Wen Ya had no idea where she had picked up that non-mainstream quote, but she applied it directly to the two of them, trying to educate the children.
Father and daughter exchanged a glance, then simultaneously broke into identical, beaming smiles.
Shen Yi burst out laughing.
Wen Ya: “? What’s so funny? Was there something wrong with what I said?”
She looked around. She had been completely serious.
It was such a beautiful line—gentle yet powerful, powerful yet kind, and with a sharp edge hidden beneath that kindness—
She had spent a whole hour scrolling through her phone before finally choosing it.
Shen Sixing’s voice was lazy, with a hint of amusement rippling through it.
“You’re really adorable.”
Wen Ya heard nothing but sarcasm in those words.
She hadn’t known Shen Sixing for very long, but she had already gained plenty of experience identifying the way he used polite forms of address to deliver veiled mockery.
Just as Wen Ya was preparing to argue the matter with Shen Sixing, someone suddenly knocked on the door.
“Knock, knock.”
Shen Yi had no intention of getting dragged into their battle. She immediately jumped off the sofa.
“I’ll get it!”
She yanked open the door, and the first thing she saw was a huge bouquet of flowers.
“Shen Sixing, it’s me!”
The voice outside was bright and clear. The person standing in the hallway was a boy of eleven or twelve, dressed in a well-tailored black coat with white lining folded out at the cuffs. A watch on his wrist reflected the corridor light in tiny, glittering fragments.
His entire being radiated an overpowering aura of money.
Shen Yi stared at his face for several seconds, finding it vaguely familiar.
Then she suddenly closed the door.
Shen Sigui, standing outside: “?”
Through the door, Shen Yi tentatively called out, “Shen Sigui?”
There was a brief silence outside.
Then Shen Sigui’s voice came through the door, carrying unmistakable surprise.
“You know who I am?”
Standing behind the door, Shen Yi’s mind began racing.
Unable to resist, she opened the door again.
There stood Shen Sigui, his childish, baby-faced features not yet fully grown out of their boyishness.
Several words surfaced in Shen Yi’s mind:
—The gloomy little mushroom when he was young.
She turned her wrist and pulled the door open, then tilted her face up to look at the boy outside. With an assessing gaze, she asked, “What are you here for?”
She refused to believe that her future uncle, Shen Sigui, could have been a kind and harmless person as a child.
She absolutely would not allow Shen Sigui to sabotage her parents’ relationship.
Shen Sigui tilted his head. “My brother’s inside. Shen Sixing, open the door!”
After calling out twice and receiving no response, his gaze fell back on Shen Yi’s face. He examined her like he had discovered a new toy.
“Come to think of it, did he get himself a girlfriend?”
“Are you that woman’s burden?”
The boy bent down with a grin and leaned close to her. Then he suddenly raised his right hand and lightly drew it across his neck.
As though jokingly pretending to cut something, he threatened her with a malicious smile.
“If that’s the case, I suggest you remember to hide somewhere safe. Don’t let my parents find out, or else it’ll be easy to…”
Shen Yi looked at him expressionlessly.
She showed no sign of being frightened.
Shen Sigui chuckled and blinked. Then, stepping past her, he squeezed his way inside.
“Shen Sixing—” he called, drawing out the final syllable.
A moment later, Shen Sigui witnessed a scene he would never forget.
His half-dead older brother, who spent most of his time hiding in the shadows, was currently crouched beside the coffee table, carefully folding a child’s clothes so they wouldn’t wrinkle the next day.
Sunlight slanted in through the window and fell across the boy’s lowered eyelashes, lending a little softness to his normally bloodless face.
There was an unmistakable…
domestic, husbandly air about him.
Holy crap.
Shen Sigui felt as though he had been electrocuted. Goosebumps crawled from the back of his neck all the way down his arms.
“What are you doing?!” the boy’s voice rose half an octave. He nearly dropped the bouquet. “Shen Sixing?”
Shen Sixing had heard him coming long ago. He simply hadn’t felt like paying attention.
Wen Ya emerged from the kitchen at that moment.
“So you’re Shen Sixing’s useless little brother?” she asked.
She carried a plate of fruit over and casually grabbed Shen Yi, who was running all over the room, firmly pressing her daughter back onto the sofa. She stuffed a slice of apple into Shen Yi’s hand and instructed her, “Eat more fruit. You need your vitamins.”
“How did you find my house?”
Shen Sigui frowned.
Useless?
Was this how Shen Sixing described him to people outside?
Shen Sigui immediately became unhappy and pulled a face. “Not telling you.”
“…”
As expected, he was a brat.
Wen Ya couldn’t be bothered with him. It was difficult for her to feel any desire to converse with people she didn’t care about.
