“Miss! We found it!”
Cui Wu hurried over, holding a stack of photographs. Her face was filled with speechless shock.
“This is what Su Wan looked like before she debuted.”
Zhou Suisui took the photographs.
Looking at the woman in them—with dark skin and features that could, at best, be called plain—she was utterly speechless.
She had really guessed correctly.
Su Wan had undergone plastic surgery.
“Let me see.”
Zhou Sui'an leaned over.
The moment he saw the woman in the photograph, his pupils widened in disbelief.
“Sister Wu, what did you just say? This person is Su Wan?”
He was so shocked that he nearly jumped to his feet.
His expression was indescribably strange, as though he had swallowed a fly.
“Yes.”
Thinking he did not believe her, Cui Wu pulled up the scandal exposed by Old Ghost’s team on her phone and held it in front of Zhou Sui'an.
“Look. The scandal Old Ghost’s team dug up uses this same photograph. It matches what our people found. They just acted faster than we did.”
“...”
Zhou Suisui frowned slightly.
Old Ghost?
The paparazzo in the entertainment industry who was arrogant and unpredictable, and who seemed particularly fond of going after film emperors and queens?
Wasn’t he famous for digging up scandals about major celebrities?
Why would he take the initiative to investigate Su Wan?
And the scandals he had uncovered were even more comprehensive than the information she possessed.
Regardless of the reason, though, she was grateful to him. He had indirectly helped her.
Pushing those thoughts aside, she raised her head and looked at her brother.
He was sitting on the floor, staring blankly into space. The fingers clutching the photographs had turned pale and bluish.
He looked as if he had suffered a devastating blow.
“Brother, what’s wrong?”
Zhou Suisui was startled.
She hurried over and reached out to touch his forehead.
He couldn’t really have lost his mind, could he?
At last, Zhou Sui'an’s eyes moved. His gaze fell on Zhou Suisui’s concerned face, and he forced out a smile that looked worse than crying.
“Suisui, your brother has suffered so much!”
“Why are you crying now?”
Zhou Suisui was stunned.
When her brother had cried in front of her before, he had only been pretending, trying to make her soften toward him.
But now... he was genuinely crying.
“This... I remember this woman...”
Remember?
Wasn’t this just Su Wan?
“Are you starting to talk nonsense?”
Zhou Suisui hurriedly patted his back. “Take your time.”
“In the first few years after I took control of the company, the Zhou family was in turmoil. Those old foxes took advantage of my youth and constantly tripped me up.”
“To stabilize the Zhou family, I did quite a lot of charity work during those years, and I did it in a very high-profile way.”
“Su Wan... No, back then, her name was Wang Wan. She was a poor student at a middle school in Miancheng, and one of the students sponsored by the Zhou family...”
Zhou Sui'an slowly began to recall the past.
“That day, after giving the students a speech about striving for success, I personally awarded scholarships to several outstanding students from impoverished families. Wang Wan was one of them.”
“I originally thought she was an excellent student with both good grades and good morals, so I even spoke to her privately and offered her a few words of encouragement. I never imagined that after leaving the stage... she would actually sneak into the room the school had temporarily arranged for me to rest. She tried to... take off her clothes and offer herself to me, saying all sorts of ridiculous things about wanting to become my woman...”
At the time, he had been so humiliated and furious that he shoved her to the floor.
He had been enraged that, after the Zhou family had spent so much effort sponsoring her, the poor student they had supported could turn out to be someone like that. He had cursed her viciously, thinking that perhaps he could bring her to her senses.
Instead, when the principal and school administrators came running after hearing the commotion, she had actually turned the blame on him, claiming that he had lusted after her and used the sponsorship as an excuse to molest her.
He had been utterly disgusted by that woman.
Fortunately, there had been surveillance cameras in the room. Otherwise, even if he had a hundred mouths, he would never have been able to explain himself.
He had never imagined that the woman he had worshiped for so long was actually her.
Zhou Sui'an felt sick to his stomach.
He wanted to slap himself hard across the face.
He wanted to go back in time and shake his past self awake—the lovesick fool he had been!
“Suisui, I’m beginning to wonder whether my savior really was her.”
He refused to accept that the person who had saved him—the person he regarded as his lifesaver—could actually be someone like that.
