Chapter 30 Part 3

Xu Qingzhu: “…”

A long pause. Then, in a low murmur: “Is everyone at your school an idiot?”

Xu Qingya didn’t catch on. “What do you mean?”

“How could someone like you rank first?” Xu Qingzhu asked with complete sincerity.

Xu Qingya: “…”

She rolled her eyes and shot back, “Natural talent.”

“Come help already,” Xu Qingzhu said. “She’s having an allergic reaction.”

“Allergic?” Xu Qingya immediately rushed over. “This serious? What did she eat?”

“Milk.” Xu Qingzhu said calmly, working to get Liang Shi’s coat on with some effort.

“Milk? There are people in this world who are allergic to milk?” While helping Xu Qingzhu prop Liang Shi up, Xu Qingya rattled off like a machine gun: “But Sister Liang was so calm downstairs earlier. Doesn’t she know she’s allergic to milk? And with an allergic reaction this severe, you’d think one experience would be enough to remember.”

Xu Qingzhu said nothing.

The two of them supported Liang Shi downstairs.

Xu Qingya stopped abruptly at the front door, her tone serious and earnest. “Sis, so you knew she was allergic to milk, and you still let her drink it?”

Xu Qingzhu: “…”

She had only wanted to test it.

Who knew Liang Shi would genuinely remember nothing and calmly drink the entire glass.

“Sis.” Xu Qingya demanded angrily, “Why didn’t you stop her? Severe allergies can kill people. If Sister Liang actually died, that would be murder, understand?”

Xu Qingzhu glanced over with cool detachment, offering no explanation. “You support her. I’ll get the car.”

Xu Qingya: “…”

It was deep into the night.

The white Porsche sped along the wide road and arrived at the hospital in short order.

Xu Qingzhu had called Zhao Xuning on the way. It happened to be Zhao Xuning’s night shift again, so the moment they arrived at the hospital, Zhao Xuning was already there with staff, sending Liang Shi straight to the emergency center.

The tests confirmed a severe allergic reaction that had triggered a high fever.

Zhao Xuning gave her a fever-reduction injection first, then started an IV and prescribed medication.

By the time everything was settled, it was two in the morning, and even the hospital had quieted down.

Xu Qingzhu booked a room for Xu Qingya at a nearby hotel. With school the next day, she told her to go rest.

Xu Qingya glanced at the ward and condemned Xu Qingzhu’s cold-blooded behavior. “Cold-blooded animal!”

Xu Qingzhu: “…”

She didn’t defend her actions. She only told Xu Qingya to leave quickly.

Xu Qingya looked at her distrustfully. “You’re not planning to chase everyone away and then quietly smother Sister Liang to death, are you?”

Xu Qingzhu: “…”

She cast Xu Qingya a cool glance, her voice crisp and cold. “Murder is illegal.”

Xu Qingya huffed softly. “Glad you remember.”

After Xu Qingya left the hospital, Xu Qingzhu sat on the long bench outside the ward, staring into space.

At first she was thinking about why Liang Shi had had an allergic reaction.

Then she gradually began to believe that amnesia could completely change a person’s personality.

And then she overturned her initial thought in her mind, feeling that this simply couldn’t be the same person.

The old Liang Shi had never carried a scent so pleasant that it made people feel at ease.

But the facts proved that this was indeed Liang Shi.

It was just that she’d hit her head and lost her memory.

The two little figures in her mind kept at each other’s throats until, in the end, Xu Qingzhu’s thoughts drifted away entirely.

She entered a state of not really thinking about anything, just blankly staring.

She remained like that until Zhao Xuning came over after finishing rounds.

Zhao Xuning handed her a bottle of water. “Still thinking about Liang Shi?”

Xu Qingzhu finally snapped back. She took the water and drank, then shared her suspicions with Zhao Xuning.

Zhao Xuning looked at her. “Didn’t we agree before? No matter who she is, as long as everything is normal, that’s all that matters. You’re planning to divorce anyway.”

Xu Qingzhu was silent for a moment. “But I’m too familiar with the old Liang Shi. So whenever she does even one thing now, I can’t help but compare. It might have to do with my curiosity. I just feel this whole thing is too bizarre. Even though I plan to get through these days with her and then divorce, and even though I know her affairs have nothing to do with me, we share a bed and interact countless times every day. I can’t help but be curious.”

“So what do you suspect now?” Zhao Xuning asked point-blank.

Xu Qingzhu thought for a long time, then let out a heavy sigh and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

The facts proved that Liang Shi was still allergic to milk.

She was still the same Liang Shi from before, apart from a completely different personality.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to just let yourself off the hook?” Zhao Xuning said. “Why force yourself to think about things you can’t understand? You’re going to go your separate ways in the end regardless.”

Xu Qingzhu pressed her lips together. “The impact she’s had on me is greater than I imagined.”

“So you like her?” Zhao Xuning raised an eyebrow, her tone tinged with disbelief.

Xu Qingzhu denied it immediately. “I’m not crazy.”

“That’s good.” Zhao Xuning breathed a small sigh of relief. “I thought you might recklessly step into the same river twice.”

Xu Qingzhu: “…”

She smiled bitterly. “Impossible. All my energy right now is going into work. Minghui is my grandfather’s life’s work. I won’t let it decline.”

