It must be Zhu Jianjun.
Zhu Yaya's heart stirred. She stood up from the sofa and went to greet him. The first things that caught her eye, however, were two small, green watermelons.
Zhu Yaya: !!!
Zhu Jianjun held a watermelon in each hand, smiling warmly at Zhu Yaya: "Yabao, I bought you the watermelons you've been loving lately."
Zhu Yaya felt a little surge of joy and reached to take the watermelons from him, but Zhu Jianjun stopped her.
"They're heavy, let your dad handle it."
As soon as he got home, without even resting, Zhu Jianjun went straight to the kitchen, put on a little apron, and started clattering around to cook, calling for Zhao Jing and Zhu Yaya to come eat.
After finishing the meal and cleaning up, Zhu Yaya sidled up to him, pretending to be well-behaved and asking curiously: "Dad, how do you know Yan Heng? And how come you're so comfortable with him seeing your precious daughter home?"
Zhu Jianjun sighed at the question: "Ah, that kid's had a hard life too. His father was a narcotics officer, graduated from the same police academy as me, so you could say we were colleagues. Do you remember the February 14th case from seven years ago?"
Zhu Yaya: ... She had only arrived here not long ago, how would she know?
Seeing Zhu Yaya fall silent, Zhu Jianjun said with a touch of melancholy: "I forgot, you were only nine at the time, you probably don't remember. Yan Heng's father was good-looking, so he was sent undercover into a suspected drug trafficking organization. He was accidentally exposed, and the criminals captured Yan Heng and his mother. Yan Heng was only ten then. He witnessed with his own eyes how those maniacal drug dealers tortured his father to death and drove his mother insane. He was beaten badly too. Even in that situation, the kid was clever enough to secretly send us a signal when they weren't looking. That's how we managed to round up all those drug dealers."
Zhu Jianjun shook his head and continued: "Both his parents were orphans, with no other relatives. His mother was driven mad by the torture, sometimes lucid, sometimes confused. When she loses it, she doesn't recognize anyone, not even Yan Heng. We suggested sending his mother to a psychiatric hospital. But Yan Heng was worried it would worsen her condition and disagreed. Psychiatric medication isn't cheap. The bureau gave him some help too, but it wasn't quite enough. Thankfully, the kid is tough and determined. However, because his father went undercover, he faced a lot of misunderstanding too. Yaya, don't go around telling people that Yan Heng's father was a narcotics officer. We're worried there might still be enemies seeking revenge."
Zhu Yaya nodded silently, thinking of the rumors circulating at school. Yan Heng's perpetually icy face floated into her mind again.
"Yabao, in our line of work, it's hard to avoid making enemies. So, when you're out, you always need to be careful and protect yourself." Zhu Jianjun patted Zhu Yaya's head.
"Okay, I know." Zhu Yaya didn't pull away.
"What are you two whispering about over there? Yaya, aren't you going to drink your milk and go to bed?" Zhao Jing walked over, holding a cup of warmed milk.
"We were just talking about Yan Heng," Zhu Jianjun answered.
Zhao Jing seemed to know about him too. After a moment's silence, she said, "We should invite him over for a meal some day."
"My dear wife, I was just thinking the same thing," Zhu Jianjun said with a laugh.
Zhu Yaya took the warm milk from Zhao Jing, drank it, brushed her teeth, washed her face, went back to her room, and lay down in bed ready to sleep.
The living room light was still on, a sliver of brightness seeping through the door crack.
Resting her head on the soft pillow, Zhu Yaya thought, actually, Zhu Jianjun is a really good father! Then she thought about the milk Zhao Jing warmed for her every night—Zhao Jing was a really good mother too. Her heart felt a little swollen and full. Compared to Yan Heng, both her past self and her current self were much more fortunate.
Yan Heng.
