Su Zhiyi followed the doctor’s orders and lay in the infirmary all afternoon. Thinking about the absurd events of the previous night and the potential futures that might come to pass, she felt restless and uneasy.
After pondering for a long time, Su Zhiyi decided to call Su Nanfeng to ask how she was doing.
At that time, Su Nanfeng was lying in the hospital. She received a video call from her mother, Su Tianyu, and was met with a barrage of scolding: “You have the nerve to cause trouble, but not the ability to fix it? I didn’t raise you to be this useless!”
“If this happens again, forget about school. When you’re old enough, you’ll enlist directly!”
“Stop embarrassing me out there!”
From beginning to end, Su Tianyu never asked about Su Nanfeng’s injuries. After confirming she was still functional, she berated her and snapped the call shut.
Su Nanfeng sat on the bed, listening to the dial tone coming from the phone, her heart sinking into an abyss.
Ah… It was like this again. Only scolding. She was used to it.
Su Tianyu was a former soldier who went into business after leaving the military. Leveraging the connections she had built, she thrived.
Her former superior, who greatly admired her, pulled some strings and connected her with the scholarly Mu family. At a matchmaking banquet, she fell in love at first sight with the eldest daughter, Mu Zhilan.
She was infatuated with Mu Zhilan’s family background, but what stirred emotion was the eldest daughter’s superior appearance.
For an alpha from a humble background trying to break into high society, Mu Zhilan’s status as a young miss was the perfect calling card.
Mu Zhilan hadn’t been interested in her at all. It just so happened that at the time, someone she couldn’t easily refuse was pursuing her.
Omegas back then had far less freedom than today. Even if an alpha would enter a heat/rut cycle from marking an omega, an omega, once marked, still risked losing their sense of self.
Mu Zhilan was in the prime of her youth. She didn’t want to marry into a wealthy family and become a housebound noblewoman. On top of that, her family thought she was at the right age and pressured her fiercely to marry. After weighing her options again and again, she chose Su Tianyu.
Before the marriage, Su Tianyu signed an agreement with Mu Zhilan, guaranteeing she wouldn’t mark her. They would each live their own lives, not interfering with one another, and divorce when the time came.
Su Tianyu signed readily. Yet, on their wedding night, she marked Mu Zhilan regardless.
Su Nanfeng and Su Zhiyi were the products of that violent union.
Mu Zhilan’s family beliefs didn’t allow her to destroy her children in the womb. After enduring a great deal of pain, she still chose to give birth to the twins.
But as soon as the children were born, Mu Zhilan moved out of the Su family home, her attitude extremely firm. Seeing that even this couldn’t win the omega’s heart, Su Tianyu’s interest gradually faded, and she threw herself wholeheartedly into her company.
Their relationship was fraught with conflict, but they still spent time with the children together every week, trying their best to present a facade of a loving couple, hoping to give the children a warm childhood.
Initially, Su Tianyu was cooperative. She wasn’t an entirely heartless alpha and felt some tenderness for her own blood.
But over time, she grew weary of it.
As her career flourished, Su Tianyu began to philander. Nobody knew how many paramours she had outside. Sometimes, during their weekly time with the children, she’d even carry the scent of other people’s pheromones.
When the twins were eight years old, Su Tianyu crashed her car into a guardrail while driving with her A-list celebrity lover, causing a huge scandal. Once the other party recovered from her injuries, Mu Zhilan seized the opportunity to divorce her.
During the divorce, Mu Zhilan used the leverage she had on Su Tianyu, wanting to take her two children with her.
But Su Tianyu started acting shamelessly: “They are my children too, my seed. Why should they all go with you?”
“Their surname is Su, not Mu like yours!”
Mu Zhilan remained very calm, stating plainly: “I don’t care what surname the children have. As long as they came from my body, I have the right to take them away.”
Nowadays, the law’s protection of omegas is very comprehensive. In an AO family, if the parents divorce, all children under fourteen can follow the omega mother.
Even if the omega mother lacked the means to raise two children, social institutions would provide corresponding subsidies to help.
After all, this was an era of declining birthrates. Families with children were a true blessing to society.
From every angle, Su Tianyu stood no chance. No matter what methods she used, she couldn’t get her children back.
To fight for custody, Su Tianyu resorted to a ploy of feigned suffering. While the lawyers on both sides were locked in fierce debate, she suddenly changed her attitude, pretending great difficulty as she spoke: “This car accident… made me infertile. Apart from Nanfeng and Zhiyi, I can’t have any other children.”
