It wasn't until her wedding to Zhou Mochen, when she overheard her parents talking with his maternal grandfather, that Xu Su finally learned the truth.
The moment she found out in her past life, Xu Su became absolutely certain that her parents had sold her for their own gain. She recalled how Xu Weiping had been a manual laborer for over a decade with no promotions, yet suddenly became a workshop supervisor at the textile factory while she was in high school.
If she hadn't met Zhou Mochen after they moved into the subsidized housing, Xu Su would have suspected that he had secretly arranged for their family to get the apartment. That he had deliberately lived across from the Xu Family, deliberately picked her up and dropped her off from school every day, while Chen Shulan and Xu Weiping had gladly gone along with it.
'Thinking more darkly, could it be that when my grandmother was hospitalized with paralysis and couldn't care for herself, they deliberately claimed they had no money for her treatment just so I would have to go beg Zhou Mochen for help?'
Thinking of her past life, Xu Su's eyes reddened. She lowered her gaze and ate silently, hiding her emotions.
For the next few days, Xu Su brought lunch to Xu Weiping at noon. The workers at the textile factory would tease the big and burly Xu Weiping for having such a stunningly beautiful daughter.
This day, Xu Su was wearing a pale yellow, knee-length dress. Holding an aluminum lunch box, she stood in the shade of a tree, waiting as usual to give her father his lunch.
Xu Weiping's colleagues, who had seen her over the past few days, shouted loudly into the factory for him. "You're a lucky man! Your daughter comes to bring you lunch under the hot sun every day. You should at least tell her to bring an umbrella. It's not good for a young lady to get a tan."
"Ah, what's the use of a student being pretty? Studying hard is what's important," Xu Weiping said, laughing as he dismissed his colleague and took the lunch box from his daughter.
For lunch, Chen Shulan had made braised pork ribs, stir-fried celtuce, and cold-dressed eggplant. Feeling sorry for her husband's hard work these past few days, she had specially bought two pounds of ribs to cook.
Xu Su stood to the side, waiting for him to finish so she could take the lunch box back to wash.
At that same moment, on the second floor of an office building to the right of the father and daughter...
Li Jinxiang finished signing a document with a final stroke of his pen. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and called out several times to the young man standing by the window, but the other man paid him no mind.
Puzzled, he got up, walked over, and patted the young man's shoulder. "What are you looking at so intently?"
Zhou Mochen didn't look away, his expression unreadable from his profile. He only asked, "Grandpa, is your factory hiring summer workers?"
Li Jinxiang followed his gaze. Down below, in the shade of a tree, a young girl with short hair was using a broom and dustpan to meticulously sweep up the bones the man in the worker's uniform had spat out.
His brow furrowed. "The textile factory doesn't hire summer workers. That must be a worker's family member who came to deliver lunch. Aren't we trying to clear this place out for you? The Old Industrial Zone has been working overtime these past few days, so the employees aren't going home to eat."
"Are you staring so hard because you're hungry?" Li Jinxiang glanced down a few more times but saw nothing unusual, aside from the fact that the girl was quite pretty. "Come on, Grandpa will take you to lunch. It's already noon."
Zhou Mochen didn't move until the yellow figure in his line of sight picked up the lunch box and walked farther and farther away.
Seeing him like this, Li Jinxiang was a little alarmed. "Why are you staring at her like that? That girl looks like she's only sixteen or seventeen. You're not getting any ideas, are you?"
But then he immediately dismissed his own thought. "No, that can't be. Just two months ago, your mother was on the phone with your grandmother, saying that in your four years of college, not a single girl came near you. She was even worried you might be gay."
Although his grandson hadn't grown up in Chang Province and wasn't close with them, he still knew a bit about him through his daughter's phone calls.
He'd been exceptional and independent for as long as anyone could remember. He started learning about venture capital in high school, and by the time he graduated from college, his personal net worth was already substantial. As for his love life, according to his daughter, to say his standards were sky-high would be an understatement.
Zhou Mochen turned around, his eyes a little cold. He smiled at his grandfather. "It's nothing like that. Let's go. We can eat first and then talk business."
Lunch box in hand, Xu Su was walking home. She stopped at the side of the road to wait to cross. A black Land Rover drove past. On the wide, empty avenue, it was moving quite slowly.
It was only after she crossed the street that she belatedly realized something. Zhou Mochen's car in Chang Province back in '05 had been a Land Rover, a black one. That car had taken her to and from school for over two years; the memory was deeply ingrained in her.
Then she laughed at herself for being paranoid. 'In a city as big as Chang City, there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of people driving Land Rovers. I'm just being overly nervous.'
'Based on the timeline, he's twenty-one right now, just graduated from college. He should be in Beijing at this time, since there's been no news of this old factory district being sold yet.'
She remembered that it would be next year when the old textile factory grounds, along with the other factories near the industrial zone and their dormitories, would all be acquired by him.
This huge plot of land was used to build a "Times Center Plaza." Three years later, when Xu Su graduated from high school, the initial framework was just barely visible. Ten years after that, the plaza would become a landmark building in Chang City, the most prosperous area in the entire city. Even the price of the subsidized apartment the Xu Family had received would skyrocket as a result.
And a project this massive was just an insignificant piece of his business empire.
***
「Time flew by, and soon it was August 10th.」
After a few days of sleeping on the sofa, Xu Su had gotten used to it. She would sleep soundly until six in the morning. By the time she had finished getting ready, Xu Weiping and his wife were just getting up.
Today, Chen Shulan was accompanying her to register for school. The textile factory was very busy, so Xu Weiping couldn't get away.
After breakfast, Chen Shulan gave her son a few instructions, and then the mother and daughter left with the things they had prepared.
The Old Industrial Zone wasn't far from City No.1 High School, and there was a direct bus route. The bus stop was about a hundred meters from the end of their alley.
In 2005, private cars weren't nearly as common as they would be a decade later. So, besides Xu Su, there were three other families at the bus stop who also looked like they were taking new high school students to register. She just didn't know which school they were going to.
Chen Shulan didn't know them and had no intention of saying hello. She pointed at the bus stop sign and said to Xu Su:
"Susu, remember that the bus to your school is the 528. It's written on the front of every bus. For now, you should take the bus to and from school. After a while, once you're familiar with the route, you can ride the family bicycle. That way you won't have to wait for the bus, and it'll be more convenient."
Xu Su nodded. She had traveled this route for three whole years; she couldn't be more familiar with it. It was a half-hour bike ride from the Old Industrial Zone to City No.1 High School, but the bus ride was only about ten minutes. It was indeed close.
Chen Shulan told her to take the bus for now, but she didn't realize that high school students had to be at school by six-thirty for morning reading. This meant that Xu Su, as a day student, would have to leave a little after six, before the earliest buses even started running.