After being reborn, my sister insisted on marrying me.

Wei Yi decided to stay at the school for a few days.

He felt that his decision was very wise.

His sister... the doctor told her to abstain from sex.

The problem is that he knows his older sister is a big fan of bad food.

Even if he could resist, she would always pounce on him whenever she saw him.

After finishing, he collapsed on the bed, groaning and moaning. Once he was rested, he continued playing.

If he were at home, her gynecological problems would go from "not a big problem" to "needing hospitalization" in less than two days.

He stuffed his change of clothes into his backpack.

Chen Xinyi leaned against the door frame of the master bedroom, arms crossed, her peach blossom eyes filled with displeasure.

"Are you really going to live at school?"

"Hmm. Sulei said the operational data from the five campuses needs to be reviewed in person, and Guo Yu's second-generation smart lock also needs to be tested." Wei Yi said without looking up.

There are plenty of excuses.

"When are you coming back?"

"Let's wait a few days. You should get some rest, and remember to take your medicine on time."

"I'm not sick."

Wei Yi looked up at her.

Chen Xinyi met his gaze for a second, then guiltily looked away.

The ointment prescribed by the doctor was still on the bedside table; she had applied it just this morning.

"Fine." She pouted, her tone as if someone had snatched a freshly peeled lychee from her hand. "Come back soon."

After everyone left.

The whole room suddenly fell silent.

Aunt Zheng took the day off, Lin Siyan went to the coffee shop to check the accounts, and Jin Shilin was at Tianbingbing keeping an eye on the new product launch.

Chen Xinyi curled up on the sofa and opened her laptop. The Heytea supply chain report was filled with a dense row of numbers.

She stared at the same line three times but still couldn't remember it.

She closed her laptop, stood up, and walked around the living room.

Without Wei Yi around, and without her sisters by her side, she seemed a little out of sorts.

She decided to organize her wardrobe.

Since moving to Zhichun East Lane, I haven't had time to properly organize my belongings; my seasonal clothes are still stuffed in my suitcase.

She dragged her suitcase out from the bottom of the wardrobe and took out each item one by one.

Autumn clothes, summer clothes, and a cashmere scarf I bought last year.

Then she found a brown paper bag at the very bottom of the suitcase.

The bag was old, with frayed edges, and the closure was sealed with several layers of transparent tape.

It looks like it's been repeatedly opened and closed and then resealed.

She paused for a moment, then smiled, squatted down on the floor, and opened the bag.

Inside was a photo album, nothing fancy, just something I bought at the supermarket; the plastic seal was already a bit yellowed.

Turn it over.

The first page.

A thin, tiny baby was placed on the sofa in an old house in the county town.

She stood beside him, her hands protecting his sides, her expression as serious as if she were carrying out some important mission.

Chen Xinyi remembers that she was four years old that year, with two pigtails and wearing a pretty floral dress.

On the back of the photo is her mother Li Hongjuan's handwriting: "Xinyi is four years old, looking after her younger brother."

She flipped through a few pages.

Wei Yi has grown from an infant into a chubby baby who can sit and crawl.

He was sitting in his walker, and she squatted down two steps away, clapping her hands to call him over.

He took a step and fell, crying loudly. She rushed over and picked him up.

Her dad snapped this photo; in it, her mouth is open, as if she's saying, "Stop crying, stop crying."

She turned a few more pages. Wei Yi was three years old when she was scolded by her own mother.

Because it's too hot in the afternoons of summer in small towns.

She put her old dress on him, tied it into two little pigtails, and pulled him into the living room to announce to everyone, "This is my sister."

In the photo, Wei Yi looks bewildered, while she stands next to him making a victory sign.

On the back of the photo, her mother's handwriting reads: "Yi Yi is three years old. Her older sister treated her like a younger sister for half a day."

Seven years old.

Wei Yi is in elementary school, and she is in fourth grade.

Because of her good grades, she asked her teacher for the privilege of being dismissed five minutes early—the reason being that she wanted to pick up her younger brother from school.

The teacher actually approved it.

