sbdcsierra Chapter 744 I should have found Yangyang sooner
Chapter 744 I should have found Yangyang sooner
The boy glanced at Mingxiu, then his gaze slowly and stiffly fell on Lu Yangyang.
The sky was beginning to darken, and no lights had been hung under the eaves yet. Only the embers from the barbecue were still glowing faintly. Through this dim light, the young man gazed at Lu Yangyang with complicated emotions, but he did not take a step forward.
"Huh? Are you also my sister's family?" Mingxiu, who was about to walk over, noticed the boy who suddenly ran over. Looking at the somewhat familiar face, she turned her head to look at him curiously.
The appearances of the Sheng siblings are not difficult to distinguish. Although each has their own characteristics, they are at least four or five points similar. When they are separated, it may not be so obvious, but when they stand together, anyone can tell that they are a family.
Mingxiu had never heard that Lu Yangyang had a younger brother; she thought she only had two older brothers.
Lu Yangyang and Sheng Junyao also saw Sheng Junye. Sheng Junyao waved to Sheng Junye, "Xiao Wu, come here. When did you get back?"
Upon hearing Sheng Junyao's words, Sheng Junye subconsciously looked at Lu Yangyang, then nervously clenched his fist before slowly walking over.
When he stood before the two of them, Sheng Junye hesitated to look at Lu Yangyang. He had grown considerably taller in the past two years; at fourteen or fifteen, he was already slightly taller than Lu Yangyang. If he simply raised his eyes, he could meet hers.
"Big brother," Sheng Junye called softly, then opened his mouth, mustered up a lot of courage, and called out in a small voice, "Sister."
Lu Yangyang raised an eyebrow: "You called me?"
Sheng Junye's face, which had been pale with nervousness, suddenly turned bright red, and he lowered his head, no longer having the courage to raise it even slightly.
Then, as if making a decision, she took a step back, bent down abruptly, and said, "I'm sorry!"
"One apology is enough. It's not like I'm stupid. I don't need to repeat myself many times to remember something," Lu Yangyang said indifferently.
There wasn't really any grudge between her and Sheng Junye, let alone any resentment. When Sheng Junye first apologized to her, she made it very clear to him that she accepted his apology, but she never intended to forgive someone who didn't welcome her.
Sheng Junye fell silent. He looked up at Lu Yangyang with some embarrassment, then lowered his head again and whispered, "I... I don't necessarily need your forgiveness. I just... I just..."
He hadn't seen her for a long time, and thinking about the things that had happened in the past, he felt more and more that he had gone too far.
In the past two years, he has experienced a lot, so he can better understand his own ignorance back then, as well as the grievances Lu Yangyang suffered when she returned to the mansion. That's why he wanted to apologize to her. But in fact, he also knows that there was no affection between them to begin with, so his apology was somewhat superfluous.
He looked at her cautiously and said nervously, "I just... wanted to say hello to you."
"Yes, I received it." Lu Yangyang looked at him and nodded. "Long time no see."
Sheng Junye immediately perked up, "Long time no see!"
After the two finished greeting each other, Sheng Junyao asked him, "Have you eaten?"
Sheng Junye shook his head.
"Have someone get a set of bowls and chopsticks, let's go eat first," Sheng Junyao said.
"Oh, okay." Sheng Junye replied cheerfully, then turned and ran to find Jing Chao.
Lu Yangyang then asked Sheng Junyao, "When did he come to the Northwest?"
Lu Yangyang remembered that the last time she heard news about Sheng Junye was when she was still in Jiangnan. Her second brother told her that Sheng Junye had been injured and would no longer be able to practice martial arts. She never asked what happened to him after that.
“After he was injured, your second brother sent someone to bring him here,” Sheng Junyao explained briefly. “He was depressed for a long time and suffered a lot when he was thrown into the caravan before he slowly recovered. Later, he often went to the trade market to do odd jobs, and now he has set up his own stall and can support himself.”
"Self-sufficient?" Lu Yangyang looked at Sheng Junyao in surprise.
Sheng Junyao smiled faintly: "Yes, I haven't given him a single penny since he came to the Northwest."
Lu Yangyang was clearly a little surprised. "I thought he was young and you were all spoiling him!"
Sheng Junyao looked at her quietly for a moment, not in a hurry to speak, then beckoned Mingxiu over and told her about the matter he needed her help with. He then arranged for Mingxiu to be sent to Ye Chengfeng's place.