Mu Zhilan was somewhat surprised. Su Tianyu had never been so earnest in front of her before.
Given Su Tianyu’s dissolute lifestyle, she should theoretically have a bunch of illegitimate children out there. Yet, after all these years, she only had these twins. It was truly baffling.
Mu Zhilan stood stunned. Seeing there was still room for negotiation, Su Tianyu offered: “Can we ask both our lawyers to leave? Let’s talk privately, shall we?”
“There’s no need for us to fight so nastily, is there?”
After considering for a moment, Mu Zhilan cautiously replied: “Fine.”
The extra people quickly left. In the large meeting room, only the alpha and omega remained, sitting opposite each other in silence.
Once she had to reveal her own scars, Su Tianyu seemed somewhat indifferent.
She loosened her tie, leaned back, and slumped wearily into the chair. After thinking for a while, she said: “Miss Mu, although we’ve been married for over eight years, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about my family.”
Su Tianyu was a remarkably beautiful woman. Her military service gave her a very sharp bearing, and her pair of phoenix eyes were deep and mesmerizing, attracting countless men and women who flocked to her.
It was precisely because her looks weren’t bad that Mu Zhilan, considering Su Tianyu’s difficult family circumstances, had chosen her.
At least looking at a pretty face, sharing a bed wouldn’t be unbearable.
But after eight years of marriage, Mu Zhilan had long seen through what kind of scum the person opposite was. Now, looking at that face, she felt no enchantment, only weariness.
Mu Zhilan’s expression was faint, her voice calm: “Your family has nothing to do with what we’re discussing now.”
“No, it does.” Su Tianyu raised a finger, tapping it in the air, and looked up at Mu Zhilan opposite her, her gaze unfocused. “If you take the children away, it means I have no heirs. All my current assets might be snatched away by my younger sister.”
Mu Zhilan found this reasoning somewhat absurd: “Nanfeng and Zhiyi are your children by blood. According to inheritance laws, everything you have will eventually go to them.”
Su Tianyu shook her head, negating Mu Zhilan’s claim: “In any other family, I’d be sure. But my family… not necessarily…”
Su Tianyu slowly began, speaking of some of her own affairs.
Su Tianyu was born into an AO family. Both parents were in the military, but her omega mother died very early. After her omega mother’s death, her alpha mother remarried, taking her deceased omega mother’s younger sister as her wife.
In her youth, Su Tianyu was never valued. Compared to her, her mother favored the children born from her second wife.
To curry her mother’s favor, Su Tianyu joined the military, doing things similar to her mother. After leaving the service, she even let bygones be bygones and started a company with her younger sister, who had just graduated university.
The current Su Group was something Su Tianyu had fought tooth and nail to build. But once a family business grows large, people with ulterior motives multiply.
It seemed like Su Tianyu was in charge, but many believed her younger sister, Su Haiming, would be the next chairwoman.
The reason was simple: in the early days of her business, Su Tianyu had been far too “indulgent” towards her sister.
At this point, Su Tianyu gave a cold laugh: “But actually, I never liked my sister. I despise her. If it weren’t for the fact that being nice to her could earn me a few words of praise from the mother who never once approved of me, I wouldn’t even bother with that idiot waste of space.”
“Before my mother died, she always told me, ‘She’s your little sister. You must take good care of her, give her everything.'”
It was only then that Su Tianyu understood: the maternal love, the family she had pursued her whole life, was nothing but a farce.
All her efforts to earn praise were, in the end, just a joke.
Mu Zhilan fell silent, listening as Su Tianyu mocked herself: “Miss Mu, I know you look down on me. My previous actions were just to make our relationship more secure. I didn’t necessarily mean to force you to have children.”
“But the children were born, and I will try to like them.”
“I need an heir. Su Haiming has already taken over the company’s upper management. If I don’t have a reliable heir to contend with her, then after I die, my possessions will become hers, her children’s…”
“I don’t want my whole life to have been spent making her wedding dress.”
In all their years of marriage, Su Tianyu had said many things, but none had been as moving as this. The pianist, nourished by love since childhood, couldn’t fully comprehend the conflicted psyche of a child from such a family, but she could hear the unwillingness and pain.
Yearning for love, chasing love, yet never obtaining it.
