Wen Zhi froze mid‑swing. She didn’t need to turn to know whose voice that was.
She forced herself to pivot, plastered on a smile that felt like it would crack any second. “Oh—Brother, I noticed no one’s been cleaning Sister Yin’s room for a while, so I thought I’d bring the maid over to help.”
She looked up into Wen Zeru’s assessing gaze and felt her stomach drop. How much had he heard of the racket she'd just made? The lamp had smashed so loudly; for a moment she could almost feel her heart beating in her throat. If he had come at any other time—God, of all moments he had to show up now.
Wen Zeru watched her carefully. Her face flushed, then went pale; the movement made a small, contemptuous sound curl in his chest. So this was the “good sister” Father had been going on about.
He could still hear his father’s lecturing voice from the banquet, all clipped sympathy. “Zeru, don’t forget—you don’t only have Yin. You have Zhi Zhi, too. You two have grown up together; you can’t let what happened with Yin make you ignore Zhi.”
“Two bowls of soup must be balanced,” Father had insisted. It sounded noble on the surface. But seeing the mess in his sister’s room now, Wen Zeru tasted irony. He imagined how Wen Zhi must have treated Wen Yin when he wasn’t looking—how she’d sneered and pushed and taken her place. The thought made his mouth twist.
“Didn’t expect Zhi Zhi to like Anyin this much,” he said, deliberately light. There was a knowing edge to his smile that gnawed at Wen Zhi. She told herself it was just nerves about the noise. She hadn’t been thinking anything about Anyin; she’d been thinking about smashing things.
Wen Zeru’s voice softened with faux appreciation. “So thoughtful of you to clean her room yourself.”
She blinked. When had she ever planned to clean Anyin’s room? But before she could protest, one of the servants was fetching rags and a mop.
“Xiao Li, bring the cloths and the mop. Second miss, please make sure you tidy the first miss’s room properly.”
By the time she fully registered what had happened, an apron had been tied round her waist, a rag shoved into her hand, a mop propped by her side. Wen Zhi’s protests died in her throat. The rag felt like it had been dipped in coals.
“Brother, no—I—” she started, but Wen Zeru only smiled, lifted his phone as if to capture the moment. “It’s fine, Zhi. I’ll take pictures and send them to Anyin. She’ll be so touched she might cry.”
He held the phone a little tighter than needed. The gesture sent a flinch through him. The memory of that ridiculous, terrible dream slipped in uninvited—a dream so vivid it felt like a warning. In it, Anyin was the true Wen family daughter, returned to a house that had swallowed her childhood. She hadn’t been pampered; she’d been sidelined. Meanwhile, Wen Zhi—who’d been sitting in the privileged seat for years—moved through the house like she owned it, making life small for Anyin with petty cruelties.
In the dream, the final scenes were worse. The humiliation spilled from reality into spectacle: reality TV, online ridicule, ex‑lovers who watched from the wings without lifting a hand. The cruelty mounted until one night a fan—worshipped and warped—took a blade. It ended with Anyin dying at the hands of someone who called themselves her biggest supporter.
Wen Zeru’s hands tightened around his phone. Even if it had been only a dream, the image had left him raw. He had been an idle spectator as the worst of What Might Happen played out in his head. From now on he would not stand by.
Wen Zhi muttered under her breath and set to work, as if the mop in her hand were a confession she couldn’t take back. She scrubbed and dusted while Wen Zeru watched, offering unsolicited guidance with the air of a supervisor and the relish of a man entertaining himself.
“Zhi, that table over there—make sure you get the top good and clean.”
“You need to put some weight into your mopping. That posture won’t get the grime out.”
“Watch the corners. Don’t miss the edges—those are the spots everyone notices.”
Wen Zhi, who had always sought Wen Zeru’s attention and approval, suddenly found his commentary interminable. Didn’t he have anything better to do at the company? Why was he so leisurely today?
Wen Zeru seemed to sense the petulance in her, but he only tapped the banister with one finger, his expression folded into something deliberate. The online tide was shifting. Netizens who’d been silent were starting to speak up for Anyin; people had seen her composure on livestreams, how she’d been nothing but polite and steady toward Xiao Mo and the others. The rumor mill couldn’t hold forever.
Then, like a spark to tinder, a new thread exploded onto the trending board. Someone—an account with the handle full of praise—had posted a bombshell:
[@Praiseworthy: Heard a famous actress was the ringleader of a school bullying ring. Won’t name her yet, but I have pics and audio.]
Attached was an audio clip. After a breath of static, there was the sharp crack of a slap hitting flesh, quick and loud. A girl’s voice spat, “Ugh!”
“What are you looking at? One more look and I’ll gouge your eyes out!”
The voice was rough, not polished like any star’s studio tone—more like a petty bully’s, full of menace. Then there was the sound of water sloshing, a splash like someone dousing another with a bucket.
And finally, the clipped, taunting line: “X‑jie, still want to play?” The poster had censored the syllable before “jie” so listeners couldn’t immediately identify who she meant. The bleep only made the damage more delicious to the hungry crowd.
Wen Zhi’s hands froze on the mop. Even here, cleaning someone else’s mess, she felt the tremor of something bigger creeping toward them—something that might not be so easily swept under a rug.