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Wen's father only had one month of annual leave. After taking it, he hurriedly returned to the military headquarters in response to orders from his superiors.
Before leaving, he told Ah Heng to stay away from the trio, saying that she would be corrupted if she followed them.
"Our Ah Heng is such a kind and innocent child. She mustn't be led astray by these brats, you understand?"
As a father who hopes his daughter will be virtuous, kind, and skilled in all kinds of things, these concerns are absolutely necessary.
He said "these brats" but in his heart, there was only one word for him—Yan hope.
Yan hope is a magical child who always brings unexpected changes to life. He has no intention of demonizing the lovable boy, but he always goes to extremes and does things in a way that is beyond reproach, leaving the elders with no way to intervene. His growth trajectory always follows his own predetermined direction, making it impossible for people to guess the future and the ending, a completely genuine fog.
His selfish wish was that his daughter would live a peaceful and carefree life, ideally remaining a gentle and innocent girl until the end of time.
Therefore, the older generation made an agreement that he did not want Aheng and Yanxi to be together. If possible, since Aheng is getting old, he wanted to follow his and his wife's wishes and find a safer and happier home for their daughter.
This destiny will certainly not be Yan hope's.
He had meticulously planned ahead, envisioning a bright future for his biological daughter, but little did he know that a single word in this world would overturn all his plans: fate.
But tell me, if fate hadn't intertwined, how could Yan hope and A Heng, clinging to two extremes, have met on that particular day, that month, and that year...?
Ah Heng smiled and obediently agreed, "Dad, I know."
She can turn around and make braised pork ribs, stewed pork ribs, winter melon pork ribs, and steamed pork ribs every day, enjoying it immensely.
Foreseeing some things is one thing.
If it is, then wanting to stop it is another matter entirely.
Mr. Wen looked at Yan hope with a clear understanding and felt apprehensively that this young man was an anomaly. Little did he know that, in a joke and wishful thinking, his daughter had also become an anomaly in Yan hope's life.
He saw through Yan hope, but overlooked how he should view his own daughter...
He thought he knew everything, relying on his experience as an adult and his sense of rational superiority. However, he couldn't understand how difficult it was to control one person's attraction to another...
He was outside the circle, and out of blood ties and goodwill, he worried about those inside the circle so much that he wanted to take care of everything for them; but for those inside the circle, joy or sorrow, besides feeling it with their breath and heartbeat, how could there be even a trace of unease or rationality to sort out all their thoughts and make all the imperfections and compromises...
He is a father, yet he can only find pity from someone outside the circle.
This pity, however, only served to highlight the boy and girl's innocence and flaws, making it seem out of place, pale and powerless, like the white moonlight shining on the earth—how could one draw warmth from such empty light...
Moreover, how can one know that having met someone means they are destined to fall in love?
Just as those we are deeply in love with may not necessarily be the ones we are fortunate enough to stay with.
With so much effort, what's too much and what's too little?
Chapter 21
Chapter 21
Ever since they learned that Aheng was Siwan's younger sister, the girls in the class became embarrassed and even more reluctant to get close to Aheng. But when they met, they would greet her vaguely and evasively.
Ah Heng felt a sense of relief.
“This girl is giggling again, what’s making you so happy?” Xin Dayi scratched the black hair on his head.
"Lin Minmin and I greeted each other." Aheng raised her eyebrows. Lin Minmin was the girl she had a grudge against.
"Silly boy!" Xin Dayi laughed.
"Damn it! Can you two stop bickering for no reason? Help me get rid of this pile of stuff! Hurry up!!" Yan hope shouted, waving a stack of homework books beside him.
"Yan Meiren, you seem to have wandered back from the second year of high school. Don't tell me you can't do something so simple..." Xin Dayi, with a bright and sunny disposition, finally seized the opportunity to tease Yan hope.
"It's not that I can't write, it's that I'm too lazy to write. Pfft, you bunch of little potatoes wouldn't understand me."
"Who's this little potato? Yan hope, don't get cocky just because you ate a few more meals!"
"Young Master, you weren't even a toothy kid when I was already gnawing on ribs!" Yan hope yawned. He had stayed up all night playing games.
Ah Heng flipped through Yan hope's notebook, smiled wryly, and felt a headache coming on.
How long has he been accumulating homework that he hasn't done?
"Dayi, you're in physics and chemistry, I'll take politics and history." Aheng picked up four homework assignments from a stack, divided them into two, and handed them to Xin Dayi.
Why should we do his homework for him?!
Why don't you guys help me with my Chinese, math, and English homework?!
The two of them jumped up and down together.
"What are you saying? I don't understand." Ah Heng smiled, her dark eyes filled with gentle light.
