Chapter 58
The quaint and exquisite pocket watch bore elegant and imposing patterns, identical to the decorations on the furniture Shu Ci had once seen in the Shen family’s reception room.
With a gentle flick of the thumb, the cover of the pocket watch opened, revealing the metal gears and hands inside.
Hidden at the bottom of the dial was a group photo.
Shu Ci waited quietly as the hands circled round and round, straining his eyes to see each person in the photo clearly.
The blond man and woman sitting in the front row had outstanding temperament. Their brows and expressions marked them unmistakably as members of the Shen family; they must be Shen Lin’s parents.
The father looked slightly serious, but the hand around his wife clearly revealed tenderness and consideration. The mother’s face was brimming with a warm smile. She held a baby in one arm, while her other hand rested on her abdomen.
Shu Ci recalled that Shen Ti had once mentioned that after the former head of the Shen family was imprisoned, his wife also lost the child in her womb.
His eyelids trembled, and he looked at the back row.
A boy and a girl stood side by side behind the Shen parents, high-spirited, with the light of youth shining in their eyes.
The boy had blond hair and golden eyes, his posture tall and straight, standing like a pine tree. Hidden in his brows was a hint of an indescribable smile. The girl had a single black ponytail tied to the side, hanging down smoothly. Her cyan eyes were like spring wind and rain, making one unable to resist looking at her a few more times.
“What does this mean?” Shu Ci carefully returned the pocket watch to Shen Lin. “Me, the shipwreck incident, and this family photo of yours—what’s the connection?”
Shen Lin didn’t take it back. He glanced at it: “The child in my mother’s arms is you.”
His understatement struck Shu Ci like a thunderbolt. Shu Ci subconsciously brought the pocket watch closer, scrutinizing the picture right in front of his eyes.
The child was about two or three years old, dressed exquisitely and delicately. His chubby hand clutched the woman’s arm, but the candid shot only captured half of his profile and a widely grinning mouth.
“No, wait!”
Shu Ci held his forehead, feeling a bit disarrayed. “You mean you and I are biological brothers? Ah Ti and I are actually relatives with the same surname? That’s not right. Our hair and eye colors are clearly completely different. I don’t look like you Shen family members at all, okay?”
After speaking, he looked at the photo again.
Time had passed, and the photo was slightly yellowed. The little milk dumpling didn’t have much hair, and the color was light, making the specific hue indiscernible.
Shen Lin lowered his eyes, swept them over his face twice, and took back the pocket watch.
“You are not a member of the Shen family, nor are you my brother.” Shen Lin looked into Shu Ci’s blue-grey eyes, then looked at the girl in the pocket watch. “But this girl beside me is your biological sister.”
Shu Ci looked at their similar eye colors, stunned.
“She, us…”
In the sea breeze, Shen Lin’s voice was rarely low and hoarse: “She was my fiancée, Song Shiyu. You and your sister secretly lived in our ancestral home since you were born, until that day—”
Shen Lin’s voice became unlike the gentle, powerful, and inspiring tone in his campaign videos. For him, it was reopening an old scar, retasting the pain that had been suppressed after being washed by time.
In Shen Lin’s restrained and calm voice, Shu Ci walked into his memories.
Social interaction among noble families had a set of established rules. The ancient families were both players of the game and makers of the rules. They admired strength, advocated for the strongest pheromone abilities, and held the highest power.
Until an unusual Omega appeared in this circle.
Song Zhiyuan didn’t suddenly appear in the vision of the major families; they just never paid attention to people from humble backgrounds. Even less did they know when this Song Zhiyuan broke the barriers and stepped onto the gaming table.
An Omega, relying on his outstanding ability, wise mind, and tenacious perseverance, contended with those arrogant Alphas, carved out his own path, and established his own prestige.
He was elegant, humble, and polite to everyone; no one could pick out a single fault.
In that era when noble Alphas stood at the top of the pyramid and could wantonly oppress the common people, Song Zhiyuan’s popularity among the people once exceeded the sum of candidates from several major families. later, he even touched the edge of the Chief Executive position.
An Omega who once missed becoming the Chief Executive by a hair’s breadth!
Shu Ci was stunned, recalling that Marshal He Lian had mentioned this matter to him: as a loser, he was not recorded in history books but had his traces completely erased by people like the Gu family who controlled the current situation.
“It seems you’ve heard of him.” There was a hint of nostalgia in Shen Lin’s voice. “He is your Omega father.”
“But why did we live in your house?” Shu Ci asked blankly.
“Because your father knew that the higher he climbed, the less personal privacy he would have. Everything about him would be dug up completely by the media. Long before he started his life trajectory in the Central District, he had already entrusted you and Shiyu to my father.”
Shen Lin’s earliest memory of Song Zhiyuan was of him standing in front of his father with his daughter, lowering his proud head to seek protection for his children.
At that time, he didn’t know what kind of path this Omega uncle would take.
Hiding outside the door, he heard Song Zhiyuan say, “My daughter’s level should be very high. If Little Lin needs stronger offspring in the future…”
“Zhiyuan!” His father interrupted him directly.
“You saved my wife’s life once. It’s fine if you don’t want any repayment, but how can I watch you use your child for this kind of thing?”
“But—”
“It’s just adding a pair of chopsticks; the Shen family can handle this small matter. To the outside world, we’ll say she’s a child from a side branch of my wife’s family fostered under her name. But you, you want to speak for Omegas so much, yet how dare you use your own daughter’s marriage prospects as a bargaining chip?”
The Shen family was a breath of fresh air among the noble families, a moderate faction that didn’t associate with those corrupt families. Since his father met Song Zhiyuan, he had always maintained an implicit attitude of support.
