Forbidden To Be Tempted

C/T Warning: Mentions of su– and dv

Su Wenjing is very enthusiastic.

Even when they were not familiar with each other, she didn't rush to inquire about Cheng Suran's private matters or mention which old friend Cheng Suran resembled. Instead, she invited her to taste the food while discussing the new styles she favored at the trade fair.

On the contrary, Cheng Suran gradually became restless.

Through professional training, even if she was curious and eager, she wouldn't show it. She remained composed.

From a brand to the entire fashion industry, and to the business she runs, Su Wenjing talked eloquently, but she doesn't talk to herself alone. Cheng Suran unknowingly follows her rhythm and chats happily with her.

Su Wenjing is in the medical equipment business. The company is large in scale. Its headquarter is located in Jiangcheng, with branches in many countries and regions around the world. It is also a leader in the import and export trade industry. She can speak English, Russian, and Japanese fluently, and she went to Singapore to study in her early years. She looks very young, but she is actually fifty years old, and there are only a few wrinkles on her face when she smiles.

Cheng Suran observed quietly.

Perhaps it was because of the kindness she felt at the first meeting and the comfort of chatting, she had a good impression of Su Wenjing, so she naturally let go of her guard a little, and even faintly felt that the charms between their eyebrows and eyes seemed a bit alike.

Is it because they both have dimples?

It was completely dark, and the garden outside the window lit up lights one after another. The dishes carefully arranged on the table were almost eaten, and the waiter brought dessert.

"Where are you from?"

"Lingzhou."

As soon as these words fell, Su Wenjing's face changed slightly.

Cheng Suran was keenly aware and asked, "What's wrong?"

Su Wenjing's eyes suddenly became complicated, and she seemed hesitant to speak: "I..." She paused, holding her bag tightly with one hand under the table, "My hometown is Lingzhou."

"What a coincidence," Cheng Suran was quite surprised.

"It turns out we're from the same hometown. Maybe we've met there before, which is why you might feel like I resemble a friend."

Su Wenjing looked at her, a trace of struggle flashed in her eyes, and the smile on the corner of her mouth looked a bit forced. Today, she and Cheng Suran did not meet just for dinner, but—

"We do know each other."

She straightened her shoulders and her expression became serious, "But not as friends."

Cheng Suran was puzzled: "What do you mean?"

Su Wenjing took out a palm-sized photo from her bag, looked at it in her hand, and seemed to have made some decision, put it on the table, and slowly and solemnly pushed it to Cheng Suran.

Source: https://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4738582

This translation is originally posted on

love4baihe.blogspot.com

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The photo above shows a family of three. The woman is slim, with red lips and white teeth. She has the temperament of a Hong Kong-style female star. She holds a little girl with braided pigtails in her arms. She wears a plaid dress. The mother and daughter smiled brightly, and the man next to them...had his head cut off.

This is an old photo with low resolution and the date is marked in gold font in the lower right corner.

September 16, 2000.

The woman looks exactly like Su Wenjing, almost a young version of her. Even though the pixels are not so clear, a small brown mole on the side of the mouth of the little girl in her arms can still be seen.

Cheng Suran stared at the photo and suddenly had a strong intuition in her heart...

She looked up slowly.

"The little girl in the photo is you." Su Wenjing said softly.

This face, in her twenties and fifties, the only difference was the innocence in her eyes and the maturity. Cheng Suran looked at her in disbelief, her lips opening and closing, "You..."

"It's mom."

Su Wenjing uttered that title.

So blunt, so unnatural, as if the person sitting in front of her was not her own daughter, but a stranger—she hadn't seen her for many years, and she was no different from a stranger.

The word "Mom" is the most sensitive forbidden place in Cheng Suran's heart.

"Are you joking..." She chuckled sarcastically, turned her face away, and emitted a hoarse, strained breath from her throat.

Based on just one photo?

"It's not a joke," Su Wenjing sighed, "At the trade fair that day, I heard Miss Jiang mention your name, Cheng Suran... the name I gave my daughter. I can't be wrong."

"There are many people with the same name and surname. Could it be that each of them is your daughter?" Cheng Suran retorted very quickly.

She also raised her voice unconsciously.

Her heart trembled violently.

Her name…

"You were born in the Year of the Rabbit."

"On the 20th of February, under the sign of Pisces."

"You're from Lingzhou."

"You have a small mole on the corner of your left mouth."

"When you were three, your parents divorced, and your mother left. You lived with your father."

