Chapter 97 -97: The Little Green Plum in the Photo is You
Huo Shiyan opened his phone and looked at the abrupt message. The last time he and Shi Lei exchanged messages was almost ten years ago.
Back then, after Shi Lei entered high school, his replies became fewer and farther between.
The last message was from Huo Shiyan asking Shi Lei why Yuan Xi had deleted him from her friends list, and Shi Lei never replied to his message.
The long-silent QQ account finally chimed with a notification.
Huo Shiyan typed a reply, “What’s up?”
Shi Shishitou: Brother, you actually replied to me instantly. Do you still remember me?
...
Zhuangzhuang: I remember.
Shi Shishitou: What about Yuan Xi? Do you still remember Little Xi sister?
Zhuangzhuang: I remember.
Shi Shishitou: Little Xi sister is awesome. Her company is going to ring the bell on NASDAQ, and she’s heading to New York on the sixth. Do you want to meet up then?
As Huo Shiyan glanced at Yuan Xi, their child was nearly three months old. If she found out she was Zhuangzhuang, she probably wouldn’t regret marrying him and want a divorce, right?
Yuan Xi was looking at a screenshot sent by Shi Lei in the group chat.
Shi Shishitou: Zhuangzhuang replied to me. He remembers us!
Yuan Xi listened to the continuous QQ message notifications coming from Huo Shiyan’s side and turned her head to meet his eyes.
Huo Shiyan typed a reply: “Okay, have Little Xi add my QQ. I’ll get in touch with her.”
Yuan Xi received the message sent by Shi Lei and added Zhuangzhuang’s brother with her new QQ account. His profile picture was still of their group of five during their second-grade trip to Jiangcheng Zoo.
Seeing Zhuangzhuang’s profile picture, Yuan Xi saw her friend request was immediately accepted.
Yuan Xi wasn’t sure what to say for a moment. It was tough to start the first sentence when childhood friends, formerly inseparable, had grown up.
Zhuangzhuang, however, was the first to send a message: “Why did you delete me?”
Yuan Xi: Ah? My QQ account was hacked back then; I didn’t delete you.
Zhuangzhuang: I thought you hated me and that’s why you deleted me.
Yuan Xi: I didn’t hate you. I also rarely used QQ back then, so I didn’t re-add my old friends right away after it got hacked.
Zhuangzhuang: Are you sure you didn’t hate me for being fat? Or for being ugly?
Yuan Xi: How could I hate you? It was just a hacked account. Let’s meet in New York and talk then. You pick a place.
Zhuangzhuang: Sure, contact me when you arrive.
Yuan Xi: Okay.
After sending her message, Yuan Xi said to Huo Shiyan beside her, “I need to go to Jiangjing No.1 to pick up my passport.”
Huo Shiyan said, “Let me take you there.”
Yuan Xi nodded, “Okay.”
As soon as the two of them got in the car, a little figure entered the backseat, “Sister, where are you going? I want to come too!”
“Get out of the car,” Huo Shiyan said, annoyed.
Xiao Shihuo shook his head, “I haven’t been out since I got sick. I want to go with you.”
Yuan Xi got out from the passenger side and seated Xiao Shihuo in the child safety seat in the back, “Let’s just take him with us.”
Xiao Shihuo kissed Yuan Xi’s cheek, “Sister is the best.”
Huo Shiyan snorted and sent a message to Qin Lang, “Enroll Shiyan in enough training classes to ensure he doesn’t have a moment of free time this entire summer vacation.”
Qin Lang quickly replied, “Okay.”
The apartment Yuan Xi lived in at Jiangjing No.1 was the worst in the whole complex. Despite being in a luxury neighborhood, it was sunless on the second floor and was the smallest unit.
But Yuan Xi had bought the apartment through Gu Hanchen’s connections.
Huo Shiyan followed Yuan Xi inside, and they were greeted by warm decor.
Xiao Shihuo entered the house with Yuan Xi and saw a little brown bear wearing a tiny crown on the shelf.
Xiao Shihuo picked up the bear and said, “What a cute little bear.”
Yuan Xi looked at the bear and said, “This bear can be considered my Ah Bei. I couldn’t sleep well without this little bear as a child. If you like it, I’ll give it to you.”
Xiao Shihuo hugged the bear and said, “Thank you, Sister. This little bear smells so nice, like Sister’s scent.”
Huo Shiyan pulled the little bear out of Xiao Shihuo’s hands, “You can’t just take other people’s things.”
“Big sister is not ‘other people,’ big sister is my big sister,” Xiao Shihuo tiptoed trying to reach for the little bear that Huo Shiyan was holding out of reach, “Big sister gave it to me.”
Yuan Xi lightly smiled, “Let Huohuo play with it, I don’t need this little bear anymore.”
