Wen Yuan instinctively ran after her and grabbed her.
“Then why are you telling me now? Why not keep lying?”
“Because I’m tired. I don’t want to live my life carrying this secret anymore. I beg you—let’s break up.”
Wen Yuan looked into her teary eyes, his mind extraordinarily calm.
He asked, “When did you get married? You said Ning Yuan and Ning Rong are your ex-husband’s children—are they yours? You’re only about ten years older than them. If they were yours, you would have had them before turning eighteen. That would make your ex-husband a criminal for abusing a minor.”
“But if they’re not yours, and yet you keep your ex-husband’s two children and raise them as your own, why not your own children? Only one possibility remains: you didn’t have any of your own. Was it impossible… or did you just not want to?”
“Our relationship has lasted so long. With your personality, if it were impossible, you would have told me long ago. But you didn’t, so it’s not your problem. And since your ex-husband already had Ning Yuan and Ning Rong, it wasn’t his problem either. So if it’s not that it couldn’t happen, it’s that you didn’t want to.”
“He’s your ex-husband. Either you divorced, or he’s dead. But either way, you never mentioned him, always hiding his existence. If you loved him, you wouldn’t behave this way. So you don’t love him. You don’t want children with him. Am I right?”
Zhou Man froze. She knew Wen Yuan was intelligent, but she hadn’t expected him to deduce so much even under these circumstances.
Wen Yuan continued, staring at her, following his reasoning. Zhou Man couldn’t take it and struggled free, rushing down the stairs in a panic.
Wen Yuan followed but didn’t stop her.
Her emotions were too high; he wanted to give her time to calm down. Later, they could discuss things slowly.
Lan Xingchen, who had overheard the conversation, also felt the need to collect himself.
He returned to his room while Wen Yuan was distracted.
Ning Yuan and Ning Rong were indeed Zhou Man’s ex-husband’s children. Even if there was no blood relation, there had been a clear legal relationship.
It was correct for him to call them brother and sister. Calling them “older sister” or “brother-in-law” was merely for appearances.
Lan Xingchen spent the whole day calming himself.
He could sense from his uncle’s later words that Zhou Man might have her own reasons and secrets. But that didn’t stop him from being angry at her deception toward his uncle.
He wondered: would they get back together? Would they still marry?
He quickly got the answer. That day, Zhou Man accompanied his uncle back home again. His uncle smiled and told him they were going to marry.
Zhou Man simply looked at him, her eyes gentle.
Lan Xingchen was silent for a moment, but quickly offered his congratulations. Though he was still upset at Zhou Man’s deception, this was his uncle’s marriage—if his uncle was happy, that was enough. He liked Zhou Man, so he naturally would not oppose her.
He just felt awkward—awkward because he now knew things he shouldn’t, and could no longer face her as he once did, blissfully ignorant.
This awkwardness was especially pronounced around Ning Yuan and Ning Rong. He could no longer casually call them “brother” and “sister,” because those titles had been correct only under the guise of their step-sibling identities.
When he knew nothing, it was easy. But once he did, the titles felt like thorns on a blossoming branch: sharp, painful, and impossible to ignore.
He watched his uncle and Zhou Man enter marriage, watched his uncle invite Ning Yuan and Ning Rong over, watched him meticulously prepare their bedrooms.
At first, Lan Xingchen had no particular feelings. But one day, after waking from a nap, he came out of his room and through the railing saw them in the living room: Wen Yuan, Zhou Man, Ning Yuan, and Ning Rong, sitting together with the TV on in front of them. They weren’t watching it—they were chatting and laughing.
Ning Rong leaned against Zhou Man, while his uncle sat beside her. He couldn’t see what was being said, but Ning Rong suddenly laughed, and even Ning Yuan’s expression softened at that moment.
Lan Xingchen watched quietly, and suddenly realized: in a sense, they really were a family.
Sitting together like this, happily talking, there were no secrets—they all knew each other’s true relationship. They knew they were parent and child, a family.
Only he was excluded, knowing nothing.
—He knew their secret not because anyone told him, but because he had accidentally overheard something he shouldn’t have.
No one actively informed him, nor wanted to. No one ever intended for him to know.
So he should have known nothing. He should have been foolishly ignorant, seeing them only as simple step-siblings.
At this moment, Lan Xingchen felt complex and sorrowful emotions.
He did not go downstairs, not wanting to disrupt their warmth.
Returning to his room, he pondered what to do next. Could he act perfectly, as if he truly knew nothing?
He didn’t seem to have that level of acting skill.
So he resolved to appear as little as possible in their presence. As long as he avoided them, they wouldn’t notice he had learned their secret.
Lan Xingchen began spending weekends on campus, going out, keeping himself busy and occupied with college life.
He was careful not to interfere with his uncle’s marriage. But soon, he realized it wasn’t enough.
Ning Yuan and Ning Rong didn’t like him. Several times, when they were talking privately, he would accidentally walk past and they would immediately fall silent, glancing at him nervously as if afraid he would overhear.
