Chapter 12: Excellent or Inferior
Zhou Wanfeng went up the stairs, her hand on the railing. She looked up and saw Yun Jingya at the top of the third-floor landing, looking at her as if she wanted to say something, her hands clasped together nervously.
She glanced downstairs. Yun Jingya must have seen the farce in the living room.
Zhou Wanfeng was physically and mentally exhausted. She walked past her and went straight to the attic. She just wanted to be alone right now.
The bed in the attic was still there. She took off her backpack and fell onto the bed, burying her face in the quilt. She felt inexplicably down. She had originally thought that the original Zhou Wanfeng was better off than her, not having to worry about food, clothing, and shelter, and having someone to help her even if she couldn’t get into college. But now she discovered that there was a hidden hand behind her life’s trajectory.
One that understood the human heart and knew how to drive human nature to extremes.
Selfishness, jealousy, greed, rage, arrogance—these were the words used to describe the original Zhou Wanfeng. Never possessed, never lost? How could that have given rise to greater desires?
The beast in the original Zhou Wanfeng’s heart had been deliberately nurtured.
After figuring this out, Zhou Wanfeng was touched. She didn’t like Yang Yijun, but the truth she had discovered made it impossible for her to follow Zhou Zhiru’s script.
Knock, knock, knock, knock. A knock on the door.
Zhou Wanfeng turned to look.
Yun Jingya stood timidly at the door. Seeing her looking, she asked in a small voice, “Can I come in?”
Zhou Wanfeng sat up, leaning against the headboard, her gaze fixed on the girl who had walked in, the future female lead.
She could almost imagine that Zhou Zhiru must have been extremely caring and attentive to the female lead. First, his identity as a stepfather required him to maintain a good fatherly image. Second, it was probably due to Yun Jingya’s own excellence. Third, it was probably to provoke the original Zhou Wanfeng and drive her mad with jealousy.
Zhou Wanfeng carefully examined the twelve-year-old Yun Jingya. A beautiful and delicate face, an elegant posture, a smart and studious mind. Her excellence was already beginning to show.
But…
She frowned, her eyes narrowing. In an instant, Zhou Wanfeng’s eyes widened.
She jumped off the bed and quickly walked over to Yun Jingya.
Yun Jingya instinctively took a step back.
Zhou Wanfeng couldn’t help but smile. She had just understood something.
In the original novel, Zhou Wanfeng had failed her college entrance exams with abysmal scores. Her personality was likely sensitive and irritable. Her arrival in Yunhai City from Dongshan was as a failure, a stark contrast to Yun Jingya, who had excelled in her exams and been admitted to a prestigious university.
Between the two, Zhou Zhiru had unhesitatingly pushed them in completely different directions.
But now, she was not the original Zhou Wanfeng. She had even arrived six years early. Now, at the same age of twelve, the gap between her and Yun Jingya was not as pronounced as it would be six years later.
Zhou Zhiru was probably still in a wait-and-see mode.
Zhou Wanfeng sneered. If she were the one to shine brightly in this life, Zhou Zhiru would most likely destroy the kind and bright-eyed girl before him and raise a beast instead.
Seeing Zhou Wanfeng staring at her and smiling, Yun Jingya couldn’t help but touch her face, her expression puzzled. “What are you smiling at?”
“Nothing. I just discovered something interesting,” Zhou Wanfeng said, turning to sit on the bed. She propped herself up with her hands and looked up at the girl who seemed to have something to say. “Did you come up to ask if I hit your grandmother?”
Yun Jingya was a true twelve-year-old. Her expression was natural and undisguised. She opened her big eyes and nodded solemnly.
“Everyone downstairs said I hit her. You still want to come up and ask me?” She had probably seen the farce downstairs, yet she insisted on coming to ask.
Yun Jingya sat on the edge of the bed, wringing her hands. “None of them asked you. Even in a police interrogation, they have to hear both sides. I wanted to ask you first.”
