A Willing Mistake, My Lady – Chapter 107
by Little PandaModern AU Extra 1
First Meeting
The quiet residential neighborhood was surrounded by lush trees that shaded the not-so-narrow roads from the sun, yet the emerald-green leaves didn’t feel oppressive at all—instead, they lent the old neighborhood a fairy-tale charm.
Looking up, the branches on either side seemed to intertwine with purpose, forming a lush natural canopy. Sunlight pierced through the gaps in shafts, creating beams of light so beautiful they seemed unreal.
Shen Hetang was sprawled on a half-new, half-worn fabric sofa, her long legs extending straight over the armrest and dangling off the side.
A pair of plastic slippers that cost less than ten yuan barely clung to her feet. Comfortable shorts and a loose white T-shirt served as her loungewear at home—convenient enough that she wouldn’t even need to change to go to the market.
She opened a flat tin box containing various household documents and a debit card—this held all her income.
Seventeen thousand five hundred—barely enough to get her through her final year of high school. Her parents had died in a car accident when she was very young, leaving behind a child and aging grandparents. From then on, the two elderly country folks had struggled to raise their granddaughter, and though life was hard, their healthy, happy granddaughter remained their spiritual pillar.
Her parents’ car accident, due to the apportionment of liability, had yielded only a hundred thousand yuan in compensation. Shen Hetang was only eight at the time, yet she told her grandparents, “Don’t be afraid. I’ll grow up soon and earn money to support you both.”
The old couple’s hearts ached hearing this. Persuaded by her martial arts coach, they decided to let their talented granddaughter continue her training—even if it meant renting another twenty or thirty mu1 of farmland, they would earn the money for her education.
Their original twenty mu of land could net twenty or thirty thousand in a good year, but in a drought, ten thousand was considered lucky. Now that they had a child to raise, of course, more was better.
Coach Cui had also waived Shen Hetang’s tuition, simply wanting to teach her—not wanting a promising seedling to wither before it could bloom. So during the farming off-season, her grandmother moved into the city with Shen Hetang to their old home. Not wanting the child to switch to a rural school, the grandmother had to move in with her, while her grandfather stayed behind doing odd jobs.
When spring planting season came, she would stay at Coach Cui’s house. Every day after school, she trained for two or three hours. Sometimes she would repeat a single movement for three hours or more, not stopping until it became muscle memory.
She remembered Coach Cui’s kindness. Aside from winning first place and bringing him glory, how else could she repay him?
As she grew older, Coach Cui would seek out competitions with prize money. All competitions required entry fees, but Coach Cui said he would cover the registration, and any prize money would be Shen Hetang’s own.
The gigs Coach Cui arranged for her were wildly varied—wedding banquets, commercial performances for advertisements, and even once posing as a white-haired old lady for a tai chi sword performance, because the original elderly woman had fallen ill at the last minute.
Using his motley network of connections, Coach Cui got her in. After one performance, she earned five hundred yuan. The white wig cost thirty, leaving her a net of four hundred seventy yuan.
By then she was fifteen. Her grandmother, afraid of becoming a burden, returned to the countryside. Besides, her grandfather also needed someone to look after him—the old couple had reached the age where they needed to lean on each other.
Shen Hetang had suggested bringing her grandfather over so the three of them could live together, but her grandmother said the home couldn’t be abandoned, and old folks didn’t want to stay away from it.
Shen Hetang went along with whatever made her grandparents happy. But during the busy farming season, she had to go home and coordinate the workers and machinery to finish planting their twenty or thirty mu of land.
More or less, it covered the old couple’s annual expenses, and her grandmother even managed to save eight or ten thousand yuan each year to set aside for her granddaughter.
Her grandmother would always say that life in the countryside was easier—you couldn’t spend money even if you had it, unlike the city where even a single scallion cost money. Once in the city, you couldn’t even bear to throw away a scallion leaf—what kind of life was that?
Every time, Shen Hetang couldn’t help but laugh. Her grandmother always had plenty of self-evident truths, one after another.
The tin box also held another debit card containing the original hundred thousand yuan plus the eighty thousand her grandparents had scraped together over the years through frugal living—a total of a hundred and eighty thousand. Her grandmother said it was for her university tuition, but Shen Hetang felt it was her grandparents’ retirement fund.
Nowadays, earning her own tuition through part-time work wasn’t difficult for her. She had been self-reliant since childhood, emotionally grounded and socially adept—even on her own, she would live well.
School was about to start again, and she needed to buy study materials and stationery.
Recent odd jobs had been scarce, so she had to spend carefully. She decided to withdraw two thousand five hundred yuan from her card for the first month’s miscellaneous fees. She received some financial assistance at school, so it should be enough.
She put on a white shirt, light blue jeans, and canvas shoes—a common, ordinary outfit. Yet her tall, straight figure made the clothes look far more refined, the relaxed ease carrying a sharpness that drew attention but discouraged casual approaches.
Her hairstyle and aura were somewhat at odds—a bob cut with thick bangs, paired with cool, pale skin, somehow transformed someone who was a bit aloof into a quiet, reserved sweet girl2.
Because she had always kept her hair short, she was growing it out a little longer for the first time under her grandmother’s vehement insistence. She felt it was simply torture, but she had no choice—she didn’t want to hear her grandmother say again that she would close her eyes without ever seeing her granddaughter’s hair reaching her waist3.