One day, when the housemaid was on leave, he tried making fries in the air fryer. Ning Yuan came downstairs, and they locked eyes awkwardly. He politely asked if he wanted some; Ning Yuan refused.
The next day, he returned home after hanging out with Xu Ya and went to get a drink from the fridge. At the kitchen door, he saw Ning Yuan making fries.
But unlike him, who had used frozen fries in the air fryer, Ning Yuan peeled and cut fresh potatoes, boiled them, and deep-fried them in oil. Ning Rong stood nearby, eating the fries Lan Xingchen had already made.
“Are they good?” Ning Yuan asked her.
Ning Rong nodded repeatedly. “Mm-hmm.”
Ning Yuan tasted one and commented, “Not bad. At least better than the air fryer fries.”
Lan Xingchen: …
He turned and left, fuming. Air fryer fries—what did they ever do to you?!
That evening at dinner, Ning Yuan put the fries he made on the table near Lan Xingchen and said, sarcastically, “Try some.”
Try what? Try how your deep-fried fries beat my air-fried ones?
Lan Xingchen stayed silent, eating his meal without touching the fries.
That he could accept. He hadn’t cooked before—of course he couldn’t compete with Ning Yuan. But Ning Yuan seemed to delight in provoking him, as if he needed to assert superiority.
This all happened after Lan Xingchen took his English Level 4 exam.
His mood was bad; during the listening section, he wasn’t focused and lost concentration. When results came, he barely passed.
Wen Yuan, knowing he had taken the exam, asked at dinner, and Lan Xingchen honestly shared his score.
Wen Yuan was surprised. “Why so low? Will you still take Level 6?”
“Yeah,” Lan Xingchen said.
Just then, Ning Yuan, sitting across, said, “I got 663 on Level 6.”
Ning Rong, unwilling to be outdone, said, “I got 679.”
Lan Xingchen: …
Their gazes, full of subtle mockery, met his. Indeed, their Level 6 scores were far superior to his barely passing Level 4.
Determined not to be outdone, he scored 685 on Level 6 the following year.
Hah. Who’s afraid of whom?
Yet after all this, looking at his own Level 6 results, Lan Xingchen felt a sudden emptiness.
He couldn’t keep competing with Ning Yuan and Ning Rong forever. They already disliked him, and continuing this way would only worsen their relationship.
If that happened, his uncle and Zhou Man, as the elders, would be caught in the middle, stuck in an awkward position.
Lan Xingchen could roughly understand it. Ning Yuan and Ning Rong were Zhou Man’s children. Though he wasn’t his uncle’s biological son, he was like one of the children in this newly formed family. Accepting new parents was already an act of love toward their own parents.
Accepting an additional child brought in by a stepparent was harder. Some could manage it; some couldn’t. Ning Yuan and Ning Rong clearly belonged to the latter group.
—They already had a supportive older brother and younger sister. They didn’t need another younger brother.
Moreover, Zhou Man now lived in his uncle’s villa, alongside them.
From Ning Yuan and Ning Rong’s perspective, it was natural to feel uneasy. All the children belonged to the parents, so why could he live there with them while they could not?
They might also worry about Zhou Man being alone in the villa if it were just the three of them.
Even real siblings could grow resentful if things weren’t balanced. How much more so for this complicated trio, who weren’t exactly siblings but functioned like one.
Lan Xingchen realized he needed to move out.
If he moved out, none of the three younger members would be living under the elders’ roof. Ning Yuan and Ning Rong might feel less resentful, and there’d be fewer provocations.
If he moved out, he wouldn’t have to worry about others discovering the secret he had accidentally learned.
If he moved out, his uncle could enjoy his belated marriage without the small conflicts between the younger generation affecting his relationship with Zhou Man.
After all, he wasn’t his uncle’s biological son. He couldn’t just stay there forever.
With that in mind, Lan Xingchen made up his mind.
Moving out during college? His uncle would certainly not agree, and he was a little reluctant himself.
So he postponed it, delaying until after graduation, finally using entrepreneurship as an excuse to move out.
All these years, Lan Xingchen had never told anyone about these things.
Things he shouldn’t have known but accidentally did.
He kept them locked away, silently buried in his heart, pretending he knew nothing.
Yet Pei Qingjian didn’t follow the usual pattern—or perhaps he followed it too rigidly. He didn’t know the relationship between Ning Rong and Zhou Man, hadn’t even known such a person existed.
So he had no preconceptions. When he stated, plainly and without emotion, that she came from Zhou Man’s side, Lan Xingchen naturally assumed they were mother and daughter.
Yet soon, he doubted that assumption because of their ages, trying to reject it.
But that was the truth. Lan Xingchen could not speak it aloud, yet he could not deny the reality.
He didn’t want to continue the topic.
Lan Xingchen stood up and said to Pei Qingjian, “I’m going to shower.”