“I’ll stay with you until the very end. When we reach the conclusion of the story, you’ll understand everything.”
The system was still being as cryptic as ever.
And so, throughout those long, forgotten days, Shen Yi kept pondering the causes and world lines the system had mentioned.
Come to think of it, there was one question Shen Yi had never considered.
What exactly had caused her rebirth?
In the comic, her family had been labeled “villains” by the system.
But when she thought about it carefully, there had never been any particularly intense conflict between her parents, her brothers, and Song Yee.
If being at odds with the protagonist was enough to define someone as a villain, then why had her family been classified as villains?
Not one of them had ever had a plotline involving any conflict with Song Yee.
Shen Yi sat on a bench in the park, her hands clasped together. She assembled and dismantled the clues in her mind like building blocks, yet she could never find the most crucial piece.
All Shen Yi could guess were a few possibilities on the surface.
Perhaps it had something to do with her, and with the fate that remained unknown to her.
The system suddenly seemed to remember something and told Shen Yi, 【Oh, right. You’re going to have a brother.】
Shen Yi froze. “Shen Zhizhao?”
The system replied, 【That’s right.】
…
Over the following year, Shen Yi shamelessly took advantage of the fact that people would repeatedly forget her and never remember her, and watched her parents’ daily life whenever she could.
But a gloomy little mouse like her, hiding in the shadows, was bound to get caught by the bigger mouse eventually.
Shen Sixing stared blankly at the strange little creature peeking through his window.
He found it strange, too, that he hadn’t killed her.
Anyone would have felt creeped out being watched like that, but all he felt was a little helpless.
There was no disgust. Instead, there was an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
Perhaps it was because he was about to become a father.
In any case, even when Shen Sixing caught Shen Yi, he always handled her gently. He never truly tried to kill her—at most, he would give her a cold glare.
Shen Yi would never be remembered by him completely, either.
Even after exchanging a few words with them, she would be forgotten by both of them in the blink of an eye.
Wen Ya was about to officially become a mother.
It would be her second time becoming one—
If Shen Yi was counted.
But all memories of Shen Yi had already been erased as cleanly as if someone had scrubbed them from a sheet of paper. Not even the slightest trace remained.
So now, she was still a new mother. She would seriously study recipes for all kinds of baby food in the kitchen.
After Shen Zhizhao was born, Shen Yi gained a new subject to observe.
Taking advantage of the fact that nobody retained any memory of her, she continued finding every possible way to sneak inside. She would crouch beside the crib, rest both hands on the railing, and prop her chin on the backs of her hands as she watched the tiny person inside.
He noticed her, too.
Then he would throw back his head and start crying at the top of his lungs.
Shen Yi immediately hid herself.
So noisy.
She covered her ears and retreated.
Wen Ya and Shen Sixing took turns carrying him around the room. They hummed off-key lullabies, and sometimes, halfway through humming, one of them would yawn first.
Whenever Shen Yi watched him, Little Zhizhao would occasionally notice her as well.
When he lay over an adult’s shoulder, blowing milk bubbles, his damp eyes would suddenly turn toward a certain corner of the room and stare at the spot where Shen Yi was crouching.
With no elders to help them, Wen Ya and Shen Sixing, both new parents, muddled through their days in a constant state of chaos.
Whenever Shen Sixing held Little Zhizhao in the living room, his face often wore an expression caught somewhere between total collapse and tender affection.
Shen Yi frequently found it horrifying.
So this was what her father had been like the first time he became a dad?
He would place his computer on his knees, type with one hand, and shake a rattle beside the crib with the other to coax the baby.
That year, Wen Ya began spacing out more and more often.
Sometimes, while cutting vegetables in the kitchen, she would stop with the knife suspended in midair, seemingly lost in thought.
“I just feel…” Wen Ya’s voice paused. “We need a daughter.”
And so, in the third year after Shen Zhizhao’s birth,
Shen Ruxu was born.
Shen Yi couldn’t wait to go and see him, too.
He was wrinkled and rather ugly.
Unlike Shen Zhizhao, who had loved crying from the moment he was born, this child loved to smile.
Whenever Shen Yi secretly went to watch him later on, she found the corners of his mouth curved upward, a layer of watery light in his eyes. He looked as though he were smiling at everyone he saw.
She couldn’t help smiling as well, her heart softening.
But as she watched him, something suddenly came to mind.
A memory from the past abruptly rose to the surface.
Back when Shen Yi was at school, she would occasionally talk about the past with Song Sijun whenever the two of them were together.
Little by little, Shen Yi learned from Song Sijun that in his previous life, he and Shen Xun had been plastic friends.
“That person was truly awful,” Song Sijun said expressionlessly, poking at the ice cubes in his drink with a straw. They clinked sharply against the cup. “In my previous life, I told him about what happened between us.”
“Guess what he said to me?”
The corners of Song Sijun’s mouth lifted slightly as he imitated Shen Xun’s tone. His voice was flat and emotionless.
—“Then you two are really pathetic.”
—“Good thing I didn’t suffer as much as you.”
After that, Shen Xun even went on to tell Song Sijun, whose family life was miserable, that his own family of assassins was a happy one.
Song Sijun could only marvel at how disastrously poor the other boy’s emotional intelligence was, then complain about him to his sister.
Shen Yi merely listened.
After all, those things had happened in a previous life.
But something was wrong.
In reality, if the comic’s plot had remained unchanged, Shen Xun’s family shouldn’t have been happy at all.
According to the comic’s timeline, Shen Ruxu should have disappeared from the story very, very early on.
Shen Yi still remembered that setting and the exact point in the plot.
The scene from back then was etched clearly into her mind.
Shen Xun believed that his family was happy?
Why?
Could it be that Shen Ruxu had still been alive in their previous life?
Shen Yi suddenly realized that there was a question she had long overlooked.
Her fingers curled slightly as she stared at Shen Ruxu, who was still a baby.
Shen Yi had always assumed that the current timeline was the past.
That it was the time before everything had happened.
But this—
Was this really the past?
…
…
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