Chapter 30
Qiao Xiaoxiao had no idea that the sister she held in her heart, the one she had longed for the entire holiday, was at this very moment rushing to her, covered in dust from her journey.
Her thoughts had already shifted to Chu Fengyi. Qiao Xiaoxiao desperately wanted to know what had happened to her sister that made her cry silently in the dead of night.
After observing, Qiao Xiaoxiao found that Chu Fengyi was only a little arrogant. She was a kind-hearted person who could endure hardship. On the way back from the market today, Qiao Xiaoxiao noticed that her leg was probably a little uncomfortable, her brow furrowing slightly from time to time. But she didn’t show it at all and chatted happily with Nuonuo all the way.
In the small courtyard, a gentle breeze was blowing. Chu Fengyi was leisurely inspecting the clothes she had bought at the market with her painted fingers, her eyes filled with pleasure. Since coming here, she had found that she didn’t need to bother with social niceties and could say whatever she wanted. It was an unprecedented sense of freedom.
In the Chu family, she was, after all, the heir. The Chu family was large and prosperous, and countless eyes were watching her from both inside and outside. The reason she wore heavy makeup and mature clothes was just to make herself look like an “adult.”
Looking at Chu Fengyi, Nuonuo’s little heart was filled with sympathy.
She felt that this sister was so pitiful. After she arrived, she had first wolfed down two bowls of rice, and now she was humming a little tune, so happy, as if she had never seen clothes before.
Nuonuo tugged at her pants. Chu Fengyi looked down at her. “Hm?”
Nuonuo signed with her hands.
—Sister, are you lonely? Don’t you have a sister too? Ask her to come and keep you company.
Chu Fengyi didn’t understand. She took out her phone, handed it to her, and switched to handwriting mode. She signed with the sign language she had just learned.
—You write.
Nuonuo looked at her with a head full of question marks and wrote on the phone.
—Sister, you can just talk. There’s nothing wrong with your mouth.
Chu Fengyi: …
She had been secretly learning sign language recently, but it was really too difficult. She now admired Qiao Xiaoxiao from the bottom of her heart. It seemed that she knew everything, and even if she didn’t, she could learn it right away. Unlike herself, who would get confused after looking at the gestures for a while.
Looking at the two words “sister” that Nuonuo had typed, Chu Fengyi’s eyes dimmed a little. “I have a sister, but…” she looked outside, seeing Qiao Xiaoxiao vigorously pumping water from the well, not paying any attention to them.
“But… she doesn’t want me anymore.”
With just one sentence, Chu Fengyi’s eyes turned as red as a little rabbit’s. Nuonuo’s heart ached for her, and she quickly wrapped her little arms around her leg.
—Why? Did you steal your sister’s phone and hide it, and she got angry?
Nuonuo’s little brain had limited capacity, and she could only judge based on her own understanding. Chu Fengyi was amused by her and ruffled Nuonuo’s hair. “No, it’s a bit complicated between the two of us.”
Nuonuo tilted her head and looked at Chu Fengyi curiously. Her big, blinking eyes were like black gems, making it impossible to refuse.
Chu Fengyi put down the clothes in her hand and sat down in the chair, her eyes vacant as she said softly, “Actually… I’ve always had my suspicions. I’m not my family’s biological child.”
This feeling had existed in her heart for a long time.
She always felt that her parents and sister were hiding something from her. Besides their strikingly similar eyes, the sisters were different in every other aspect.
Her sister was gentle and clear-headed, while she was hot-tempered and prone to anxiety. Her sister had never needed anyone to worry about her since she was a child, and had arranged everything in her life in an orderly manner, while she needed her family’s support for everything.
Chu Fengyi lowered her head, her voice a little choked. “I… I actually wanted to get a paternity test, but… I didn’t have the courage.”
She didn’t have the courage.
This was no joke. A guess was just a guess, but once it was on paper, everything would change.
From the moment she saw Qiao Xiaoxiao, Chu Fengyi couldn’t help but think, if they switched places, and she was in Qiao Xiaoxiao’s position, there would be news reports in two days about a 15-year-old girl starving to death at home, her body covered in mold, without anyone noticing.
