Chapter 162: He Yunqing's Childhood

"I do."

Jin Nana was somewhat surprised. She hadn't expected Jiang Yao to agree so readily.

"Are you really okay with this?" Jin Nana was referring to He Yunqing.

Jiang Yao smiled. "Compared to all that, I want to see you in a wedding dress even more, Nana. You are already so gorgeous; you'll look breathtaking in a wedding dress."

Jin Nana looked at Jiang Yao in bewilderment.

"A-Yao, why do you care about me so much? Why does it feel like you treat me so exceptionally well?"

Even calling themselves close friends felt like a stretch for her and Jiang Yao, yet strangely, Jiang Yao treated her like someone she held the dearest and closest to her heart.

Jiang Yao looked silently toward the rising morning sun in the distance. "Perhaps you'll understand one day, or perhaps you never will."

Jin Nana was her younger sister.

This was a secret that neither she nor Elder Jin was ever willing to voice.

Jin Nana gave a slightly playful smile. "Don't tell me... you're in love with me?"

Jiang Yao turned her head, exchanged a smile with Jin Nana, and said, "Yes, I'm in love with you. Satisfied?"

Jin Nana nudged Jiang Yao forward, her steps growing lighter and more cheerful. "A-Yao, don't worry, I will definitely love Yunqing well. My love for him will certainly be no less than yours. You have no idea, actually, Yunqing had a very bitter childhood too."

Jiang Yao knew that He Yunqing was estranged from He Huai'an, and she also knew that Aunt Yu was his stepmother.

Yet as for anything else, He Yunqing had never mentioned it to her, and she hadn't felt it appropriate to pry.

Hearing Jin Nana put it this way now, Jiang Yao couldn't help asking, "Did he... go through a lot when he was little?"

Jin Nana nodded. "You probably didn't know, but Yunqing used to have a little sister."

"A little sister? A biological sister?" Jiang Yao asked in surprise. "Then where is that little girl now?"

Jin Nana shook her head. "Dead."

She continued pushing Jiang Yao forward. "That was when Yunqing was eight years old. His mother was pregnant with his little sister, but never in a million years did they expect that Yunqing's father would cheat with the present Aunt Yu right around that time."

"Word has it that Aunt Yu was Uncle He's first love back in their school days, his white moonlight, but they ultimately broke up and couldn't stay together due to various reasons. So when Uncle He crossed paths with Aunt Yu again later on, it was like a raging fire meeting dry tinder, and the two of them simply lost all control."

"A-Yao, do you suppose that counts as true love?" Jin Nana asked, looking somewhat puzzled.

"Pfft!" Jiang Yao spat out indignantly. "If there's no marriage, no children, and both people are quietly waiting for each other, then fine, I'll admit it's true love. But they didn't miss a beat when it came to getting married and having kids, greedily grabbing every benefit, and now they use someone else's agony as their justification, trampling over another's feelings, grinding down another's self-respect, yet still dare to parade around claiming it's true love? Absolutely shameless!"

Seeing Jiang Yao's righteous fury, Jin Nana suddenly smiled. "You're one of the very few people who speak up for Yunqing's mother and curse Uncle He out like that."

"Shouldn't anyone with even a shred of normal values think the way I do?"

Jin Nana looked a little saddened. "Yet, there are simply too few people in this world with normal values. When Yunqing's mother found out about this, everyone was advising her to just endure it, since they already had three children after all. Even some people who were nominally close to her pointed fingers, blaming her for failing in this area or that, which gave another woman the opportunity to step in. And there were others still, pointing fingers behind her back and mocking her."

"Turns out there really are people in this world who commit evil seamlessly, without ever having to pay a price," Jiang Yao gritted her teeth.

She resonated deeply with He Yunqing's mother.

When she had suffered her own trauma, she too had been met mostly with belittlement and ridicule.

Thank goodness for Chen Zui's help; otherwise, she probably wouldn't have been able to endure it at all.

"Pity that not everyone in this world has a sense of justice like yours," Jin Nana sighed. "More people love to kick a person when they're down, delivering another blow when you're already vulnerable, even though they probably have no personal grudge against you at all."

"Perhaps that's simply human nature," Jiang Yao sighed. "So what happened next?"

"Later on, Yunqing's mother gave birth to that child. It was an adorable baby girl, but she also developed postpartum depression at the same time. However, all the torment was only just beginning; Uncle He seemed utterly possessed, starting to stay out all night, every night.

"The most fatal blow came one day when Yunqing's mother received a video—a video of those two illicitly carrying on an affair."

Jin Nana reminisced, "I was still young then, and many details are blurry in my memory. I only heard the adults say that on that day, Yunqing's mother didn't scream, shout, or throw a hysterical fit. She didn't even shed a single tear. She simply washed, groomed, and dressed herself neatly and impeccably, then went to her favorite coffee shop for a cup of coffee and exchanged warm greetings with her friends. They said she smiled as though she were genuinely happy.

"When night fell and everyone had drifted off to sleep, she held her newborn infant in her arms and jumped from the bedroom window."

"She..." Jiang Yao managed only a single syllable before finding the story so heavy it left her gasping for breath.

"Yunqing witnessed it all with his own eyes—his mother's corpse, his sister's corpse, and that pool of blood on the ground..." Jin Nana's voice choked up slightly as well. "Ever since that day, he remained completely unresponsive and mute, until half a year later when he finally began to speak again."

Jiang Yao couldn't help but feel a pang of heartache for He Yunqing. She had never imagined that a man who seemed so dependable had endured such things in his childhood.

Back then, he was merely a child.

Witnessing all of that firsthand was simply too cruel for him to bear.

"Yet the bullying didn't stop with the death of Yunqing's mother," Jin Nana remarked with bitter irony. "People often say that the deceased command the utmost respect, but in the eyes of those people, that phrase was reduced to a joke. Instead of sympathizing with her, everyone began pointing fingers at her all over again, questioning why she couldn't be stronger, why she had to resort to dying over such a trivial matter. Not a single person ever genuinely stood in her shoes to listen to her or understand her."

Jiang Yao understood. One group of people simply failed to grasp what postpartum depression actually meant, while the other group was purely, genuinely malicious.

"And so, as expected, less than half a year after she died, Uncle He impatiently married Aunt Yu and brought her home. People seemed to develop a sudden collective amnesia; no one remembered the woman who had died in despair during those cold, lonely nights anymore. Instead, everyone started singing praises of the great romance between Uncle He and Aunt Yu, as if all the obstacles that had once kept them apart were merely villains in a story, while the two of them were the true protagonists."

Jiang Yao couldn't help but heave a sigh of lament.

"You have no idea, A-Yao, what a kind and optimistic person Yunqing's mother used to be."