“If I say I didn’t hit her, and your grandmother says I did, who would you believe?” Zhou Wanfeng looked at Yun Jingya, her expression extremely serious.
After a moment of thought, Yun Jingya looked up, her gaze firm. “If that’s the case, then I would try to find evidence to prove that one of them is lying.”
Zhou Wanfeng snorted and fell back onto the bed. After a while, she looked up at the attic roof and said, “I didn’t hit her this time, but I can’t guarantee I won’t in the future.”
At these words, Yun Jingya’s eyes instantly brightened. She even took two exaggeratedly deep breaths. The next second, she mimicked Zhou Wanfeng and fell back onto the bed with a thud, then rolled over to look at Zhou Wanfeng with a radiant smile. “I’ll help you get on Grandma’s good side in the future.”
Zhou Wanfeng said nothing. She didn’t need to curry favor with anyone. Whether they liked her or not, she didn’t care.
“This is great! Let’s be good friends. I have a lot of classmates, but I always have to go to tutoring classes, practice the piano, and learn calligraphy, so I have no time to hang out. They always go to the boutique together on weekends, but they’ve never once asked me. Some of them go with their older sisters. We can go together. You can give me a ride on your bike, and when you’re tired, I’ll give you a ride. I’ve saved up a lot of pocket money. We can also go for ice cream.” Yun Jingya looked at Zhou Wanfeng with delight, like a normal girl eager to dress up her doll.
Zhou Wanfeng could imagine that living at South Lake Mansion, with a driver and maids, wearing exquisite clothes and hair clips, these external things had invisibly set her apart.
And in her past life, she had been at the other extreme.
“That’s because you’re pretty, excellent, and rich. They might admire you, or be jealous, or feel inferior, or be too shy. If you want to go with them, just ask them out once.”
Yun Jingya suddenly moved closer, propping herself up and looking straight at Zhou Wanfeng. “Would you be like that too?”
Zhou Wanfeng was taken aback. She could clearly see her own reflection in the other girl’s pupils.
She smiled faintly, her expression serious. “No. If you’re excellent, I’ll appreciate you. If you’re mediocre, I won’t care about you.”
“You’re so realistic. But we’re both twelve, and I feel like you’re different from me and my classmates. I feel like as long as you’re in my sight, I can’t help but want to look at you.” Yun Jingya couldn’t describe the feeling. There was a very special quality about Zhou Wanfeng.
She was right in front of her, yet she couldn’t see through her. Downstairs, with so many people questioning and cursing her, she had just stood there, neither refuting nor defending, just coldly watching the crowd, as if she were a bystander.
“I’m so happy you came to Yunhai City. I’m Mom’s daughter, you’re Dad’s daughter, and then there’s Mom and Dad’s little fatty. It feels like our family is finally complete,” Yun Jingya said with a smile, taking Zhou Wanfeng’s hand. “Let’s go to the boutique before school starts and buy some school supplies. We’ll need them anyway.”
Zhou Wanfeng smiled and nodded. It was clear she really wanted to go.
The grand play that Yang Yijun had orchestrated had come to a helpless end, but the aftermath was not over so quickly.
The next morning, the two men in the family had gone to work, and Yun Jingya and Yun Chengbin were in the piano room. Zhou Wanfeng had run five kilometers and practiced a set of boxing early in the morning. She went upstairs to wash up and then came down, planning to cook some egg noodles for herself.
But as soon as she came downstairs, the kitchen auntie immediately brought out a portion of breakfast and placed it on the dining table: eight-treasure congee, pickled golden silk radish, and homemade steamed buns and shumai.
The kitchen auntie awkwardly greeted Zhou Wanfeng and then rushed back into the kitchen to get busy.
Zhou Wanfeng sat down to eat. The eight-treasure congee was soft and well-cooked. As she was eating, Granny Zhang walked over with a swollen face, looking dejected, like a defeated rooster, completely deflated.