Seeing Chu Fengyi so upset, Nuonuo reached out her little arms and touched her cheek with her chubby little hands.
Chu Fengyi looked at her with tears in her eyes. A child’s eyes were so clean, so pure and flawless, that she didn’t have to be afraid of being deceived or betrayed. Instead, there was a natural healing feeling.
Nuonuo signed, remembered something, picked up Chu Fengyi’s phone, and wrote.
—Sister, don’t be sad.
Chu Fengyi sniffled with relief and stroked her hair. This child… is really sensible.
Nuonuo wrote again.
—My sister said I’m not her biological sister either. She picked me up from a pile of firewood like a stinky sheep dropping. We’re the same.
Chu Fengyi: …
The sky in the countryside darkened late. Chu Fengyi had originally wanted to set off some firecrackers, but Qiao Xiaoxiao refused. She had to run, study, and do her accounts at night. Where would she find the time to play with the two of them? Seeing her like this, Chu Fengyi had a bit of a headache. “Life is short. Even if you’re working hard, you don’t have to push yourself so hard, right?”
Qiao Xiaoxiao lowered her eyes and didn’t explain. This was a class difference carved into her bones. Some were born into wealth, while others had to exhaust every ounce of their energy just to survive.
The last time Chu Fengyi had done “business” with Qiao Xiaoxiao, she had seen that she had earned quite a bit of money, but she hadn’t seen the pressure she was carrying on her back.
Besides studying, Qiao Xiaoxiao’s core task now was Nuonuo’s throat.
Her sister was now 8 years old. Her throat had been damaged by a fever when she was 3, five years ago. Everyone had given up hope, but Qiao Xiaoxiao hadn’t. She had researched a lot of related information herself and had consulted some doctors, but the answers were all similar. She needed to undergo a systematic examination.
The little money she had was just a drop in the bucket for Nuonuo’s subsequent treatment.
The thought of this made Qiao Xiaoxiao feel breathless. And there was her uncle. He was getting older and older. A few nights ago, it was cold, and Qiao Xiaoxiao had heard him coughing badly at night. It had gotten to the point where it was like asthma, and he could barely breathe. When she asked him, he just said he had gone to the clinic and it was just a cold, nothing serious. But was that cough really just a cold? She wanted to persuade him to quit smoking, but Qiao Xiaoxiao also knew that if it weren’t for that bag of tobacco keeping him going, her uncle would have been crushed by the weight of life long ago.
And her sister… how could she, with such a mountain on her back and no future in sight, repay her?
Qiao Xiaoxiao buried her face in her palms, what leaked through her fingers was suppression and anxiety.
As the sky darkened, Chu Fengyi led Nuonuo to the village entrance. A large bundle of sparklers bloomed with twinkling lights in the night. Since Chu Fengyi’s arrival, Nuonuo’s face had always been adorned with a sweet smile. At this moment, the little girl was being chased around by the sparklers Chu Fengyi was waving, her little face flushed, and she was even letting out “giggle, giggle” sounds of laughter.
Chu Fengyi suddenly stopped, her face illuminated by the sparks as she looked at Nuonuo in surprise. She had thought Nuonuo couldn’t make any sound at all, but that was clearly laughter just now.
Just as she was about to speak, two boys with dyed yellow hair swaggered over from the east end of the village. They wore their jackets open, their jeans hanging loosely on their hips. The moment Nuonuo saw them, she immediately lowered her head, her gaze fixed on the ground.
The sparkler in Chu Fengyi’s hand was still burning, sparks falling at her feet. She squinted and sized up these two uninvited guests.
The boy in the lead whistled loudly. “Oh, the mute can laugh now?”
The other immediately chimed in, “Of course. But it might not be the same in a couple of days.”
“Why?”
The two of them sang in chorus, like a clumsy double act.
“Her jinx sister is back. Who knows what kind of curse she’ll put on her this time!”
Chu Fengyi frowned and was about to act, but she saw Nuonuo, who had been looking down, suddenly raise her little face. She bit her lower lip hard, and her clear eyes shot out a sharp, cold light like a blade.