After settling Mingxiu in, Sheng Junyao personally fetched some wine and handed it to Lu Yangyang: "Have a drink with your elder brother too?"
Lu Yangyang looked at Sheng Junyao with a strange expression. She didn't expect that even her older brother would invite her for drinks after not seeing him for several years.
Lu Yangyang blinked, took it, and followed Sheng Junyao to the corridor where the lights were already on, where they sat down and looked at the training ground in the distance.
The two clinked glasses and drank two cups before Sheng Junyao spoke, "After Xiao Wu came to the Northwest, he told me a lot of things, including how he helped Sheng Yunzhu bully you after you returned to the capital."
Lu Yangyang gave a soft "tsk," "They can't beat me."
She beat him up quite a few times.
Sheng Junyao looked at her gently: "It wasn't just him, but also Father, Mother, Grandmother, Second Brother, and everyone in the entire Sheng State Duke's Mansion. How they all helped Sheng Yunzhu bully you. When I returned to the manor before, what I learned was only the surface. During that time, it was clearly you who suffered injustice."
Lu Yangyang was slightly taken aback. She hadn't remembered these things for a long time. After having that dream, she was filled with grievances and confusion. So after returning to the Duke's Mansion, in order not to repeat the fate in her dream, she treated everyone equally. But it wasn't that she didn't need family affection. She also wanted to know what real family was like.
It was the first time she had been treated fairly by the so-called family after her elder brother returned home, and the first time someone had openly shared her grievances and stood up for her regarding the so-called true and false heiress issue.
That was the first time she had a family.
"Xiao Wu cried his heart out, asking me why he was always the one being ignored. He knew he was neither good at academics nor martial arts, and he couldn't gain his father's approval. He was even less academically gifted than his fourth brother, who was born out of wedlock. So he dared not have any expectations of his father. He only hoped that his mother would notice him. But unfortunately, his mother was in poor health when he was born, and then Yunzhu was brought back. His mother was filled with guilt towards Yunzhu and couldn't care less about him. He grew up with maids and servants. Whenever he wanted to get closer to his mother, he could only watch as his mother was closer to Yunzhu. He asked the people around him, and they told him that because Yunzhu was a girl, girls were naturally closer to their mothers, and he was a boy and had to give way to his sister. So he began to intentionally or unintentionally try to please Yunzhu, hoping to get closer to his mother and receive some praise from her."
"Even though he was injured, he still wanted to go to Jiangnan with his mother, but his second brother secretly sent him to the Northwest. He wanted me to take him back to Jiangnan to find his mother, but every time the time came to leave, he would hesitate. So during that period, he was depressed on and off. He felt that he had let you down and had done something wrong, but he also felt wronged. Why could he never get what he wanted?"
“I made him forget his identity as the young master of the Duke of Sheng’s mansion and go out to make a living on his own. How much effort and how much hardship does a boy with no strength have to put in to survive in this world?”
"When he was cheated out of all the money he earned in a day, when he was starving and ashamed, waiting for handouts, when he was robbed and almost lost all his goods, even his life, when he was covered in blisters from working on a single order, I asked him when he came back, 'Are you wronged?' He never said a word of grievance again. He only asked me, 'How did you survive when things were so hard?'"
"He only started suffering this hardship at the age of thirteen, and it was still so difficult for him. You were abandoned in the countryside by Sheng Yunzhu's relatives when you were three years old. What hardships did you endure to survive? That was the first time he truly realized what what they did to you meant. They were helping their enemy to hurt you. How can an apology erase all of this? It's not that he can be forgiven for his innocent mistakes when he was young. If he truly wants your forgiveness, he will find a way to make amends."
“So Yangyang,” Sheng Junyao said calmly, “you don’t need to forgive anyone. No matter how much time has passed, you can choose according to your own heart. Not all emotions have to have a perfect reconciliation in the end.”
Lu Yangyang blinked, then blinked again, her eyes slowly welling up with tears, but the corners of her lips slowly turned up, revealing an extremely bright smile, "Does that include Big Brother too?"
Sheng Junyao nodded slightly, "Yes, including me."
Lu Yangyang also hummed in agreement, "Big brother should have found me sooner."
"Yes, I should have found Yangyang sooner."