Chapter 26
Upon hearing this, Chen Yan looked up in disbelief, staring at her with a shocked expression.
He had considered the possibility of criticism, and even a slap in the face, but he never expected this answer.
And she knew? When did she find out?
Was her previous coldness towards him because she discovered his deception?
Will she hate him?
The thought of her disgusted look made Chen Yan's heart clench instantly. He was afraid to see that look, especially from her eyes.
His gaze followed her intently, but a second before she looked at him, he lowered his eyelashes to hide the bloodshot in his eyes.
Li Taohua's gaze kept shifting between the two, afraid of missing even the slightest movement from either of them.
She was stuck on the stage and couldn't get off. Although she suspected Xiang Wan was lying, she put on a humble and submissive appearance.
"Young Miss, as long as you are willing to sponsor my Chengze, I am willing to be your slave." After saying that, she knelt down at the entrance of the Xiang family's villa.
Xiang Wan didn't even glance at her, and called security to take her away.
She knelt down and refused to leave. Even the security guards couldn't do anything about her. It took four guards to carry her away from the villa entrance.
After Li Taohua left, the courtyard of the villa instantly returned to its initial tranquility.
Xiang Wan turned to look at Chen Yan, who was still standing there watching her, and said in a flat tone, "Let's go."
Chen Yan didn't say anything either, and silently followed her to the study. The two sat facing each other on the sofa, each remaining silent.
It wasn't until Xiang Wan broke the silence that she asked, "Your name is Chen Yan, which 'Yan'?"
"Extended extension".
Xiang Wan's gaze passed over him and landed on the fireplace behind him, her eyes filled with understanding. The person who wrote her a memorial letter in that world was indeed him.
At the time, she was still angry because of his deception, but when she saw the letter of condolence, she had already forgiven him most of the time.
But because her trust had been betrayed, she remained lukewarm towards him for the past two months.
She knew he could sense her coldness, because she could also feel his cautiousness.
He was just a kid, and he lied to survive, so Xiang Wan softened her heart.
"I'm sorry, sister, I was wrong."
Upon hearing this, Xiang Wan glanced at Chen Yan opposite her. His eyes were red at the corners, his eyes were moist, and his gaze was pleading, as if he was silently begging her not to abandon him.
She stared at him for a long time without moving, and after a long while, she asked him a question: "Why did you tell that lie back then?"
After discovering he had lied to her, Xiang Wan couldn't understand it. Sponsoring a child, whether male or female, didn't make much difference to her.
Chen Yan remained silent for a few seconds after hearing this, and then said, "Because you said you don't like little boys, and that boys can't be tamed."
Countless times, these two sentences echoed in his ears and appeared in his dreams.
During his first month at the Xiang family, Chen Yan had nightmares almost every night. In his dreams, he said he was a boy, and Xiang Wan, sitting opposite him, would look at him with disdain and say:
"I don't like little boys."
"Can't be tamed."
In his dream, her tone was icy, chilling him to the bone.
Every time Chen Yan wakes up from this nightmare, he gasps for breath in fear and it takes him a long time to recover from the nightmare.
Over the years, he has also been wondering how Xiang Wan would have reacted if he had told the truth back then.
Therefore, after he finished explaining his reason, he kept staring into her eyes, but to his surprise, she looked completely bewildered after hearing the reason.
After listening, Xiang Wan remained silent for a moment, and then tried hard to recall what she had said at the time.
Did she raise a little boy she couldn't tame, Zhou Chengze from her previous life?
It had been so long that she could hardly remember what she was thinking when she said it: "Did I really say that?"
Upon hearing this, Chen Yan neither said yes nor no, but felt a bitter taste in his mouth.
To this day, he can still clearly remember Xiang Wan's expression when he said those words in the back seat, and the desperate feeling he had when he heard them.
But to her, it was just a vague memory.
Chen Yan felt a pang of sadness, but on the surface he only looked tenderly at his savior: "Sister, I'm sorry I lied to you."
