The sweetest in the entertainment industry

Chapter 7 What next?

"When I was little, I was always laughed at because of my name."

Gu Lanxi had never talked about these things with anyone before. She started, but for a while, she didn't know how to organize her thoughts.

Fortunately, Lu Nanting is an excellent straight man; as long as he's willing, he won't let the joke fall flat.

"Your name? It's a nice name! Did you get your brain caught in a door? Why are you laughing at me?"

Lu Nanting really couldn't understand why she would say that.

When he first heard his mother mention her name on the phone, he thought that their names shared the same character. At that moment, he felt a subtle, indescribable sense of destiny, a feeling that was pleasant.

Gu Lanxi remained patient and explained to him in a low voice:
“You usually speak Mandarin. Although you can understand most Cantonese because of your mother and maternal grandfather’s family, you naturally don’t understand some everyday slang, especially some swear words.”

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

Gu Lanxi was a little embarrassed, but she still spoke frankly about those things:

“In my hometown, if someone, especially the youngest child in a family, is bad, has poor character, or is a good-for-nothing, people will contemptuously call him ‘rotten adopted brother,’ which is a very dirty and derogatory term. Do you hear that? Doesn’t it sound a lot like my name?”

Gu Lanxi specifically repeated it in dialect, and it did sound very similar.

Some people with flawed values, regardless of age, always enjoy bullying others as a game.

People will laugh at others' names, heights, disabilities, stuttering, pimples, and even their weight, size, or size of their breasts.

Because of her name, people don't even need to think twice before they associate that insult with her in a strange and contrived way.

A group of children, not quite understanding what was going on, glanced at her sideways while trying to suppress their excitement, and whispered in someone's ear—

"Let me tell you, don't let her pretty face and good grades fool you. Her name is awful! You know what? Her name is..."

Gu Lanxi knew how terrifying rumors could be from a very young age, what it meant to be isolated, what it meant to fabricate stories out of thin air, and what it meant to have no bottom line...

For the perpetrator, it's a source of pleasure; if the victim minds, it's petty; but for the victim, it's a lifelong shadow.

When I was little, I thought about changing my name, but no one in my family cared about it. They just thought I was troublesome and a worry.

When she was able to make her own decisions, she developed a stubborn streak.

She wants to become the best version of herself, to prove that a name is insignificant to the strong.

She would make everyone who used to mock and bully her treat her with respect and fawn over her, calling her "Miss Gu" whenever they saw her.

It was precisely because of this upbringing that wealth and status were so alluring in her eyes, making her willingly pursue them.

"Those who see Buddha through Buddha's eyes will see everything as dirty if their hearts are tainted. We should just focus on living our lives well. Your name is fresh and elegant, truly wonderful. Moreover, water is the source of life, and having so much water in your name is definitely auspicious!"

Although he knew that such comfort was pale and would not have much positive effect, he still couldn't help but speak up.

Gentle persuasion is probably effective. Gu Lanxi couldn't help but laugh as she listened to his nonsense, which even touched on auspicious meanings.

Now that she had started talking, she brought up other things:

“When I was little, I cried a lot. People would always appear out of nowhere and call my name randomly. They would also pull my braids. At first, I would go home and complain every time. Later, my grandma took me to get a haircut. It was a very short haircut, like a boy's, because she said, ‘If you insist on being vain and growing your hair long, who else will people pull your braids if not you?’”

Lu Nanting felt that her grandmother's actions were wrong, with things like victim-blaming, but criticizing someone's elder in front of others was somewhat inappropriate.

So he focused intently on Gu Lanxi and asked her, "And then?"

“When I got older, I learned to make phone calls. I called my mom and kept talking about it, describing my pain in detail, and my grandparents' inaction. I thought she would try to find a solution, like changing my name, asking a teacher to give me more attention, or transferring me to another school. But she didn't care about any of that. She just told me that in her hometown, there was a stream called Lanxi, and when I was born, she happened to be homesick, so she named me that.” “That’s quite meaningful.”

For many people, their hometown is a warm and gentle place in their hearts. Associating their name with these emotions can make them feel better.

However, Gu Lanxi gently shook her head, unscrewed the bottle of mineral water, took a sip, and waited for her emotions to calm down before slowly saying:

“At first, I thought so too, and I was happy about it because I grew up with my grandparents who didn’t care much about me. They treated their grandchildren from other houses better than I did. So I had a lot of fantasies about maternal love. I thought that if she only showed a little bit of concern, it would be enough to make me feel better than anything else.”

Although more than a decade has passed, she has a good memory and can still recall her mother's subtly impatient tone at the time.

"Later I found out that it was all because I was a girl. My father didn't care what I was called, and neither did my grandparents, so my mother had the power to name me. She then decided on a name in a very perfunctory and casual way. Later, even though she knew it was inappropriate, she still couldn't be bothered to care."

For many girls, the preference for sons over daughters in their families of origin is definitely one of the heaviest shackles.

She was born unloved; many things were deemed unworthy simply because of her gender.

No one would accept this.

It wasn't a fleeting cloud, but a mark etched deeply onto the body.

A casual remark from someone else about making peace with the past is just empty talk from someone who doesn't understand the situation.

So Lu Nanting didn't say anything, but simply put down the ring box and gently took Gu Lanxi's hand that was resting on her knee.

Years later, when Gu Lanxi talks about these things, it's as if she's telling the stories of strangers.

However, she and Lu Nanting had not been alone together for a long time, and she had never talked about these things in front of him, so she would stop to sort out her thoughts every few sentences.

"My parents were in a free-love relationship back then. They met on campus and went from school uniforms to wedding dresses. They were the envy of many when they were young. Even though my maternal grandparents strongly disagreed with her marrying someone from such a far away place, she still insisted on marrying him."

Most only daughters in the Yangtze River Delta region (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai) do not marry far away. It is said that when her mother made this decision, her maternal family severed ties with her.

She had never seen anyone from that side of the world since she was a child.

These were all things her mother told her while holding her hand on the night before she died.

That was her mother's last act of tenderness, a turning point that would influence her entire life.

“My parents run 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 their energy and affect their ability to have a younger brother. My father did this only to take advantage of my mother’s feelings for me. He planned to do two things: first, send me back, and then find a way to send my mother back as well. Because at that time, he already had someone else outside. That woman gave birth to a son for him, who is only half a year younger than me.”

Such things happen far too often in wealthy circles. Lu Nanting has heard of and witnessed countless examples of them since he was a child.

Many of his classmates had experienced problems with having illegitimate children.

However, what they care more about is how the birth of an illegitimate child will affect the distribution of property, rather than how paternal and maternal love should be divided.

But clearly, what Gu Lanxi cared about most all along was the latter.

This suggests that the father-in-law, whom he had never met, was not a very capable person.

At least his wealth is not enough to keep one rational.

After mentally cursing the person, Lu Nanting felt a sense of relief and calmed himself down before asking, "And then?"

Is it a stereotype that people from Guangdong value auspicious meanings?

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(End of this chapter)