After these words, the woman never appeared again. In her memory, only her sweat-dampened back disappearing into the crowd remained.
Strange and cold crowds moved before her eyes. Loneliness and fear engulfed her as the crowd surged. She wanted to find that woman, but the street was filled with unfamiliar faces.
She waited, until the scorching white day faded into darkness and the crowds gradually dispersed. The woman still hadn’t come. The night breeze blew away the day’s heat, but she still felt hot, as if burning inside. The scene grew increasingly blurry, with darkness surrounding her, gently embracing her descent into endless night…
When she awoke, she had drifted through pale, nauseating hospitals, police stations filled with officers, noisy aid stations, and finally, a dilapidated welfare institution.
Adults always asked her many questions, but she only looked at them with anxious eyes, not knowing how to respond. Eventually, they stopped asking and left her alone in a corner of the dark room.
From that moment, she no longer wanted to touch sunlight, as that piercing brightness made her uneasy, and she feared the clamor that reminded her of the panic of being abandoned.
She understood she had been abandoned by that woman with the sweat-dampened back, leaving her a child without a home.
On that sunny day, a strange woman arrived at the welfare institution. Unlike other children who crowded around her, hoping to be adopted, she stood quietly in the shade, counting falling leaves.
When a high-heeled shoe crushed a leaf, she looked up at the woman towering above. The stranger’s smile was fake, her heavily made-up eyes radiating indifference. This was her only impression of that woman.
Amid the envious gazes of other children, she was taken away by this strange woman, stepping into Hong Kong’s wealthy elite society and entering a fairy-tale-like upper-class world.
She was like a magically transformed Cinderella, becoming a princess of noble lineage overnight.
That woman was Liu Qiusi, who gained a new identity as Tong Yixuan, daughter and second-in-line heir of Tong Baichuan, head of Tong International Group. Liu Qiusi was Tong Baichuan’s second wife, having previously been a marginalized mistress. After a tragic accident claimed the lives of Baichuan’s first wife and son, Liu Qiusi was elevated to the principal wife.