Upon hearing this, Xiang Wan stopped worrying and instead looked at his medium-length hair.
She pulled him to the full-length mirror and sat him down. Looking at him in the mirror, she asked, "Chen Yan, boys can have long hair too. Do you want to cut it off, or keep it?"
When Chen Yan saw her female reflection in the mirror, she instinctively felt ashamed: "I want to cut it off."
Xiang Wan turned around to ask a barber to come and cut his hair, but Chen Yan called out from behind him: "Sister, I want you to cut it for me."
Seemingly realizing he had made too many requests, he subconsciously licked his lips: "Is that alright?"
Xiang Wan did not refuse. She took a pair of scissors from the desk, walked behind him, and began to cut his hair.
This was her first time cutting someone's hair.
She picked up a strand of Chen Yan's hair with her index and middle fingers and cut it shorter with scissors.
She cut very slowly and meticulously, strands of hair falling to the floor, the entire study silent except for the sound of the scissors.
Because she was cutting his hair, the two were very close, so close that she could see his trembling eyelashes when she looked down.
After she finished cutting her hair, looking at the boy with feminine features in the mirror, Xiang Wan's memory became a little hazy, and she suddenly remembered the day she first met Xiao Gui.
That day in the woods, she broke down in tears because of the cow dung on her shoes and the news of her rebirth. When she was exhausted from crying, she saw Chen Yan, who was barefoot, offering her his cotton shoes.
Thinking of the humiliation she felt back then, Xiang Wan silently curled the corners of her lips.
"Chen Yan, go wash your hair."
"good."
After cutting his hair, Xiang Wan left, and Chen Yan went back to his bedroom to take a shower.
The bathroom was filled with steam. Chen Yan wiped the fog off the mirror with his palm, revealing his handsome face.
She only got a haircut, but her whole demeanor changed.
With the wisps of hair no longer obscuring his forehead, his cool and aloof features became clearer, and even his jawline became more prominent. He was no longer a neutral, ambiguous figure, but instead possessed a unique, refreshing quality characteristic of a young man.
Chen Yan looked at himself in the mirror, and after a long while, he reached out and touched the stray hairs beside his ear, his gaze softening.
He really enjoyed Xiang Wan cutting his hair. When she was cutting his hair just now, he could feel her breath gently brushing against his cheek, giving him a feeling of intimacy between them.
He used to like her a lot, but something seemed different, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it, and it seemed like nothing had changed.
In the mirror, his eyebrows curved slightly, and he smiled silently.
He turned on the shower, and steam filled the bathroom once again.
In the other part of the hall, Xiang Wan was playing with Ju Tuan on the sofa. But after a short while, Ju Tuan broke free from her embrace, jumped off the sofa, and walked towards the courtyard.
Xiang Wan watched it walk away, and after a long while, she realized that it had gone to play with that evil little eye.
I don’t know if it’s because animals have their own language system that only they can understand, but not long after Green Fur came to this home, Orange Cat became its friend.
Every time Xiang Wan saw Ju Tuan playing with that silly goose, she would worry that the evil little eyes might corrupt her Ju Tuan.
She looked at the green-haired creature barking at her from ten meters away and couldn't help but turn pale.
Wang Yidong, who was behind them, also saw this scene and couldn't help but laugh. Xiang Wan heard the laughter, turned around, and gave her a disapproving look, her eyes seeming to say, "Whose side are you on anyway?"
Wang Yidong handed her a thin blanket, and Xiang Wan put it on even though she wasn't cold.
Just now, when Li Taohua was making a scene at the door, she happened to be out buying groceries. When she came back, she heard the maid report to her and that's how she found out about it.
However, Xiang Wan instructed the maids not to get too close, so the maids were unaware of what had happened and only knew that someone was causing trouble.
Wang Yidong was a little worried and wanted to ask Xiang Wan what had happened, but she brushed it off with a single sentence.
"It's nothing serious." She paused upon hearing this, her tone as if she were talking about a trivial matter. "By the way, Xiao Yan is a boy."
