Seventeen years ago, two baby girls were switched at the same hospital. Seventeen years later, amid the scent of osmanthus blossoms just beyond a garden wall, fate brought their lives back to where they began.
In September, the newly wealthy Ji family moved into Wutong Lane, next door to the Meng family, a scholarly clan with a century of history.
The Meng family patriarch, Meng Chongyuan, happened to glimpse the smile of the Ji family’s youngest daughter, Ji Zhinuo, through his window. The kettle nearly slipped from his hand. When the girl smiled, she looked exactly like his late daughter-in-law, right down to the placement of her dimples.
An absurd thought took root in his mind: What if the babies had been switched at the hospital all those years ago?
Under the pretext of a charity gala, he quietly obtained strands of hair from Ji Zhinuo and Ji Wenyan for DNA testing. The results confirmed his suspicion: Ji Zhinuo was a Meng by blood, while Meng Shuyan, whom the Meng family had raised for seventeen years, was the Ji family’s biological daughter.
The two girls’ lives had been quietly switched in a busy delivery room seventeen years ago. Seventeen years later, a wall between their homes gave way to the truth, and the Ji and Meng families chose a path no one had taken before. They wouldn’t blame each other or force the girls to switch places. Instead, they would bring their two families together and protect both girls for the rest of their lives.