Someone needed to break the oppression and exploitation of the bottom-level ABOs.
Shen Lin didn’t know what his father talked about with Uncle Song later. He only knew that his father led a little girl with extremely bright eyes and extremely gentle pheromones to him, asking him to take on the responsibility of being a brother from then on.
They grew up accompanying each other, saw each other’s most wretched appearances, and participated in the most important periods of each other’s growth. He didn’t know from which moment he no longer stopped at the responsibility of a brother. He began to look forward immensely to her coming of age, looking forward to personally accompanying her through the tormented heat periods, and harboring vigilance and unease towards all Alphas approaching her.
Although his parents never mentioned it, Shen Lin had long arranged her future into his own life.
“Shiyu was the person who accompanied me the longest in this world. She didn’t like going out, so very few people had seen her. That trip was Uncle Song taking her to celebrate her birthday. The day of the shipwreck was her birthday.”
But the result was that no one survived.
“At that time, he spoke for Omegas and clearly fought for rights, which had already touched the inherent interests of the Gu and Chen families. So I always believed the shipwreck was their handiwork, but there was no evidence.
“The shipwreck location wasn’t far from Dragon Spine Island, and it was also on the inevitable path of the ocean current. When I had the power to inspect and monitor the vicinity of that sea area, I received the news that you inherited Dragon Spine Island.”
Shu Ci suddenly understood: “So that day when I completed the inheritance process, you sent someone to tell me about the shuttle service because you wanted to confirm if I… was a survivor on the ship?”
Shen Lin didn’t deny it.
That day, sitting in the car, he saw at a glance those cyan eyes identical to Song Shiyu’s, and froze into a statue on the spot.
Later, he obtained Shu Ci’s complete information, and countless hypotheses flew through his mind.
If he had attended more inconsequential banquets, if he had known more about the teenagers in the noble Omega circle, if he could have adopted Shen Ti into the main family earlier and spent some effort to understand Shen Ti’s interpersonal network, would he not have dragged it out until now to find him?
Such memories seemed to drain all of Shen Lin’s strength, and his body swayed slightly.
Shu Ci looked at his pale fingertips and suddenly understood the fleeting tears in Shen Lin’s eyes when they met, the look of him seeing another person through himself, and his unconditional care in the original book.
So that wasn’t an illusion.
Shen Lin was reminiscing about his past through him, paying homage to his nowhere-to-place heavy love by making it up to Shu Ci.
“Can you let me hug you?” Shen Lin suddenly said.
Shu Ci was slightly stunned.
Immediately after, he heard him lower his head and mutter hoarsely to himself, “The day I sent her onto the ship, we quarreled.”
She acted coquettishly, saying that if he hugged her, she wouldn’t be angry anymore.
The young boy at that time held a grudge in his heart. Not only did he not hug her, but he also directly stuffed his younger brother into her arms, remaining arrogantly silent.
But there was never another chance.
The Shen Lin who was like a spring breeze on the outside seemed to be a mask. How many years had the festering wounds underneath been silently hidden? The moment he saw him, the mask shattered.
Shu Ci, who had extremely strong empathy, felt his heart being squeezed fiercely, and it hurt violently.
“If it makes you feel a little better.” He took a step towards Shen Lin, and in the next second, was pulled into Shen Lin’s embrace.
This was completely a brother’s embrace. The sorrowful emotion didn’t contain a trace of strange impurities. He even gently stroked Shu Ci’s head like an elder, making Shu Ci, a person who had lived two lives, feel a tiny bit awkward.
“Because your identities were special, my parents didn’t dare hire others. You were actually brought up by Shiyu and me. She mixed formula, I changed your diapers. I even thought later that if we had our own children, we would have much more experience.”
The brief hug ended, and Shen Lin let go of him.
His brow was deep, as if he had bid farewell to his youth through the living medium of Shu Ci.
“But I don’t understand. Was there something shameful about me and… my sister?” Shu Ci forced himself to calmly sort through all this. “Was he afraid we would be implicated and attacked, or worried that his work wouldn’t allow him to take care of us?”
“Both, but neither was the main reason. Most importantly, Uncle Song was unmarried when he gave birth, having your sister and then you successively. None of us knew who your Alpha direct relative was. A councilman’s family life, especially private morality, is easily attacked and scrutinized.”
“…”
Holy crap, so wild.
So the gossip and slander Shu Changze endured for so many years was actually something his biological father did himself?!
Shen Lin wanted to say something more, but an assistant knocked on the door, inviting him to the reception room. A bit of fatigue floated in Shen Lin’s eyes, but he quickly replaced it with a calm and composed expression.
Before leaving, he said to Shu Ci, “Just in case, don’t go to the dinner tonight. I’m afraid Gu Lanzhu will still make a move on you.”
“Then I’ll go back to my room?”
“Just go to the room next to mine. There are bodyguards on this floor; they can’t get in.”
Shu Ci walked dizzyingly to the next room, sat on the bed, and sorted through the massive amount of information in his mind, as well as the ambiguous words Zhao Qian left them. Thinking and thinking, he fell asleep.
This sleep lasted until late at night; the first night of the charity dinner had already ended.
The entire cruise ship fell into silence.
Waking up groggily, his throat was parched. Thinking he was still at home, he opened the door intending to go to the kitchen for water.
Unexpectedly, as soon as he opened the door, he was startled by a huge black shadow at the doorway.
Didn’t Shen Lin say there were bodyguards on this floor and no one could get in? Why is there such a big person squatting at his door?!
Still in shock, Shu Ci rubbed his eyes, his gaze full of astonishment.
“Lu Wanqing? Why are you here?!”
Author’s Note:
Lu Wanqing (Squatting outside his wife’s door all night, jealous version)
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