Chapter 107 First Heartbeat: The Truth

Shang Yanci stopped the action that made her angry, put her aunt on the sofa and stopped touching it.

Auntie whined and rubbed her furry little cat head against Shang Yanci's fingers.

Pei Yuning: "Jin Jin, you stinky little cat!"

Auntie realized the mood of her young master belatedly, and stopped rubbing against Shang Yanci. She jumped off the sofa swiftly, ran to Pei Yuning's feet, wrapped her fluffy tail around her ankles, and meowed in a small voice.

Pei Yuning bent down and pinched its ears: "Stinky little cat."

Shang Yanci came over, Pei Yuning turned around to leave, but was gently and forcefully half-embraced in his arms. He opened his pocket watch, handed it to her, and said softly: "I'm sorry, baby, I haven't thought about how to tell you about this before, so it led to the misunderstanding today. It's my fault."

Pei Yuning was still angry, but her eyes involuntarily looked at the photo in her pocket watch. It was her fifteen-year-old birthday photo. Her face was young and tender, and she was wearing a matte pink ballet skirt with lifelike butterflies embellished on the hem.

Shang Yanci stared at her with a burning gaze, his voice was low and mellow, crossing time and mountains and seas, turning into a breeze and blowing into her ears: "I do have a white moonlight whom I have secretly loved for five years, and now I am her husband. Her name is Pei Yuning, and she is the girl I first fell in love with, the first girl I had a crush on, the first girl I deeply loved, and the girl I have always loved deeply."

Shang Yanci had a crush on her? Five years?

Butterflies on a matte pink skirt.

The matte pink "papillon" tattoo on Shang Yanci's little finger.

Pei Yuning raised her eyes to look at him, reached out her hand to touch his little finger and tapped it three times, and asked softly: "Does this tattoo have anything to do with me?"

"Yeah." Shang Yanci took her hand, interlocked their fingers, and said frankly, "When I first saw you unilaterally, you were wearing the matte pink ballet skirt in the photo, like a butterfly fairy descending to the mortal world."

Pei Yuning asked: "Five years ago, on my birthday, you met me?"

Shang Yanci said gently, "Your birthday is March 21st in spring, and I met you on November 19th in late autumn. To be precise, what I saw was your birthday photo when you were fifteen years old."

Pei Yuning continued to ask: "Where did you get this photo?"

Shang Yanci pondered for a moment, lowered his eyes and looked at her, and said slowly: "Five years ago, I went to the nursing home to visit an elder. There, I met Jiang Xinzhi."

Hearing this, Pei Yuning's eyelashes trembled.

Shang Yanci put his hands on her waist, kissed her red eyelids, and asked softly, "Baby, let's go to the sofa and cuddle and talk, okay?"

Pei Yuning nodded.

Shang Yanci picked her up, walked to the sofa and sat down, continuing the previous topic: "When I was about to leave that day, Jiang Xinzhi... cut her wrists. I gave her first aid, and then the doctor rushed to send her to the hospital for treatment. At that time, she was sitting on the swing with the photo in her pocket watch on it."

Pei Yuning was silent for a moment, then asked softly, "Why did she... cut her wrists?"

Shang Yan Ci: "Jiang Xinzhi suffers from bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety."

Pei Yuning's voice trembled: "How could it be?"

Shang Yanci was reluctant to continue, but Pei Yuning had the right to know the truth. He had to give her complete initiative. No matter good or bad, he had no right to make any decision for her.

Shang Yanci told her everything: "I didn't know about her illness at the time. It was when I went to her house last time I went back to France that her current husband told me. Jiang Xinzhi had a tendency to get sick a long time ago, and it can be traced back to when she married my father-in-law."

Shang Yanci: "Before marriage, Jiang Minzhi already had a boyfriend, who is now her husband. But because the Jiang family wanted to marry into the Pei family, they broke up on the grounds that she threatened her grandmother's medical treatment."

After glancing at Pei Yuning's expression, Shang Yanci continued, "The day before Big Brother was born, Jiang Xinzhi's grandmother passed away. When she was pregnant with you, Xu Han appeared. In the same year, Jiang Xinzhi's best friend committed suicide because she fell in love with a passionate man who was arranged to marry her. She said that when she saw Big Brother and you, she would think of her grandmother and best friend, so she had to stay away from you."

Shang Yanci paused for a moment, then spoke again, his voice harsh and difficult to express: "When you were four years old, she didn't want you to be married off in the future, so...she treated you like that, wanting to end everything. From that day on, she realized that she was sick, so she filed for a divorce and left Jingbei."

Pei Yuning thought of that gray evening, blinked her eyes, held back the tears, and said calmly: "Even if she was sick, I would not forgive her. I am not qualified to forgive her on behalf of my childhood self. As a mother, she never loved me."

"I'm not saying this to ask you to forgive her, but I think you have the right to know the truth, that's all." Shang Yanci hugged her and coaxed her softly, "I don't want you to be trapped in that childhood nightmare forever. Come out of it slowly. I will always be with you, okay?"