She set the fruit plate on the coffee table, then stuffed a slice of orange into Shen Yi’s hand as well, treating the uninvited guest in the living room as though he were invisible.
Shen Sigui was left standing to the side. Unwilling to be ignored by his own brother, he moved over beside Shen Sixing and lowered his voice.
“Shen Sixing, you’re dating someone, aren’t you?”
Shen Sixing: “I’m not.”
“Huh? You still dare to say you aren’t? Look at how pathetic you’ve become. You’re even folding clothes for someone else’s kid, and you still claim you’re not dating her?”
“You’re actually volunteering to be someone’s stepdad?”
“I don’t particularly like that way of putting it,” Shen Sixing said ominously. “…She’s my daughter too.”
Shen Sigui: “You’re only eighteen! Get a grip! You’ve clearly gone crazy from living outside for so long. You actually like playing stepdad to a little kid?”
Shen Sixing was in no mood to joke around with him. He looked at him calmly and repeated, “She’s my daughter.”
Shen Sigui had always been intimidated by that look in his brother’s eyes.
The boy shrank back slightly. Seeing that Shen Sixing was serious, he put away his playful expression.
“All right, whatever. If you want to play house, that’s fine,” he said quietly. “But if Dad and Mom find out, you’ll be in serious trouble. You know what the consequences are, right?”
Shen Sixing: “I know.”
Of course he knew what the consequences would be.
A few days later, Shen Sixing transferred the entire three-million-yuan commission into Wen Ya’s account.
When Wen Ya received the bank notification and saw the long string of digits, she initially assumed it was payment for one of her assassination jobs.
Then she realized that the sender appeared to be her future husband sitting nearby.
She turned her head toward Shen Sixing in the living room, her expression slightly strange.
“Why do you have enough money to make a transfer this large?”
Shen Sixing sat on the sofa, his lips parting and closing as he tried to think of an excuse.
Maybe he could say he had saved someone’s life out of sheer heroism, only to accidentally kill them in the process, and their family had given him the inheritance as a token of gratitude?
But before he could say anything, Wen Ya had already come up with an explanation herself. Her eyes suddenly lit up.
“Could it be…you won the lottery?”
Shen Sixing swallowed the excuse that had almost reached his lips and nodded.
“Shen Sixing, your luck is incredible!” Wen Ya held up her phone and looked over that string of digits again, a genuine smile blooming across her face. “Now we can buy another place in the city near a good school and pay off most of the cost.”
Seeing her smile, Shen Sixing’s eyes curved as well.
“…Yeah,” the boy murmured.
His luck really had always been very good.
In the capital, where every inch of land was worth its weight in gold, housing prices were terrifyingly high.
The two of them were planning to buy another apartment in a good school district ahead of time, so they could accompany their child once she started middle school.
As Shen Sixing flipped through the listings the real estate agent had sent over, he looked utterly worn down, as though becoming a father had aged him by more than a decade.
The down payment, monthly mortgage, management fees, school zoning—three million was nowhere near enough.
It looked like he really would have to keep orchestrating incidents to make money quickly.
…
Adults had adult matters to keep busy with: earning money, everyday expenses, property fees, tuition, and all the rest.
As for Shen Yi, who had become small again, her foremost task was going to school.
Wen Ya had compared countless schools before finally enrolling her in the best private elementary school in the city.
Most of the students there had parents who were leaders in their fields, with business owners making up a large share.
Shen Yi’s deskmate was a boy named Chen Qiang. His family supposedly ran a museum, and he brought all sorts of little trinkets to school every day.
The boy was quite generous, often handing things out to everyone.
Shen Yi was soon given an artifact of her own—
a beer bottle cap.
After examining it from every angle and determining that it had absolutely no value whatsoever, Shen Yi flopped onto her desk and let out a long sigh of boredom.
“You don’t like it?” Chen Qiang chattered beside her. “It came with a new batch of collectibles my family acquired. I specifically picked out a pretty one for you.”
Shen Yi lay with her face buried in her arms and muttered a single muffled word.
“No.”
Chen Qiang refused to give up. Bracing his tiny hands against the edge of the desk, he leaned closer. “Then what do you like? I’ll bring it for you tomorrow.”
Shen Yi ignored him.
“Shen Yi,” Chen Qiang said, poking her arm again, “I like you. Be my wife.”
“Get lost,” Shen Yi said.
Chen Qiang shrank back, looking a little aggrieved.
That afternoon, as school let out, the teacher announced that the school would be holding a sports day in a few days. Parents could participate during the event, as a way to strengthen parent-child bonds.
Shen Yi had attended countless sports days from kindergarten through elementary school.
