She Adopted Me After My Biological Mother Passed Away - Chapter 19

“Our Little Xue’s affairs are the most important things of all~”

Shi Shuxue’s biological father was named Zhao Qingyuan. Back in the band days, people called him “A-Yuan.” He was the bassist for the Screaming Goldfish.

At eighteen, while still in university, Shi Xianyu dated him and gave birth to Shi Shuxue. When Shi’s father found out, he was livid, kicking Shi Xianyu out of the house and beating her whenever they crossed paths thereafter.

Shi Xianyu had a temper herself, so she simply severed ties with her father. Initially, she was quite attentive to her baby, but life was hectic. Most of her time outside of school was devoted to the band, so she entrusted Shi Shuxue to others, looking after her personally only occasionally.

Initially, Screaming Goldfish’s style leaned toward post-rock. Shi Xianyu acted as the lead singer, composer, and guitarist, writing lyrics filled with youthful ego and social rebellion. Their work gained a small following in niche circles but was a total commercial failure. A live house performance might draw fewer than twenty people; they were constantly losing money just to play.

Once, while performing near a school, a student recorded a video on a phone. The footage was shaky, but it captured the moment Shi Xianyu’s voice cracked. She didn’t stop, she just leaned into the failure and kept going. The drummer lost the beat, too, and in the end, they all finished the set laughing together.

Unexpectedly, that blunder struck a chord with people. The band went viral. A record label offered a contract but demanded they change the lyrics, add commercial elements, and shift their genre. Most of all, they wanted the lead singer, Shi Xianyu, to change her “unpresentable” style and appearance.

A-Yuan supported the commercial shift; if they didn’t change, they wouldn’t even be able to eat. But Shi Xianyu had reservations. She felt that the mangled final product wouldn’t be her music at all. She and A-Yuan had their fiercest argument over this change in style.

The contract ultimately fell through. Some said they were ungrateful. The band missed their chance and lost any hope of ever leaving the underground scene.

Later, A-Yuan cheated on her and went abroad with the daughter of a music producer. Before leaving, he didn’t forget to mock Shi Xianyu, saying no one listened to her stuff and that it didn’t deserve to be called art.

Not long after the bassist left, the drummer passed the civil service exam and quit the band, while the other guitarist joined a wedding band.

Her former teammates either betrayed her or moved on to make a living, leaving the albums to gather dust in boxes. Shi Xianyu fell into a deep depression, suffering from severe psychosomatic symptoms. She spent her days drowning her sorrows in bars; even Chi Yeyu couldn’t pull her back.

“My story with Shi Xianyu is just that simple not much to tell, really. She helped me, and I couldn’t save her. I joined the band late and didn’t know the instruments, so when she was bored, she’d give a few pointers to a ‘dummy sub’ like me. But mostly, it was their drummer who taught me. Everything else I know, I heard from her.”

Chi Yeyu was off today, wearing a casual gray jacket at home with the hood pulled over her head, lounging lazily in a rocking chair.

“Shi Xianyu, she…”

Shi Shuxue thought of the Shi Xianyu she had seen over the past few years. She rarely came home, wandering who knows where all day. When she did return, she was always drunk sometimes wailing, sometimes silent as death. Grandma was annoyed by her but would still heat up food and cook soup for her.

When Grandma was seriously ill, however, she stepped up. She rushed home covered in the dust of travel to take the elderly woman to the hospital. It was a rare sight for Shi Shuxue to see a sober Shi Xianyu: her blonde hair tucked behind her ears, wearing a baseball cap, efficiently handling paperwork and communicating clearly with doctors. Before she left, she even left plenty of money for Shuxue.

That was Shi Xianyu: sometimes so terrible it made your teeth ache with hatred, but occasionally showing a good side that reminded Shi Shuxue she was, after all, a blood relative. It was for this very reason that her sudden disappearance was so hard to accept.

“How long was she sick?”

“Hard to say. Maybe since that scumbag cheated on her, maybe even earlier. She couldn’t show it at all in the early years, she was laughing and joking all day. Even if she was truly hurting, we would have thought she was faking it.”

“Shi Xianyu was broad-minded and told me not to touch him, but… that man better not come dancing in front of me again.” Chi Yeyu crunched a hard candy viciously. Shi Shuxue caught a faint scent of white grape.

“Is he back in the country?” Shi Shuxue asked.

Chi Yeyu said, “He is. You’ve probably seen his interview videos; they were filmed domestically. He couldn’t make it abroad, so seeing that his ‘ex-wife’s grave was smoking’ (meaning her luck changed/she became famous post-mortem), he scurried back to chase the trend, talking nonsense.”

The netizens weren’t entirely blind. No matter how much he described his past hardships or painted their separation as a tragic necessity of reality, people questioned him: If you care so much now, why didn’t you take your daughter abroad? Even if life was hard, you couldn’t even come back to visit once in all these years?

He was taking the “black and red” route (fame through notoriety). The more people argued, the more the topic trended, and the more the traffic surged.

Shi Shuxue’s face remained impassive as she commented, “Disgusting.”

The sky finally cleared. The afternoon sun filtered through the glass roof of the sunroom, sifting into fine golden speckles that fell on the potted plants along the wall. Several plump succulents were crowded in earthenware pots. Shi Shuxue sat on a floor cushion, idly brushing the succulent leaves.

