Quick Wear: Cousin, Come to the Bowl Quickly

"Ah Xiang!" Lin Xi suddenly reached out and grabbed Ah Xiang's arm tightly, so tightly that Ah Xiang cried out in pain.

"Miss... what's wrong?" Ah Xiang looked at Lin Xi's pale face and her violently heaving chest with surprise and doubt.

Lin Xi's voice was tense and trembling slightly, "Aunt Xiang, think carefully, back then... when I was eight years old, when I got lost in the mountains, how exactly did I... get back?"

Ah Xiang was taken aback by the question, frowned, and tried hard to search her memory. Finally, she said uncertainly, "At that time... I think I was in the laundry room in the backyard, rushing to iron a batch of clothes. I didn't go to the front."

"But later I heard Zhang Ma and the others in the front yard gossiping that you came back with the Commander and his wife in their car, and that you were delirious with fever and had been in a coma for several days. Your wife was so worried that she kept crying..."

"What about the Xu family?!" Lin Xi interrupted her hastily, "Didn't the Xu family save me? Didn't they come with us?"

"The Xu family?" Ah Xiang was taken aback. "No, the Xu family arrived the next morning. Master Xu, along with Young Master Xu and Madam Xu, brought a lot of nourishing gifts. Madam entertained them in the front hall, and when they left, she even had the butler prepare a generous gift in return..."

As she spoke, Ah Xiang looked at Lin Xi with some concern and asked in a caring tone, "Miss, why are you asking this? Are you feeling unwell?"

"The next afternoon..."

"A generous return gift..."

Lin Xi murmured Ah Xiang's words, slowly released Ah Xiang's hand, and staggered back two steps.

She was born when Shanghai was in turmoil, so although people in Shanghai's high society knew of Commander Lin, few knew what she looked like except for close relatives and friends.

When she was born, the situation in Shanghai was not peaceful, so her mother kept a close eye on her. After her brother Lin Min passed away, her mother wanted to keep her under her watchful eye at all times. Except for necessary occasions, she rarely took her to appear in Shanghai's social circles and did not allow her to go out at will.

Therefore, although everyone in Shanghai's high society knew that Commander Lin had a precious daughter, very few people, apart from a few families with long-standing friendships, had actually seen her face.

Given the Xu family's social standing and network at the time, they were nowhere near the Lin family's level. It's highly likely that Xu Yucheng and the rest of the Xu family didn't even know her, or that she was Commander Lin's only daughter.

Therefore, if Xu Yucheng really did save her and carry her down the mountain, then without knowing her true identity, he would have taken her back to the Xu family first, then sent someone out to inquire about which young lady was missing, and then sent her back or notified the Lin family to pick her up.

This will inevitably take time and a process.

But her memories of that day were a series of events: getting lost and crying in the mountains, vaguely seeing Xu Yucheng surrounded by a crowd, being carried away, losing consciousness, and then opening her eyes again to find herself lying on her soft, warm bed.

There were no intermediate transfers, no identity verification process, and no memory gap of being "temporarily taken in by a stranger's family."

It went so smoothly... as if the person carrying her down the mountain knew who she was from the very beginning and knew where to take her.

All the clues, all the contradictions, all the overlooked doubts, were awakened at this moment by the long-awaited fragrance of flowers, pointing seamlessly to a truth that Lin Xi was unwilling to believe—

Surrounded by servants, Xu Yucheng, the eldest son of the Xu family who stood out from the crowd, did indeed notice her, who was soaking wet and shivering.

But the person who reached out to support her in the cold, drizzling rain, and carried her step by step down the mountain with his still-slender back...

The person she was grateful for and would always remember, the person whose feelings she had misplaced for so many years...

It was Shen Jingyuan from beginning to end.

"Ha..." Lin Xi squeezed out a short, breathy sound from her throat, a sound that was hard to tell whether it was laughter or crying.

Suddenly, a scene flashed into her mind: a rainy night in a hotel many years ago, under the dim candlelight, Shen Jingyuan lowered his eyes, his face half-hidden in the hazy light, and asked her in a low voice—"Did he carry you back?"

He found out then...

He knew perfectly well! Yet he kept it from her for so many years!

"Miss... what's wrong?" Seeing Lin Xi looking so devastated and unsteady, Ah Xiang stepped forward with concern, wanting to reach out and support her.

But Lin Xi's expression changed, a flame suddenly ignited in her eyes, and she abruptly stuffed the clothes she was holding back into her arms and ran towards the main building.

"Miss!" Ah Xiang was startled by her sudden action and instinctively tried to call out to her.

But Lin Xi, who had run a few steps ahead, suddenly stopped as if she had remembered something important. She turned around and ran back to A Xiang's side, and suddenly pulled out a shirt from the pile of clothes.

The next second, she clutched the shirt, lifted her skirt, turned around, and ran wildly towards the main building without looking back.

