Inheritance

Wei Yin stormed off at once. The people there were too stunned to react, and no one went after her.

Yu Tiantian was dragged away by her for no apparent reason. “Hey, I was still watching—”

“This boss is awful,” Wei Yin said as she got into the car. “I’ll take you to another exhibition next time.”

Yu Tiantian found this rare; under normal circumstances, Wei Yin almost never got angry. Even when she was upset, she would just swallow it and keep quiet. For her to be this visibly furious, so much so that you could tell at a glance, was even rarer than someone spamming a Carnival gift in her livestream.

“Tell me about it,” Yu Tiantian said as she drove, glancing toward the exhibition hall. A group of people had come out; the one standing in front was probably the owner. “Were they all staring at you?”

Wei Yin gave the place a cold look. “Drive.”

“Weren’t you here to look for a ceramics performance?” Yu Tiantian said. “Did you have an argument?”

Wei Yin was silent for a long moment before saying, “She saw the patterns on my porcelain, that zodiac set. She thought I’d copied someone else’s idea.”

“Is she crazy?” Yu Tiantian said, instinctively defending her best friend. Then she thought about it more rationally. “That porcelain set was livestreamed from start to finish; the patterns were drawn by you by hand, and you never even used your phone. Couldn’t that count as evidence?”

She worked in art, and plagiarism was no small matter. She was worried Wei Yin might really get targeted. Even if she was innocent, having someone splash mud on you was infuriating enough.

“No evidence needed,” Wei Yin said, turning to look out the window. In the rearview mirror, those people were still standing at the entrance; her phone had also started buzzing. She didn’t even need to look to know it was the Wuxi shopkeeper. “I already cleared it up. That was my original work.”

“That’s good then,” Yu Tiantian said with relief. “That person really isn’t worth it; she didn’t even understand the situation and already accused you. This shop is bad; we’ll switch to another one.”

The shopkeeper was still calling. When Wei Yin didn’t answer, they switched to WeChat and text messages, and before long her phone was ringing like a symphony of ding-dings.

Wei Yin put it on silent; out of sight, out of mind.

“Where to next?” Yu Tiantian asked.

Wei Yin’s mind was a mess right now. “To the courtyard. You probably haven’t been there yet; I’ll take you to look around.”

She wanted somewhere that could calm her down. Working clay helped her settle quickly.

Yu Tiantian turned the car around, and they went to the courtyard together.

The courtyard was two streets away from the urban village. This whole area was made up of single-story houses waiting to be redeveloped.

When she pushed open the green iron gate, there was a small, neatly swept courtyard inside; even the fallen leaves had been gathered to one side, revealing a broad stretch of clean concrete.

“Uncle and Auntie had someone clean it,” Wei Yin said as she led Yu Tiantian inside. “This is your room.”

The main room faced south and was packed with pottery supplies. The throwing wheel hadn’t been cleaned yet, and there was a layer of dried white clay dust on it.

Wei Yin’s room was on the west side of the main room; Yu Tiantian’s was on the east.

“Why is it all your stuff?” Yu Tiantian said, looking around in circles. “Not even a paintbrush.”

“There is,” Wei Yin said, holding up the coloring brushes she used herself. “Aren’t these? And there’s also underglaze concentrate.”

Yu Tiantian rolled her eyes.

“Fine, I’ll move it myself.” After taking a lap around, she had nothing else to say. The place was spacious, the water and electricity were convenient, and both rooms already had beds; with a little tidying, they could sleep here temporarily. “The storage room’s too small. This place is pretty good. The livestream shots will look better too. I’m going to film this part in.”

Wei Yin didn’t understand any of that. Yu Tiantian could arrange it however she liked; as long as there was a place where she could quietly do her own thing, that was enough.

“I’ll go move the stuff,” Yu Tiantian said. “You wait here.”

She meant what she said. Yu Tiantian planned to move everything over from the storage room today.

Wei Yin stood up. “I’ll go with you.”

Yu Tiantian waved her off. “No need. I’ve got something else to do later; once the stuff’s moved over, you’ll have to put it away anyway.”

She would move it; Wei Yin would arrange it. Clear division of labor.

Wei Yin had no objection. “You still need to go to work?”

“Nope, I already quit,” Yu Tiantian said. “I’m going to see Yu Tiantian.”

At the name, Wei Yin looked up. “What’s wrong with her?”

Yu Tiantian used a tone that said, You know exactly what I mean. “She’s treating me to a meal. The kind where you know damn well she’s up to no good, but you still have to show up and deal with it.”

Wei Yin shook her head. “I don’t know. She only had a fight with Hua Yu a few days ago.”

“She fought with Hua Yu?!” Yu Tiantian’s eyes lit up. “Tell me about it.”

