Yu Shu asked, "Do you know where the circuit breaker is?"
Shen Youlin shook his head. Yu Shu then beat him up, "You're useless at everything except being a burden."
"...Wah."
After struggling for so long, Yu Shu was also tired. She went back with Shen Youlin to the children's room on the second floor to rest.
As the night grew later, the temperature dropped lower. The velvet curtains were pulled down to keep them warm.
Shen Youlin hugged Yu Shu and looked at the pirate ship kids bed he loved so much when he was little. He marveled that one day he would come back here to spend the night with his wife.
Yu Shu said, "Anyway, since we have nothing to do now, start confessing."
She set a two-minute timer on Shen Youlin's phone, "I'll give you two minutes to organize your words."
Shen Youlin scratched his head, "Where should I start?"
"Start from the beginning!"
"Then I'd have to go back to when Granny Yu Fanxing was pregnant with me."
Shen Youlin was an unplanned child of Yu Fanxing and Shen Chaowen. At first, they didn't intend to keep him. Firstly, Yu Fanxing was no longer young. Secondly, they already had children. But Shen Youfei somehow learned about this and told Granny. Under Granny's firm intervention, Yu Fanxing was brought back to the old house to carry the pregnancy.
From the beginning, he was not expected. During the pregnancy, Yu Fanxing felt extremely uncomfortable. She even had placental abruption during childbirth and almost died on the operating table.
Yu Fanxing’s health collapsed. It took her several years to recover. For Yu Fanxing, beauty was life. The stretch marks on her belly and the long scar were even more unbearable than death. So she resented Shen Youlin and refused to see him.
"But it doesn't matter. I have my Elder Sister," Shen Youlin said very calmly about this past, "Seeing how Yu Fanxing was then, she felt very guilty, so she raised me by her side. We lived in this house. She was just a half-grown kid herself then, thirteen or fourteen. She had already learned from the nanny how to take care of me."
Feeding, bathing, coaxing to sleep, teaching to speak, telling bedtime stories...
Although Shen Youlin had three nannies to take care of him, Shen Youfei still did everything hands-on.
The first word Shen Youlin spoke was not dad or mom, but Elder Sister.
Shen Youfei became a mother figure to him at first out of guilt towards Yu Fanxing. Before long, it changed into affection for Shen Youlin.
"My name was also given by her. You can tell we’re siblings from our similar names. We're the only ones in the family with such similar names," Shen Youlin said with a nostalgic smile as he talked about these things. "We both only had a nominal enrollment in school. Teachers would come home to give us lessons. So I could stick with her every day back then. Later, because of me, my Elder Sister rejected overseas universities and chose to attend university in Beijing. To make it convenient for her to go to school, we moved into an apartment near her campus.”
“That year, afraid I'd be bored at home, we raised Yun Duo together."
If only such a life could have continued.
Shen Youlin hugged Yu Shu tightly to draw some courage and strength to keep talking. "The next year, she met Yan Xingnan, a narcotics police officer."
It was an ordinary hot summer day. Shen Youfei took Shen Youlin swimming. On the way, they heard a harsh police siren getting closer and closer.
A jeep carrying three drug traffickers broke through the police barricade and fled towards the highway.
If only Shen Youfei hadn’t been driving a modified Mercedes-Benz G-Class that day. Without any hesitation, she rammed the drug traffickers’ car and forced it to stop.
“Buckle up tight, baby!”
Still sitting in the child safety seat in the back, Shen Youlin hadn’t reacted when he heard the crash.
The drug traffickers were furious and shot at their car. Thank God for the bulletproof glass that saved their lives.
Soon the police arrived and subdued the criminals.
Shen Youfei got out of the car on shaky legs. She trembled as she undid Shen Youlin’s seatbelt and lifted him from the child seat, almost dropping him. Fortunately Yan Xingnan was there to help just in time and prevented Shen Youlin from falling to the ground.
“My legs went soft from fear then. I grabbed Yan Xingnan’s collar and wouldn’t let go. He had no choice but to hold me.” Shen Youlin smiled. “Yan Xingnan took off his goggles. Handsome! My Elder Sister was lovestruck at first sight!”
Yan Xingnan weighed Shen Youlin in his arms, “Little buddy, are you scared?”
“I’m not scared!” Shen Youlin put up a bold front, but his words were shaking. “My Elder Sister said the Shen Family can produce prodigal sons, but never cowards!”
His words made the group of cops burst into laughter. Yan Xingnan looked even more handsome when he laughed. Shen Youfei couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“Hmm, your elder sister is right. If you weren’t clutching my clothes so tightly, I would have believed you.”
Shen Youlin’s face turned red. He burrowed into Shen Youfei’s arms.
Shen Youfei had gained strength from years of carrying him. But now she pretended to be too weak to hold him and looked at Yan Xingnan helplessly and pitifully.
Yan Xingnan understood and coaxed Shen Youlin to stay put in his arms.
Yan Xingnan cleared his throat, “Miss Shen...”
“No need to be so formal. Just call me Youfei.”
“Miss Youfei, the maximum reward we give to good citizen crime stoppers is 50,000 yuan. Our boss said we should claim as much as possible... for the car repairs...”
No wonder they sent the most handsome guy to negotiate with Shen Youfei!
Yan Xingnan felt rather embarrassed himself. After all, the girl had just helped them big time, yet here he was to talk money.
Shen Youfei beamed brighter than the sun, “Then if you want to thank me, take me out for a meal! Don’t worry about the car repairs!”
The brat Shen Youlin started sabotaging her, “My Elder Sister is lying. Her cars are never repaired. They get replaced directly! She said cars that have been repaired are like men who have cheated. Can’t have them.”
Shen Youlin laughed out loud recalling his silly past self. “After I said that, both their faces turned red. But they still went out for that meal. It was like their first date. To spend more time with him, my Elder Sister deliberately left her wallet at the restaurant for Yan Xingnan to help her find it.”
Yu Shu asked, “How did you know? Were you there?”
“They wouldn’t have brought me on their date! Yan Xingnan told me later. He saw my Elder Sister drop her wallet but didn’t expose her.”
“What happened after?”
“After... The wallet was found. My Elder Sister was very ‘grateful’ to Yan Xingnan and gave him a banner.”
The banner bore eight big characters: So handsome, cases solved so fast.
At that time, Yan Xingnan didn’t express feelings for Shen Youfei. His attitude was aloof and polite. But Shen Youfei, raised in luxury and elite education since childhood, was confident and flashy. She firmly believed that whoever she liked would like her back.
So she directly delivered the banner to the police station. She had just exchanged a couple of words with Yan Xingnan when he was called away for an emergency mission with his colleagues.
Shen Youfei didn’t lose heart. She went on to find Yan Xingnan’s boss and told him to pay more attention to his subordinate’s personal issues, like taking her, such a fair-skinned beauty, as his grass widow.
Yan Xingnan’s boss instantly understood. He promised to do his best to matchmake Shen Youfei and Yan Xingnan.
That was also when Shen Youfei met Jiang Han, a poor little orphan raised in the pantry of the police station canteen.