……

In the room, Shen Jingyuan gently stroked Lin Xiyin's trembling back as she cried, his eyes churning with emotions that were almost overflowing.

Lin Xi will never know that on that damp, rainy night in a small inn in Fengtian during her journey north that year, when she curled up in a chair and lightly uttered, in a tone mixed with self-mockery and relief, "If Xu Yucheng hadn't carried me down the mountain back then... I wouldn't have blindly chased after him for so many years," what a silent yet earth-shattering collapse Shen Jingyuan, who was silently pouring tea beside her, experienced in his heart.

It turned out to be like this...

It turns out that Xu Yucheng, who was good for nothing except his handsome appearance, was able to so easily capture all her admiring gazes because of the life-saving grace he received years ago.

That life-saving grace that originally belonged to him...

In that instant, Shen Jingyuan almost blurted out, "I was the one who carried you down the mountain," but he swallowed the words back down.

Along the way, through several twists and turns, the tense atmosphere between the two did indeed ease considerably, and she would even occasionally inadvertently reveal her dependence on him.

But Shen Jingyuan knew better than anyone that the high wall of estrangement between them would always remain.

He knew all too well how much he meant to her.

In the past, he couldn't compare to Lin Min, who had already sacrificed herself but whose image was forever frozen in perfection. Later, he also couldn't compare to Xu Yucheng, who became her "hero" because of a misunderstanding. His place in her life was always insignificant.

Even though she has now seen through Xu Yucheng's true colors, and that infatuation that arose from a misunderstanding may have faded away, it doesn't mean that the feelings she invested in Xu Yucheng all those years were fake.

It doesn't mean that Xu Yucheng will automatically fill the empty spot next to her after he's kicked out.

Now, telling her the truth about what happened back then, besides making her regret her "blindness" all these years and putting her in an awkward and embarrassing situation, what else can it bring? Is it about demanding repayment for a favor?

He didn't dare to gamble.

He dared not gamble with a past favor that she might have long since forgotten, on the slight affection she had just begun to feel for him, or challenge the position in her heart that he himself was not even sure of.

He didn't dare to at that time, and later, after the two confessed their feelings and got together, he was unwilling.

That year, Japan finally couldn't hold back and launched a war. Thanks to Commander Lin's strict defense, Shanghai did not lose an inch of land, but the surrounding prefectures and counties fell one after another, and people suffered terribly.

The saying goes, "If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold." Apart from leaving behind the necessary forces to defend the city, most of the troops stationed in Shanghai were urgently dispatched to support the surrounding areas.

After several years, the war gradually subsided. Faced with the Japanese army's final counterattack, Shen Jingyuan volunteered to go to Tongxian, where the fighting was most intense and the Japanese army's firepower was most ferocious.

On the eve of their departure, he and Commander Lin repeatedly rehearsed the plan in the headquarters, using sand tables and telegrams, until late at night. When they finally emerged from the smoke-filled operations room, it was already past midnight.

The wind was biting cold. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and slowly walked towards the lounge, his body still recovering from several sleepless nights.

However, just as he looked up, his gaze suddenly sharpened as it passed over the empty corridor and landed on the solitary osmanthus tree in the center of the courtyard.

A person was standing under the tree.

Her slender figure was wrapped in a dark coat, almost blending into the night. The dim light from the corridor illuminated her blurry yet familiar silhouette.

It's Lin Xi.

Shen Jingyuan suddenly stopped in his tracks, almost wondering if it was a hallucination caused by his extreme fatigue.

He hadn't been back to the Lin Mansion for over half a month. The war was intense, and communications were intermittent, so he didn't have time to send back even a single word.

Upon suddenly seeing her, his muddled mind hadn't fully cleared, but his body had already started moving before his consciousness could.

Almost instinctively, he took long strides and strode towards the figure under the tree.

He stopped half a step in front of her, so close that he could smell the faint fragrance of her hair, mixed with the chill of the night dew.

The longing for each other after so many days apart, the tension from the intense battles, and the anxiety about the unknown journey ahead all surged in his chest, but in the end, it only turned into a dry "You...why are you here?"

Perhaps chaotic times can really make people grow up quickly. In just a few years, she was completely different. Although she still had that bright face, she exuded a calm and quiet temperament. She was completely different from the young lady who always raised her chin and was full of arrogance.

In the dim light of the corridor, Lin Xi looked up and quietly met Shen Jingyuan's gaze, her dark eyes churning with a chilling emotion.

In the end, all those words were reduced to a single, calm sentence: "I miss you."

Those three seemingly innocuous words were like sparks flying into boiling oil, instantly igniting Shen Jingyuan's suppressed emotions.

With a swift movement of his long arm, he pulled her into his embrace, his strength so great it seemed he wanted to meld her into his very bones.

Lin Xi trembled slightly as he hugged her, but she did not struggle. Instead, she buried her face deep into his chest, closed her eyes, and almost greedily inhaled the comforting scent emanating from him. She slowly raised her hands and hugged him back.