thump thump etc.

"The stingy girl said she wasn't coming, and she really isn't coming." Jiang Yilin didn't expect that ever since she refused the persimmons Jin Xilu brought her, she really hadn't come to see her again.

The peaceful afternoon was broken by a series of urgent knocks on the door.

"Coming, coming. Why are you knocking so urgently? I would have thought..." The man guarding the door opened the door and bumped into Jin Meiling, who looked nervous and anxious.

"Have you seen my Xilu? Have you seen her?!" Jin Meiling pushed the man's shoulder away and, supporting her neck, tried to search inside.

"What Xilu? That girl of yours who always sneaks in, I've told you so many times to control your girl, she's like a wild animal." Before the man could finish speaking, Jin Meiling glared at him so much that he took a few steps back.

He had never seen Jin Meiling so flustered before.

"Jin Xilu is my child!" After saying that, Jin Meiling turned around decisively and ran into the yard to search for Jin Xilu.

Jin Meiling hadn't expected to be stopped by Jiang Yilin after failing to summon Jin Xilu.

"What's wrong! Where did Jin Xilu go?" Jiang Yilin didn't expect that she would react faster to hearing Jin Xilu's name than to hearing her own.

"Have you seen Xilu?" Jin Meiling's fingers were trembling with anxiety. She had searched everywhere she could think of, but she couldn't find Jin Xilu anywhere.

"She hasn't come for several days again. Has she disappeared?" Jiang Yilin didn't realize that her words were full of concern for Jin Xilu.

After searching the Jiang family's courtyard, Jin Meiling knew that Jiang Yilin wouldn't lie. She broke out in a cold sweat. Xi Lu wasn't at the Jiang family's house. She had also searched the square and all the places she might have gone.

Kim Hee-ro was not found.

Before Jiang Yilin could ask any more questions about Jin Xilu, Jin Meiling had already rushed out of the Jiang family home.

He clenched his fists and looked up at the sky.

The clouds briefly obscured the sun, and his eyelashes fluttered slightly as he considered his plans to go out.

On the other side, Kim Hee-ro was hugging a persimmon tree trunk, her eyelashes wet, clearly having just had a good cry.

She doesn't believe she isn't her grandmother's biological child.

Looking back, I remember whenever someone jokingly said that they didn't look like my grandmother.

Jin Xilu would get angry on the spot, pouting and saying, "Hmph, nonsense, watch out or your nose will fall off tonight." Then she would run home alone, lock herself in the kitchen, and wait for her grandmother to come and coax her.

As golden sunlight streamed through the kitchen's stained-glass window, she heard a knock and looked up to find the kitchen door already open. In the next instant, she was pulled into her grandmother's arms, her calloused fingers stroking her forehead, and she heard her grandmother's concerned voice.

"What's wrong, Xilu? Are you unhappy today? Talk to Grandma about it."

Jin Xilu told her grandmother everything she had heard that day. After listening, her grandmother picked her up and gently touched her forehead, nose, mouth, and finally her eyes with her fingers.

"Come on, tell me, are your forehead, nose, mouth, and these beautiful eyes real or fake?"

Grandma's touch was very soothing, and her eyes were gentle and tender.

Upon hearing this, Kim Hee-ro, who had been keeping her eyes closed, immediately opened them. She was somewhat puzzled as to why her grandmother was asking this, but she still answered, "Really."

Grandma's voice was always so gentle yet powerful, and beneath that gentleness lay an endless love for her.

"That's right, your eyes are real, your nose is real, and I'm holding your body right now, all of these are real."

"Grandma's love for you is more genuine than anyone else's words."

"Grandma will always love you, you are my child."

That day, Jin Xilu even wrote about her grandmother in her composition. She wrote: "My grandmother is always warm and cozy. She makes me believe that the flowers in the world are colorful, and that the fragrance of flowers and the sweetness of taste are real. She is the most precious person to me in this world. I love her, without a doubt."

But this time, her grandmother personally peeled away the colorful plastic covering her, telling her the truth of the world: she was a child who had been taken in.

Grandma is missing again today. Jin Xilu knows perfectly well that she must have run off to the Jiang family again.

She circled furtively around the Jiang family's wall, thinking it over and over, but remembering Jiang Yilin's cold and unapproachable face, she gave up the idea of ​​climbing the wall.

"Forget it, forget it. That guy's been in a bad mood lately, like a powder keg. Anyone who gets close to him gets yelled at. I'll go see him in a few days."

With nothing to do, Jin Xilu planned to cross the bridge to find Xiaolin and Xiaohua to jump rope together, but strangely, she had just reached the corner of the alley when she got there.

An old man, covered in dirt, stopped her. Jin Xilu felt a chill run down her spine as he stared at her with his small but shrewd eyes, and instinctively wanted to get away.

But she couldn't avoid it. The old man blocked her way with his cane. Jin Xilu looked up to ask him to move aside, but when she looked up, she met his swollen eyelids and thin lips that were almost worn down. He looked like a dried-up, malnourished radish.

"Move aside, I need to pass." Kim Hee-ro thought he just had bad eyesight and wasn't intentionally blocking her way.

Who knew that the old man, who was blocking the way, not only didn't move aside after hearing this, but stared at him even more brazenly, his expression changing from dazed to surprised.

Kim Hee-ro felt something was off, thinking she might have encountered a rather abnormal person. She took a few steps back, not wanting to talk to him anymore.

"Hey, girl!" The man slammed his cane on the stone slab, making a thud.

Jin Xilu ignored him, but after running only two steps, the man caught up with her. She wondered why he was using this broken cane when he wasn't actually a cripple. Then she heard the man speak.

"Girl, you know Jin Meiling, right?"

Upon hearing her grandmother's name, Jin Xilu stopped and nodded, "Mm."

"Ha, I knew you looked so much like your mother, I couldn't possibly mistake you." The man's eyebrows suddenly relaxed, and his mouth opened wide like a toad eating a fly, as if only then could he laugh out loud.

"Who are you? You're talking nonsense." Kim Hee-ro clenched her hands, clearly feeling that this person was very unreliable, but a rebellious, secret expectation still burned within her.

Jin Xilu had asked her grandmother about her mother before, and her grandmother answered very simply that her father had passed away and her mother had remarried and moved to a faraway place and would never come back.

When asked too many times, Grandma said that she didn't actually know anything about her mother, and eventually Jin Xilu stopped asking.

Let's just pretend they're both dead. Anyway, she has her grandmother, that's enough.

"Silly child, I'm telling you the truth. I don't know how Jin Meiling tricked you, but listen carefully."

“You were taken in by Jin Meiling. I acted in a play with her back then so that you could be registered in the household. Now I’m going to ask her for money.”

"Impossible! Grandma would never lie to me." Kim Hee-ro retorted, then turned and ran away.

The man behind her didn't chase after her, but his voice, like a curse, lingered in her ears.

"Ha, it's pitiful. Jin Meiling has never told you the truth all these years."