一张保险单，和一声当众叫出的“妈妈”

Last time, Zhou Wan took her mother's bank card, hardened her heart and pushed Lu Xixiao away — but grandma's illness kept worsening, and the money to save her was still far short.

Today, let's keep going.

Zhou Wan's father had long been gone; before he died, he left behind a sum of money.

All these years, her mother flatly insisted the money was hers, and gave Zhou Wan not a cent.

But right at this point, Zhou Wan dug up an insurance contract at home.

It was written plainly: the true beneficiary of the money, from start to finish, was Zhou Wan herself — not her mother at all.

In that moment, Zhou Wan understood everything: she'd been lied to by her own mother for years.

She quietly made a vow: what belongs to me, I'll take back with my own hands, piece by piece.

The chance came quickly.

The Lu family held a grand memorial banquet; everyone of note in the city would attend, and Zhou Wan's mother, of course, was among them.

Zhou Wan did everything she could to sneak in — she meant to force her mother, in front of everyone, to cough up her father's money.

At the banquet, the boy who always looked down on her deliberately spilled a drink on her old dress, to shame her in public.

Every eye fixed on Zhou Wan, and the air froze.

Just then, Lu Xixiao walked over.

It turned out he had quietly prepared a white gown for her, and without a fuss sent her off to change.

When Zhou Wan changed and stood under the lights, her whole self lit up.

Even though she'd been cold as ice to him lately, Lu Xixiao kept stepping in front of her, again and again.

But fate gave them no room to breathe.

Right then, Zhou Wan got a call from the hospital: grandma finally had a matching kidney donor, but the surgery cost three hundred thousand.

Three hundred thousand — for Zhou Wan at that moment, it was an astronomical figure.

She had almost no other choice.

Step by step she walked to the center of the banquet and, before the whole room, called that woman "Mom" for the first time.

She said: all these years, thank you, Mom, for supporting me.

One line, and she pinned her mother in front of everyone.

Cornered, her mother could only agree in public to hand over the father's three hundred thousand.

And so grandma's surgery money was secured.

But this scene fell entirely into Lu Xixiao's eyes.

His face showed nothing, but inside felt as if a hand had gripped it hard.

He asked Zhou Wan: toward me, was there ever even one second that was real?

Zhou Wan opened her mouth, and in the end said nothing.

Because she was pressing down a secret she couldn't break open: the woman on that stage was the very birth mother who had abandoned her — and not one person in the room knew it.

After the banquet, the Lu family simply moved Zhou Wan in, under the same roof as Lu Xixiao, to study for the exams together.

The distance between them was drawn closer, bit by bit.

But Zhou Wan, unable to help drifting toward him, also had to hide the truth with all her might.

This summer, she lived more and more like someone walking a tightrope.

Have you ever had a secret that the harder you tried to bury it, the more you feared it would be seen through?