With each characteristic Su Wenjing mentioned, Cheng Suran was struck once.

She was speechless to refute.

In reality, she didn't need to say all this. Just based on that old photograph, she had already believed deep down that the radiant woman before her was her biological mother whom she hadn't seen in over twenty years. However, the news had come too suddenly,

She had long accepted the fact that she was a stray child without a home.

The most nostalgic and dependent age has passed.

The two looked at each other in silence.

Under the light, Su Wenjing looks like a bodhisattva, gentle and loving, and has an aura of saving sentient beings. The more she looked at her, the more ethereal she seemed, as if she had stepped out of a dream.

The mother Cheng Suran saw in her dreams when she was a child was like this.

No wonder she felt a sense of familiarity when they first met. No wonder she felt there was a resemblance between them. No wonder her name contained the character "Su"; a character she had always liked since childhood.

Cheng Suran looked down at the photo again.

With such an elegant posture, the woman truly was beautiful. The attire from that era, now referred to as "vintage style," made her resemble someone like Zhang something or Wang something – radiant, confident, gentle, and graceful.

Suddenly, what her aunt said to her rang in her ears: She really doesn't look like the Cheng family at all.

Indeed.

She is more like her mother.

But she also failed to fully inherit her mother's beauty.

In the photo, the little girl is less than two years old, and her round face is extremely cute. At that time, all the accidents had not happened, and she was so happy lying in her mother's arms. As for the man next to them whose head was cut off… she doesn't care.

Su Wenjing looked at her movements, her heart became heavier, and she whispered: "I'm sorry."

Cheng Suran's fingers stiffened and she didn't speak.

It's very strange.

She felt surprisingly calm, without losing control of her emotions, without becoming hysterical, and without accusing this woman of things like "It's too late for apologies" or "What's the point of coming now." During the years she lived with her aunt, she had rehearsed this scenario countless times in her mind, as if only by doing so could she vent her grievances.

"Don't you want to know why Cheng Guowen's face is cut off in this photo?" When Su Wenjing mentioned her ex-husband's name, a trace of disgust appeared in Su Wenjing's eyes.

Cheng Suran said lightly: "It's been so many years since you've been divorced, who still wants to leave traces of their ex."

Su Wenjing's face darkened, and her voice became heavier. "But... no mother would willingly abandon her child." After saying this, she stared deeply at Cheng Suran.

There is something to be said.

Cheng Suran lowered her eyes and thought about it. She knew very little about her biological mother. The only impression she had was the contemptuous eyes, slanderous words from her father, grandma, and aunt when they mentioned her mother occasionally, and how many times she had heard from others in her childhood. She had also heard a few rumors from others when she was a child, like how her mother was spoiled and looked down on honest peasants, dressing up like a vixen to seduce men everywhere, abandoning her child with a wolfish heart, not worthy of being a mother—

She once really believed that her mother disliked the poor and loved the rich and abandoned her.

During countless nights of feeling wronged, she would cry alone while covering her mouth. Her heart was filled with resentment, and she had felt indignant many times. Why did others have complete families while she didn't?

Why not find out today?

"Do you have any reason?" Cheng Suran asked calmly.

Wenjing inhaled, took a sip of lemonade, and said slowly: "My dear, when you get older, you can't let your heart be too attached to a man. Feeling sorry for a man is the beginning of a nightmare…"

The Su family is the earliest ten-thousand-dollar household in Lingzhou. It has gradually developed from a small business to open a factory. Su Wenjing has lived in a big villa since she was born, and she is picked up by car to and from school. Her peers can't afford toys or ordinary snacks. At the time, she was already tired of playing with all kinds of new gadgets and imported snacks.

The little princess who grew up rich and well protected by her parents perhaps tired of listening to too many sweet words from men in the same circle, when she met a simple and down-to-earth man by chance, which felt refreshingly different—

Cheng Guowen, the driver of the Su family.

The man was tall and rough, with fairly handsome features, from a poor family, graduated from a technical secondary school, served as a soldier for two years, and has never had a serious job since he was discharged from the army.

He was playful and liked to act pitifully.

At that time, in Su Wenjing's eyes, he was completely different from those "coquettish and cheap" men outside. Love started from novelty and flourished in pity. She felt sorry for this poor but humorous honest man. To marry him, Su Wenjing went on a hunger strike, attempted suicide, and caused a huge scene at home. She nearly severed ties with her parents.