She would just have to endure it.
The place to buy study materials was somewhat out of the way. As she walked back with her canvas bag, two people came walking toward her.
A man in his forties, dressed so impeccably he was clearly the successful type. He had his arm around a girl of sixteen or seventeen.
The girl wore a tight black dress that barely covered her hips, her long, slender white legs on blatant display. With a shapely rear, narrow waist, and full bust, the young girl exuded a blend of innocence and allure—practically a straight man’s ultimate dream girl4, top tier5.
Shen Hetang noticed those pale, slender long legs first. As the two of them passed each other, their eyes met subconsciously.
The girl seemed to have been crying—the skin around her eyes was flushed pink. Waves of long hair cascaded over her shoulders, a white flower pinned at her ear. Tears still clung to her curled lashes, as translucent as crystal, making her look so pitiable—like an exquisite, perfect doll.
But why was she crying? Was that man her father? If so, why would he allow his young daughter to dress so provocatively?
The man was also dressed entirely in a black suit, one hand gripping the girl’s shoulder. From the distance between them, the girl was clearly trying to keep away from the man, but he insisted on keeping his hand on her.
This scene made Shen Hetang deeply uncomfortable. Even if they really were father and daughter, they had reached the age where propriety demanded some distance. She stood rooted, then glanced back, feeling a tightness in her chest. She thought she might have too strong a sense of justice—getting upset over something like this. That was a flaw she needed to fix.
As if sensing something, that exquisite doll turned her head, giving Shen Hetang a forty-five-degree glimpse of her profile, before the man pulled her away.
She suddenly took two steps forward, then stopped abruptly. She had actually wanted to snatch the girl back—she must be crazy.
“Tangtang, it’s not that serious,” she told herself.
Just now, she had felt possessed, wanting to drag that person back and run away with her.
After a trip to the countryside, the new school year arrived. The final year of high school—no one even had time to sleep.
Her grades were above average. If she couldn’t compete on academics alone, her athletic specialty could still get her into a decent university. At this point, her basketfuls of gold and silver medals counted for something. As long as tuition was affordable, she didn’t ask for much.
Though her parents were gone, her grandparents had never shortchanged her. They weren’t wealthy, but they had raised her with ease. Her martial arts training, thanks to natural talent, didn’t feel burdensome either.
When it came to earning money outside, Coach Cui handled most of the arrangements—she just had to show up. So her pocket money was fairly comfortable. She simply didn’t have the habit of spending recklessly. Whatever her grandmother gave her, she saved, spending only what she earned herself.
Life was orderly, methodical.
On the second day of the new term, a transfer student arrived in their class. The moment she walked in, the classroom erupted, giving Shen Hetang, who had her head down, a headache.
She thought, did a celestial maiden just walk in? The boys in front and behind were all going crazy. Was it because they were in the throes of puberty? How could none of them have any restraint?
She casually glanced toward the front—and froze as if someone had sealed her acupoints. The transfer student wearing the blue-and-white school uniform was the same girl in the black dress she had encountered that day. That crystalline teardrop still hung in her heart, impossible to wipe away no matter how she tried.
“Hello everyone, my name is Jiang Chenyu. Please take care of me.” The girl gave a polite little bow, but she was clearly not one for unnecessary words.
As soon as she finished speaking, another wave of commotion swept through the classroom. The girls, on the other hand, felt an immense crisis—the oppressive sense that their standing was under threat.
“There are currently two empty seats. Jiang, you can sit wherever you like.” The homeroom teacher pointed to the seat next to Shen Hetang and the one next to a male student.
That boy’s eyes lit up. He figured he was quite popular, so this beautiful girl would definitely choose him. That would be great—eye candy right through the end of high school, and maybe even something more. His thoughts wandered far away.
Then he watched helplessly as the beauty headed toward Shen Hetang’s side, deflating like a punctured ball—his despair visible to the naked eye.
The girls in the class looked slightly relieved that she hadn’t chosen the class heartthrob, but not by much.
Seeing her take the seat beside her, Shen Hetang offered a polite but distant smile, only for the new student to flash an even more perfunctory fake smile in return—and that was the end of it.
Seeing that the new girl wasn’t the chatty type, Shen Hetang didn’t push and make a nuisance of herself. She went back to her own business, though her attention remained on the new student.
For some reason, she felt an uncontrollable pull to pay attention to her—not the superficial interest she had in others, but a depth she couldn’t quite articulate, as if they had known each other before.
Every cell, every fiber of muscle and bone in her body felt drawn—strange, yet natural.
Footnotes
- A traditional Chinese unit of land area, approximately 667 square meters or 0.165 acres.
- Literally 'sweet girl'; modern Chinese internet slang for a cute, gentle-looking young woman with an approachable, sweet demeanor.
- A popular modern Chinese internet allusion from the phrase 'When my hair reaches my waist,' expressing a wish for romantic fulfillment; here used by Shen Hetang's grandmother to express her desire to see her granddaughter grow long, feminine hair before she dies.
- Literally 'a straight man's heaven-vegetable'; modern Chinese slang describing someone who is the exact, ideal physical and aesthetic type for heterosexual men.
- Literally 'ceiling'; modern internet slang referring to the absolute highest possible standard or pinnacle of a category.
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