Wei Yin was a good kid and never lied to her friends, so she honestly recounted everything: “Hua Yu said she spread rumors about me. Though we only found out the one who actually spread them was the class monitor, Hua Yu said it was her, so it must have been her.”

Yu Tiantian had originally expected a battle between Hua Yu and Yu Tiantian, and especially wanted to see Yu Tiantian get flattened by Hua Yu. She never expected the topic to turn to Wei Yin instead.

She opened her mouth, then for a moment didn’t know what to say first.

After bottling it up for a while, she finally said, “…What a bunch of damn bastards.”

Seeing that Yu Tiantian wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how to start, Wei Yin bared her teeth in a smile. “It’s fine. I don’t remember any of that. Hua Yu told me a lot afterward; turns out we knew each other so early, and we even had a pretty good relationship.”

Talking about this made her happy. Since only Yu Tiantian was here, she could share that joy with her, so she tugged her along and chattered through all the clingy little details of her past with Hua Yu, concluding, “Other than being a little tsundere and a little too proper, Dr. Hua doesn’t have a single flaw.”

“She really told you not to wear a bath towel?” Yu Tiantian kept focusing on the wrong point. “And she wouldn’t let you wear a tank top and shorts?”

Wei Yin gave her a sidelong look. “Isn’t that excessive?”

Yu Tiantian slapped her thigh. “She’s finally got some backbone!”

Wei Yin: ?

“Believe me,” Yu Tiantian said, laying out facts and reason. “If this had been when you two had just met, even if you wore a see-through top, she’d probably only have found you a hospital gown or draped a blanket over you. She wouldn’t have said another word!”

Wei Yin narrowed her eyes, not buying it at all.

“Really,” Yu Tiantian said. “She’s often abroad; before her PhD, she spent more than half her time overseas. No bra is normal there. Whatever you want to wear, however you want to wear it, nobody’s going to gossip about it.”

Wei Yin frowned. “You mean Hua Yu is very open-minded?”

“Oh, not exactly,” Yu Tiantian denied immediately. “Her family is still pretty traditional. It’s just that she knows how to respect people. She’s seen everything. Unless she treats you like one of her own, and not just that, but someone very close to her, she wouldn’t open her mouth to criticize how you dress or do things.”

Seeing Wei Yin fall into thought, Yu Tiantian gave an example. “That red-haired girl we ran into when we ate last time? Her name’s Li Leran. She’s also a childhood friend of mine and Hua Yu’s. One year, she threw a pool party at home. While doing breaststroke, she cramped up and flailed around in a 1.2-meter-deep pool for ages. After she got out, her high-cut bikini bottoms had rolled themselves into a thong. Everyone was laughing and busy tugging her clothes straight and looking for a towel; only Hua Yu stayed very calm and even asked me what I was laughing at.”

“Your memory is broken; delete that right now,” Wei Yin said with a shiver. “Hua Yu wasn’t even paying attention to whether it was a thong or not.”

“Forget it, I can’t explain it to you,” Yu Tiantian said. “Anyway, you two should just flirt, bicker, and make up. I’m delighted to see my cousin willing to open her heart and embrace the past, and embrace love.”

“I’m heading out… huh, my teacher’s calling?”

Yu Tiantian went outside to take the call, while Wei Yin started sorting out the tools and cleaning the throwing wheel. Two minutes later, Yu Tiantian came back with a strange expression and said to Wei Yin, “My advisor’s here looking at the exhibition too. She saw me… and the owner of the exhibition is Pedro.”

“Whether she’s called Elizabeth Alexander or not has nothing to do with me,” Wei Yin said, picking up a smooth lump of clay and slapping it onto the wheel. “Aren’t you supposed to move things?”

“Today I’m… not moving them after all,” Yu Tiantian said, dragging over a stool and sitting quietly beside Wei Yin. She couldn’t help asking, “Um, do you know who Pedro is?”

“Don’t want to know.” Wei Yin lowered her head and stepped on the pedal; the wheel spun rapidly.

Yu Tiantian fell silent.

The clay body had been kneaded a little dry, and Wei Yin couldn’t press it smoothly. The more she worked it, the more tangled her mind became; after a while, she started to feel slightly irritated.

“Who is she?”

Yu Tiantian immediately said, “Honorary president of the Art Association, honorary professor at the Capital Academy of Fine Arts, lifetime achievement recipient of the Fine Arts Award…”

“Besides all those honors,” Wei Yin said, entirely unmoved by the weight of them, “what does being a great artist have to do with me?”

Yu Tiantian’s mouth had gone a little dry. She glanced at Wei Yin and hesitated. “Do you have a really big issue with her?”

Wei Yin washed her hands in the bucket. “No.”

“You clearly do,” Yu Tiantian said. “What exactly happened after you went in?”

