“No, no, I’m just curious, alright?” Qiao Yaruan quickly cut her off.
Shui Anluo sat next to her bed and watched as her son slept brazenly on the bed. She rubbed her head as she replied, “I’m not too familiar with the situation in my beautiful brother’s home. I’m just more familiar with him as a person.”
“Aren’t the elite families in ‘A’ City all in the same circle? Since you run in the same circle, don’t you know each other well?” Qiao Yaruan seemed anxious.
“I don’t know all of them, they’re so much older than I am. I had played with friends of my own age, even elite families have differences in age, alright?” Shui Anluo rolled her eyes and said, “Besides, Beautiful Brother is much older than me. I remember that he had a younger sister who’s two years younger than him. She’s still much older than me too so I won’t have played with them.”
“Younger sister?” Qiao Yaruan caught onto one word and her body shivered again.
“That’s right. I think her name was An Qirou.” Shui Anluo thought seriously. “However, she passed away a long time ago.” Shui Anluo rejoiced over her decent memory, she was able to remember that name.
“Qirou,” Qiao Yaruan repeated the name gently. That older sister has such a beautiful name, just like her.
Shui Anluo detected the sobs in Qiao Yaruan’s voice and her heart jumped. “Empress Dowager, are you alright? Where are you? I’ll go look for you,” Shui Anluo said, worried.
“I’m fine,” Qiao Yaruan quickly replied. “Do you know how his sister died?”
Shui Anluo frowned because her questions today have been rather strange.
“Sister Qirou? I’m not too sure myself. I just remember coming home one day to find a lot of people in the neighborhood. My mother then told me that Sister Qirou had died while on duty. Oh, Sister Qirou was a student at the police academy,” Shui Anluo explained again, afraid of confusing her. “I was still around thirteen or fourteen that year. I don’t remember. I think I was in junior high school.”
Shui Anluo finished speaking. She did not hear a response from the person on the other end so she cried out, “Empress Dowager, are you still there?”
Qiao Yaruan quickly reached out and wiped her tears. “It’s nothing, nothing.”
She had just remembered the incident from that year. She had died on duty and it was all her fault.
“Qiao Yaruan, where are you? I’ll go to you right now, don’t do anything else,” Shui Anluo said. The more Shui Anluo thought about this, the more she felt that something was not right.
“Luoluo, I’m alright.” Qiao Yaruan tried her best to hold her tears back.
“Tell me where you are right now.” Shui Anluo was very worried so there was a bite of impatience in her voice.
“The dormitory.”
“Wait there, I’ll be there in an hour,” Shui Anluo said and rushed to the study to tell Chu Ningyi that she was heading to the university. She asked him to look for her at the campus before she left.
Chu Ningyi frowned as he watched Shui Anluo take her phone and leave. Had she been talking to Qiao Yaruan?
Shui Anluo arrived at the university. Before she could go upstairs, Qiao Yaruan asked her to move a crate of beer up. Shui Anluo could hear the strange tone in Qiao Yaruan’s voice so she moved the crate of beer upstairs without objections.
Shui Anluo placed the beer on the desk. She panted as she shut the door and turned around to lean against it, gasping. “Talk to me. You’ll offend me for moving these cans of beer up for you if you don’t clear things up today.”
Shui Anluo only saw the look on Qiao Yaruan’s face when she looked up. Forget about her messy and dirty appearance, her eyes were red and swollen as if someone had abused her.
Shui Anluo was in shock and a stream of NC-17 news images flashed across her mind. She rushed over and held her hand as she asked in a teary voice, “Empress Dowager, you can’t have been…”
