My Queen, My Rules - 25
Backstory
To be honest, Ji Mingshu knew very little about the Cen family's past. It wasn't until her second year of middle school that she accidentally learned Cen Sen had a bizarre, melodramatic secret backstory.
He and Cen Yang had been switched at birth.
She never learned exactly how the babies had been mixed up or how the mistake was discovered when they were seven or eight years old. All she remembered was her first reaction when she heard the story: utter shock.
Mostly because the day before, middle-school Shu-bao had just finished a romance novel where a wealthy family's daughter was deliberately swapped by an evil nanny. Naturally, the heroine turned out to be the real heiress.
After finishing it, she'd instinctively cast herself as the fake daughter, fantasizing: What if I was switched too? What if, just when I'm about to get married one day, some ugly duckling little white lotus suddenly appears to steal my identity, my wealth, and my husband? And no matter what underhanded tricks I use, I can't defeat the little white lotus female lead, winding up penniless, loveless, and heartbreakingly pathetic?
Her second reaction was much simpler: Cen Sen was just so, so, so despicable!
From what she'd heard, the Cen family's original plan had been straightforward. They would bring Cen Sen back into the family and restore his rightful place. As for Cen Yang, after raising him for so many years, they loved him as their own. They would simply keep raising both boys together. The Cen family certainly wasn't short on money to raise an extra kid.
What no one had expected was that Cen Sen refused.
Even as a child, he had been astonishingly resolute. He made his position crystal clear. If they wanted him back, then Cen Yang had to leave.
The Cen family was an old-fashioned clan. Outwardly harmonious, beneath the surface they favored sons over daughters, the main branch over collateral relatives, and blood ties above all else.
So when forced to choose, there was never really a choice. The real heir's demand came first. Almost without objection, they sentenced Cen Yang to exile.
Cen Yang was sent back to the An family in Xingcheng. The Cen family paid the Ans a generous sum to relocate overseas and forbade them from setting foot in either the capital or Xingcheng until Cen Yang came of age. From then on, Jingjian's Cen family had only one son: Cen Sen. No one was allowed to mention Cen Yang again.
Back then, Ji Mingshu couldn't understand it. Couldn't he just simply come back? Why did Cen Yang-gege have to leave? So he hadn't gone abroad to study after all. He'd been driven away by this male version of the ugly duckling!
That ugly duckling was far too ruthless. If he could be that heartless as a child, what would he become when he grew up?
She genuinely put herself in Cen Yang's shoes, feeling his pain as her own, and developed a genuine dislike and disdain for the cold, taciturn iceberg that was Cen Sen. Looking back, that revelation had been the spark that fueled nearly every clash between her and Cen Sen throughout their teenage years.
But as she grew older, those childhood feelings for Cen Yang gradually faded, and she found herself increasingly able to see things from Cen Sen's perspective.
From beginning to end, none of it had ever been his fault. No one watching from the sidelines had the right to judge him or demand generosity on someone else's behalf.
The Maybach turned away from the airport and headed toward the faculty apartments at Xingcheng University.
The closer they got to the university, the more nervous Ji Mingshu became. Every few minutes she pulled out a compact mirror to check her makeup, then smoothed her hair again and again until every strand lay perfectly in place.
Before getting out of the car, she even switched to a more understated lipstick, then dug a trench coat out of the trunk and draped it over herself. By the time she was done, she looked even more tense than Cen Sen.
She couldn't help it. She'd never had a mother-in-law. Cen Yuanchao was in poor health and spent most of his time recuperating at the family estate on the outskirts of the capital, where visitors were restricted. She'd barely interacted with anyone from her in-laws' generation.
Mr. An and Mrs. An had raised Cen Sen through several of the most innocent years of his childhood. No matter how completely they'd lost contact afterward, there had to be lingering affection.
In a way, they counted as half a father-in-law and half a mother-in-law to her. On top of that, they were both professors at Xingcheng University. Meeting them for the first time as their half daughter-in-law naturally made her a little anxious.
So preoccupied with her own nerves, Ji Mingshu never noticed how unusually quiet Cen Sen had been the entire drive.
Standing in front of the aging faculty apartment building, she gave herself one final inspection, slipped her wedding ring onto her finger after fishing it out of her handbag, then affectionately looped her arm through Cen Sen's, looking every bit the gentle, devoted daughter-in-law.
Unfortunately, her first obstacle arrived before she even reached the front door.
No one knew how many decades these faculty apartments had stood. Forget the lack of an elevator. The stairwell itself was narrow, cramped, steep, and unforgiving.
To make matters worse, Ji Mingshu had worn a pair of pointed, sparkling CL heels. By the time she'd climbed to the second floor, she already felt half dead.
And the An family just had to live on the seemingly unreachable sixth floor :)
"I... I can't do this anymore. I need a break. This is torture."
By the third floor, Ji Mingshu had successfully transformed herself into a gasping salted fish. She clung to Cen Sen and refused to take another step, strongly resembling a professional con artist who collapses and feigns unconsciousness ten meters away from their target on the street, demanding to be carried.
Cen Sen glanced at her without a word. Then he walked back down two steps, bent slightly at the waist, and said quietly, "Get on."
Ji Mingshu: "…?"
She rubbed her aching calves, unable to believe the Dog Man had suddenly discovered his humanity.
When they finally reached the sixth floor and climbed off his back, she secretly studied him. Strange. She'd never seen him exercise, yet he'd carried her all the way up six flights of stairs without even breathing hard.
