I Got Together With My Mom's Nemesis - Chapter 8

Kong Lingyi didn’t scold her like Ran Xu did, nor did she worry about her like the grandmother next door.

The woman merely glanced at her insincere tears and skillfully ignored them.

“You might as well just scold me,” Ran Xi said. She didn’t know why she felt guilty. It was true that she shouldn’t have woken Kong Lingyi in the middle of the night to bring her to the police station.

In the past, whenever she got into trouble, she had remained defiant. After all, the one with nothing to lose has nothing to fear. No one ever took her side anyway. If pushed too far, she could always find a skyscraper to jump off of.

But Kong Lingyi was different. She had received good things from this woman, and if she angered her, she would probably lose them all.

Humans are greedy. Just as she was about to die of thirst in the desert, Kong Lingyi had handed her a glass of water. It was warm and comforting, soaking straight into her heart.

She wanted a second glass, a third, and even dreamed of sharing the sweet nectar with the woman.

“Would scolding you stop you from doing it again?” Kong Lingyi’s voice was soft. “If that worked, you would have become ‘that perfect child’ long ago.”

Ran Xi followed the woman’s gaze to the ground, but there was nothing there. Just as she couldn’t read the woman’s thoughts, she couldn’t find any meaning in the empty space.

She lowered her head, her expression blank. She suddenly realized that Kong Lingyi was nothing like the person Ran Xu had described.

A few minutes later, Li Meimei’s parents arrived to pick her up.

As Ran Xi’s guardian, Kong Lingyi gave them a brief, polite greeting. Her gaze then shifted to Li Meimei’s disheveled hair. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

Ran Xi froze. Suddenly, her nose stung with unshed tears. She shook her head and sat down, falling silent for a long time.

“What’s with the crying?” Kong Lingyi asked with a faint smile.

“I know crying won’t solve anything. I’m just angry. I’m angry at myself for being so useless.”

Why didn’t I just kill that man with the rock? Ran Xi thought.

“As long as you understand. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have called me in the middle of the night.”

Ran Xi’s guilt vanished in an instant, as if the woman’s earlier concern had been nothing but a hallucination.

“Do you always talk to children this cruelly?” Ran Xi wiped her tears with her sleeve. “Do you speak to Songsong like this too?”

“This is different.”

“How is it different?” Ran Xi grumbled. “I’m an adult with the mind of a two-year-old!”

Kong Lingyi refused to engage in her nonsense. She checked the time, feeling a wave of exhaustion wash over her. The girl’s chatter was giving her a headache.

“I’m injured,” Ran Xi declared.

The woman looked at her.

“Right here,” Ran Xi pointed to her heart. “Your harsh words stabbed me!”

Kong Lingyi looked away and closed her eyes to rest.

Ten minutes later, the man finally returned from his medical examination, his forehead wrapped in gauze.

The police officer called the three of them into the room and asked if they wanted to reach a settlement.

The man glanced at Kong Lingyi’s attire and said, “Besides medical expenses, I’m also claiming for mental distress and lost wages…”

The officer interrupted him. “Just give us a number.”

“Fifty thousand yuan, and I’ll act like nothing ever happened today.”

“Fifty thousand? You’ve got to be kidding me!” Ran Xi’s anger flared up again.

The officer advised her, “Young lady, there’s no need to get so worked up. We can discuss this calmly.”

Kong Lingyi shot the man a cold glare. “We won’t settle. Let’s just go straight to court.”

She continued, “I’ve seen the surveillance footage. We both know whether my daughter actually hit you or not. Once the trial is over and the verdict is in, I’ll pay you every cent if the court orders it. But if you’re just trying to extort us, I will hire a professional lawyer to handle this. I hope you’ll be just as confident in your lies when you’re testifying in court.”

“That’s right! We’re not settling!” Ran Xi’s lips curled into a smirk, her eyes now filled with defiance and provocation as she glared at the man.

The man’s expression shifted, and he fell silent for a long moment.

