My Idol Turns Out To Be My Ex-Girlfriend - Chapter 9

“Ahhh!!! Help! Our girl is so good to her fans! Someone just said they wanted to see her face, and she actually showed it immediately!!!!”

“What a lucky day! She finally revealed her true face! She looks like such a boss!”

“Oh my god! She draws so well, her voice is so lovely, and she’s this beautiful? I’m losing it. That’s it, I’m her loyal follower for life!”

“Where are those people who were talking trash about her looks earlier? Come out and say something! Don’t play dead now!”

“Gosh, she has the face of a true artist! Nobody told me the real-life Tang Hengzhi looked like this! She looks like a literal oil painting. Mom, I believe in love again.”

And so, Lin Sanyuan once again proved with cold, hard facts that one moment of being an extrovert can lead to a lifetime of being an introvert.

Even when she spoke through a screen online, trying to fit into the group, she ultimately ended up feeling socially mortified by her own wishful thinking.

Even worse, her social death occurred in a corner known to no one else, visible only to her.

How lonely.

Suddenly, everything felt dull and uninteresting.

Perhaps entering “sage mode,” Lin Sanyuan suddenly lost the urge to study.

The second before she closed the livestream, Autumn Wind’s unique, soft, and low voice echoed from her phone once more.

“Goodnight…”

Lin Sanyuan: “…”

What a strange livestream.

It hadn’t even been thirty minutes since it started, so why was she saying goodnight already?

It was as if she knew Lin Sanyuan was about to leave.

See, there she went again, being narcissistic.

Before her brain could fully process the thought, there was a click as the front door lock was turned with a key.

Qiao Lian was back from her evening self-study session.

Lin Sanyuan, wearing her little grey chicken slippers, padded down from the bed and hurried to the kitchen to cook noodles.

“You’re back! Are you hungry? I’m making two portions, do you want a poached egg?”

Qiao Lian entered the room and changed her slippers. She was dragging a suitcase behind her, looking like she had brought all her clothes from the school dormitory.

“Just a few noodles, no egg, but add some chopped green onions,” Qiao Lian said, not seeming to bother with polite formalities.

Two bowls of noodles were ready quickly. Lin Sanyuan took a sip of the broth and asked, “What time does your school usually finish evening study?”

Qiao Lian seemed to be home quite early.

“Nine-thirty.” As expected, she had come back ahead of time.

Lin Sanyuan frowned, thinking this kid really must not like studying.

However, she didn’t say anything. Everyone has their own path, and who was to say a child who doesn’t like studying isn’t a good person?

At the very least, she was keeping her promise and staying away from bars.

After Qiao Lian finished her noodles, she waited for Lin Sanyuan to finish and naturally prepared to take the bowls to the kitchen.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Just leave it to me,” Lin Sanyuan stopped her and began tidying up herself.

Qiao Lian raised an eyebrow. “You’re sick.”

“I’m much better. Besides, you don’t rinse the dish soap off properly. Eating that is bad for your health. Looking at you, I bet you don’t do much housework at home, do you?”

Watching her busy back, Qiao Lian gave a soft “mm” in response. “Usually when I’m home, my younger sister does all the chores.”

“Your sister?”

“Stepsister.”

Lin Sanyuan understood. “Then your sister is quite sensible.”

“She is sensible,” Qiao Lian smiled, “she just doesn’t like me very much.”

“Huh?” Washing two bowls didn’t take long. Lin Sanyuan shook the water off her hands and prepared a bowl of brown sugar water with poached eggs.

Leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, Qiao Lian watched her. “Are all people who stay home to write novels and draw comics as naive as you?”

Damn it!

She was trying to comfort the kid, and the kid turned around to mock her.

Lin Sanyuan rolled her eyes hard. “I think your sister is right. She should dislike you.”

Qiao Lian stirred the eggs in the brown sugar water with a spoon and sighed. “I don’t like eggs.”

“A kid staying in someone else’s house doesn’t have the right to be a picky eater. Eat it,” Lin Sanyuan said, not wanting to waste it, even though she didn’t like them much either.

Qiao Lian sighed again but eventually finished the eggs.

After finishing the brown sugar water, she took three hundred yuan out of her small bag, placed it on the coffee table, and weighed it down with a cup.

“What’s this for?” Lin Sanyuan asked.

Qiao Lian replied, “Accommodation fee.”

“I don’t need that. It really doesn’t cost much. You don’t need to give me your allowance, keep it for yourself.”

“It’s not allowance. My stepfather is disabled, and I rarely ask him for money. This is income I earned from a part-time job at school, it’s all for you.”

Lu Wanghai’s night stall didn’t make much money, and covering Lu Xi’s tuition and daily expenses was already a tight squeeze.

Although her biological father sent Lu Wanghai her allowance every month on time, Lu Wanghai’s follow-up treatment costs were also a massive expense.

Lin Sanyuan looked at her with a strange expression. “Is high school so competitive now? You can even take part-time jobs? You earned three hundred yuan in one afternoon?!”

