Jiang Chenyue couldn’t bear to see her go hungry and immediately got up from the bed, both concerned and worried as she plained, "Why haven’t you eaten at this late hour? What if you hurt your stomach? And Li Shengxiao, what about him, hasn’t he been looking after you?"
Rong Yan only wanted her to eat something and didn’t expect her actions would inadvertently implicate someone innocent. She quickly stepped in to explain, "He’s been looking after me; it’s just that I didn’t want to eat myself."
"Really?" Jiang Chenyue seemed doubtful, but unable to bear her going hungry, she forced herself up despite her frail condition, furrowing her brows, and holding Yan’s hand, "Girls can’t skip meals. e, I’ll take you to get something to eat."
Rong Yan noticed she was only wearing a hospital gown, a thin layer that wouldn’t fend off the cold weather outside.
"Mrs. Jiang, hold on a second," she stopped Jiang Chenyue and turned to run inside.
In moments, she grabbed a coat from the rack for Jiang Chenyue, then with a gentle smile said, "It’s windy outside, a bit cold. Mrs. Jiang, wear a coat so you don’t catch a cold."
The warm coat wrapped around her back brought a flurry of emotions to Jiang Chenyue’s heart.
Tears seemed to brim in her eyes as she clutched the corner of the coat Rong Yan had handed her, suppressing the surge of affection within.
In a husky voice, she suddenly asked, "Yan, do you..."
"Hmm?" Rong Yan, aside from handing her the coat, also carefully turned back to bring the water cup from her bedside with no notice of her unusual expression.
"Are you happy living with the Rong Family?"
Her action of putting the water cup into the bag paused as she looked back, her porcelain face full of confusion, seemingly unsure why she was being asked this.
Jiang Chenyue also realized her question was peculiar, her throat dry and heart bitter, forcing out a smile uglier than crying, "What kind of question am I asking... Yan, don’t take it to heart."
Even though Rong Yan didn’t know why she asked, she still responded after placing the cup well, "It’s neither good nor bad."
Jiang Chenyue looked at her intensely, almost as if she wanted to hear that Rong Yan’s childhood was pleasant.
"If the Rong Family hadn’t taken me in, who knows where I’d have ended up. Maybe a trafficker would’ve taken me, turning me into a roadside beggar. Or perhaps I’d have been sold to a secluded mountain or sent to an orphanage—the situation might not have been much better than the Rong Family taking me in. The Rong Family only ignored me, but at least they didn’t let me starve. It’s just that when I was young and unaware of the truth, I always thought I was Mrs. Rong’s daughter, leading to parisons with others and feeling hurt."
As a child, she couldn’t prehend why her ’biological mother’ would treat her friend’s daughter better than her.
She had envied and felt disheartened.
Later, the truth came out; Rong Weiwei was Jiang Meiqi’s daughter, while she was just the scapegoat Jiang Meiqi picked up from the hospital—all of it made sense, and her childhood envy and disappointment dissipated.
Now, she and the Rong Family are even; neither owes the other.
The twenty years of care she owes Jiang Meiqi have been repaid to Rong Weiwei, and the trivial debts the Rong Family owe her, she’s no longer counting.
She and the Rong Family have parted ways, each going down their paths as though they never knew one another.
Calling to the dazed Jiang Chenyue, she took her arm, "Mrs. Jiang, let’s go get some dinner."
Jiang Chenyue came back to her senses, reluctantly forcing out a faint, bitter smile and silently patting her hand, sighing softly.
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