“Is everything going smoothly at the company?” Zhao Xuning asked.

Xu Qingzhu nodded. “A few small problems, but manageable.”

“That’s good.”

The mood suddenly dipped.

After a long while, Xu Qingzhu sorted through her thoughts and said to Zhao Xuning: “Do you remember I told you that the first time I met Liang Shi was when I was five?”

Zhao Xuning nodded. “You two had been kidnapped and escaped together. After Liang Shi came back, she was very erratic for a while. Nobody paid much attention.”

Especially her. She hadn’t cared at all.

She’d just thought Liang Shi had gone crazy.

At the time, she’d even felt a bit pleased.

Xu Qingzhu said: “I was five that year, and Liang Shi was seven. When we were kidnapped, she took care of me a lot. She even roasted sweet potatoes for me in the wild and encouraged me to stay strong, saying life would definitely get better, because we were bound to have so much love.”

Zhao Xuning listened quietly.

And Xu Qingzhu was immersed in that memory, her cool voice carrying a thread of tenderness.

“I thought this older sister was very strange at the time. We were being tormented so cruelly. Those people whipped us, slapped our faces, grabbed us by the hair and smashed our heads against the ground, leaving one bloody mark after another. One child died just like that, bleeding so much.”

At this point, Xu Qingzhu’s voice trembled.

She was clearly reliving that year’s horrors, but she was holding her emotions in check.

It was her first time recounting the details of the kidnapping to anyone other than her attending physician.

Zhao Xuning clearly noticed the change in her and reminded her gently with a frown: “If it’s too painful, you don’t have to continue. Otherwise in a moment you’ll…”

“It’s fine. I can handle it.” Xu Qingzhu exhaled softly and continued. “I also saw with my own eyes a child’s fingers being chopped off and then thrown to feed a big wolf dog. And Liang Shi, because she was always smiling, the kidnappers took a dislike to her and slapped her hard enough to knock out a front tooth.”

Hearing this, Zhao Xuning felt a surge of anger in her chest.

It was probably because Liang Shi was usually so arrogant and domineering that it was simply impossible to connect her with the kidnapping from years past, impossible to empathize with the pain she’d suffered. But hearing Xu Qingzhu say this now, Zhao Xuning suddenly recalled the Liang Shi of those days.

It was back when they had just met.

Zhao Xuning was a transfer student.

She was typically the type to block out the world around her, so she didn’t care what happened outside her own bubble.

She only knew there was a girl in class who had been kidnapped and came back rambling incoherently.

She hadn’t given it a second thought.

But one day, the comic book she’d left on her desk was torn to pieces. She was furious. When she turned around, she saw the other half of her comic book sitting on that little girl’s desk.

And the little girl was still tearing the pages into long strips.

Zhao Xuning marched over and got into a brawl with her.

That little girl was Liang Shi.

Everyone at the time said she was a lunatic.

There was nothing for a sane person to say to a lunatic.

But at some point, the lunatic started forming gangs and grew increasingly arrogant and domineering.

Nobody thought anything of it.

Because lunatics were supposed to be arrogant and domineering.

Zhao Xuning combed through her memories but found nothing suspicious.

She continued listening to Xu Qingzhu.

“Even though this older sister was strange, I still felt she was warm and kind. Her smile was beautiful, and I wanted to believe her.” Xu Qingzhu said: “On our wedding day, I brought up the kidnapping when we were kids. She said nothing at all, as if she’d never known me before.”

“Also, ever since I got to know her again, her smile has always been sinister and eerie. Nothing at all like the person I knew as a child. I comforted myself by thinking we’d both grown up and forgotten, that people change. But lately…”

She paused. “I’ve started to see that familiar smile on her face more and more often. The curve of it is exactly the same as when we were young.”

“So you suspect she’s the person you met as a child?” Zhao Xuning asked.

Xu Qingzhu shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Precisely because she couldn’t decide, she’d laid out every detail of the past, hoping that the more rational Zhao Xuning could help her judge.

“It’s just a feeling.” Xu Qingzhu said. “I inexplicably sense something familiar about her.”

Zhao Xuning: “…”

“That really is a tough one.”

Zhao Xuning said: “I even ran her DNA. She’s Liang Shi.”

Both of them were science students with rational minds, so they didn’t believe in anything that hadn’t been scientifically verified.

“Is it possible she has multiple personalities?” Zhao Xuning said. “Can you think of anything else that’s different?”

Xu Qingzhu thought for a moment, then recounted everything she knew about Liang Shi since they’d reconnected as adults, including all her volatile moods.

Sometimes Liang Shi would be extraordinarily good to her, taking her to upscale restaurants, sending her air-freighted roses, calling her wife, baby, sweetheart with such affection. But at the same time, she was doing the same with other women outside. She cheated constantly. Sometimes she’d put on a show of propriety, but other times she wouldn’t even bother. The worst time, she brought a woman home, into their newlywed bedroom.

That woman asked her, “Am I so much better than your Omega wife?”

She’d coaxed the other woman in bed with all manner of sweet nothings.

Xu Qingzhu had been standing outside at the time and heard every word.

She endured it for four months.

In truth, she’d never expected Liang Shi to change. She only felt that since it was a marriage of alliance, and the Liang family had given the Xu family so much money, keeping Minghui Jewelry clinging to life, she would simply make concessions.