“Yuan Xi, how can you give away the gift that…”
Huo Shiyan paused, then said, “How can you give away the gift that Brother Zhuangzhuang gave you so casually?”
Yuan Xi asked, “How do you know it was Brother Zhuangzhuang who gave it to me?”
Huo Shiyan replied, “You said before that Brother Zhuangzhuang gave you a crown.”
Yuan Xi took off the small crown from the little bear. As she did so, she carefully observed the diamond in front of her and felt slightly shocked.
The Yuan Xi from the past couldn’t tell the difference between a diamond and cubic zirconia at a glance, but having accompanied Gu Hanchen to various events over the past five years, she had acquired quite a few diamond pieces and could now tell at a glance that this seemed to be a real diamond…
After moving into this house, Yuan Xi had casually placed the little bear on a shelf and hadn’t inspected the small crown on the bear’s head closely.
“Shiyan, take a look at the diamonds on this crown, could they be real? It looks like they might even have diamond girdle markings.”
“They’re real,” Huo Shiyan concluded after just one glance.
Yuan Xi was surprised, “They’re actually real diamonds?”
Previously, she had always thought of this crown as a fake diamond crown from an ordinary accessory store…
“Such an expensive gift, I really shouldn’t have accepted it,” said Yuan Xi. “I’ll go to the United States this time and return the crown to Zhuangzhuang.”
Xiao Shihuo jumped up trying to get the little bear, “I don’t want the crown, I want the little bear.”
But Huo Shiyan didn’t give the little bear to Xiao Shihuo, “I’ll buy you something else, you can’t have this little bear.”
“Why not?” Yuan Xi asked.
Huo Shiyan replied, “Because I like this little bear too.”
Yuan Xi really hadn’t expected Huo Shiyan, who was already twenty-seven years old, to like this plush little bear toy.
Xiao Shihuo pouted, “Then I won’t fight with you for the little bear, but remember to buy me a toy, okay!”
“Okay,” Huo Shiyan agreed.
When Yuan Xi returned to Ruohu Mansion and was putting the Diamond Crown into her suitcase, she still felt surprised; the diamonds on the crown, both big and small, added up to be worth over a million, especially the largest diamond…
Just after returning to Ruohu Mansion, Yuan Xi received a phone call from Chen Yuan, “Xiao Xi, my mom was cleaning out the storage today, and she found some of your old things stored at our place. Do you want them? Should we get rid of them or sell them? The junk dealers are right at our house.”
When Yuan Xi had been driven out of the Yuan Family’s home, all the clothes she had grown up with, which had been kept by her parents, were thrown away by the Yuan Family.
Yuan Xi couldn’t bear to see the clothes her parents had carefully kept for her thrown away, so she had picked them all up.
But at that time, she had nowhere to live, and the dormitory had no room for these things…
Chen Yuan’s house had a large storage space that was always empty, so Chen Yuan’s parents had allowed Yuan Xi to store those things at Chen Yuan’s house.
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Now, with Chen Yuan’s house being demolished, it was time for her to take those things back.
“I’ll come over and take a look.”
When Yuan Xi arrived at Chen Yuan’s house, it was just getting dark. The junk dealers were weighing things on a scale next to them.
Chen Yuan handed Yuan Xi a mask, “There’s dust, you should wear the mask. Your things are all here.”
Yuan Xi looked over and saw a bag containing clothes she had worn as a child. The eighteen-year-old Yuan Xi couldn’t bear to throw them away, but the current Yuan Xi thought it would be best to sort them out, throwing away what needed to be thrown and donating what could be donated.
She and Chen Yuan sifted through each item, and Chen Yuan said, “You really liked blue when you were young, all blue dresses.”
Yuan Xi replied, “It seems so.”
As a child, she seemed to have had a phase where she really liked the color blue.
It appeared that not only did she and Xiao Shihuo favor similar looks, even their preferred colors were once the same.
Chen Yuan pulled out a blue chiffon dress that looked more and more familiar. When she saw the logo on the waistband, she said, “Yuan Xi, isn’t this dress the same one that the little girl in the photo on Huo Shiyan’s bedside dresser was wearing?”
Yuan Xi could no longer remember wearing the dress in Chen Yuan’s hands at any particular time, but it was indeed the same dress that Xiao Shihuo had worn.
Carefully looking at the Dior logo, Yuan Xi questioned, “But how could I have afforded a Dior dress as a child?”
“That dress was a gift from Grandma Zhuangzhuang.”
Chen Yuan’s mother came over and said, “That was when you graduated from elementary school. Grandma Zhuangzhuang bought each of you a dress. You all wore them only once or twice, and then after starting middle school, you stopped wearing dresses altogether. I even kept Yuanyuan’s dress, such an expensive dress, I couldn’t bear to throw it away.”
Chen Yuan hastily added, “Xiao Xi, I can now confirm that you were the little childhood friend in the photo on Huo Shiyan’s dresser!”
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