She Adopted Me After My Biological Mother Passed Away - Chapter 1

I’m here to make you the happiest child in the world.

“Student Shi Shuxue, we need to confirm this with you once more. Your aunt has clearly stated that she is no longer suitable to continue as your guardian, and your biological father… is still unreachable. According to regulations, if no other relatives are willing to take over guardianship, the next step is for you to temporarily move to a welfare institution.”

The woman on the other end of the phone spoke with professional patience, though an unmistakable urgency was hidden between her words.

Shi Shuxue stood in the corner of a bathroom stall and cut her off expressionlessly.
“I’m not going.”

“This isn’t a matter of whether you want to or not.” The other party’s tone hardened. “Shi Shuxue, you are a minor, and your family situation is very special. You must have a guardian. That’s the rule.”

Shi Shuxue fell silent for a moment.

The class bell rang. As a second year high school student preparing for the college entrance exam, her breaks were rarely the full ten minutes prescribed. The sounds of classmates laughing and fooling around outside the stall gradually faded, and soon the entire restroom was empty except for her.

“I’m not going,” she said again, her voice softer but each word enunciated clearly. “I have somewhere to live.”

“What you call ‘having somewhere to live’ is skipping evening self-study every day to go back to an old house ten kilometers away to take care of your grandmother? Your grandmother’s caregiver also called today, saying you were still feeding her medicine at two in the morning, then got up again at five to cook porridge. That’s not something a high school student should be doing. Xiaoxue, if you keep this up, you’ll…”

Shi Shuxue tightened her grip on the phone.

Her grandmother had been ill for many years. The caregiver taking care of her had been hired by Shi Xianyu, and the expenses had always been paid by Shi Xianyu as well.

After Shi Xianyu died, her aunt began scheming over the little savings left behind. Under the pretext of cutting costs, she unilaterally reduced the hours the caregiver spent with her grandmother.

A wind had risen last night, and the window in her grandmother’s room hadn’t been closed properly. When Shi Shuxue heard the noise and went in, the old woman was sitting on the edge of the bed in a daze, clutching a photo of her, murmuring her mother’s name.

Shi Shuxue looked extremely similar to Shi Xianyu. Many people said the mother and daughter looked as if they’d been carved from the same mold. Ever since her grandmother developed Alzheimer’s, her eyes had grown increasingly cloudy, and she often called out Shi Xianyu’s name while looking at her.

But Shi Xianyu had always stayed connected to her mother’s life only through money, rarely showing up more than a few times a year. So most of the time, the slurred “Shi Xianyu” the old woman called out ended up falling on Shi Shuxue, the granddaughter.

Shi Shuxue helped her grandmother back into bed, tucked her in, boiled hot water, and fed her medicine. By the time everything was settled, dawn was already breaking, and she dozed off by the bedside for a short while. When the caregiver arrived in the morning, she was in the kitchen cooking millet porridge.

Steam drifted up from the pot. The caregiver sighed at the doorway and said, “Xiaoxue, you won’t be able to hold on like this.”

“I can,” Shi Shuxue said now, staring at the cold white tiles of the bathroom stall.

She leaned against the partition, feeling the chill seep into her back, as if it were draining the strength from her bones. “My family has a house. I can take care of my grandmother. The caregiver said she needs someone to make sure she takes her medicine on time, and someone to talk to her.”

The sound of pages flipping came from the other end of the line. After a while, Aunt Zhang’s voice softened. “Your mother, Ms. Shi Xianyu, left a notarized will naming a woman called Chi Yeyu as your guardian. We are trying to contact her now. If you have no objections…”

“Chi Yeyu?” Shi Shuxue had no impression of the name. But anyone designated by Shi Xianyu couldn’t possibly be a decent person, most likely one of her drinking and partying friends.

In her mind, she pictured two bad women with heavy smokey makeup and tattooed arms, facing each other in a haze of smoke, casually deciding the fate of a high school student in a few words. Shi Shuxue felt not the slightest bit of goodwill toward this stranger.

“If that’s the case, why didn’t you look for her to be my guardian from the beginning?” Shi Shuxue said coldly. “Most likely because she didn’t meet your standards, right? You determined she wasn’t suitable to be my guardian, and now you have no choice but to…”

Before she could finish, the door behind her was suddenly knocked on. The force was neither light nor heavy, carrying an undeniable sense of pressure.

“Shi Shuxue? Are you in there? What are you doing in the bathroom during class time?”

Shi Shuxue hung up the phone, decisively stuffed it into her uniform sleeve, and calmly pulled open the stall door, meeting her homeroom teacher’s gloomy face.

