The trees outside the car window quickly receded. Xu Nuo sat in the back seat of the car. The polite driver in front and the slightly warm leather seat under him gave him a feeling of unreality.
Xu Rong patted her dazed son with a gentle look, "Don't be afraid, Mom is here."
The boy's pursed lips relaxed, and he gave his equally uneasy mother a reassuring smile, "Yeah."
"Uncle Yan... he's a very nice person. It's okay. He has a younger brother who is the same age as you. Nuonuo has a brother now." Xu Rong felt much more relieved and smiled with her eyes curved.
She is a typical Jiangnan woman. When she was young, she went north to work with her fellow villagers and stayed away for decades. Later, she met Xu Nuo's father. They were from the same family and both came out to work, so their relationship became closer and closer. Finally, they simply set up two tables and got a marriage certificate.
The couple wandered around and finally settled down in Jiang City, where Xu Nuo was born the following year.
Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. When Xu Nuo was three years old, his father fell seriously ill. The pillar of the family collapsed unexpectedly, leaving only the mother and son at a loss. The family did not even have time to sell all their assets, and the man, who had been ill from overwork, passed away.
Later, Xu Rong had to work several jobs a day to barely make ends meet for herself and her son. Fortunately, Xu Nuo was very well-behaved. He loved his mother and always stayed at home alone.
When he was a little older, he would also do some illegal work. Since people didn't want underage workers, he would say that he had just turned 18. But he had a baby face that looked very young, and it was obvious that he was lying. So he could only work in small shops to earn a meager salary.
Xu Rong met Yan Qingshan by chance while distributing flyers. It was like a clichéd romance novel, but a middle-aged version.
At that time, Yan Qingshan had just been so angry with Yan Zhigui on the phone that his heart ached. He came out of the banquet and was getting some fresh air downstairs. Not far away was a more prosperous business district in Jiang City. Yan Qingshan, who was rubbing his heart, and Xu Rong looked at each other.
Xu Rong is less than 40 years old, and her long-term hard life has not turned her into a hysterical and complaining woman. She is still as gentle and tough as when she left her hometown to work. Yan Qingshan feels that he has fallen in love at first sight, but Xu Rong just thinks he is having a heart attack.
The rest of the story was even more logical. Their children had grown up, so they decided to live together. Xu Rong moved into the Yan family with Xu Nuo.
Xu Nuo no longer had any memory of his father, as he had left too early when he was still very young. He had seen his mother's hard work over the years, and he had no objection to her remarriage. Instead, he was happy for her that she had found her own happiness, even though it might mean losing his last remaining relative.
Uncle Yan, who was always mentioned by his mother with a smile, didn't look like he was already forty-five or forty-six years old. Perhaps rich people took good care of themselves, and looked mature and reliable. This was Xu Nuo's first impression of his stepfather when he first met him.
"I guess his son is not much different, we should be able to get along well," he hypnotized himself by promising himself while standing in front of the door of the magnificent villa.
Yan Qingshan really liked Xu Rong, otherwise he would not have gone against everyone's opinion and married her in his middle age. Naturally, he loved Xu Nuo as well. For a while, the three of them seemed to be like a normal family, living in harmony and happiness.
Yan Zhigui stood by the window on the third floor, lifted a corner of the curtain and looked coldly at the three people below. From his angle, he could only see Yan Qingshan's smiling face and the reserved woman beside him. Behind the woman was probably her son, whose face could not be seen, only a dark chestnut whorl of hair.
The hair color is typical of a punching bag. Yan Zhigui snorted coldly and turned away from the window.
Downstairs, Xu Nuo looked up as if he had sensed something, but he could only see the empty balcony on the second floor and the windows on the third floor with tightly drawn curtains.
Is it an illusion?
Yan Qingshan seemed to notice and explained awkwardly, "My son lives on the third floor. I didn't take care of him when he was young... Now he has a very troublesome temper."
Xu Nuo responded to him with a smile, not knowing how to say it, as he was not very good at communicating with people he was not familiar with. However, Yan Qingshan seemed very satisfied with him and praised him several times in a row, which made Xu Rong laugh out loud.
The decoration inside the villa is even more beautiful than it looks from the outside. If Xu Nuo had not moved here with his mother, he felt that he would never be able to imagine what a rich person's house looked like.
Yan Qingshan took them to the third floor, which should be all bedrooms. The rooms were not close to each other. Xu Rong and Yan Qingshan's master bedroom was near the easternmost end, and the room prepared for Xu Nuo was in the middle of the third floor. The door of the bedroom on the westernmost end was closed, so Yan Qingshan's son should be living there.
For some reason, Xu Nuo felt a little uneasy. He glanced in that direction several times with great concern and for a moment he even ignored his spacious and luxurious new room.
Yan Qingshan and Xu Rong finished the tour, and then he remembered his good-for-nothing and rebellious son, and his anger rose unconsciously.
"Yan Zhigui, come out! Aunt Xu and brother are here, how can you not come out and say hello!"
If it were before, Yan Zhigui would have just thought he was talking nonsense, but the scene he just saw through the window drove him to obey his father's wishes for once.
The door opened and Yan Zhigui walked out. His hair was a little long, covering his eyebrows and eyes a little. His skin was pale, making him look very gloomy. However, his handsome and sharp features made people unable to look away, like a blood-red rose blooming in a damp corner.
While Xu Nuo was looking at Yan Zhigui, Yan Zhigui was also looking at this burden brought in by his stepmother.
The gloomy boy was slightly stunned. His brother seemed to be too handsome.
While the word "beautiful" wasn't quite right to describe a man, he couldn't think of a more fitting word. Xu Nuo was delicate and well-behaved, standing there perfectly still, even her curled eyelashes seemingly at peace. He didn't look like a poor, day-to-day laborer, but rather like a porcelain doll meticulously sculpted by an artist. So pretty, so adorable.
Almost at first sight, Yan Zhigui knew that this so-called brother in front of him must become his property. The dark thoughts in his heart were clamoring to brand Xu Nuo with his own mark and hide him in the dark.
They want to be a pair of lovers who are deeply in love with each other and they want to sink into the quagmire together.
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