"Wen Heng, why do you always get stuck at crucial moments?" Xin Dayi asked anxiously.
"Hey! I was just speaking Earth language, Wen Heng, how come you couldn't understand me?!" Yan hope glanced at him.
"So you can speak other planetary languages too?" Xin Dayi found Yan hope's words very awkward.
"Oh, I'm from Mars, here to explore your Earth." Yan hope grinned, his smile dazzling.
What is Mars like?
"Just like Earth, blue skies, white clouds, coconut palms, clear water, and white sand..."
"That's McDull's Maldives, don't steal the pig's lines!"
"I'm from the same family as Xiaomai, and I was born in the Year of the Pig, so it won't mind..."
Ah Heng chuckled silently.
See? See? She said, in less than two seconds, the two of them went off-topic.
"Class is starting! Xin Dayi, why are you talking so much!" Class teacher Ms. Lin walked into the classroom and tapped the blackboard eraser.
“Yan hope also said that!” Xin Dayi was displeased.
Ms. Lin, sweating profusely, adopted a state of selective deafness, pretending not to hear, and began her lecture.
Yan hope gave a forced smile, then kicked Xin Dayi hard under the table with his long legs.
Xin Dayi is screaming.
"If I'd known, I wouldn't have bothered to switch seats to sit at the same table as you!"
"I wouldn't even want to sit at the same table as you, it would make me seem like I'm on the same level as you!" Yan hope tapped his chin lightly with his long, slender, white fingers, looking lazy.
Ah Heng turned her head, looked at the two of them, and smiled with her head tilted to the side.
Her teeth were perfectly aligned, like grains of rice, beautiful and gentle.
"Watching the show costs money!" Yan hope smiled, extending her beautiful, clean hand, her fingers white as jade, her knuckles thin and delicate.
“What are you saying? I don’t understand…” Ah Heng shook his head and turned around slowly.
"Playing dumb again." Yan Xi looked at Aheng's back and spoke lightly, but her tone carried a sense of familiarity and mockery.
"Are you two very familiar with each other?" Xin Dayi muttered.
Yan hope just smiled and remained silent.
Just the right amount, exactly what I knew.
Not too deep, not too shallow, just the right amount of new knowledge.
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When Ah Heng called Si Wan to dinner, he was rushing to finish his homework. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a first-year high school English assignment.
"Yan hope's?" Aheng frowned.
"Hmm. They forced it on me and told me to finish it today." Siwan wrote furiously.
Ah Heng reached out and pulled the workbook off the table.
"No." She shook her head, her brows furrowing slightly, and the clear mountain and water landscape became misty.
"Huh?" Siwan looked up, puzzled.
"We can't let him be like this, spoiling him."
Siwan hesitated—"This was Yan hope's instruction..."
"Leave it to me." Ah Heng smiled gently, her voice soft and sweet.
After dinner, Ah Heng, carrying her homework, went to visit the Yan family.
Grandpa Yan had a dinner engagement and wasn't home. After saying goodbye to Lieutenant Li, I went upstairs.
When Yan hope saw her after knocking on the door, he was clearly surprised.
"Come in." Yan hope nodded slightly and stepped aside calmly.
Ah Heng was initially a little embarrassed, with her head down, but then she saw the pink pig-head slippers the boy was wearing, and her nervousness vanished in an instant.
She went inside, but was covered in cold sweat.
Everywhere you look is pink: pink walls, pink curtains, pink bookshelves, pink tables, a huge full-length mirror, pink clothes strewn all over the floor, graffiti covering the walls, and simple cartoon figures—a style that's terrifyingly awful.
Ah Heng was overwhelmed by the pink color, rubbed her eyes, and handed the notebook to Yan hope.
Yan hope raised an eyebrow—"I remember I already handed it over to Si Wan to handle."
“Make it yourself,” Ah Heng said with a smile.
"No time," Yan hope said calmly, picking up the controller from the wooden floor, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and continuing to play the game.
"Do it yourself," Ah Heng repeated, her tone gentle yet firm.
"Oh, you can put it on the bed. I'll think about it when I remember." The boy nodded indifferently, his eyes clear and bright, but he was focused on the scene on the TV screen where the little figures were engaged in a fierce battle.
However, his tone already betrayed displeasure.
"When will you remember?" Ah Heng continued to smile.
"I don't know." Yan Xi's face turned completely cold.
“Oh.” Ah Heng nodded, sat down silently to the side, took out a pen and began to write down the political history she had promised to do earlier.
The boy's thumb struck the handle, the fingertip exerting an uncontrolled force, vaguely sharp and piercing.