Chapter 471 Lu Shiman’s Childhood
Lu Chixu quickly tried to remedy the situation, his tone a little flustered: "Ji Linshen, that's not what I meant. Don't think too much. When Manman was with us, she always..."
He wanted to say "I've always been happy", but he couldn't say it, because the distorted self-image of Lu Shiman described by Ji Linshen was like a needle piercing his heart.
This made him deeply aware that behind the happy faces they saw, there might be deeper scars hidden.
Lu Yannan waved his hand to stop Lu Chixu's clumsy explanation.
His gaze fell on Ji Linshen again, and his voice was heavy with a sense of calm: "Tomorrow, I will go to Mo Ning in person."
Ji Lin was stunned. Mo Ning?
Since she calls me "big brother" so intimately, she must be my future sister-in-law.
"I'm going too!" Lu Chixu immediately said, his anxiety evident in his words.
Lu Yannan shook his head: "No, you stay home with Manman tomorrow, pay attention, and carefully observe her daily behavior and mood changes."
After saying that, he felt uneasy and added, "Just keep it with her, don't let her feel anything strange."
Ji Linshen volunteered: "Second brother wants to know the situation, let him go, I will stay at home with Manman tomorrow."
"You can't." Lu Yannan refused more bluntly: "It doesn't matter if you delay your own work, but don't delay the one I arranged for you."
Ji Linshen: "......"
"She's very clingy to you. If you stay home from work and stare at her, she'll notice it more easily with her keen sense. Let the second child accompany her."
Lu Chixu wanted to argue, but seeing his elder brother's expression that didn't allow him to argue, he finally said "hmm" in a depressed tone.
With no way to relieve the heaviness and worry in his heart, he looked around the living room anxiously.
His eyes fell on his eldest brother's treasured wine cabinet, and the dazzling array of wines inside attracted his attention.
In his upset state, a strong impulse drove him over.
Lu Chixu reached out for the glass door handle of the wine cabinet without thinking.
“Click.”
There was a slight but clear sound of the lock latch clicking.
The door didn't budge.
Lu Chixu was stunned, thinking that his hand slipped and failed to open the door. He pulled harder, but the heavy glass door was still firmly closed.
He widened his eyes in surprise and looked back at Lu Yannan in disbelief.
"Brother? You locked the wine cabinet? Who are you protecting against?" Lu Chixu felt that his brother was a little stingy.
Lu Yannan's originally solemn expression was interrupted by Lu Chixu, leaving him speechless.
He gave Lu Chixu a cold look and said in a quiet voice, but with a hint of caution: "Beware of cockroaches."
Lu Chixu was confused. Cockroaches? There were cockroaches in this villa?
Haha, I’m afraid it’s to guard against them.
Ji Lin, who had been observing silently, said in a deep voice: "Be careful of the third brother."
Lu Chixu nodded suddenly, scratched his hair in annoyance, and looked at the locked wine cabinet, feeling more and more thirsty: "Brother, open it and have a drink. I'm so bored."
He tapped his fingers irritably on the wine cabinet glass.
Lu Yannan was so angry that he almost laughed. He didn't bother to pay attention to him: "Drink shit, if you want to drink, go to the wine cellar and get it yourself. Don't touch what's in here."
Lu Yannan’s meaning was clear: you are not qualified to touch the treasures here, so go to the wine cellar and destroy the ordinary ones.
Lu Chixu curled his lips and walked towards the door while muttering "stingy" under his breath.
He just wanted to drink something, as if only the strong alcohol could temporarily numb his turbulent emotions at the moment.
Only Ji Linshen and Lu Yannan were left in the living room.
A heavy silence fell again.
Only the second hand of the wall clock made a regular clicking sound in the silence.
Ji Linshen looked at Lu Yannan leaning on the sofa with his eyes closed and brows frowned, and sighed in his heart.
He took a step forward, stood in front of Lu Yannan, and broke the silence: "Brother, Manman...what is the core cause of her illness?"
"Is it simply due to parental neglect?"
Lu Yannan slowly opened his eyes.
He didn't look at Ji Linshen immediately, but looked towards the floor-to-ceiling window with a somewhat unfocused gaze, his slender fingers unconsciously tapping lightly on the armrest of the sofa.
The rhythm of the tapping seemed to reflect his chaotic mood at the moment.
After a long time, he let out an almost inaudible sigh.
"I don't know." For the first time, Lu Yannan's voice was almost hoarse: "Ji Linshen, I... I really don't know."
"I always thought that giving her everything I could and protecting her would be enough..."
His words paused with difficulty, as if he was trying to dig out those fragments of memory that had been deliberately buried.
The warm yellow light from the living room shone on his angular face, but it could not dispel the gloom.
“When I was little…” Lu Yannan finally spoke again, his voice shrouded in a gray mist: “Manman was very… lively.”
"She'd act like a spoiled brat, asking for candy, drawing turtles on my homework, secretly changing all the contact names in the second child's phone to "Big Brother," pestering the third child to play a game like a Taoist priest catching zombies with her, and even sneaking into the fourth child's room and hiding his pillow..."
"She is like a little sun, full of energy and radiant."
"We all felt that this was how she should be, and we indulged all her 'antics' because that was the most vivid version of her."
The memories made Lu Yannan's stern mouth seem to relax a little, but it was soon swallowed up by deeper bitterness.
"But, as long as... as long as they are here, especially when Lin Yanxin is here too." When mentioning that name, Lu Yannan's tone unconsciously carried a cold disgust.
"She'll be... a completely different person."
"Every time after a fight with Lin Yanxin and when she was scolded, she was very quiet, not making a fuss or arguing back."
"My parents' preference for Lin Yanxin is ingrained in them. Perhaps it's because Lin Yanxin's parents died young? Perhaps they did it on purpose to show us? I don't know."
"When Manman fell and burst into tears, they didn't even give her a glance. But when Lin Yanxin accidentally got splashed with hot soup, they immediately showed concern and cared for her."
"They've never looked Manman in the eye. No, more like, they've never looked at the five of us siblings in the eye."
Lu Yannan's voice began to tremble slightly, and his fists clenched and unclenched unconsciously on his knees.
"Manman is very smart. She learned to read cues from a very young age."
“Every time…” Lu Yannan paused, “Whenever they picked up Lin Yanxin and held her in their arms and spoke softly to her, no matter what Manman was doing, she would immediately quiet down.”
"She would find a corner to stay in, or cling tightly to me or my second brother, with her little body tense and tight."
"But her eyes would involuntarily glance over there secretly, and that look..." Lu Yannan took a deep breath and continued: "Yearning, confusion. At that time, she was unbelievably well-behaved."
Lu Yannan closed his eyes, his Adam's apple rolling violently, as if trying to swallow the intense bitterness.
When he opened his eyes again, the bloodshot eyes were clearly visible.
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