Yu Buqi, once exposed, showed not the slightest hint of displeasure. Instead, with a serious expression on his small face, he remarked, "Little Uncle told me this is a legitimate method of courtship within a reasonable scope."
Yu Qinghuai’s hand, clutching his knife and fork, faltered. He looked at Jiang Yuchi, explaining with a calm demeanor, "At the time, he only told me he wanted to make a friend."
Sensing the awkwardness at the table, Jiang Yuchi scoured her memory for a way to change the subject. She let out a dry laugh and took the initiative to bring up the past, "Your Little Uncle used to pester me with questions all the time back then. It’s a very normal way to build a rapport."
After Jiang Yuchi married into the Yu family, the turning point in the frosty relationship between Yu Qinghuai and his sister-in-law was when he began learning how to skateboard, and Jiang Yuchi witnessed his clumsy, stumbling attempts.
Back when she was a student in the coastal city of D, she would often spend her spare time skateboarding along the seaside roads. Acting in her capacity as a sister-in-law, she offered him a few pointers, and from then on, Yu Qinghuai began seeking her out in private to ask for advice on skateboarding.
Just as she thought she had successfully moved past the topic, Yu Buying, who had been chewing her food like a little squirrel, suddenly puffed out her cheeks and asked innocently, "So, was Little Uncle trying to date Mommy with the intent of marriage back then, too?"
Jiang Yuchi met her daughter’s wide, curious eyes and felt herself gently unraveling. She cast a look of silent plea toward Yu Qinghuai. Understanding her intent, Yu Qinghuai lowered his voice and said sternly, "Yu Buying, eat your food and stop talking."
"Understood! Sir!" As if a switch had been flipped, Yu Buying immediately saluted Yu Qinghuai in the style of a TV drama character, then buried her head back into her meal.
This might just be some unique parenting style of Yu Qinghuai's, Jiang Yuchi mused, though she felt it was rather odd. She felt that Yu Qinghuai should have explained things clearly to their daughter instead of resorting to such a blunt, rough redirection.
Perhaps he simply found the notion too absurd to warrant an explanation.
After the meal, Yu Qinghuai prepared to leave for the Yu Group office, mentioning that he had official business to attend to and likely wouldn't return until tomorrow afternoon. Before he left, Jiang Yuchi couldn't help but say, "There’s no heartless boss breathing down your neck, so can’t Boss Yu grant himself a day off on the weekend?"
"I am not the boss." Yu Qinghuai turned back, a trace of amusement in his voice as he continued, "Boss Jiang, have you forgotten who the Yu Group belongs to now?"
Jiang Yuchi, the absolute controlling shareholder of the Yu Group, suddenly realized the truth: it turned out the heartless boss squeezing the employees was none other than herself.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jiang Yuchi noticed Yu Qinghuai’s tie was slightly askew. Habitually, she reached out to straighten it for him. Once finished, she patted his shoulder and said, "Work hard."
After this sequence of actions, both of them froze for a moment. Yu Qinghuai was the first to regain his composure; he gave a low, affirmative sound before turning to head out the door.
Jiang Yuchi, however, remained dazed for a long while.
Memories she had once thought were well-buried flooded back like a torrent.
Before leaving every day, Yujie would kiss a sleepy, dazed Jiang Yuchi awake, coaxing his "little wife" in a gentle voice to tie his necktie for him. The little wife would pat his shoulder and lazily murmur, "Work hard."
Although Yujie and Yu Qinghuai were biological brothers, Jiang Yuchi had never confused the two six years ago. Their temperaments were like night and day: Yujie was a "refined scoundrel" who masked a lethal edge with gentleness, while Yu Qinghuai was like an immature boy—volatile, quick-tempered, and emotional.
Yet, six years later, the current Yu Qinghuai had moved further and further away from those descriptions. He wore suits, wrapping his true self perfectly beneath a polished exterior. Only then did Jiang Yuchi realize that he was, indeed, Yujie’s brother; they shared identical features.
While Jiang Yuchi was still lost in her melancholy, her hand was suddenly enveloped by something soft.
"Mommy, gogogo!" Today, Yu Buying was wearing a dark blue Victorian-style princess dress. She held Jiang Yuchi’s hand, skipping along in high spirits.