In the photo, he is carrying a new schoolbag, and she is holding his hand as they walk ahead.

This photo was taken by her dad. It's blurry; it only shows the two of them from behind.

She remembered that it was drizzling that day, and she held the umbrella over his head, leaving half of her shoulder soaked.

When she got home, she and her father were both scolded by Li Hongjuan.

She didn't argue back at all. After taking a shower, she went to her brother's room to check if his schoolbag had gotten wet from the rain.

The sound of a security door being unlocked.

Lin Siyan returned, carrying two iced Americanos she had brought back from the coffee shop.

She changed into slippers and came in, only to find Chen Xinyi squatting in the middle of a pile of clothes on the living room floor, holding a photo album in her arms, with an expression on her face that she had never seen before.

She lacked the shrewdness she displayed when negotiating business deals, and the sweetness she showed when flirting with Wei Yi.

It's a rare kind of gentleness in Chen Xinyi, very quiet, as if she's completely immersed in memories.

"Xinyi?"

Lin Siyan placed the iced Americano on the coffee table, walked over, and squatted down next to her. "What are you looking at?"

Chen Xinyi didn't say anything, but simply turned the photo album at an angle so she could see it.

Lin Siyan saw a group photo of three people:

Chen Xinyi was about ten years old, Wei Yi was six or seven years old, and there was a little girl about the same age in between.

The three of them stood in a row at the entrance of the elementary school. Wei Yi was reluctantly sandwiched between his two older sisters, whose faces still seemed to have traces of tears from crying.

"This is the daughter of another comrade of my father's from our county. Her name was something like Zhou."

Chen Xinyi pointed to the little girl and said in a tone as if introducing an antique on display in a museum, "She said she also liked Wei Yi and wanted to marry him when she grew up. I told her, 'You're too late, he's already mine.' Then she cried. Haha."

Lin Siyan couldn't help but laugh, but the smile was short-lived.

She looked down at the photo of ten-year-old Chen Xinyi, her eyes so determined, as if Wei Yi really was already hers.

It turns out it started when I was so young.

Chen Xinyi continued flipping through the pages.

During one summer vacation when Wei Yi was in junior high school, he took a nap on the sofa.

She knelt beside the sofa and secretly kissed him.

She took this photo herself, holding up her phone. The image is a bit crooked, and only half of the two people's faces are visible.

She printed out the photo and added it to her album. On the back of the photo was written: "My first official kiss with him."

Why is it called the "official first kiss"?

Because before that, when they were both children, she had actually kissed them many times.

While he's asleep, when he's not paying attention, when he's engrossed in watching TV, or when he's little and wants candy, trick him into kissing you first...

Every time she finished kissing him, she would touch his head and say, "You are mine."

Chen Xinyi thought so.

He probably thought his sister was really annoying back then, hehe~

When Lin Siyan saw this photo, her lips immediately fell down, and she turned to look at the ginkgo tree outside the window.

Chen Xinyi didn't notice her expression and continued flipping through the pages.

Wei Yi was in junior high school, and she was in high school.

Every day after school, she would pick him up from school and walk ahead, holding his hand, while he followed behind with his head down.

On the weekend, they each had a cup of milk tea at the shop; he drank the original flavor, and she drank the pearl flavor.

She said she wanted to open a milk tea shop in the future, and he agreed.

In the photo, she is holding up a milk tea and smiling at the camera, while he is drinking his own milk tea next to her, not looking at the camera at all.

She remembered that after drinking milk tea that day, there was milk foam on the corner of his mouth. She wiped it off with her finger, and he said disgustedly, "Sister, you have saliva on your hands."

She said I licked it clean.

The disgust on his face turned into utter despair.

Wei Yi's winter break during his second year of high school.

Wearing her newly bought red scarf, she dragged him to the selfie booth at the entrance of the county town shopping mall to take a set of selfie photos.

There's a picture of her kissing him on the cheek, and he looks utterly helpless.

On the back of the photo, she wrote: "In February 2013, I took him to take our first set of couple photos. Although he doesn't know they are couple photos yet, he will find out later."

Turn to the last few pages.