She had long since lost interest in events like the long jump, tug-of-war, and javelin throw.
“Shen Yi, are your parents coming?” Chen Qiang asked, poking her arm.
Shen Yi was packing her textbooks into her backpack one by one.
After thinking about it, she answered, “They are.”
That much, she was sure of.
After all, Shen Yi’s parents were genuinely absurdly free. Both of them were “freelancers,” with plenty of time on their hands.
…
The weather on sports day was unbelievably nice.
Warm sunlight spread over the athletic field, making the white lane markings glimmer faintly.
Compared with the other parents around them, Wen Ya and Shen Sixing standing together looked more like a young couple on campus than the parents of a child.
A few girls who were close to Shen Yi raised their hands and asked, “Big brother, big sister, are you Shen Yi’s mom and dad?”
Shen Sixing wanted to deny it.
But Wen Ya had already seized the initiative and answered firmly, “We are.”
“Wow—”
The elementary school girls’ eyes lit up. “You’re so young!”
After racking their brains for a compliment, they declared, “You two are really... accomplished at such a young age!”
“...”
After a little small talk, the tug-of-war match organized for the sports day was about to begin.
The school had arranged for fathers and children to compete as pairs.
Wen Ya crouched beside the track, solemnly cheering the two of them on.
“Do your best. You absolutely cannot lose.”
Shen Sixing was not particularly concerned. “But it’s only a tug-of-war match.”
It wasn’t as though losing would matter.
Wen Ya gave him a very gentle smile. “I know.”
“But I hate losing, Shen Sixing.”
Shen Sixing froze for two seconds, inexplicably sensing a faint pressure.
The young man gave a slow smile. “All right, then. I’ll do my best too~”
The soft, delicate, deliberately silly tone made Wen Ya’s expression turn strange, and she got goosebumps.
“Be serious.”
“Okay~,” Shen Sixing replied.
That was what he said, anyway.
In truth, when it came to physical strength, Shen Sixing was only good at applying clever techniques. If he had to stab someone or kill them, he could find the right angle and twist their bones to get quick results.
But in terms of sheer strength, unfortunately, Shen Sixing was a weakling.
Besides, he was human, not a god.
How could he possibly control every variable and determine the outcome of a game?
The opposing team was obviously much sturdier than they were.
Shen Sixing looked at the bulky muscles of the parents across from them, then lowered his head to look at the thin wrist exposed beneath his sleeve.
His arms already seemed to ache faintly.
The whistle blew.
The match began.
Shen Sixing gripped the rope and leaned back with all his might.
His whole body swayed back and forth as the rope dragged him around, like a piece of kelp on the verge of being blown away by the wind.
Standing behind him, Shen Yi immediately grasped the essence of it from her father’s seaweed-like silhouette fluttering in the breeze.
She began leaning backward too.
No matter how strong a child was, there were limits.
At least compared to a dozen muscular grown men, the outcome of the contest really had nothing to do with her.
While straining away at the rope, Shen Sixing did not forget to glance back at the child. He found Shen Yi copying him, leaning back and wobbling side to side like a fish flopping on shore.
Their eyes met.
Neither could hold it in.
Father and daughter burst out laughing like idiots at the same time.
Meanwhile—
the red cloth tied at the center of the rope crossed the line, and the referee’s whistle sounded.
The other class erupted in cheers of victory.
By the time Shen Yi and Shen Sixing were done laughing, they had already lost.
Wen Ya’s expression visibly darkened.
“Mom, hehe, we lost!” Shen Yi said cheerfully as she ran over to Wen Ya, completely unaware of the seriousness of the situation.
Wen Ya handed Shen Yi the water bottle she had crushed, her expression grim. She did not say a single word.
Oh no.
This was bad.
Shen Yi instinctively looked at her mother’s face.
Damn it.
She had forgotten that Wen Ya had always been fiercely competitive.
Shen Sixing cautiously eyed the crushed plastic water bottle, assessing Wen Ya’s terrifying grip strength.
He had a feeling that if they lost the next event too...
Wen Ya might very well twist his head off and use it as a ball.
“What’s the next event?” Wen Ya asked coldly, forcing down her anger.
“...”
Shen Yi thought through the school’s various sports events. “Javelin, shooting, and badminton. Do you want to participate with me, Mom?”
Since it was intended for elementary school students, all the equipment was scaled down. The goal was to cultivate the children’s interests and hobbies.
Shen Sixing could not help but lodge a weak protest. “The two of you are going together? Don’t you need a strong, strapping man like me to help?”
“Oh, move aside,” Wen Ya snapped, finally losing patience as she shoved his bothersome head away. “I’ll do it!”