Chi Yeyu sat up from the lounger, the gray hood sliding to her shoulders to reveal the silver studs in her ears. The tips of her hair shimmered in the sunlight. She reached across the coffee table and pinched Shi Shuxue’s cheek, chuckling, “Don’t be angry. At least he didn’t take you away.”

Her breath smelled of candy. Shi Shuxue told her to go rinse her mouth, and she went off smiling, leaving behind a jaunty, carefree silhouette.

A few days after that conversation, the peace Chi Yeyu had built was shattered by an uninvited guest. Shi Shuxue was in class when she heard the teacher calling her name at the door, saying someone was looking for her.

She set down her pen and walked out. At a glance, she saw the man from the interview videos. He still maintained that “refined” look from his band days, his hair meticulously styled to look effortless, hairspray keeping every strand in place. He had a beard now. When he looked at Shi Shuxue, his lips curled up as if to sweep away the past, and he waved, saying, “Long time no see, Shuxue.”

The last time Shi Shuxue had seen him was when she was nine. He had picked her up from primary school. Back at the rental house, it seemed he had asked Shi Xianyu for something they had a fight, and in the end, the television was smashed against the tiled floor.

“It’s been so long, you’ve grown so tall.” A-Yuan rubbed his hands and stepped closer, trying to bridge the distance. “When you were little, you always followed your mom, clutching her hem. Now, you’re even prettier than she was.”

Shi Shuxue didn’t respond, only watching him coldly.

“You’ve seen the news online, haven’t you?” Seeing her silence, A-Yuan pivoted to his main point, his tone suddenly dropping as if he were indignant on her behalf. “Chi Yeyu is being criticized so harshly, people say she’s making money off your mom’s songs and treating you poorly. See how unfair that is? Come with me to an interview, just say a few words. Tell everyone you’re being raised well, and mention how hard it was for your mom back then. It helps Chi Yeyu clear her name and makes everyone remember the good in your mother. It’s a win-win.”

He spoke with high spirits, gesturing as if to embrace her. “When the time comes, the two of us, father and daughter can remember your mom together. Won’t that look touching on camera? Once the netizens see that, they’ll understand everything was just a misunderstanding.”

Shi Shuxue was repulsed. She took a step back, her voice sharp. “Who are you calling ‘father and daughter’? I only have one guardian now.”

The smile on A-Yuan’s face froze for a split second before being replaced by a look of shame. He reached out to pat her shoulder, but Shi Shuxue dodged him as if avoiding a cockroach.

His hand hung in mid-air. He smoothed it over his nose. “Xiao Xue, I know I wasn’t there for you all these years, and you harbor resentment. I understand. We all had our difficulties. But right now, your guardian, Miss Chi, is being torn apart by public opinion. Don’t you want to help her? Or do you actually believe what they say online?”

Shi Shuxue crossed her arms, eyeing him. “The things said online, didn’t you have a hand in them? You called Shi Xianyu ‘crazy’ in the interview, and now you come to me saying you miss her?”

“Xiao Xue, how can you think that of your father? I just… I just want more people to know about your mother’s talent. Those media outlets took me out of context, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You didn’t mean it?” Shi Shuxue’s volume rose slightly, the suppressed anger finally flashing in her eyes. “When you went abroad with someone else and mocked her songs as not being ‘art,’ did you mean it then? Now that she’s dead, you come back to step on her name for traffic and want to drag me into your ‘devoted father’ act? Do you think I’m stupid?”

If Zhao Qingyuan hadn’t come to her door, she wouldn’t have even wanted to mention these things. Now that she had spoken, it felt as though a heavy stone had been moved from her chest, allowing her to breathe.

A-Yuan’s expression shifted completely from shame to embarrassment, and finally to self-righteous indignation. “Shi Shuxue! I am your biological father! Even if I made mistakes in the past, I’m doing this for your own good! What can Chi Yeyu give you? That woman has no real ability, she’s nothing without the Chi family! Coming to the interview with me only benefits you!”

His voice was loud. Fortunately, the class inside was doing a choral reading, which muffled his shouting.

“I don’t need it,” Shi Shuxue interrupted, her tone returning to its previous coldness. “Go. Don’t come looking for me again.”

A-Yuan hadn’t expected her to be so stubborn. “Don’t you regret it! Chi Yeyu is just a rich girl playing around. Sooner or later, she’ll leave this mess and crawl back to the Chi family! No one will help you then!”

He threw out the threat and turned to leave, his leather shoes thumping loudly against the hallway tiles. As he passed a window, he kicked a fallen leaf on the ground with spite.

Shi Shuxue stood there with a blank face, no longer in the mood for class. Perhaps she had been corrupted by Chi Yeyu, she glanced through the window at her classmates studying, turned around, and headed toward the stairwell.

Finding a deserted spot, she dialed Chi Yeyu’s number.

The first time, it didn’t go through.

She called back. It rang for two seconds. She hesitated, then hung up.

To her surprise, Chi Yeyu called back instantly. “Hello? Hello? Xiao Xue? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing important,” Shi Shuxue said first.

From the other end of the line came the sound of paper flipping and a voice laced with a smile:

“Our Little Xue’s affairs are the most important things of all.”