Serena suddenly felt a chill run in her back. His tone was always cold, but now it seemed harsher than usual.
She tried to convince. “I-I think there would be much better. There are many empty rooms on the third floor. Nana can rest in any of them.”
Jinhai smiled. “You seemed to know about this villa more than necessary. Is this really your first time here?”‚
Serena was caught off guard. She realized she made a slip of the tongue.
‘Liu Jinhai is…sharp.’
She waved her hand in dismissal and laughed. “No. How can I know anything about Huo villa? I got bored, so I was just roaming around for a while. That’s when I came to know that there are rooms just in case if any guest gets sick.”
Nana said, “It’s alright, Serena. My job is also done. Whatever remaining is there, Meiling and the others can handle it.”
“I-I see…But I think traveling in such a condition won’t be good for you.”
Jinhai said, “I understand your concern as her friend, but don’t forget that I’m her husband. I also care about her, and I know what I am doing. So, you can rest assured.” He narrowed his eyes. “You sound anxious to make her stay here.”
Serena jolted. “What? It’s nothing like that.”
“It better be.” Jinhai looked at Nana. “Let’s go.”
As they left, Serena got a message.
‘Come.’
She got a headache. She climbed up the stairway and made her way to a room where she found a woman wearing a beautiful cheongsam.
Huo Xiao Fan looked at her in disdain. “You couldn’t do a single thing, Zhilan. Just how hard was it to force Nana to stay here?”
Serena pursed her lips and stayed silent.
She scoffed. “My plan failed because of you. Tonight I would have created such circumstances to get Jianyu and Nana locked in one room. After what happened before, Jinhai would surely have exploded.”
Huo Xiao Fan forced herself to become calm. “And that Nana…Since when did she start to take my threat so lightly? She got an inkling to my plan, so she already had her plan ready. The banquet is useless now!”
“But Mom…isn’t this enough? Jianyu is my boyfriend. I know both of them don’t have any feelings for each other, but it still hurts me when I see them together so close.” Serena bit her lips.
Huo Xiao Fan glared at her. “Exactly what the problem is! You made it all complicated by making this serious with him. For God’s sake, you even got pregnant! You knew what your motive was in approaching Jianyu, yet you…I seriously feel like giving you a beating!”
Serena held in her tears. She wanted to cry her heart out, but she knew her tears wouldn’t have any effect on the woman.
“Now leave! What are your standing here for? If Nana thinks that she has won that she is very wrong.”
Serena blankly left the room, but to her shock, Jianyu was standing outside. She thought her heart would jump out of her chest.
“J-Jianyu?”
He flicked her forehead. “Where were you? I was looking for you everywhere.”
‘Thank God…’
Jianyu saw the silhouette of a woman. “Who is she?”
“…A guest. She was congratulating me.”
He frowned. “In this room? The banquet is in the hall. Why would any guest be here?”
“T-that…I don’t know…Forget about her. That is not important. Let’s go. I’m starving!”
—
In the car, Jinhai and Nana were together, but it was silent. Driver Mu was feeling awkward with this atmosphere.
Jinhai was silently looking at her. Nana found his gaze questioning.
He asked, “How did you first meet Serena?”
Nana looked puzzled, nevertheless answered. “We met when we were eleven. We had just entered middle school. She was a transfer student, and she got into the same class as mine. We hit it off very quickly and soon became best friends.”
“Who talked first?”
“She came to me bringing her lunch box one day, and then slowly we got to know each other.”
Jinhai said nothing for a while. Then he asked, “And her family?”
“She said her parents lived in a different city, and she was staying with her aunt, though I never met her. Then in college, she moved out to live in the dorms.”
He looked out of the window. “I see…”
Nana didn’t think much of it. Her mind was only filled with the confusion overseeing that cuff link. Unknown to Nana, Jinhai was quietly observing her, carefully watching every single expression.
—
The next day, Nana stood in front of that house where she lived seven years of her life from she was three to ten. It was tough for her to decide to come back to this place. As much as there were happy memories, they faded away against that one night.
She blankly stood at the same spot for a few minutes before she could gain the strength to take the next step.
Nana opened the door, and the sight of the living room greeted her. The furniture was covered in white clothes, and it had become too dusty.
“Nee-chan, you can never find us.” She saw little Yukito and Yukira giggling and running around, trying to hide from her. Yu Ichika was lovingly looking at them from the kitchen while preparing for the dinner. Yu Tengfei was watching the television, apparently annoyed by their running around the hall.
Her eyes welled with tears as the sight disappeared. She walked upstairs and first came across the twin’s room. She remembered how Yu Ichika would always tell them a bedtime story without which the twins would still whine and cry.
She softly chuckled.
Then she passed by her own room, but she didn’t have the courage to go inside. That horrible memory of that night twelve years ago was still fresh in her mind. Her cries, her helplessness, and the realization of her family shattering forever were still imprinted in her mind.
Finally, at the end of the little corridor, she reached the last room. It was Yu Ichika and Yu Tengfei’s. She took a deep breath and pulled the doorknob.
Just like all the other rooms, this room was also quite dirty. There was a big bed in between and on the bedside table were photos of them as the family together; the twins as baby boys, Nana from all the ages from three to ten, their camping trip, their holidays, birthday parties, and much more.
She opened one of the drawers and found a little box inside.
“Mom, what is this box?” A little Nana of eight years old asked Yu Ichika.
Yu Ichika smiled. “Well, it is something that belongs to your Dad, but I have taken it.”
She cutely tilted her head.
Yu Ichika chuckled. “Look.” She opened the box, and it held a silvery shiny thing in it.
Nana’s eyes sparkled. “It’s so pretty!”
“Isn’t it? It’s called a cuff link.”
“Cuff-coughing?” Nana scrunched her brows.
Yu Ichika broke out in laughter. “No, silly. Cuff link. It is something that men wear as a stud to secure their shirt’s cuffs at the wrist. It is a kind of jewelry.”
Nana was shocked. “Men also wear jewelry? I thought only girls wear them.”
“Um, not much, but there are still some things that men can wear. And this belongs to your father.”
“But how will you wear it? You don’t wear shirts.”
She chuckled. “I know. But your father lost it once, and I found it. I liked it, so I declared that I would keep it from then on. It is also like a souvenir for me. Whenever your father is away on some trip, I look at it, and it makes me happy.”
Nana asked, “But shouldn’t be there two of them? We have two hands, so two wrists.”
Yu Ichika squeezed her cheeks. “You are so cute. Yes, dear, cuff links come in pair, but your father lost them, and I could find only one.”
She nodded her head.
Nana stared at the cuff link in her hands, the same one whose another half she found at the Huo villa.
Nana kept the cuff link back. She opened the cupboard to search for something. What that something was, even she had no idea, but she knew it would take her another step closer to the truth.
Somehow, she was getting a bad feeling that she won’t like the answer. She was feeling restless and anxious. The old clothes and other things were still kept as it is. She searched everywhere, but couldn’t find anything significant.
Then her sight went onto his office bag that Yu Tengfei used on his business trips. She dusted it off a little. Nana opened it and, as usual, found some business files and papers. She glanced through all of them, and from the last file, a photo dropped on her dress.
She picked it up and froze seeing a man and woman standing together arm in arm, laughing. The man was kissing the woman’s cheek in the photo, and the woman’s gaze was blushingly lowered.
The man was all too familiar to her, her adoptive father, Yu Tengfei. And somehow she found the woman also very familiar.
‘She kind of…looks like me.’
But a photo in such an intimate position with another woman meant only one thing.
“Dad…was having an affair?”