“I’m using the restroom,” she answered.

“Using the restroom?” the teacher asked. “Using the restroom and chatting so enthusiastically? Were you talking to a ghost just now?”

Shi Shuxue blinked and explained earnestly, “Teacher, kids our age are all very afraid of loneliness. If we can’t make good friends at school, we’ll invent an imaginary friend. Even though I look like the type who’s always alone, I don’t actually like being lonely either.”

Her appearance was extremely deceptive: snow-white skin, delicate features, like a doll displayed in a Christmas shop window. Beneath her neat bangs was a pair of pure, harmless black eyes.

Likeable top students always occupied the top of the school ecosystem’s food chain. Teachers tended to give them greater tolerance and special privileges.

Shi Shuxue didn’t think the homeroom teacher would make a big deal out of such a small mistake. She calmly met the teacher’s gaze and nodded. “I’ll go back to class.”

As she brushed past, Shi Shuxue secretly let out a breath of relief. Then suddenly, a pulling force from behind made her stumble backward.

She steadied herself in surprise and turned her head to look at the homeroom teacher, who had just grabbed the back of her collar.

“Wait, Shi Shuxue,” the teacher said, extending her hand. “Hand it over.”

Inside the long sleeves of her autumn uniform, the phone pressed warmly against her skin, vibrating faintly.

Shi Shuxue’s eyes widened slightly. She silently stared down the older woman for several seconds before resigning herself and handing over the phone.

“Come with me to the office.”

With the contraband confiscated, Shi Shuxue followed her out of the restroom.

It was class time. The corridor was empty. Slanted daylight cut through the windows at the far end, casting long strips of light across the terrazzo floor.

The class monitor stood by the window a few steps away, her left hand properly clasped behind her back, her right hand holding a vocabulary book. When she saw Shi Shuxue come out, her gaze lifted from the last line of words to her face.

She curved her eyes and smiled at Shi Shuxue.

In that instant, Shi Shuxue understood.

“There’s nothing for you here anymore. Why aren’t you back in the classroom?” the homeroom teacher asked.

The class monitor’s gaze still lingered on Shi Shuxue’s turned profile. She casually closed the vocabulary book. “I’m going back now. Exams are coming up, I can’t delay my studies.”

“You’re managing your time very tightly, but you don’t need to put so much pressure on yourself. If I remember correctly, you did quite well on the last monthly exam.” The homeroom teacher’s tone carried praise, with a pointed undertone. “Keep your mind on the right path. Maintain it.”

Shi Shuxue stared aimlessly out the window. The student on duty today had forgotten to close it. The late autumn wind slipped in, carrying the astringent scent of grass and trees. From the distant sports field came the blurred sound of a broadcast, shredded by the wind as it drifted over, perhaps some class was having PE.

Clouds drifted slowly across the sky. When they passed over the sharp roof of the teaching building, they seemed to take on a hint of ginkgo-leaf yellow.

So nice…

By the time she snapped out of it, the other two had finished talking. As the class monitor passed by her, she suddenly exclaimed “Ah!” The vocabulary book slipped from her hand and landed right by Shi Shuxue’s feet with a slap.

“Sorry.” The class monitor bent down to pick it up. As her hair brushed her shoulder, she whispered, “The teacher just asked me if I’d seen anyone bring a phone.”

W High was a boarding school with strict management. Electronic devices like phones were contraband. If you were caught, it meant a week of being sent home for reflection.

Shi Shuxue had been secretly carrying a phone to stay in touch with the caregiver, but she’d never used it in front of others. To report her at such a perfectly timed moment, the class monitor had really put in the effort.

In her usual calm voice, Shi Shuxue said something that sounded surprised: “You pay a lot of attention to me.”

The monitor’s smooth-covered book slipped from her hands again and fell back to the floor.

Shi Shuxue walked past her and headed straight for the office.

“Do you know why I called you in?” the homeroom teacher asked, sitting down behind her desk, her eyes fixed on Shi Shuxue.

There was disappointment in that gaze, confusion, and perhaps even some concern. The former top student of the grade now had attendance sheets filled with red circles over the past two weeks: late for morning reading, leaving evening self-study early, even being caught climbing over the wall this morning by the duty students.

“Because I brought a phone,” Shi Shuxue said.

The homeroom teacher let out a long sigh and opened a drawer to rummage through it. Shi Shuxue stood quietly by the desk, waiting for the teacher to approve her leave.

The class monitor had opened up a brand-new line of thought for her. She’d never considered using this method to get time off before. Now, she sincerely felt grateful for the week-long break the monitor had granted her.