“The old mistress wants to see you,” Granny Zhang said and turned to leave. After yesterday’s events, she had understood that this wild child from Dongshan was afraid of nothing. She was ruthless and vicious. At her age, her bones were brittle and couldn’t take a beating.
After finishing her meal, she took the plate to the kitchen. The kitchen auntie politely took it and said she would wash it.
Zhou Wanfeng washed her hands and went to the Go room.
She pushed open the door and took off her shoes.
Yang Yijun was pressing the incense ash herself, making it even and smooth. She gently pressed a lotus-shaped incense seal on top and slowly filled it with incense powder.
Zhou Wanfeng sat opposite her and watched as she removed the seal, leaving a lotus-shaped imprint of incense powder on the white ash.
A long time passed. Zhou Wanfeng propped her hands on her knees, preparing to leave. Yang Yijun closed the lid of the incense burner. Wisps of smoke rose, and she asked, “…I remember you said you didn’t want to live here.”
Zhou Wanfeng sat cross-legged again. “I still don’t want to live here now.” She smiled, looking into Yang Yijun’s eyes. “But I like the current change. And today’s breakfast was very rich and delicious. Can I take this as a signal that you want me to stay? After all, if I leave here, he will definitely have an excuse to move out, under the pretext of taking care of me.”
Yang Yijun looked down at her fingernails. They were a little long and needed to be trimmed. She couldn’t refute it. Zhou Wanfeng was smarter and more alert than she had thought. She had been afraid yesterday too.
“But your choice yesterday made me think you were on my side.” Since you don’t want to stay, you should have gone along with the act yesterday. Yang Yijun looked at the girl opposite her. She had thought about it all night but still couldn’t figure it out.
Zhou Wanfeng smiled and nodded. “He’s not the type to take care of people. He didn’t even go back to see my grandmother before she died. I don’t trust him. And anyway, you were the one who helped me get into school in Yunhai City. I consider this as returning the favor.”
“The favor is returned,” Yang Yijun said, not believing this reason. After all, they were father and daughter, related by blood.
Meanwhile, on the attic terrace, the kitchen auntie, after cleaning up the kitchen, went to chat with Xiao Ling and Auntie Fang.
“You have no idea how awkward I feel. After what Auntie Zhang said before, I was in a difficult position. I mean, at my age, making things difficult for a child. I’m not that mean or vicious. But look, it would have been better to do nothing. Now, whenever I see her, I just want to hide,” the kitchen auntie said, feeling frustrated.
Xiao Ling and Auntie Fang were taking down and washing the curtains for the change of season, which was a big job. Xiao Ling complained to the kitchen auntie, “It’s the same for us. The way things were done before and the way they’re done now, it’s us who are embarrassed. But if you want to talk about who has it the worst, I think it’s Auntie Zhang. Look at her face, it’s so swollen. If I were her, I would have taken a few days off to rest at home.”
“She wouldn’t dare. Someone new is coming to the house. If she goes home now, will there still be a place for her when she comes back? Her son and daughter-in-law don’t have good jobs. The whole family depends on her salary. She’s been paying for her grandson’s kindergarten since he started. It’s not easy for her at her age,” Auntie Fang sighed. If it weren’t for the extra few dozen yuan a month, she wouldn’t have wanted to make things difficult for a child either.
“Auntie Zhang really should retire. She’s getting old, after all. When there’s work to be done, she uses her age, her back and leg pain as an excuse to push it onto us. She just likes to stick close to the old mistress. In reality, we’re the ones who do everything, but she gets all the credit,” the kitchen auntie muttered.
Xiao Ling nodded vigorously in agreement. “Only Old Dong in the yard has a good temper. She bosses him around all the time. Anyone else would have fought with her. I’m quite looking forward to the new person.”
Auntie Fang buried her head in her work and said nothing.
Granny Zhang had one foot on the terrace and had heard every word of the conversation. She gritted her teeth in anger. When these three had first come to work for the family, it had all been thanks to her.