Kong Lingyi rubbed her temples. “As her mother, I can’t just stand by and let my daughter be bullied.”

Hearing this, Ran Xi rubbed her head against the woman’s arm and whispered, “You’re the best, Mom.”

“Fine, fine…” the man relented. “I’ll just consider myself unlucky today.”

“You still have to pay the thirty-seven yuan!” Ran Xi reminded him. “I already gave you the cigarettes! You even tore them open! You haven’t paid for them yet! If you don’t, my boss will deduct it from my salary again!”

Kong Lingyi turned her head and narrowed one eye, finding the young girl’s chatter utterly grating.

The police stepped in to mediate, eventually making the man pay for the cigarettes. Both parties then signed a settlement agreement.

The whole ordeal dragged on until past two in the morning. When Ran Xi finally walked out of the police station, she was beaming with joy.

Seeing Kong Lingyi walking toward her car without looking back, Ran Xi hurried after her. But when she tried to open the passenger door, she found it locked.

“Hey!” Ran Xi’s smile vanished as she knocked on Kong Lingyi’s window.

The woman rolled down the window halfway, her voice laced with clear irritation. “I’ve already helped you settle everything. What else do you want?”

“You… you won’t let me go home with you…” Ran Xi forced a sheepish smile. “I know it was my fault for troubling you today.”

“Then you should learn from your mistake right now and stop bothering me.”

Kong Lingyi only replied to the second half of her sentence. Now that Ran Xi was too embarrassed to repeat her request to go home, the conversation ended there.

Of all the times they had met recently, this was the harshest thing Ran Xi had ever heard her say.

She stood there, lost and unsure of what to do. Seeing that the car hadn’t driven off yet, she assumed she was blocking the way and took a few steps back.

Biting her lip and tugging at her sleeve, she put on a display that would make anyone’s heart ache.

But the car engine roared, and the woman drove away without a backward glance.

Ran Xi found a nearby bench and sat down, staring blankly into space. She felt like she should be sad.

When Ran Xu had kicked her out on New Year’s Day, she had only felt angry. But now that Kong Lingyi had refused to let her in the car, she felt a genuine pang of heartbreak.

Just moments ago at the police station, they had been playing the part of a mother and daughter. Now, Kong Lingyi had heartlessly told her to get lost.

What was this?

It felt like a sudden cliff-edge end to a relationship. Ran Xi was utterly devastated, her emotions choking her throat with a dry, bitter ache.

Her pride was wounded. She had never been bullied like this in her entire life.

People like her, who were bold and confident, usually only faced whispers behind their backs. Being openly humiliated like this was unheard of.

Ran Xi wiped away her tears. The cold wind bit at her cheeks, stinging like needles.

“Kong Lingyi! How dare you play me!” she screamed into the empty air, her chest feeling tight with frustration.

The only response was the occasional honk of a horn from the distant main road.

Playing the victim hadn’t worked. Getting angry hadn’t worked either. Ran Xi even felt that if it weren’t for her connection to Ran Xu, Kong Lingyi wouldn’t have spared her a second glance that night in seventh grade.

It was like an ant finding a crumb dropped by someone eating bread. The ant treats the food as a gift.

She was just a pitiful ant, eating crumbs of a two-thousand-yuan loaf.

Kong Lingyi had pinched her in her hand, watched her struggle, laughed a few times, and then tossed her back onto the ground.

Do you think you’re a god? Just playing with people’s emotions like that.

“You’re just an old woman, yet you dare take advantage of me!” Ran Xi couldn’t stop her tears. “Believe it or not, I’ll go to the police and expose you. You’re not my mother at all!”

She stood up and stomped forward. “You just had to take me home! Do you think two thousand yuan is a lot of money?”

“You’re just as hateful as my mom said you were!”

When Ran Shuang was on her sickbed, she had warned Ran Xu. Ran Xi had been only twelve at the time. Although she didn’t know much about the old days, she had tried to remember every word Ran Shuang said.