Zhu Yaya silently repeated his name in her heart. With her years of experience reading dramatic romance novels, she had a feeling his role wasn't just a minor, forgettable character. This was someone who could hit the male lead and walk away unscathed! Both parents being orphans—that kind of backstory in a novel isn't something an ordinary person gets.
Sleep stubbornly refused to come, so she simply bounced up, fished out the somewhat long-negated book "The Domineering Him, The Pure Love" from under her pillow, turned on the bedside lamp, and started flipping through it.
She started re-reading from the first chapter. The author's timeline was a bit messy, and the plot had inconsistencies. She was looking for all the male characters that appeared in this book.
Reading further, when the male and female leads were adults, the male lead went from being the son of the richest man to becoming the richest man himself. The female lead, forced abroad by the male lead's mother, made a glamorous return as a designer. The womanizing second male lead remained chaste for the female lead, growing into a puppet CEO...
Wait, puppet CEO?!
Zhu Yaya sensed something off and kept reading. Good grief, it turned out a guy named "Ling Yixiao" suddenly popped up in the second male lead's family.
The Ling family's rise to fortune wasn't clean; they had underworld connections and had been trying to go legit these past few years. But the old patriarch, Master Ling, wasn't willing to just let go of the underworld empire he'd built over the years, yet he didn't want his chosen heir, Ling Yiming, tainted by that dirty business. He needed a puppet, so he brought in a boy from outside, about the same age as Ling Yiming, named him "Ling Yixiao," and had him take over the Ling family's shady, behind-the-scenes dealings.
The second male lead, Ling Yiming, once said to the male lead, Murong Beichen, with a laugh: "The old man had a bastard child who was lost outside long ago. That bastard actually became a policeman, and yet his child ended up taking over our family's underworld business. How ironic!"
In the book, others described Ling Yixiao as scheming, eccentric, obsessive, cold-blooded, an emotionless robot, and so on.
But Master Ling never expected the puppet he saw would be so ruthless. Catching him completely off guard, Ling Yixiao seized complete control of the Ling family, reducing the intended heir to a true puppet.
The female lead, Xu Chun, once met Ling Yixiao and was stunned on the spot, accusing him painfully: "How could you become like this?"
Zhu Yaya's fingertip resting on the page paused at that line. Xu Chun knew Ling Yixiao?
At the end of the novel, moved by Ling Yiming's devotion, Xu Chun joined hands with Murong Beichen. With the combined halo of the male and female leads, they managed to bring down Ling Yixiao—who had made many enemies and been abandoned by everyone—from his position as head of the Ling family and have him imprisoned. The day after Ling Yixiao entered prison, he committed suicide.
Without a doubt, the character "Ling Yixiao" was the antagonist in "The Domineering Him, The Pure Love."
Zhu Yaya thought to herself, could it be that Yan Heng is this Ling Yixiao?
Then she remembered Yan Heng's heroic act on the bus and felt maybe not?
So annoying! She closed the book in frustration and went to sleep.
The next morning, Zhu Yaya, who had obediently promised Yan Heng not to follow him anymore, still showed up at the Tian Tian Breakfast Shop.
"Brother Yan, good morning! I'll have one red bean bun and one custard bun, please," Zhu Yaya said with an ingratiating smile.
Yan Heng stared at her for a second, then got the buns for her, saying coldly, "Didn't I tell you not to follow me?"
"Hehe, Brother Yan, as your little follower, how can I not stick with my big brother all the time?" Zhu Yaya said shamelessly.
"I'm not your big brother."
"Okay, Brother Yan. Whatever you say is right!"
Yan Heng: ...
After Xu Chun came by, bought breakfast, and left, the "little brother" who had just been saying "I need to stick with Big Brother all the time" instantly abandoned his newly acknowledged big brother and walked off.
Yan Heng: ...
Yan Heng watched Zhu Yaya's retreating figure until she disappeared from his sight. She's probably worried about being late, he thought.
At school, after class ended, Zhu Yaya quite openly and boldly, with her head held high, strode right through the door of Class 17, Grade 12.
