In the hospital.
Xiao Yunyun let out a long sigh of relief when it was time to get off work. She picked up a pile of documents and went to her office with her shoulders drooped.
Xiao Yunyun turned around to leave the office as soon as she packed up her belongings.
“Hey, Yunyun!” An intern pointed at Xiao Yunyun and said, “You… haven’t changed your clothes yet.”
Xiao Yunyun subconsciously looked at herself—she was still wearing her white medical gown.
“D*mn! How could I get off work with this?” she thought to herself.
“My superior will ask me to work overtime as soon as I leave the office!”
“Thank you,” Xiao Yunyun said as she touched her forehead. She put down her bag, took off her white medical gown, and hung it up.
The intern looked at Xiao Yunyun in bewilderment. “You did a double-take when Dr. Liang asked you to make patient rounds with her this morning. I noticed that you were in a daze when having lunch. Just now, you almost left the office without taking off your uniform. Yunyun, are you all right?”
Xiao Yunyun hesitated for two seconds and shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“… Good,” the girl said, “go home and have a rest.”
The girl didn’t pry any further because she could tell that Xiao Yunyun didn’t want to confide in her.
Xiao Yunyun knew that it was simply her self-deception.
The fact was that she had been missing Shen Yuechuan all day, although she didn’t want to admit it.
It had been two days since they left each other at the hotel. Shen Yuechuan didn’t contact her to explain.
“Will I lose contact with him like this?” she wondered.
The idea made optimistic Xiao Yunyun feel upset. She could only console herself that it wasn’t too bad like that. She thought that she needed a clean break.
However, it wouldn’t take long for her to regret it.
In her eyes, Shen Yuechuan’s not contacting her meant that he had been flirting with her.
She didn’t want to accept it as a fact. She would rather have Shen Yuechuan continue flirting with her.
She shouldn’t have degraded herself like that. However, she didn’t want to lose contact with Shen Yuechuan.
“Why was I so impetuous that day?”
Bothered by such thoughts throughout the day had made Xiao Yunyun even more tired than doing research. She felt extremely exhausted as she returned to her office with the documents.
Therefore, she forgot to take off her white medical gown.
Xiao Yunyun didn’t take a bus home directly after leaving the hospital. She walked along the sidewalk outside the hospital and finally stopped at a crossroad.
After thinking for a while, she took a taxi to the hotel where Su Yunjin stayed.
The clerk at the front desk recognized Xiao Yunyun at once because she had often gone to the hotel those days. The clerk said to her with a smile, “Miss Xiao, Mrs. Su is out.”
Xiao Yunyun asked in surprise, “Did she say where she was going?”
“No.” The desk clerk smiled like a robot. “Mrs. didn’t tell us that you would come here. May I give you the room card?”
Xiao Yunyun pondered for a while and nodded. “Alright, thank you.”
Why did she go out? Su Yunjin had told her that she would suffer a lot if she insisted on staying with Shen Yuechuan.
She wanted to know why Su Yunjin was so sure of that.
She tried in vain to call Su Yunjin after waiting in the hotel room for more than half an hour. To her surprise, Xiao Guoshan called her from Australia.
Xiao Yunyun had a better relationship with her father since childhood, so she was excited at Xiao Guoshan’s call. “Dad!”
Xiao Guoshan smiled and said in a voice filled with fatherly concern, “Yunyun, how’s it going?”
“I’m doing well.” After a pause, Xiao Yunyun said with pride, “I was on my night shift a few days ago. I helped in some emergency surgeries! The patients were all rescued!”
Xiao Guoshan laughed. “Death won’t take your patients away as long as you are with them!”
Xiao Guoshan had been supporting Xiao Yunyun in her medical studies throughout. Xiao Yunyun would have given up because of Su Yunjin’s opposition if it were not for her father.
Xiao Yunyun smiled with her lips compressed. “Dad, I’ll try my best to be a good doctor and to bring hope to the patients!”
Xiao Guoshan said, “You will. You’re always great.” After a pause, Xiao Guoshan suddenly said in a serious voice, “Yunyun, I have something to tell you.”
Xiao Guoshan was serious and old-fashioned in his company while easy-going and gentle at home. He had never spoken in a serious tone like that even when he stayed up all night talking with Xiao Yunyun about her university major.
Xiao Yunyun was shocked. “Dad, what’s wrong?”
“Take it easy. You should have known about it long ago.” After a pause, Xiao Guoshan said, “I remember that you often said ‘if only you had an elder brother or sister’ when you were a child.”
“…”
“The fact is that you have an elder brother,” Xiao Guoshan said.