After more than a year of marriage, the nature of the so-called honest man was gradually exposed. Starting with his unemployment and excessive drinking, and later escalated into domestic violence. He was a soldier, so he still had some strength in him. A spoiled little princess is no match for him.

The night in the countryside was dark and long, and she was lying on the bed, crying while hugging her two-year-old daughter. The "love" brought by novelty and pity is thus annihilated in endless physical and mental torture...

The stiff relationship with her family eased at this time, and her parents still cared about their daughter. Su Wenjing finally got rid of this marriage and escaped from the devil's den. To completely forget the past and start again, she let go of her three-year-old child.

Opening up the scars of the past is so ugly, but it doesn't hurt anymore.

"I guess this is the price of growth."

Su Wenjing paused after speaking, took a big gulp of lemon water, slowly swallowed, and wiped her mouth with a tissue. She then smiled and muttered to herself, "I can totally imagine how the Cheng family must have schemed behind my back, and I can guess what kind of ideas they instilled in you... it's nothing more than, your own mother looks down on rural folks, has no shame, seduces men everywhere, and abandons her husband and child to run away with a lover..."

Harsh words sounded as light to her as talking about the weather.

Cheng Suran stared at her blankly, under the table, her hands resting on her knees tightly twisted together.

That day in her hometown in Lingzhou, her aunt angrily accused her father and revealed all the old stories. In one sentence, she said, "He beat his wife away". At that time, her mind was full of the truth about Jiang Yu and the rabbit doll, and she didn't think about other things.

So that's how it was...

But what about later? In these over twenty years, was there really no news at all? If it weren't for the chance encounter at the trade fair, would her biological mother ever have reached out to her voluntarily?

Of course not.

She understood.

For Su Wenjing, she is the child of her and the person she hates most in life, the price paid for being a love fool when she was young, and the nightmare she wants to forget completely.

Cheng Suran suddenly felt sad, a tinge of bitterness welled up in her heart, but it was fleeting, dissipating like a mosquito bite before emotions could truly stir. Her gaze turned numb as she said, "Your guess is correct."

Su Wenjing smiled wryly.

"When you were so young, I left your side. I haven't fulfilled a mother's responsibilities for so long. I suddenly appear before you today, and I know I have no right to ask for your forgiveness..."

"Do you know that Cheng Guowen is dead?" Cheng Suran interrupted her.

Su Wenjing was stunned.

"I was seven years old, and he went out to drink, got drunk and got into a fight, and was accidentally stabbed to death. A few days ago, the village was building a road to relocate graves, and I went back to preside over it for him.

Cheng Suran said lightly, picked up a small silver spoon, dug a piece of pudding, and put it into her mouth, the sweet taste spread on the tip of her tongue, just a bit but enough to neutralize the bitterness in her heart.

"Then... you."

Su Wenjing didn't care about that man's affairs, and her intuition told her that something must have happened later.

"Later, I stayed at my aunt's house until I was eighteen." Cheng Suran said while eating pudding. Each spoonful was larger than the previous one, hurriedly consumed as if trying to fill something up before it could be devoured.

Seven years old has memories.

In those few days, the house was in chaos. She was hungry for a long time and ate the eggs laid by the old hen raw. The adults were arguing in the main room, and she hid in the room and eavesdropped through the door, talking about..."Don't want her", "Forget it", "That damned mother, I don't know where she died".

It seems they weren't able to contact her biological mother.

At that time, Cheng Suran wondered why her mother didn't come to take her away. As she grew older, she even thought about how great it would be if her mother had taken her away. Even as an adult, she would occasionally think that if her mother had taken her away earlier, she wouldn't have had to endure eleven years of living under someone else's roof.

Since the past cannot be changed, there is no need to talk about it now.

In just a few words, Su Wenjing heard a lot of hidden information, and it took her a while to regain her composure. A hint of guilt flashed in her eyes as she said, "I didn't know such a thing had happened. I…"

Cheng Suran's seven years old was her thirty-one years old. At that time, she had married her current husband, her career had just started to improve, and she was pregnant with her second child. Even if she knew about it, she wouldn't take Cheng Suran to her side—a very realistic choice, her heart couldn't stand such torture.

Having escaped from hell and reborn again, she will not allow her past mistakes to bother her.

She sees her own daughter as a mistake.

She is nothing but a bad person.

"Sorry."

"No need to apologize," Cheng Suran shook her head lightly, "As a woman, I sympathize with your experience and understand your choice. As for the rest... I don't want to say much more. That's all."

"I'm not here to seek forgiveness."