“……”
That cry of “Daughter” from Wen Ya did not startle the people inside the living room. It was the gunmen outside who were taken aback.
Crouched behind their respective positions of cover, they watched as the searchlight beam shifted from the passageway toward the main hall.
One of the men in black rested his rifle against the edge of a flower bed and listened for a moment. An extremely complicated expression spread across his face.
“Is this woman here to find someone?”
The man beside him looked utterly bewildered. “What did she say? Daughter? How could she have a daughter that old? She looks barely twenty herself. That little girl has to be six or seven.”
“Did you notice? The kid calls the young master ‘Dad’ and that woman ‘Mom.’ So that means our young master and this woman are…?”
He made an ambiguous gesture, pressing two fingers together and then pulling them apart.
“Didn’t you see the way the young master was looking at her? His eyes were practically glued to that Bane. She knocked away so many of our men, and the young master looked like he was completely bewitched. He actually thought she was enchanting.”
Was he even human?!
One of them spat out the half-smoked cigarette between his teeth and forced out, “The rich really are a mess.”
Inside the hall, Shen Sigui was inevitably startled as well. “She really managed to fight her way here?”
At the time, he had only sent a photograph to inform the child’s mother and see how Wen Ya would react.
He had never expected her to actually come storming in.
And alone.
Empty-handed.
Through the front gate, beating her way inside.
Qin Ruolan loosened her grip slightly, and Shen Yi immediately ran over and threw her arms around Wen Ya’s waist. “Mommy!”
Wen Ya crouched down almost by reflex.
With one hand, she shielded the back of Shen Yi’s head, her fingertips gently cradling the child’s skull as she confirmed that the tiny person in her arms was whole and unharmed.
With her other arm around the girl’s back, she leaned in and pressed her cheek against Shen Yi’s temple, brushing against the soft wisps of hair beside her ear.
“Sweetheart, who changed your clothes?” All the icy severity Wen Ya had shown toward the guards had completely fallen away. Now she sounded like an ordinary mother, full of petty complaints and everyday concerns. “They look so old-fashioned. Where’s the outfit Mommy picked out for you before we left?”
The outfit was actually lovely.
The dress Qin Ruolan had chosen was expertly cut and made of luxurious fabric.
Any photograph of it could have come straight from the pages of a fashion magazine.
But no mother would enjoy someone else interfering with her daily childcare routine.
Especially when a stranger had replaced an outfit she had chosen herself.
Shen Yi buried her face in the crook of Wen Ya’s neck. “Grandma.”
Then she added, “It is pretty, though, Mommy.”
Wen Ya ignored that part.
She gently pulled Shen Yi back a little and looked her up and down.
“Change as soon as we get home,” she said. “It doesn’t look warm at all.”
“Okay.”
Shen Yi thought about it, then said, “Then I’ll wait until next autumn, when it gets warmer, and wear it.”
Wen Ya gave a soft snort. “Mommy will buy you a new one in autumn.”
“……”
Mother and daughter began murmuring to each other as though no one else existed.
Qin Ruolan disliked being questioned.
After listening calmly for a while, she took the opportunity to insert herself into the little world between mother and daughter. “So those tacky, childish accessories she was wearing were your choice?”
At that, Wen Ya slowly stood up.
“Childish?” She turned her head and smiled. “Compared to that, the old-fashioned taste of the last century isn’t exactly beyond criticism either, is it? Especially when it appears on a child.”
Qin Ruolan remained composed. “An accumulation of countless colors makes her look like a walking cake.”
“Bland, minimalist outfits only make children look several years older.” Wen Ya refused to give an inch. “She’ll have another ten years to wear black, white, and gray. Why make her wear them now? Children should look like children.”
Their verbal sparring proceeded in rounds, one sentence following the next with hardly a pause between them.
Wen Ya: “The lace on the cuffs of the dress I picked out was hand-embroidered.”
Qin Ruolan: “Hand-embroidered lace paired with a machine-stitched skirt? What a tragic sense of style.”
Wen Ya: “Still better than a black dress whose only embellishment is a single line around the edge. You call that design, Madam?”
Qin Ruolan: “Have you heard of minimalism?”
Wen Ya: “Wow. So minimalism means dressing a child as if she’s attending a funeral?”
“……”
Shen Yi was trapped between them.
First, she looked at Wen Ya. Her mother’s brows and eyes were taut, the corners of her mouth turned slightly downward. She was genuinely taking this argument seriously.
Then she turned to Qin Ruolan, whose faint smile was equally hostile.
Shen Yi felt a headache coming on.
Her head swung left, then right, back and forth more than a dozen times. At last, she stopped, covered her eyes, and said, “I’m dizzy.”
Shen Sixing let out a snort of laughter and seized the opportunity to scoop Shen Yi out from between them.
Shen Shu stood where he was, staring at this inexplicable turn of events.
From Wen Ya’s sudden entrance to Qin Ruolan’s argument with her, every stage of the scene had made the furrow between his brows deepen.
The man rubbed his temples and decided to ask the most important question first.
“She’s an assassin?” Shen Shu looked at Shen Sixing. “Or a spy?”
“I’m guessing an assassin,” Shen Sixing replied, holding Shen Yi.
“Codename?”
That question finally drew Wen Ya’s attention away from the matter of the dress.
She slowly turned to look at Shen Shu.
That man had pointed a gun at her daughter’s head only moments ago.
Wen Ya remembered that she had never told Shen Sixing her codename, so she spoke up herself. “An assassin from Group Nine of the Sunday organization.”
“Codename: Harbinger Bird.”
The instant the words left her mouth, everyone froze.
And at that same moment, Wen Ya clenched her palm without warning and swung a fist at Shen Shu.
At the same time, a red dot appeared soundlessly on the glass window, aimed directly at Wen Ya.
In the shadows beside the main hall, a sniper was already poised to act at any moment.
Qin Ruolan reacted the fastest. She shifted half a step to place herself in front of Shen Shu, then raised her hand and caught Wen Ya by the wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Yet the instant she touched Wen Ya’s wrist, Qin Ruolan’s brows twitched slightly.
The young woman’s strength was astonishing.
Even the smile at the corners of Qin Ruolan’s mouth grew a little strained. Wen Ya turned her head and looked at her in equal surprise.
So she was one of their kind too?
Seeing that her first move had failed, Wen Ya did not press the matter. She withdrew her hand.
Qin Ruolan rubbed her aching wrist, then turned her head and cast Shen Sixing a complicated look. With a faint, meaningful sigh, she said, “Shen Sixing, you really know how to surprise me.”
He had actually found an assassin renowned throughout the underworld.
Shen Shu was not frightened by Wen Ya’s sudden attack. Instead, it was Qin Ruolan’s instinctive reaction that left him staring at her.
After taking a moment to recover, he decisively retreated behind his wife, shooting Shen Sixing a dark look as he did so.
“You found yourself an assassin?”
A famous assassin from the underworld, no less?!
“What were you thinking?” he demanded. “Do you think you haven’t died quickly enough already?”
Wen Ya immediately bristled at Shen Shu’s attitude. She promptly dragged the scrawny Shen Sixing, who was standing beside her, behind her back. “What’s with that attitude?! It’s not like I go around killing people.”
The sudden tug made Shen Sixing stumble.
After a moment of stunned silence, he couldn’t help but laugh.
Resting his chin on Wen Ya’s shoulder, Shen Sixing gently slipped his arms around her waist from behind. His voice was light and hazy with drunkenness.
“Miss, you’re going to protect me, right?”