A photo taken during the World Cup.

On the sofa in the living room of Zhichun Dongli, she leaned on his shoulder to watch the game, while he watched intently.

She took this group photo with her phone.

In the photo, the two people's shoulders are pressed tightly together, and beer cans and snacks are spread out on the coffee table.

And the cake for anniversary night.

The image depicts a cat and a mouse, with the cat chasing the mouse and the mouse running ahead.

She took the photo; it's a picture of the side of the cake, and you can see two ring boxes next to it, one open and one closed, both empty.

The last page had a sticky note with only two lines of handwritten text.

The first line: "Waiting for you to grow up is the most worthwhile thing I've ever done."

The second line: "Anyway, you can't escape."

There was no date, and she had forgotten when she wrote it.

It must have been during my rather cringey middle school years.

Lin Siyan saw the note and the two lines of text.

She stood up, took the iced Americano, inserted a straw, placed it next to Chen Xinyi, then turned and went to the kitchen, saying, "The coffee shop's order form isn't finished yet."

Her voice was calm, but her figure quickly disappeared behind the kitchen sliding door.

Chen Xinyi did not try to stop her.

She actually knew what Lin Siyan was thinking; she had known it for a long time.

I found out after only two months of freshman year.

That night in the dormitory, Lin Siyan thought she was asleep.

Even with her eyes closed, she could feel Lin Siyan's gaze on her face.

She recognized that look at a glance.

Isn't that the look in my eyes when I look at my younger brother?

She closed the album, leaned against the sofa, and continued flipping through the pages, but she had already finished; the rest were all blank pages.

Lin Siyan stood in front of the kitchen island, turned on the tap, and the sound of running water lasted for a long time.

She didn't check any orders; she just leaned on the edge of the island counter and watched the water swirl in the sink.

She suddenly felt like she understood everything.

The bittersweet feeling of insomnia in the middle of the night, the tightness in my chest when I watched Chen Xinyi and Wei Yi walking side by side.

The answers are all there.

The answer is that she always knew but just didn't want to admit it: Chen Xinyi had been set on Wei Yi since she was four years old.

She met Chen Xinyi during her freshman year of college.

It was fourteen years too late.

There was no chance of winning this battle from the very beginning.

But she stayed.

Because I can eat at the same table every day, see Chen Xinyi's smiling eyes, help her with her hair when she's tired, and help her sort out the accounts of the new store when she needs help.

That's all she has.

Some people are born to be trapped by someone.

In the afternoon, Chen Xinyi put the photo album back into the brown paper bag and then stuffed it back into the bottom of the wardrobe.

She washed her face, sat back down at the computer, and finally could understand the numbers on the supply chain reports.

It seems that the vulnerability and fragility of the past few hours were just a brief interlude, and the strong woman's shell has closed up again.

When Jin Shilin returned from Tianbingbing that evening, the three women sat around the dining table and had a simple dinner.

Aunt Zheng wasn't home, so Lin Siyan cooked the dishes: garlic bok choy, steamed sea bass, braised prawns, and tomato and egg soup.

While peeling shrimp, Jin Shilin reported on the tasting feedback of Sweet Ice Ice's new winter products, saying that the grape cheese flavor had a high approval rating but also a high cost, and suggested raising the price by two yuan.

Chen Xinyi said the gross profit margin could not be lower than 65%, and told her to find another supplier to pressure them further.

Lin Siyan quietly sipped her soup, occasionally offering a suggestion on financial calculations.

Everything was exactly the same as usual.

But Jin Shilin always felt that something was wrong.

Lin Siyan was more silent than usual today.

It's worth noting that when Wei Yi wasn't around, she actually talked quite a bit to Chen Xinyi.

After finishing her meal, Lin Siyan said, "I'm going to take a shower now," and went into the bathroom.

Jin Shilin whispered to Chen Xinyi, "What's wrong with Siyan today?"

Chen Xinyi picked up a piece of pork rib, chewed it a couple of times, and replied, "It's nothing."

Then she swallowed the ribs and added in a voice only she could hear, "I'm sorry, Siyan."