The homeroom teacher slid over a sheet of printed paper. It wasn’t a disciplinary notice, but a screenshot from surveillance footage: at 5:30 a.m., a figure in a school uniform was jumping down from the back wall of the school, plastic grocery bags from the market in hand.

Shi Shuxue’s gaze paused on the image.

Her grandmother had been insisting on finding Shi Xianyu yesterday. Shi Shuxue rushed home, pretended to be her daughter, made breakfast in the morning, packed it into a thermal container for the caregiver to heat up at noon, and stopped by the market to buy scallions. When she hurried back to school, morning reading was just starting.

“Explain,” the homeroom teacher said.

“Scallions are cheaper at the market,” Shi Shuxue stated.

“That’s not what I’m asking!” The teacher frowned and tapped the desk with her pen cap. “Your boarding application hasn’t been withdrawn. School rules require boarding students to follow the schedule. Why were you outside the school at a market in the early morning?”

Shi Shuxue said nothing.

“And this.” The homeroom teacher handed her another sheet, her homework statistics. On her recent math papers, the number of red Xs had multiplied several times compared to before. “Something’s wrong with you, Shi Shuxue. If this continues, I’ll have to call your parent.”

She can’t be called, Shi Shuxue thought. If someone really managed to summon Shi Xianyu, that would be quite a feat.

The homeroom teacher grew angrier the more she looked at her defiant expression. Such a good seedling, how had she suddenly become so rebellious?

“Go home for a week to reflect. I’ll confiscate your phone for now. If you want it back, have your parent come get it.”

When Shi Shuxue left the office, it happened to be dismissal time. There was no evening self-study on Fridays. She went to the classroom to get her backpack, thinking as she walked about how to get her phone back.

The shadows of the plane trees on the east side of the corridor were inching southward. Sunlight filtered through the leaves into fine golden dust, falling on the mottled wall.

The words of the neighborhood committee aunt and the homeroom teacher echoed in her ears, parent, guardian… guardian. She needed a guardian.

Where could she find one?

W High covered a vast area. By the time she reached the school gate, dusk had settled in. The sky was dyed a heavy gray-blue.

Parents and cars picking up students crowded together in a ring. Horns and laughter mixed into a noisy tide.

Shi Shuxue kept her head down and squeezed through the gaps in the crowd. She hated noisy environments, they reminded her of her mother, who played in a band.

Finally breaking out of the center of the crowd, Shi Shuxue lifted her head and abruptly stopped.

She saw someone.

The person wore a black long coat, jeans tucked into knee-high boots that outlined a pair of long, straight legs. Her tall figure leaned casually against a black off-road vehicle, its body polished to a shine.

Instinct told Shi Shuxue that this person was waiting for her.

The woman had been looking down at her phone, several metal rings on her fingers tapping against the screen with crisp sounds.

Then, sensing Shi Shuxue’s gaze, she lifted her head. A pair of upturned, cold eyes glanced over.

Shi Shuxue’s heart skipped a beat.

She had deep blue hair, the ends messy and wild against her neck. As she raised her head, her hair brushed past a row of silver earrings along her ear. Her features were sharp and striking, her aura both cool and beautiful.

The woman seemed to raise an eyebrow, put away her phone, and walked toward her. Her steps were light, her legs long, and she carried herself with style.

She really was coming for her.

Shi Shuxue had the urge to turn around and run. Only one possibility came to mind.

The woman stopped in front of her and looked down at her. Her gaze swept from Shi Shuxue’s obedient little sister-style bangs to her hoodie-covered school uniform, finally landing on her backpack. A half-smiling curve tugged at her lips.

“Shi Shuxue?” she said, her voice low. “Wow. You’re way bigger than I imagined.”

“I thought you’d only be about this tall.” She gestured around her own knee level, making Shi Shuxue feel absurd.

Did she think she was waiting outside a kindergarten?

Interest gleamed brightly in the woman’s eyes. She bent down closer to inspect Shi Shuxue’s face carefully.

She said with certainty, “Even though you’re not as small and helpless as I imagined, you are Shi Shuxue, right? You look way too much like your mom. Do you know what I’m here for?”

Her tone sounded like a child trafficker trying to lure kids into a van, or a swaggering street con artist. Shi Shuxue instinctively kept her distance from such suspicious types.

Being half a head shorter, she kept her face cold and stepped back from the questionable figure.

When Shi Shuxue didn’t answer, Chi Yeyu cheerfully answered for herself.
“I’m here to make you the happiest child in the world! Congratulations…starting today, I’m your guardian!”