At first, Yu Tiantian had thought the exhibition owner might just be some self-important businessperson who mistook a pearl for a pebble and wrongly accused Wei Yin. She never expected it to be Pedro.

Wei Yin actually wanted someone to talk to as well, so she picked out the important parts and told her about Sun Bai, saying indignantly, “Aunt Bai treasured that image library so much. Mom told her many times: sell off the collection, sell the patterns, sell whatever you can and at least get some money for the targeted medicine. If she could hold on for six years, then she could definitely hold on for another six. But she just wouldn’t agree. When she died, she was only thirty-five. She hadn’t even lived half an ordinary life, and she was gone… Pe—Pedro, is that how you pronounce it? Whoever she is, she never showed up before. So what difference does it make now that she’s appearing? It doesn’t mean anything to anyone anymore.”

Yu Tiantian patted her shoulder. “There, there. I get it. But to be honest, I don’t think Pedro is the kind of person you’re talking about.”

Wei Yin glared at her. “You know her?”

Yu Tiantian thought for a moment. “How about you ask Hua Yu? She knows more than I do.”

Wei Yin immediately pulled out her phone and called Hua Yu.

Hua Yu had just finished surgery; she hadn’t even taken off her cap yet, and when she answered, she sounded very relaxed, with a hint of laziness after intense work. “Xiao Yin?”

That slightly hoarse voice reached her ear with a strange calming power, and most of Wei Yin’s anger vanished in an instant.

After she explained everything, Wei Yin asked, “Who exactly is she? Can I just ignore her?”

Hua Yu was more steady than Yu Tiantian and asked carefully about the details of their conversation before saying thoughtfully, “Pedro is a lady worthy of respect. She doesn’t just have exceptional artistic achievement; she’s also contributed a great deal to international charitable organizations. After returning to the country, she’s long funded girls with gland disorders among orphan children, and the social organizations she founded have repeatedly and successfully rescued trafficked women and children. Four years ago, when she learned that the provincial hospital regularly provided medical aid to the western mountain regions, she became our biggest donor. Besides that, she has also funded dozens of hospitals.”

As Wei Yin listened, she stopped speaking.

This was unquestionably a great benefactor, a very good person. The little bit of resistance and resentment Wei Yin had felt seemed so insignificant beneath the light she cast.

“Oh,” Wei Yin said. “Got it.”

Yu Tiantian hurriedly added, “The teacher asked me to tell you that Pedro wants to meet you.”

Wei Yin clutched the phone but didn’t say anything.

No matter how good this person was, Wei Yin still didn’t want to meet her.

Because there was really no need. The person it would have mattered to was already gone.

Wei Yin wasn’t as angry as she had been at the beginning. Just as Hua Yu had said, Pedro was a kind person; back then there must have been many unavoidable, unspeakable difficulties. The grievances of the older generation didn’t need to be carried into the next.

But that was all. No debt, no grudge; why did they still need to meet?

Yu Tiantian fanned the flames beside her. “Just one meeting. She probably wants to learn something about Sun Bai from you…”

“But I—”

“Yaqing.”

Hua Yu’s low, gentle, composed voice and Wei Yin’s protest rang out at the same time.

“Xiao Yin doesn’t want to meet her, so she doesn’t have to,” Hua Yu said softly. “I have Pedro’s contact information. I can meet her on Xiao Yin’s behalf.”

Yu Tiantian rubbed her nose. “Fine.”

Hua Yu said to Wei Yin in a quiet voice, “Your craft was inherited from Sun Bai. Even if I can meet her for you, she’ll most likely still come looking for you. You are Sun Bai’s inheritance; if she cares about Sun Bai, she will definitely come looking for you again.”

She is Sun Bai’s inheritance.

Wei Yin hung up and stared at the ground in a daze.

“This is a good thing,” Yu Tiantian said happily. “If Pedro recognizes your craftsmanship, your value can shoot up by hundreds or thousands of times.”

Wei Yin’s mind was still on what Hua Yu had just said.

Pedro had long been funding orphan girls with gland disorders… Aunt Bai also seemed to be an orphan.

“Is Pedro a foreigner?” Wei Yin asked.

“Do you mean nationality or ancestry? Pedro was adopted by an English couple when she was little. That family was kind-hearted; they adopted more than ten orphans from all over the world. I think she even wrote an autobiography about it. But then something happened to that couple, and Pedro had just become an adult. The other children were gradually adopted out, so she threw herself into her career, though things didn’t go especially smoothly… Anyway, she only really made it big after she was forty. Coming back to the country was also only in recent years.”

Wei Yin looked out the window. Maybe it was because Pedro shared the same orphan background as Aunt Bai; maybe it was because of the hard, wandering life Pedro seemed to have lived; or maybe it was simply because of the kindness in her support for the weak. Suddenly, Wei Yin felt that meeting her wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.