"Sister..." Lu Lei whispered into Lu Rong’s ear, "Didn’t you used to like Lin Xiaoguai’s lover? Now that she’s so prominent, do you want me to give her a piece of my mind?"
Looking at her sister’s smug expression, she suddenly wondered if she had once appeared the same way in others’ eyes.
Through repeated setbacks and humiliations, when she had finally seen reality, she had asked her mother—
"Why didn’t you ever teach me? Why didn’t you scold or beat me when I was wrong? Why did you just watch me make mistakes, watch me embarrass myself? You are my mother, aren’t you?"
"You realize your mistakes now, don’t you?"
"But you could have prevented these mistakes if you had told me right from wrong from the beginning."
Lu Rong thought she would never forget her mother’s expression at that time, a mix of disgust, mockery, and... relief.
"You and your sister aren’t like me; you don’t have a clever mind. You’re just like that man, always so full of yourselves. Especially you, always persisting with your fearless self and selfishness. I’d rather have you be foolish, make minor mistakes, lose face, than be falsely wise your whole life but make a catastrophic error. In life, it’s inevitable to get hurt. I’d rather have you stumble along than always be safe and eventually end up with irreparable damage. No way back."
"Minor evils cause minor pains, major evils take lives."
Lu Rong wasn’t sure if she should agree with her mother’s words, but she didn’t want to see her sister continue this way.
"Leilei, stop ambushing people, stop throwing paint on others’ doors, stop scratching people’s faces with your long nails. All these things you think make you look good, stop doing them from now on."
Since childhood, she and her sister believed that making others suffer was a matter of pride, a way of teaching them a lesson.
That’s why she liked stealing, and her sister liked physical fights.
Even when people accused them of being uncultured, they didn’t care because they had even nastier words to hurl back, all manner of foul language at their disposal.
But it wasn’t until she had lived in the Guo Family for a few years that she realized how wrong she had been.
Because she was unscrupulous, her in-laws didn’t like her. Even if her husband had affairs, they wouldn’t speak up for her. Even her son, burdened by her reputation, was doubted by them. Every time she argued with Guo Xingye, even though he was at fault, his words, "You’re both a bastard and a thief-wife. Marrying you was only out of consideration for the Yu Family. Talentless, unattractive, and unvirtuous, do you expect me to devote myself to you, an ugly woman?" would cut her deeply.
Before, when people called her a bastard, a thief, she didn’t care. But the embarrassment after gaining clarity was exponentially worse.
Moreover, when Guo Xingye’s mistress bore a son, the in-laws cared more for that child than for her. She made a fuss, and they blatantly said the mistress was educated and well-mannered, certainly raising a good child.
Being the legal wife, she initially could have lambasted that woman, but who was she kidding? She was a bastard herself, and her mother, like that woman, was another’s mistress as well.
In her agonizing moments, her mother finally intervened to help her. As long as the Yu Family didn’t ignore her like before, the Guo Family dared not mistreat her as they once had.
This was her life, her only hope now for her son to live with dignity.
But for her sister, she didn’t want her to follow the same path.
She didn’t know whether her mother’s words were right or wrong, but fortunately, she had also said, compared to herself, her sister was smarter and more self-aware. And she usually listened to her advice, so she hoped her effort wasn’t wasted.
"Why?" Luo Lei, displeased, responded. She widened her eyes and said to Lu Rong, "Sister, didn’t you say Lin Xiaoguai offended you? If it weren’t for her, you wouldn’t have been expelled from Capital University."
Lu Rong shook her head. Offended? Now that she thought about it, Lin Xiaoguai was quite polite to her; had she really wanted to ruin her, it would have been more than just an expulsion.
In the end, she had brought it upon herself.
But to like her, that was impossible. As a woman destined to be unhappy later in life, Lin Xiaoguai’s prosperous life was easily enviable.