Qiao Lian glanced at her. “Yeah, just helping the school with some programming work, maintaining the school network’s backend and management system.”

In reality, if she were in university, these opportunities to make quick cash through part-time gigs would be even more widespread. The pay might be slightly lower than market price, but it wouldn’t be too ridiculous.

For the work she did this afternoon, the school would have had to pay over two thousand yuan if they had hired outside professionals.

Three hundred yuan was essentially dirt-cheap labor.

But Qiao Lian didn’t care, she needed the money now.

Lin Sanyuan found it hard to believe. A problem girl who didn’t like school was actually a programmer? Was she just a student with a specific talent?

“Speaking of which, if your stepfather is so poor, why don’t you ask your father for money?”

The smile on Qiao Lian’s face slowly faded. She tilted her eyes upward, her gaze turning cold and indifferent. “Why should I ask him for money?”

See? Rebellious teenagers are all the same.

It was a classic case of reading too many melodramatic web novels.

Once parents divorce, they start feeling special and lonely. These kids are usually experts at faking strength, acting like they’re ready to face the storms of the world alone.

Lin Sanyuan tapped her finger on the coffee table. “Give your dad a call.”

For the first time since moving in, Qiao Lian showed genuine anger. “Why should I call him? Stop treating me like a child.”

Lin Sanyuan said expressionlessly, “I’ll tell you why. My brain was fried from the fever, and I only just realized I should have made you call. Otherwise, what if they sue me for kidnapping a minor?”

Qiao Lian froze, then laughed in frustration. “I’m eighteen. I’m not a minor, and I’m well past the age of being a ‘dutiful daughter’.”

Lin Sanyuan rubbed her forehead. “So, the main issue in your parents’ divorce was your father?”

Qiao Lian gave her a strange look.

So she wasn’t completely naive.

“Yeah, he cheated.”

Lin Sanyuan’s expression remained calm. “Oh, I see. Then shouldn’t you be even more inclined to call him and ask for money?”

“Wait… what?” Qiao Lian was completely caught off guard.

“Are you stupid? He has money to cheat, but no money to raise his wife and child? Why are you trying to act all tough here? If you don’t take anything, are you just waiting to leave it all for his mistress and illegitimate kids?”

Lin Sanyuan said earnestly, “You think your life is miserable right now, being bullied at school, getting picked on, and having pockets emptier than your face. You probably think you’re some tragic heroine in a romance novel.”

Qiao Lian pursed her lips, her gaze resentful.

Lin Sanyuan clicked her tongue. “In my view, that’s just being foolish, like choosing to walk uphill for no reason. You hate your old man for cheating, but it’s not like you can actually pull the plug on his oxygen when he’s old. You’ll be lucky if you aren’t stuck cleaning up after him.

You think that by not taking his money now while he’s not raising you, you’ll be free from the responsibility of taking care of him when you grow up?

That’s pure nonsense. People get more ‘sensible’ as they get older. If you can cross your heart and guarantee that when he’s old, sick, and miserable, you can stand by and watch him die without lifting a finger, then sure, there’s no need to call him.

But if you can’t do that, then why wouldn’t you let him support you now? It’s his responsibility, and it’s your right to enjoy it.”

Qiao Lian had imagined a thousand ways she might be lectured, but she never expected the advice to be so… down to earth.

She lowered her head, picking at her fingers. “I take back what I said earlier.”

“What?”

“You’re nothing like my mom.”

“I’ve never even had a kid, how could I have ‘mom vibes’ at twenty-four?”

Qiao Lian kept bringing up the “mom” thing, making Lin Sanyuan feel like she was radiating “old auntie” energy.

Qiao Lian looked up and shot her a glance. “You’re like my great-grandmother.”

The vibrant, sharp-tongued kind of great-grandmother.

If she were holding a disposable plastic cup of old tea right now, sipping it while chewing the tea leaves and lecturing her, the image would be perfect.

“Holy crap, can we not have a normal conversation?”

The subtle gloom in Qiao Lian’s expression dissipated slightly. She took out her phone and toyed with it.

It looked like she was actually planning to be obedient and make the call.

Lin Sanyuan’s eyes lit up with anticipation. “When you call, can you put it on speaker? I want to hear.”

Qiao Lian glanced at her again.

“Hear what? My dad’s voice? You’re so interested in him, you’re not thinking of becoming my stepmother, are you?”

In her memory, there had been plenty of women throughout her life who wanted to be her stepmother.

“No, are you crazy? I’m a young woman in the prime of her life. Why would I go for some divorced old man with a kid? What would I even see in him? His age? The fact that he doesn’t shower? I can find someone handsome and young!”

Looking at the bristling Lin Sanyuan, Qiao Lian realized she didn’t seem to know anything about her father’s background.

Qiao Lian curled her lips, a mysterious smile in her eyes as she looked at her, her voice trailing off playfully.

“Oh, so you’re still a ‘young woman in her prime’, huh?”

Seriously, you’re only eighteen, how do you already know how to make suggestive jokes with just your eyes?

Lin Sanyuan felt a bit of a breakdown coming on. “What, is that against the law?”

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