So what if the new person was capable? Who knew the old mistress’s habits and quirks better than her? As long as the old mistress nodded, the new person would be gone in a week, and she would be the one in charge again.
August 30th. There were two days left before the start of the school year for junior high school students in Yunhai City. The city-wide start date was September 1st.
Lin Jiawen had called last night to inform them that Zhou Wanfeng’s school records had been transferred from Dongshan to Yunhai City, and her application materials had been approved. However, she needed to go to the school to fill out a form before the start of the school year.
After asking for the address of Shuangshu Model Middle School, Zhou Wanfeng planned to ride her bike there herself.
But when she came down for breakfast, Zhou Zhiru was waiting for her. He said he would personally take her to Shuangshu Model Middle School.
He really did drive her there himself. Old Chen wasn’t even there.
Zhou Wanfeng sat in the passenger seat, her backpack in her lap, her head turned to look at the scenery outside. Even without turning her head, she knew that Zhou Zhiru was sizing her up.
“The three years of junior high are very important. Study hard. With your intelligence, I believe getting first place in the grade won’t be a problem,” Zhou Zhiru said lightly.
Zhou Wanfeng turned to look at him. Hearing “first place in the grade,” she couldn’t help but sneer. “I thought you would tell me not to cause trouble, but instead you’re telling me to get first place in the grade?”
Zhou Zhiru glanced at her, a hint of affection in his eyes. “Build a good foundation in your three years of junior high. If you want to take any tutoring classes, I’ll arrange them for you. The best high school here is Yunhai City No. 1 High School. You can’t get in just with money or connections.
“Jingya’s goal is No. 1 High School. In my eyes, you’re much smarter than her. As long as you want to, you can be more outstanding than her.”
A cold shiver ran down Zhou Wanfeng’s spine. The hairs on her arms stood on end, and a chill spread up from the soles of her feet.
Zhou Zhiru continued to speak while driving, glancing at the silent Zhou Wanfeng. His voice was low. “Jingya’s grandmother found Shuangshu Model for you. It’s a private middle school. I originally wanted to find a public one for you, at least the learning atmosphere would be better. But since she already handled it, I couldn’t very well refuse. But I guess she’ll only help you enroll. She won’t let her niece help you get into a good class. That’s just how she is.”
“What if I can’t get first place in the grade? I’m not that fond of studying either,” Zhou Wanfeng said, staring at Zhou Zhiru’s face.
“First place in the grade is indeed a big goal. Let’s start with first place in the class. We’ll take it one step at a time,” Zhou Zhiru said, his tone gentle and concerned, a light in his eyes that would make one feel that this person valued them.
“Wanfeng, you have to understand me. You’re in Yunhai City, and people who know us will subconsciously compare you to Jingya. If you’re too bad, it won’t look good for me either. When people mock you behind your back, they’ll include me. But whether Jingya is excellent or inferior, others can’t say anything about me,” Zhou Zhiru said, looking at Zhou Wanfeng with a solemn expression. “Her surname is Yun. Someone else will take care of her, good or bad.”
Zhou Wanfeng looked at Zhou Zhiru’s profile, thinking how excited and joyful the original Zhou Wanfeng would have been to hear these words. Yun Jingya is not his biological daughter, so it has nothing to do with him. In other words, you are my biological daughter, your surname is Zhou, only I will take care of you, I care about you.
For a child who had lacked a father’s companionship for so long, this was like a long-awaited rain after a drought.
Zhou Wanfeng feigned silence and turned to look out the window, her heart pounding like a drum.
She knew very well that Zhou Zhiru was pushing her to improve because he wanted to see who would be more outstanding in the end, her or Yun Jingya.
“By the way, did you say anything to Jingya’s grandmother when you smashed the door and went in that day? Why did she suddenly change her tune?” Zhou Zhiru’s tone was casual, as if he were just asking, but his gaze was sharp.