Yu Yi paused, remembering this was the second day after Guan Yue’s injury. Although Guan Yue had said he would leave the next day, it would be inappropriate to rush him out so early in the morning. She nodded, “Okay.”
After breakfast in the main courtyard, Meng Qing received a message from Lin Bai and left the main courtyard.
Yu Yi sat chatting with her sisters, but her thoughts kept drifting. She wondered whether she should change the past. She had the ability to change the past and save her father and brothers, but how could she easily give up this opportunity?
However, saving them would mean her own disappearance, an idea equivalent to suicide that made her shudder. Before meeting Meng Qing, she might have unhesitatingly decided to sacrifice herself to save her father and brothers’ lives, as she was then lifeless. But now… she was reluctant!
She wanted to spend every day and year with him, to stay together until old age. But…
Yu Yi hesitated and stood up to find her mother in the inner courtyard, hoping to gain clarity through their conversation.
As she approached her mother’s room with the door slightly ajar, she heard suppressed crying from inside.
She was stunned. After redeeming all her sisters, her mother had appeared content seeing them safe. Since moving to Xiye Villa, her mother had always seemed happy. Yu Yi had never seen her mother cry, yet here she was, secretly grieving.
Peering through the partially open door, she saw her mother covering her face with a handkerchief, her head slightly lowered, revealing numerous white hairs at her temples and forehead. She was not yet forty. Yu Yi remembered the mother she saw at the Lantern Festival, with beautiful black hair, smiling at her husband, surrounded by her children – and now, barely two years later, she had become this sorrowful, aged woman.
How could her mother bear to forget her father? She could never forget their past, those harmonious days together as a family.
Yu Yi stood at the doorway, unable to enter. She stared blankly at her mother’s muffled crying, her body trembling. She now felt her previous desire to protect her own happiness was too selfish.
She painfully closed her eyes, slightly raising her chin, making a decision in her heart.
Yu Yi walked out of the inner courtyard.