"...?"
Wang Yidong was so shocked by what he heard that he dropped his phone, but Xiang Wan remained calm and said, "Have Li Xia make arrangements to transfer Chen Yan to another school next week."
She thought for a moment and said, "I'll transfer to Nanyang High School."
"When did this happen? When did Xiao Yan become a boy?" The amount of information was too much for Wang Yidong to process.
"..." Xiang Wan blinked, and it sounded like Chen Yan had undergone gender reassignment surgery.
After Wang Yidong finished speaking, he realized what he had said, swallowed hard, and quickly asked, "How did Chen Yan become a boy?"
"That's how it is."
Upon hearing this, Wang Yidong's face darkened. She always felt that her young mistress was being too nonchalant. If the sky were to fall one day, or if her young mistress discovered that she had been reborn, while others might take a month or two to accept reality, her young mistress would accept it the very next day.
Maybe it won't even take a day; they'll accept it in the next second.
Wang Yidong suppressed the urge to complain and decided to ask Chen Yan properly later: "Alright then."
On the other side, seeing that her maid was also quick to learn, Xiang Wan gave her a satisfied look, very pleased with her decision to take Wang Yidong back.
No wonder she's Xiang Wan's maid!
After dealing with Chen Yan's matter, Xiang Wan returned to her study to review the company's reports.
Although she hasn't taken over the company in recent years, she has made many of the company's directional decisions behind the scenes.
At first, Xiang's parents were a little worried, but after she achieved the mall's performance in just one year, they were shocked and finally felt at ease entrusting her with the domestic business.
Because she was still too young, Xiang Wan only operated behind the scenes, and most of the things that needed to be done in person were carried out by the company's secretary.
The head secretary's surname is Huang. He was originally the chief secretary to Xiang's father and had even picked her up and dropped her off a few times when she was a child. In her previous life, after Xiang Wan took over the company, he became her secretary, so he was very easy to use in this life as well.
Secretary Huang came over to report on the previous quarter's performance. Xiang Wan listened quietly in the study. The performance was good, so she only mentioned a few points and then sent him back.
"Then I'll head back to the company now, Miss."
"good."
Xiang Wan looked down at the report she had just read. After a while, she finally looked up from the report, only to find that the chief secretary was still there. She relaxed her brow and asked, "What's wrong?"
The chief secretary paused, hesitated for a moment, and then told her everything that Steward Gong had instructed her to do on her grandfather's side.
"You mean, Grandfather asked you to investigate the people I've met in recent years and then report back to him?"
"Yes." Secretary Huang lowered his head slightly, feeling a little strange himself, but there were many strange things among powerful families, and he never asked questions that he shouldn't ask.
Xiang Wan smiled, a hint of amusement flashing in her eyes.
It must have been that I wasn't very discreet when I was playing chess with my grandfather that day, which made him notice something was wrong.
No matter how intelligent she was at 14 in her previous life, she was still very different from the 26-year-old version of herself; she had gone too far.
Xiang Wan didn't regret it. It was one thing to keep a low profile in front of others, but he was her own grandfather. Even if he found out something, he would only cover for her and then scold her for not being careful enough.
Therefore, when she heard that her grandfather was secretly investigating her, she planned to pretend that she didn't know: "Just report the truth to Grandfather."
"Yes." The chief secretary nodded and was about to leave when Xiang Wan thought for a moment and called him back, "Wait."
"There's no need to discuss Chen Yan's matter with Grandfather."
"Understood, Miss."
"Yes, Secretary Huang, you've worked hard. You can go back now."
After the chief secretary left, Xiang Wan sat in her swivel chair and, after thinking for a moment, decided to call Li Xia.
In just a few days, Chen Yan went from being a student at Bei Yi High School to being a student at Nanyang High School.
However, on the other hand, when Zhao Luyu was informed by his sixth-grade teacher that Chen Yan had transferred schools, he couldn't sit still any longer and went directly to the Xiang family for a visit...
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