Yu Buqi took hold of Jiang Yuchi’s other hand quietly. His outfit, custom-made alongside Yu Buying’s, was an identical dark blue, British-style small suit.
Only then did Jiang Yuchi realize that the dress she had found waiting by her bedside when she woke up was part of a set with the children’s outfits—it must have been arranged by Yu Qinghuai as matching family attire.
It wasn't until she was sitting in the car that Jiang Yuchi remembered Yu Buqi mentioning something the night before about a kindergarten graduation performance for him and his sister that afternoon.
Speechless, Jiang Yuchi asked Yu Buqi, "Why didn't you wake me up earlier, brother? I should have at least dressed up properly."
"No need, Mommy looks beautiful just like this~" Yu Buying chimed in sincerely.
That morning, while the two siblings were eating with their Little Uncle, her brother had wondered whether to wake their mother early for styling and jewelry selection. But their Little Uncle had said that Mommy would look beautiful even in a potato sack, and it was better to let her sleep a little longer.
Yu Buying thought that her Little Uncle hadn't been wrong at all. Jiang Yuchi’s natural features were excellent; the light, casual makeup she had applied before leaving only made her look even more effortlessly chic.
As for jewelry, her long, elegant swan neck and delicate collarbones needed no adornment to be captivating, and besides...
Yu Buqi picked up Jiang Yuchi’s left hand and shook it, saying, "Mommy, this pink diamond on your middle finger is scary enough as it is."
The massive, pure pink diamond was so dazzling that one felt blinded by its brilliant luster after only a glance. It was the engagement ring Yujie had presented to Jiang Yuchi, setting a world record for a diamond auction at 61.92 million USD.
At that time, it had been less than half a month since Jiang Yuchi had officially broken up with her ex-boyfriend, Jiang Zhiyi, and less than two months since she had met Yujie at the farce that was her own engagement banquet. Yujie had bypassed the "defining the relationship" phase entirely and proposed to her straight away.
No matter how she looked at it, Jiang Yuchi had wanted to refuse.
But when Yujie pulled out this pink diamond—named after the "Laurel Goddess" from Greek mythology, who was obsessively loved by the sun god Apollo—the words of refusal had caught in her throat.
Ultimately, this "century proposal" concluded perfectly when the young Master Yu, witnessed by all, slid the "Laurel Goddess" onto the finger of a Jiang Yuchi who was "too moved to speak."
Later on, Yujie gave Jiang Yuchi many other precious rings—some, like her wedding ring, even more valuable and storied than the "Laurel Goddess"—but nothing could shake the status of that pink diamond in her heart. For all these years, it had remained firmly fixed upon her middle finger.
On the day she had officially broken up with Jiang Zhiyi, Jiang Yuchi had gotten drunk while crying her heart out. Yujie, who was accompanying her, had asked in a roundabout way what she had seen in Jiang Zhiyi, hoping he might find a way to help her move on.
She had shaken her alcohol-addled brain, ticking off her fingers as she recounted the past. She recalled seeing the head of the Qin Group on TV as a child, grandly spending 270 million to buy a pink diamond for his daughter’s tenth birthday. She was young then, not understanding what 270 million meant, and had pointed at the screen telling her father she wanted one. As expected, her father had scolded her for being delusional.
"Later, I realized that a 270-million pink diamond was a delusion, but even a 30-yuan knockoff Barbie doll from the roadside was a delusion."
"It felt like I wasn't worthy of anything. Even after I found my biological parents, I felt I didn't deserve anything and didn't dare to ask them for anything. In the end, Jiang Zhiyi just performed the duties of a gentleman by helping me out of a spot and offering me a cupcake at a banquet, and I fell hopelessly in love with him."
"Yujie, why am I so cheap?"
When she woke up the next day from her hangover and recalled what she had told Yujie, she was so mortified she wanted to jump off a building and end it all.
Yet, she never expected that from that day on, Yujie would buy every rare gemstone he could find on the market—and even those he couldn't. Even on the night before the proposal, he had agonized over whether to use the more valuable red diamond, "Blood of the Phoenix," or the pink "Laurel Goddess."
Fortunately, he had realized it in the final moments: the twenty-one-year-old Jiang Yuchi might have refused the red diamond, but the ten-year-old Jiang Yuchi, silently weeping within her, would seize control of her body and accept his proposal just to possess the pink diamond.