Chapter 7: And then?

“When I was little, I was always mocked because of my name.”

Gu Lanxi had never spoken of these things to anyone. Having started, she found herself at a loss for how to organize her thoughts.

Fortunately, Lu Nanting was an excellent conversationalist; as long as he was willing, he would never let a conversation fall flat.

“Your name? It’s beautiful! Were those people’s brains squeezed in a door? Why would they mock you for that?”

Lu Nanting truly couldn’t understand why she would say such a thing.

Because the first time he heard her name from his mother over the phone, he had thought they shared a character in their names. At the time, he had felt a subtle, indescribable sense of destiny—a feeling that was, in itself, delightful.

Gu Lanxi remained patient, explaining in a low voice

“You usually speak Mandarin. Although you can understand most Cantonese because of your mother and your grandfather’s family, you naturally wouldn’t know some of the colloquialisms, especially the insults.”

Because no one would ever dare use foul language in front of the young master of the Lu family, nor would anyone use such vicious words to curse him.

Gu Lanxi felt a bit embarrassed, but she still spoke of those matters openly

“Back in my hometown, if someone—especially the youngest child in the family—was considered rotten, ill-behaved, or a failure, people would contemptuously call them a ‘lan qi di’ (rotten younger brother-in-law). It’s a very dirty term with strong derogatory connotations. Listen, doesn’t it sound a lot like my name?”

Gu Lanxi deliberately said it in the local dialect; it did indeed sound very similar.

Some people with warped values, regardless of age, always enjoy treating bullying as a game.

Mocking someone’s name, mocking their height, mocking their disabilities—if you stutter, you get laughed at; if you have a pimple, you get laughed at. Even if you were too fat or too thin, or if your chest was too big or too small, people would give you nicknames.

With her name, others didn’t even need to put in any effort; they would twist their voices and link her to that insult.

A group of ignorant children, eyes slanted as they looked at her, would suppress their excitement and lean into someone else’s ear—

“Let me tell you, don’t look at her like she’s pretty and gets good grades. Her name is so disgusting! Do you know? She’s actually called…”

From a very young age, Gu Lanxi knew how terrifying rumors could be. She knew what it meant to be ostracized, what it meant to have things fabricated out of thin air, and what it meant to have no bottom line…

To the aggressor, this was joy; if the victim minded, they were just being petty. But to the one being bullied, it was a lifelong shadow.

When she was little, she had thought about changing her name, but no one in her family cared. They only found her troublesome and a burden.

By the time she was old enough to make her own decisions, a stubborn streak had taken root.

She would become the best version of herself to prove that a name, in the eyes of the strong, was insignificant.

She would make everyone who had once mocked and bullied her treat her with courtesy and a fawning tone whenever they saw her, calling her “Miss Gu.”

It was precisely because of this upbringing that wealth and status appeared so charming in her eyes, making her willing to pursue them with all her heart.

“A Buddha sees a Buddha; those with dirty hearts see filth in everything. We just need to work hard to live our own lives well. Your name is fresh and elegant; it’s wonderful, really. Besides, water is the source of life. Your name has so much water in it—it’s definitely a good omen!”

Although he knew such comfort was pale and couldn’t have much of a positive effect, he couldn’t help but speak up.

The gentle consolation was likely effective; hearing him spout nonsense and even stretch it to being a “good omen,” Gu Lanxi couldn’t help but laugh.

Since the floodgates were open, she spoke of other things

“I loved to cry when I was little. People would always pop out from places I couldn’t imagine, shouting my name, and others would always pull my braids. At first, I would go home to complain every time. Later, my grandmother took me to get my hair cut—that very short, boyish style—because she said, ‘If you insist on being vain and keeping long hair, who else would they pull if not you?’”

Lu Nanting felt that what her grandmother did was wrong—victim-blaming and all—but it was somewhat inappropriate to criticize someone’s elders to their face.

So, he just looked at Gu Lanxi intently and asked, “And then?”

“When I got older, I learned how to use the phone. I called my mother and talked about this repeatedly, describing my pain in detail, as well as my grandparents’ inaction. I thought she would find a way—like changing my name, asking my teachers to look after me, or transferring me to another school. However, she didn’t care about these things. She only told me that in her hometown, there was a small stream called Lanxi. When I was born, she happened to be homesick, so she gave me that name.”

“That’s actually quite meaningful.”

For many, their hometown is deep in their hearts—warm and gentle. Linking a name to those emotions must make it easier to bear.

However, Gu Lanxi shook her head gently, unscrewed a bottle of mineral water, and took a sip. Only after her emotions had settled did she speak slowly

“At first, I thought so too, and I felt happy about it. Because I grew up with grandparents who didn’t value me—they treated the cousins from other branches better than me—I was full of fantasies about maternal love. If she had shown even the slightest bit of care, it would have outweighed everything else in my heart.”

Although more than a decade had passed, she had a good memory and could still recall the impatience hidden in her mother’s tone back then.

“Later, I realized it was all because I was a girl. My father didn’t care what I was called, and my grandparents didn’t care either, which is why my mother had the power to name me. She decided it in an extremely perfunctory and casual way. Later, even when she knew it was inappropriate, she was still too lazy to care about me.”

For many girls, the preference for sons over daughters in their original family is absolutely one of the heaviest shackles.

Born unwanted, there were many things she was simply not entitled to, just because her gender was “wrong.”

No one would be content with that.

It wasn’t just a passing cloud; it was a brand burned deep into her skin.

The light, airy advice from others to “reconcile with the past” was nothing more than standing on the sidelines and talking without feeling the pain.

So, Lu Nanting didn’t speak. He simply put down the ring box and gently took the hand Gu Lanxi had resting on her knee.

After all these years, Gu Lanxi spoke of these things as if she were telling the story of a stranger.

But she and Lu Nanting hadn’t been alone together for a long time, and she had never told him these things before, so she would stop every few sentences to collect her thoughts.

“My parents had a love marriage. They met on campus, from school uniforms to wedding dresses. When they were young, they were the envy of others. Even though my maternal grandparents firmly disagreed with her marrying someone from so far away, she still insisted on it.”

Most only-children in the Yangtze River Delta don’t marry far away. It was said that when her mother made that decision, her maternal family cut ties with her.

From childhood to adulthood, she had never met anyone from that side of the family.

She only learned these things on the night before her mother died, when her mother held her hand and told her.

That was the final tenderness from her mother, and for her, it was a turning point that would influence her entire life.

“My parents opened a shoe factory in Jiangnan. When I was only seven months old, I was sent back to my hometown. My grandparents didn’t want me to take up too much of my parents’ energy and affect their ability to have a younger brother. My father did this only to exploit my mother’s feelings for me. He planned a two-step process: first send me back, then find a way to send my mother back too. Because by then, he already had someone else outside—that woman had given him a son, only half a year younger than me.”

Such things were far too common in the circles of the wealthy. Lu Nanting had heard and seen countless such cases since he was a child.

Many of his classmates had been troubled by illegitimate siblings.

However, they were more concerned about how the appearance of an illegitimate child would affect the distribution of assets, rather than how paternal or maternal love should be divided.

But clearly, what Gu Lanxi had always minded most was the latter.

It showed that the father-in-law she had never met wasn’t a very capable man either.

At the very least, the wealth he possessed wasn’t enough to keep people rational.

Lu Nanting desperately dissed the man in his heart, feeling a sense of relief, before steadying his emotions and asking her, “And then?”

Is it a stereotype that Cantonese people care about good omens?