“…” Xiao Yunyun was lost in her thoughts. “Do I have an elder brother? Why haven’t I seen him all these years?”
“…”
After a few seconds, Xiao Yunyun managed to ask in a normal voice, “Dad, what happened?”
Xiao Guoshan sighed. “It’s all about what happened before I met your mother. It’s a little complicated. I don’t know where to start.”
Xiao Yunyun realized that it was more serious than she could imagine. She held her breath and said, “Be brief and tell me what happened.”
After a long silence, Xiao Guoshan said slowly, “Your mother was in love with a man before she met me 20 years ago. Later, the man died in the hospital because of a very strange incurable disease. A few months later, your mother gave birth to a boy and broke off with her family in City A.”
“Your mother lived in America alone. She had to work hard to support her studies and to pay the debt accumulated after treating her boyfriend. She abandoned the boy by the roadside because she couldn’t take good care of him. She thought that the boy wouldn’t forgive her, so she didn’t leave any message about herself, and she decided not to find the boy in the future.”
“But recently, your mother has been looking for the child for some special reasons. I heard that she had found some clues in City A.”
Su Yunjin had never told Xiao Yunyun about her past, and Xiao Yunyun had rarely seen Su Yunjin’s photos that she had taken before she was 30 years old.
Xiao Yunyun was curious about it, and she had once asked Xiao Guoshan about it.
Xiao Guoshan simply told her that her mother had lived a hard life when she was young, so she didn’t want to recall those hard times.
Therefore, Xiao Yunyun had never dared to ask Su Yunjin about her past.
Only then did Xiao Yunyun figure out her father’s words. She realized that Su Yunjin had suffered from not only poverty but also what she had experienced when she was in America.
Xiao Yunyun suddenly felt strange.
“Mom abandoned my brother in America. How come she found the clues in City A?”
Xiao Guoshan said, “Your mother said that the child returned from abroad with his superior and worked in City A after he grew up.”
“No wonder Mom stayed here for so long after cousin’s wedding.” Xiao Yunyun pressed her lips. “She stayed in City A just for… my brother, right?”
Xiao Yunyun felt a bit awkward as she called out the word “brother”.
She had always thought that she was the only child, without expecting that she would have an elder brother. The point was that she had never been told about the fact…
She didn’t know how to face it at that moment. After all, there would be another human being who she didn’t know much about other than a pet in her family.
“Yes, your mother stayed in City A for that. She told me that she had found the child. So I thought it was time to tell you about it.” Xiao Guoshan sighed. “Yunyun, I’m sorry that I’ve kept it from you for so many years. I once thought there was no need to tell you about it because your mother didn’t intend to find the child.”
Xiao Yunyun took a deep breath. “Dad, I know how you feel.”
Xiao Guoshan asked with hesitation, “What do you…”
Xiao Yunyun knew her father well. She said firmly with a smile, “Dad, don’t worry! I’ll get along well with my brother if mom takes him home! In fact, I’m glad to have a brother.”
Xiao Yunyun would have never expected that she would regret saying those words a few minutes later.
Xiao Guoshan breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m happy to hear you say so, and so will your mother be.”
Xiao Yunyun said, “Uh-huh. I’ll go to visit you in Australia when I’m free.”
“Okay.” After a pause, Xiao Guoshan said, “I miss you.”
Xiao Yunyun had been away from home for a year. Her nose twitched as she heard Xiao Guoshan’s words.
Xiao Yunyun said goodbye to Xiao Guoshan in a hurry and hung up before she could cry on the phone.
Xiao Yunyun laid down her cellphone and walked into the study of the suite. She wanted to find Su Yunjin’s tablet computer to see if she could find out anything about Su Yunjin’s past in America.
However, there was nothing except a packet that she was familiar with on her desk in the study.
After thinking for a while, Xiao Yunyun recognized the packet. The other day, Su Yunjin had stopped her when she was about to open the packet that was placed on the bed.
Back then, she thought that the documents in the packet were about some trade secrets of the company.
She wondered, “But I’m Su Yunjin’s daughter, the prime heir of the company. She wouldn’t mind me seeing it even if it was confidential, right? She always asked me to learn about their businesses, didn’t she?”
Xiao Yunyun felt that something was wrong as she thought about it. She had an intuition that the documents in the packet were about her brother.
Xiao Yunyun emptied the packet with curiosity as if she had lost control of her hands, and then she saw a stack of documents.
When Xiao Yunyun recalled this moment a long time later, she would say to Su Jianan with a bitter smile,
“I would have never looked at those documents if I had known that it would change my fate.”