Chapter 25: The Orphanage Past

Guo Qiantang’s eyes gradually dimmed.

It must have been her sister checking her phone. Her sister hated men, and they had both grown up in the orphanage.

The orphanage had a stifling, oppressive atmosphere, far from the sunny image often portrayed in dramas.

Children there were not abandoned simply due to family misfortune. Many were discarded because of disabilities or innate conditions.

Qiantang still remembered the row of small rooms at the southern end of the orphanage, filled with children of unusual appearances.

Many of the physically disabled children were permanent residents of these rooms. Some required constant medication to sustain life, others had severe skin conditions that prevented them from leaving their rooms.

The orphanage director often encouraged other children to visit these rooms, thinking it would teach them compassion and warmth. But it rarely had that effect. The children longed for parents.

Healthy children, seeing those in the infirmary, questioned why they too had been abandoned.

“Why me? I’m healthy, I’m strong—why am I discarded like them?”

This fear spread quickly among the children. Though the director noticed and organized lessons to quell the panic, the seed of anxiety had already been sown.

Relationships among the children began to sour. Combined with the orphanage’s financial struggles…

Guo Qiantang lived in constant fear—until Guo Jinshu appeared.

One night, during another round of bullying, Qiantang was chosen as the target.

She was unlucky—but also lucky. A heavy stone struck her head, knocking her unconscious. The bullies fled at the sight of blood, leaving her alone.

Several hours later, a night-shift caretaker found her and rushed her to the hospital. Thanks to public donations, she survived.

Hospital food was plentiful and nutritious, something she had never known. She would even ask for an extra bun, keeping it on her bedside in case she grew hungry. But her classmates would often take it. She was terrified of hunger.

The repeated disappearance of these buns became Qiantang’s first clue to the existence of another personality.

Through the nurses’ and director’s accounts, she gradually learned about the other self.

This self was clever, quick-witted, and never avoided problems—traits Qiantang admired.

“If it were her, I’d never go hungry again… I’d never be bullied again…”

Qiantang asked the nurse for paper and pen. She and the other self became pen pals, communicating through simple drawings and notes. They shared the same brain and could perfectly understand each other’s intentions, even through what looked like scribbles.

She treated the other self as a younger sister. During her short hospital stay, they gradually got to know one another.

Eventually, Qiantang was discharged.

Returning to the orphanage, she no longer faced hunger. She began sharing daytime with her other self.

Those who bullied her in the morning would face retribution in the afternoon, administered by her sister. Whenever Qiantang woke, there was always something good to eat nearby. She realized her sister might be even better suited for surviving the orphanage than she was.

As days passed, the orphanage’s financial situation improved. They hired some teachers to instruct the children in literacy.

Qiantang was placed in the Apple Class. Each child had a fixed seat and a regular desk partner.

Qiantang was quiet, rarely speaking to her desk mate. Yet he grew more lively day by day, celebrating even the smallest sound from her.

She had assumed her coldness would suppress his enthusiasm, but the opposite happened.

One night, waking on the orphanage’s grass, she saw her desk mate snoring not far away.

Everything was clear.

Qiantang was not unintelligent. Few children would show such warmth to a stoic stone.

Her sister had taught her friend, and Qiantang realized the truth: her sister was simply more adept, more suited to the world.

This overwhelming sense of inadequacy compressed her waking hours. From once sharing the day evenly with her sister, she found herself almost entirely overshadowed, her own time steadily shrinking.