Had he been secretly taking those calcium supplements everyone advertised?
No. Obviously, it was because she was exactly as light as a canary.
The soundproofing in this old apartment building probably wasn't great. They had barely reached the landing when the weathered security door on the right creaked open from inside.
A thin, delicate face peeked out. "Um... are you... An... I mean..Cen Sen-gege?"
The girl looked about nineteen or twenty. Her hair was tied back in a simple ponytail with a black hair tie, She wore no makeup and looked every bit the picture of a fresh-faced college student.
Cen Sen paused for a moment, nodding."Mm."
The girl stared at him for several long seconds. When she finally noticed Ji Mingshu behind him, she was stunned anew.
She had never seen a woman this beautiful in real life.
Beautiful wasn't even enough to describe her. It was as though Ji Mingshu glowed. Simply standing there, she somehow made this entire apartment building feel more expensive.
The girl remained dazed for a long moment before awkwardly ushering them inside.
The apartment measured nearly one hundred and forty square meters, already the largest unit in the entire faculty complex, a privilege owed to Mr. and Mrs. An for both being professors.
Still, in Ji Mingshu's world, it was much like a certain actress insisting that anything under one carat was just diamond chips. Anything under three hundred square meters was simply a ‘tiny house’.
The moment she stepped inside, the overwhelming sense of age and the cramped space left her feeling oddly awkward. She had no idea where she was supposed to stand.
She looked helplessly toward Cen Sen, but he didn't notice. His gaze drifted slowly across every familiar corner of the apartment, his eyes carrying a warmth she'd never seen in him before.
After letting them in, the dazed, pure college student neither introduced herself nor offered tea. Instead, she hurried into the kitchen in a fluster to tell Chen Biqing they had arrived.
Moments later, Mrs. An, Chen Biqing, rushed out wearing an apron, streaks of silver already woven through her hair.
Chen Biqing must have been a beauty in her youth. Perhaps years immersed in books had left their mark, even in her plain clothes and apron, she carried herself with quiet elegance and the refined grace of a scholar.
It's just... she didn't quite look like someone who had spent more than a decade overseas. There was a weathered weariness about her, as though life had carved too many marks into her.
Dust floated thickly through the old apartment. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, turning the drifting particles into shimmering beams suspended motionless in the air.
The apartment was silent except for the faint hum of the range hood in the kitchen.
Chen Biqing stopped three or four meters away from Cen Sen. The instant she saw him, her eyes turned red.
Then she covered her mouth, staring at him without blinking as tears rolled silently down her cheeks.
For reasons she couldn't explain, Ji Mingshu's own heart tightened painfully.
It was strange.
She was the sort of person who could watch the saddest romance movie ever made and still happily point out the plot holes.
Yet somehow she suddenly felt that if she'd had a mother who truly loved her...this was how that mother would have looked at her.
She glanced sideways at Cen Sen.
His face was expressionless.
The woman before him had once been the mother he'd called "Mom" for seven or eight years.
And yet...
Nothing.
She suspected she would never see any excess emotion on Cen Sen's face for the rest of her life.
Lunch was served at noon. Throughout the meal, Ji Mingshu never saw the long-absent Cen Yang or the Mr. An who should have been there. Around the small square dining table sat only Chen Biqing, Cen Sen, herself, and Cen Sen's younger sister, An Ning.
An Ning had only been a one-year-old baby when Cen Sen left, so there was little sibling bond between them and even less things to say. Cen Sen was naturally quiet, while Chen Biqing kept choking back tears, distracting herself by constantly putting food into everyone's bowls. Thus, the responsibility of lightening the mood landed squarely on Ji Mingshu.
She felt like she was sitting on a bed of nails. She didn't even know how to address Chen Biqing. She couldn't even follow Cen Sen's lead because he'd never addressed her once. Asking about everyone's lives didn't seem appropriate either. Her instincts screamed that Mr. An and Cen Yang were forbidden topics. At this point she was half convinced that even asking where An Ning went to school might accidentally step on another emotional landmine.
In that case, the only possible topic was the food in front of them.
"This stuffed lotus root is so good! I've never had anything like it before."
—That's because she never eats fried food.
"This vegetable is really fresh too. It smells amazing."
—That's because they're stir-fried in lard, something she normally avoided like the plague.
"This fish is so tender..."
To prove she wasn't just making polite conversation, Ji Mingshu picked up an enormous piece and swallowed it whole.
The next second...
"Cough! Cough, cough!"
She grabbed Cen Sen's arm with one hand and pointed frantically at her throat with the other, coughing until her entire face turned bright red.
Chen Biqing: "What's wrong? Did a fish bone get stuck?"
An Ning: "Sister-in-law, are you okay? Swallow a spoonful of rice. Really force it down."
Ji Mingshu, trusting her dubious advice, actually tried to swallow it.
The result was that she nearly died on the spot from the pain.
"I'll get some vinegar!" Chen Biqing jumped to her feet.
A large bowl of vinegar was poured out with a clatter. Ji Mingshu managed two painful swallows, and by the time the fish bone finally softened enough to go down, she looked at the three people surrounding her, each anxiously asking if she was all right.
Oddly enough, she felt a little comforted.
To lighten the mood, this baby has sacrificed too much.
Cen-shi Sensen, you owe me.
And nothing less than an aircraft carrier will settle the debt. :)
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