The two boys were stunned for a moment, their confidence faltering, then they started to laugh. “Oh, the little mute can glare now?”
Before they could finish, Nuonuo had already bent down and picked up the gravel on the ground. Her movements were astonishingly fast. One after another, the stones whistled through the air, each one hitting its mark with precision and force. At first, the two boys wanted to act tough, but they were soon beaten into a retreat by this “stone rain,” fleeing in a sorry state.
Chu Fengyi was completely stunned. She looked down at Nuonuo for a long time. Nuonuo threw away the momentum she still held in her small hand, her chest heaving with anger. She “wu wu”ed at Chu Fengyi a few times, and tears streamed down her face.
—My sister is the best, best sister in the whole world!
Everyone could call her mute, call her stupid, say it would be better if she were dead. Nuonuo could ignore it all, but they couldn’t insult her sister.
Since she was little, her parents had not gotten along. Her childhood memories were filled with the sounds of beatings, scoldings, and things being thrown.
It was her sister who had warmed her.
Nuonuo remembered the first time her sister was brought home. Qiao Xiaoxiao had a bad smell about her. Her eyes quickly scanned the surroundings and then fell heavily.
Nuonuo looked at her curiously, not yet knowing that this girl would be tied to her for the rest of her life.
The lack of paternal and maternal love had shattered her childhood. Only her sister’s embrace was her safe harbor. When she was sick, it was her sister who held her all night, softly humming out-of-tune nursery rhymes. On summer nights, it was her sister who held a cattail fan, patiently fanning away the mosquitoes for her. At meals, it was her sister who fed her spoonful by spoonful, coaxing her to swallow every bite. Those always warm hands would always hold her little hand tightly, saying in the gentlest voice, “Our Nuonuo is the best child in the world.”
Later, she had a high fever, and everyone said it was because of her sister that her throat was damaged.
But when Nuonuo woke up, she looked at everyone with tears streaming down her face. She opened her mouth to speak but could only make a hoarse, wheezing sound.
She remembered—what she remembered most clearly was that rainy night. Her whole body was as hot as a burning coal. It was her sister who had carried her on her thin back, running through the dark alleys, one deep step after another. Her sister’s breathing was rapid and heavy, mixed with the sound of the rain hitting the ground, becoming the clearest memory in her dazed state.
Lying on her sister’s back, she could feel the trembling of that thin body. All the clinics were closed. Her sister had carried her and knocked on doors in the rain, begging. In the end, it was the old doctor at the clinic who was awakened by the knocking. When he opened the door, he saw the drenched Qiao Xiaoxiao kneeling directly in the puddle.
The adults didn’t know any of this.
She knew! She knew it clearly!
And her sister seemed to be blaming herself, feeling guilty.
From then on, every time Qiao Xiaoxiao hugged her, it was with such caution and such force.
Nuonuo knew she wasn’t smart and couldn’t compare to her sister. So, when Qiao Xiaoxiao got into high school, even though she was extremely reluctant to part with her, so much so that her little face was tear-stained every night, she didn’t tell anyone.
Nuonuo didn’t have many wishes either. Even if she had to stay in the countryside for the rest of her life, it would be fine. She just wanted her sister to be well.
Just because she had the best sister in the whole world.
The starlight was like scattered diamonds, studding the night sky. Nuonuo’s small hand held Chu Fengyi’s fingertips tightly, signing all the way. Whenever Chu Fengyi showed a confused expression, she would stand on her tiptoes and write seriously on the phone screen. The gentle night wind brushed through their hair, merging the big and small figures into this gentle starlight.
Chu Fengyi wiped her tears and scraped Nuonuo’s nose. “I know, your sister is the best sister.”
She looked at Nuonuo’s determined eyes and suddenly felt so useless.
She couldn’t even compare to a child.
When everyone was questioning her sister, she hadn’t stood up for her at the first moment.
Seeing her like this, Nuonuo signed.
Chu Fengyi knew what she meant. She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and said slowly, “I lost my leg when I was 8.”