At the time, he had lost so much blood that his body suddenly grew cold. His breathing became labored, and his vision blurred.
Then, a gentle figure suddenly appeared before him.
She expertly bandaged the wound on his leg. Her concerned voice rang in his ears, repeating words like, “You have to hold on. You still have so much waiting for you.”
Unfortunately, he had been unable to hear her clearly.
When she saw that he was beginning to lose consciousness, she used a “towel” to massage his forehead.
At that moment, the woman before him had seemed like a goddess descending from heaven.
When his mother had still been alive, she had loved massaging his forehead that way whenever he fell ill.
It must have been his mother watching over him from heaven. Unable to bear seeing him die there, she had sent an angel to save him.
When the doctors arrived and carried him into the ambulance, placing an oxygen mask over his face, his consciousness gradually returned.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Su Wan’s face—a face that resembled his mother’s...
Every time Zhou Sui'an recalled that scene in the past, his heart had filled with warmth.
He had always felt that his mother had manifested from heaven.
But now, all he felt was a chill running through his body.
After hearing the whole story, Zhou Suisui completely lost the ability to hold herself together.
For a moment, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Suisui, say something.”
“Brother, you have me now. Mom has already left us. Let the past stay in the past.”
Although it was painful, birth, aging, illness, and death were things no one could escape. No one could turn back time, and the past could not be allowed to become a burden that bound them for the rest of their lives.
Sniffling, Zhou Sui'an nodded firmly. “You’re right. I still have my sister.”
As if overcome by lingering fear, he suddenly reached out and hugged Zhou Suisui.
He wailed into her ear, “My dear sister, your brother has nothing left now. I only have you. You mustn’t abandon me!”
Zhou Suisui’s heart ached for him. She hurriedly said, “All right, all right, stop crying. I’m your sister, so of course I’ll always stay by your side.”
“No. You have to swear that you’ll listen to everything I say.”
Worried that Zhou Suisui might refuse, Zhou Sui'an added, “Of course, I’ll listen to everything you say, too.”
That pitiful, coquettish tone of his.
Zhou Suisui had no way to resist him.
She hesitantly raised three fingers, still somewhat dazed. “I swear...”
“That’s more like it!”
Zhou Sui'an immediately let go of her. He rubbed his flat stomach and smacked his lips.
“I’m starving. Come on, sister. Let’s eat.”
With that, he strode toward the dining room.
“...”
Watching her brother’s retreating back, Zhou Suisui couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.
But when she thought about how he had finally come to his senses, she let out a sigh of relief.
It seemed her brother would no longer be a lovesick fool. He had changed the fate he had suffered in his previous life.
At last, she no longer had to pretend to be a lovesick simp in front of Jiang Zongyan!
Wonderful!
Once they were seated at the dining table, Zhou Sui'an placed a chicken leg in his sister’s bowl.
“Sister, hurry up and eat.”
Touched, Zhou Suisui put a chicken leg in her brother’s bowl as well. “You eat too.”
Her eyes curved into crescents as she smiled brightly.
Wonderful!
Everything was developing in a better direction!
Just then, the phone in her pocket rang once.
She took it out and unlocked the screen.
What caught her eye was a profile picture of snowcapped mountains bathed in sunlight.
J: [What are you doing.jpg]
The message was from Jiang Zongyan.
She had been so busy these past two days that she hadn’t even had time to contact him.
Zhou Suisui’s eyes lit up. She immediately set down her chopsticks, hugged her phone, and placed her fair fingertips in the reply box.
“Tap tap tap”—she had just typed two characters when a chilly gaze suddenly fell on her…
She froze for a moment and looked up in surprise, only to meet her brother’s murderous stare.
“Who’s messaging you?”
She quietly moved her little hand to cover the screen.
“N-No one! Just some junk advertising…”
The instant those four words left her mouth, Zhou Suisui was utterly stunned.
Wasn’t that the exact excuse her brother always used when he was trying to fool her?
Good grief! How had those words come out of her own mouth?
Meanwhile, Jiang Zongyan didn’t receive Zhou Suisui’s reply right away. Gazing out at the blue sky and sea, his eyes flickered. He raised his phone and took a picture of the scenery.
Then he lifted a finger and sent it.
