白裙子那晚，她把“妈妈”叫出了口

The keywords of the last stretch of summer were a whole sky of balloons, and a relationship she pushed away with her own hands.

This stretch: an insurance contract hidden for years, and a "Mom" called out loud in public.

Last time, Zhou Wan took her mother's bank card, steeled herself and pushed Lu Xixiao far away — but grandma's illness grew heavier by the day, and the money to save her stayed far short.

Today, let's keep going.

Zhou Wan's father had long since passed, leaving behind a sizable sum before he went.

All these years, her mother flatly claimed the money was hers, with no intention of sharing a cent with Zhou Wan.

And precisely at this juncture, Zhou Wan dug that insurance contract out at home.

In black and white, written plainly: the true beneficiary, from beginning to end, was Zhou Wan herself, with nothing to do with her mother.

In that moment, the last of her hope shattered — she'd been kept in the dark by her own birth mother, lied to for all these years.

Gritting her teeth, she gave herself an order: what is mine, I will seize back, piece by piece, with my own hands.

The chance came quickly.

The Lu family held a grand memorial banquet; nearly every notable figure in the city turned up, and Zhou Wan's mother, naturally, was among them.

She schemed her way in, set on forcing her mother, before the whole room of guests, to spit out the money her father had left.

At the banquet, the boy who'd always scorned her deliberately spilled a drink on her old dress, just waiting to watch her humiliated in public.

Every eye in the room snapped to Zhou Wan, and the air all but congealed.

Just then, Lu Xixiao walked over without a sound.

It turned out he had readied a plain white gown for her, and with one soft word led her out of that ripple of laughter to change.

When Zhou Wan changed and stood beneath the lights, it was as if she'd suddenly been lit from within.

Even after these days of her treating him cold as frost, Lu Xixiao still stepped, time and again, between her and the world's malice.

But fate had no plans to let them catch their breath.

At that very instant, the hospital called: grandma had finally found a matching kidney donor, but the surgery cost three hundred thousand.

Three hundred thousand — for Zhou Wan right then, no less than an astronomical sum.

She had almost no way back.

Step by step she walked to the very center of the banquet and, before a room of silk and jewels, called that woman "Mom" aloud for the first time.

All these years, she said, thank you, Mom, for supporting me — a line light as air, yet it pinned her mother beneath every gaze in the room.

Cornered with no way down, her mother could only assent in public, handing over her father's three hundred thousand.

And so grandma's surgery money was won back — through one meticulously staged act.

But this scene, word for word, fell into Lu Xixiao's eyes.

His face gave nothing away, yet his chest felt as if a hand had clenched and wrung it hard.

As the night broke up, he finally asked the question: toward me, was there ever even a single instant that was real?

Zhou Wan opened her mouth, and in the end couldn't get out a word.

Because she was pressing down a secret she could not lift: the poised woman on that stage was the birth mother who'd coldly cast her off years ago — and not a soul in that hall knew.

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

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

And Zhou Wan, unable to stop leaning toward him, had at the same time to press the truth down into her heart with all her strength.

This summer, she lived more and more like someone walking a thin wire, a bottomless drop below.

Have you ever kept a secret that the tighter you tried to seal it, the more you feared one glance would see right through?