Taken away. The words settled heavily in the air between them, euphemism barely masking imprisonnt.
Yuyan frowned slightly, confusion mixing with dawning understanding. "Taken away when?"
Shuyin crouched down, her fingers digging slightly into the soil, feeling its texture. It felt unfamiliar beneath her touch, packed differently than she rembered, treated with chemicals and fertilizers, and maintained with carefulness but sohow lifeless despite all the care. "When I was imprisoned," she said with calm that belied the emotions churning beneath. "When they locked away and everyone pretended I’d simply disappeared." But she was here as Shuyin even though they had truly gotten rid of the original Shuyin.
Chen Xiao’s small hand tightened around his stuffed rabbit, his body tensing at words like imprisoned and locked away, concepts that resonated with his own traumatic past.
Shuyin continued softly, almost to herself, her voice carrying mory rather than present awareness. "My grandfather planted peach trees here for my mother when she was young. There were rows of them along this entire section. And jasmine vines grew along that wall..." She gestured toward the estate’s boundary wall, now covered in carefully maintained climbing roses instead. "There was a swing under the old banyan tree where my mother used to sit and read. I rember pushing her on it when I was very small."
These were Shuyin’s mories, and sentints, but now, she was still Shuyin and in Shuyin’s body, it still carried the sentints that won’t go away.
She looked up, her gaze sweeping across the perfectly arranged garden. None of it remained. No peach trees. No jasmine. No banyan tree. No swing. Only manufactured perfection without mory, without history, without soul.
"They destroyed it all while I was gone," she finished quietly. Not an accusation. Not anger. Just a fact, stated with the sa tone one might use to describe the weather. "They erased every trace of her, of us, of everything that existed before they took control."
A heavy quiet stretched between them, broken only by birdsong and the distant sound of water running sowhere in the elaborate irrigation system.
Then sothing unexpected flickered across Shuyin’s face. Not sorrow. Not grief over what was lost. Sothing else entirely. Mischief mixed with determination, childlike joy eting calculated rebellion.
She stood abruptly and removed her outer jacket, handing it without looking to a startled maid who’d appeared at so point. "Well," she said, rolling up her sleeves with deliberate purpose, "that’s easily fixed."
Yuyan blinked in confusion. "Fixed how?"
Shuyin walked over to a tool rack where gardening implents hung in organized rows. She selected a small shovel, testing its weight in her hand, then walked back to the pristine orchid bed. Without hesitation, without second-guessing, she drove the shovel straight into the carefully maintained soil.
"We’re changing it back. All of it."
The gardener made a sound sowhere between a choke and a gasp. "Madam, please, these orchids are very expensive, very rare, they require specific conditions...."
Yuyan stared for exactly two seconds, her mind processing what she was seeing, then laughter bubbled out of her uncontrollably. "You’re serious mommy?! You’re actually going to dig up the entire garden?"
"Completely serious." Shuyin tugged hard on the orchid she’d targeted, feeling resistance from roots that had been carefully established after days of careful maintenance. Soil scattered across the perfect gravel path, dark clumps landing on expensive pale stones. "These plants don’t belong here. They never did."
Yuyan grabbed another tool instantly, any hesitation dissolving into enthusiasm. "Then I’m helping!" She positioned herself next to Shuyin and began attacking a different section of the orchid bed with determined energy.
They worked side by side, elegant composure disappearing rapidly. Hair loosened from lazy morning styling. Dirt stained their hands, then their clothes as they knelt in the soil. Sweat beaded despite the cool morning air. For the first ti since returning to the mansion, since reclaiming her life from imprisonnt, Shuyin looked genuinely young. Alive in a way that strategic planning and cold revenge could never make her.
Chen Xiao stood perfectly still at first, watching the sudden activity with the wariness that trauma had taught him. Raised voices. Quick movents. Disruption of order. His body instinctively tensed, muscles coiling in preparation for danger that his conscious mind knew wasn’t coming but his traumatized nervous system still expected.
He watched carefully, waiting for anger to follow the chaos, for punishnt to erge from broken rules.
But instead, Shuyin laughed as a particularly stubborn root refused to co free. "Yuyan, this one is fighting back. It doesn’t want to leave its comfortable ho."
"Then it’s losing the fight!" Yuyan declared with fierce determination, pulling harder, her face scrunched with effort.
Shuyin glanced toward Chen Xiao and held out a small hand rake, her movent casual and non-threatening. "Help us make space for better plants," she said gently, offering rather than commanding. "These orchids need to go sowhere else. They can be transplanted. They’ll survive. But they can’t stay here."
No pressure in her voice. No expectation. Just an invitation extended and left for him to accept or refuse.
After a long pause during which he clearly debated the wisdom of joining this madness, he stepped forward slowly and knelt beside them in the disturbed soil. He began loosening earth around plant bases quietly, his movents careful and precise as everything he did. No one rushed him. No one corrected his technique. They just worked together in companionable chaos.
Yuyan dug deeper near a decorative stone border that marked one bed from another. Her shovel hit sothing solid beneath the soil. CRACK. A sharp tallic sound echoed, distinctly wrong for a garden, and everyone froze instinctively.
A hiss followed, high and pressurized. Then...
WHOOSH!
A burst of water exploded upward from the ground like a fountain soone had turned on at full pressure, shooting six feet into the air before arcing down in a wide spray. Yuyan shrieked, jumping backward. Shuyin tried to do the sa but her footing was already compromised by kneeling in loose soil. She slipped, her feet going out from under her, and landed squarely in the mud with an undignified splash that sent wet earth flying in all directions.
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