“When you're alive, you have to find a meaning that's yours.”
Those were the words Lin Yanqing's mother left her before she died, when Lin was eight.
Her father died saving the young master of the Lu family, and her mother took her own life out of grief. Adopted by the Lus, Lin became an orphan with no one to rely on and nowhere else to go. The Lu family has no room for idle people. If she wants to stay, she has to be useful.
So she made “keeping Lu Sihan happy” her reason to keep living.
He was violent-tempered, so she learned to put away anything fragile before he could smash it. When he couldn't sleep, she tapped three times on the wall between them to tell him, “I'm here.” When he was burning with fever and wouldn't wake, she stayed by his side all night.
That's how she lived until she was sixteen.
Everyone thought she was Lu Sihan's “animal trainer,” the Lu family's most successful investment.
Until she realized she might never have lived a single day for herself.
Her mother's words came back to her. This time, she made a choice: she would take the entrance exam for the university he never wanted her to attend and walk out through the door she'd spent so many years behind.
Lu Sihan never thought she would leave.
He thought she'd always wait outside his door, always answer his three taps on the wall, always leave hot milk within arm's reach.
It wasn't until she walked away without looking back that he understood: the little girl who coaxed him into taking his medicine, bandaged his wounds, and curled up clutching a rabbit during thunderstorms had grown a backbone of her own long ago.
This time, it wasn't her who was afraid to lose him. He was the one afraid he'd never again be worthy of standing before her.