“Why hold onto things from our student days? We’re adults now.”

“The fact that the three of us went to the same school from elementary all the way through college is actually a special kind of fate.”

Kong Lingyi used to love teasing people, especially someone like Ran Xu, who was both stubborn and fiercely proud.

Back in the school cafeteria, whenever the mood struck her, Kong Lingyi would sit right across from the young couple. She’d watch their “romantic movie” and comment, “This is the perfect side dish for my meal!”

The school’s honor roll listed arts and sciences side by side, with the top students in the center and the rest branching out.

On the left was Ran Shuang, the top arts student. On the right were Kong Lingyi and Ran Xu, the top two science students.

In a group of three, there’s always a third wheel. Kong Lingyi often found herself in that role, whether by choice or by chance, shining like a bright, unwanted light.

When Ran Xi was little, she thought being teased meant a classmate pulling her braids from behind in class. Only now did she realize the true extent of this woman’s mischief.

The angrier you got, the happier she became.

But if you took it seriously, she’d lose interest.

“Kong Lingyi! Don’t let me see you again, or I’ll…”

Ran Xi stopped herself mid-sentence as she spotted the woman on the sidewalk ahead.

“Or what?” Kong Lingyi shot her a sidelong glance.

Ran Xi touched her face, looking up at the sky and then down at the ground. Finally, she coughed casually and tried to walk past as if nothing had happened.

But the next second, the woman stepped aside and blocked her path.

Ran Xi looked up at her with an innocent smile. “What a coincidence. You’re out for a stroll at two in the morning too?”

“Yes. Want to walk together?” Kong Lingyi offered a sincere invitation.

“…What are you playing at?” Ran Xi muttered, staring intently at the woman’s face, trying to read any other emotion.

But Kong Lingyi just looked back at her earnestly, all traces of her earlier angry departure gone.

“Don’t you have work tomorrow?”

“I do.”

“Then why are you wasting your time here?”

“I saw a stray pet dog on the street and wondered if its owner was worried. So I wanted to see if the little dog wanted to come home with me first.”

Kong Lingyi picked a fallen leaf off Ran Xi’s shoulder, twirled the stem between her fingers, and then tossed it away. She patted the dust off Ran Xi’s clothes.

Ran Xi tried to correct the mistake in that sentence, but she couldn’t find the words to argue.

She was a pet dog, but she wasn’t much different from a stray anymore.

“I don’t have a master.”

Kong Lingyi first mirrored her slightly sad expression, then added, “Well, you could always find a new one.”

“Tch.” Ran Xi was still annoyed from earlier. “I hate people who lose their temper with me.”

“…Alright.” The woman trailed off, her voice a mix of apology and indulgence.

Her tone was so gentle it seemed like she would agree to anything Ran Xi said without hesitation.

“Stop using honorifics with me,” Kong Lingyi said, reaching out to pat Ran Xi’s head. “Was the Ran Xi I remembered always this polite?”

Don’t insult me like that!

Ran Xi’s way of addressing her changed instantly. She swiped the woman’s hand away, her anger vanishing quickly.

Kong Lingyi leaned down slightly, studying Ran Xi’s face under the dim streetlight. “Let me see. Are you smiling secretly?”

Ran Xi huffed, but her smile was now fully visible.

“There’s a box of chocolates in the car. Want to try some?”

Ran Xi licked her lips, too embarrassed to accept but unable to refuse.

So this was another way to tease someone.

If you’re truly angry, she’ll turn around and coax you back.

Ran Xi happily got into the car. Kong Lingyi answered a phone call first, finishing it hastily after ten minutes.

She looked at Ran Xi, whose face still held a bright smile. The girl was clutching the box of chocolates, having greedily eaten two already, her cheeks puffed out.

The woman’s lips curved into a smile.

Children are like that, she thought. If you just give them candy, they’ll keep asking for more.

But if you slap them first and then give them candy, they’ll come running back to you, wagging their tails.

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