Love is like a phantom. Those who only chase and never cherish can never find happiness.
Though already disgusted, the kind-hearted omega still felt a pang of sympathy. She was silent for a long time before finally speaking: “But Su Tianyu, children are not your tools.”
Not instruments for inheriting your company.
Su Tianyu knew she had cracked open the other’s heart. Confident of victory, she still pretended to be groveling: “I know. And I will love her too.”
“At least leave Nanfeng with me. She’ll be my only child from now on. I will learn to love her properly.”
Her silver tongue eventually moved Mu Zhilan.
After hesitating for a moment, Mu Zhilan gave her answer: “Fine, I agree. But if Nanfeng isn’t living well, I will take her back.”
Su Tianyu had won, won completely. A satisfied smile spread across her face: “Fine. When the time comes, I’ll let you take her.”
But how could something snatched by a ravenous wolf be easily taken back by anyone?
Once Su Tianyu secured custody of Su Nanfeng, she unsurprisingly broke her promise again, beginning to prevent contact between Su Nanfeng and Mu Zhilan, both openly and secretly.
At that time, Su Zhiyi wasn’t close to Mu Zhilan either. Just building a relationship with her daughter consumed most of Mu Zhilan’s energy. Not to mention her various concert tours, which left her with no capacity to pay attention to the child her ex-wife had taken.
By the time Su Nanfeng had this incident, it was already too late.
Su Nanfeng was sixteen. Before reaching adulthood, she could only live with Su Tianyu.
And under Su Tianyu’s discipline, she had already become a completely different person.
The young Su Nanfeng knew nothing of the grievances and entanglements between her parents. In her heart, she still believed Mu Zhilan had chosen Su Zhiyi back then and abandoned her.
She loved her younger sister, yet at the same time envied her, thinking how good it would have been if she had been the one taken away.
At least her mother would care for her, wouldn’t ignore everything, sending a secretary whenever something came up, cursing her whenever she was angry.
Why… did she have to live with this kind of mother?
Su Nanfeng couldn’t figure it out. A stifling weight pressed in her chest; she couldn’t breathe it out, nor swallow it down.
Clutching her phone, she fantasized about the apocalypse. A zombie outbreak. Her mother, Su Tianyu, surrounded by a horde of zombies. She would descend from the sky, baseball bat in hand, and rescue her mother. Then her mother would look at her with relief and realize she was a truly filial daughter.
Or, she could run out onto the street and beat up anyone she met. Then get on the social news. The group’s stock would plummet. Her mother would go bankrupt, unable to pay her debts, jump off a building, and break her legs. Only she would be left to depend on her mother. She’d start working odd jobs to support the family, and then her mother would know she was a good kid.
In short, a world-shattering event needed to happen. Earthquake, flood, volcanic eruption, asteroid impact. In the face of death and suffering, she would have her great outburst, making her mother regret ever treating her this way!
The hormones surging in her young body, mixed with an alpha’s agitation, clouded Su Nanfeng’s mind, filling it entirely with thoughts of revenge against society.
She sat alone for a good while until the phone in her palm buzzed, bringing her back to her senses.
Su Nanfeng looked down and saw the word “Sister” flashing on the screen. Without a second thought, she answered the call: “Hello…”
Her younger sister’s soft, concerned voice came through the phone, as if from a hazy, unreal world, full of a sense of detachment: “Sister, are you okay?”
Hearing the word “Sister,” it was as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown over Su Nanfeng’s brain, instantly calming her down.
A sour feeling rose in her nose. She answered in a muffled voice: “I’m fine. So you still know to worry about me? I thought you only had Gu Xizhou in your heart.”
Su Zhiyi could hear the grievance in her voice. She smiled and comforted her: “Of course not. You’re my sister, how could I not worry about you? So, what exactly happened?”
Su Zhiyi asked cautiously, phrasing her words carefully: “No major problems, right?”
Su Nanfeng detected the concern in her words; a sour, swelling feeling filled her chest. She hummed lightly and answered softly: “It’s nothing much… just some swelling…”
Sob… My little sister is still the best.
She took back her earlier thought. It was better that her sister had been taken away by their mother. How could her adorable sister be subjected to the torment of her failed mother?
If one of them was destined to suffer because of their unfortunate family, then let it all fall on her.
She was willing to give all of life’s happiness to her sister, as long as her sister could remain this innocent, kind, and carefree forever.
