Translator: Larbre Studio  Editor: Larbre Studio
âI saw how pitiful you looked and handed you a bag of apples that I had just purchased. Then, you secretly trailed behind me and followed me for a long time. I couldnât bear to send you away, so I brought you home with me. Let me see, how tall were you back then?â Shu Manâs mother gestured and estimated her adopted daughterâs height when they had first met.
Shu Manâs eyes widened as she looked at her mother in shock and disbelief. None of this seemed familiar to her at all and she had always thought that she had been legally adopted by her father and mother.
It turned out that she had been a child who had been picked up from the rubbish dump.
Shu Manâs mother wiped the tears from her eyes as these memories were enough to make her terribly upset.
She continued, âDue to my physical condition, I wasnât able to have children so after discussions with your father, we decided you raise you as our daughter. I didnât know how old you were and when I asked you. You claimed that you were six. I didnât think that you looked like a six-year-old girl but I thought you were shorter than average due to poor nutrition, so I pulled some strings and got my connections to create some identification documents for yourself. Thus, your year of birth is registered as 1995 on your identification papers and we made up your month of birth.â
Shu Man felt as though she was going to go crazy. She suddenly rose to her feet and looked at her mother in shock and surprise.
She couldnât believe that her date of birth was not her actual date of birth. Where exactly had she come from?
âSo, Man Manâ¦â her mother said earnestly as she held her daughterâs hand, âI feel that you might be the younger sister Mrs. Ye is referring to.â
Shu Man frowned and the more she heard about this from her mother, the more absurd the situation seemed.
âBut⦠mumâ¦â she paused for a moment before she said, âI donât have any evidence that I might be He Yiyi. My date of birth doesnât match He Yiyiâs and I donât have the jade pendant either so even if I truly am He Yiyi, no one would believe me since thereâs no evidence. They might even think that Iâm just a golddigger and send me away.â
Shu Man didnât think that she was He Yiyi and she didnât want to be Mrs. Yeâs younger sister either.
Many years had passed and she wasnât even sure why her biological parents had abandoned her but since she had been abandoned, the fact that they didnât spend any effort searching for her showed that they didnât love her that much.
She might have been sold or abandoned because she was a second child and a daughter born during the one-child policy. Her parents might have gotten rid of her because she wasnât born a boy.
Shu Man was not interested in acknowledging her biological relatives at that thought.
She had seen such incidents being reported in the news and there were reports of how there were couples in the villages who wanted a son but had two daughters, so they either abandoned, sold, or gave their daughter away, then posted notices and sob stories in the newspapers many years later. They would even go on television and claim that they were too poor to raise their daughter or gave lame excuses for abandoning their child, so she was not interested in acknowledging parents who were like that.
The same applied to her sister. Even if Mrs. Ye was truly her biological sister, she didnât want to acknowledge her either.
She did not lead a luxurious lifestyle but she could earn enough to take care of the basic needs of both her mother and herself and her motherâs pension was also sufficient, so they could lead an ordinary life.
She wasnât interested in a life of riches either.
She only wanted her mother to get better so that she could live a long life. She had already lost her biological mother and didnât want to lose her mother either.
âMan Man, are you really not going to go?â Shu Manâs mother held her daughterâs hand tightly. She couldnât bear to part with her daughter and looked helplessly at her daughter. After all, she didnât have much longer to live.
Shu Man said stubbornly, âNo!â