry into a criminal family.
What she wanted was stability and harmony.
If she learned what the Shen family’s so-called family business actually involved, Mommy would walk away on the spot.
So it was best for Shen Yi not to say too much.
…
Shen Sixing, who had been listening in through his earphones the entire time, frowned as he heard the two of them talking about “Daddy” and “Mommy.”
Realizing that something was wrong, he decisively pushed open the door and walked out, his eyes fixed firmly on Shen Yi.
…This kid hadn’t told her mother everything, had she?
