Chapter 2664 — I Am Your Brother

The two of them went upstairs together, and Wei Zhao stopped at the door of a room and knocked.

"Who is it?" Before long, Yu Xiaoke's rather weary, languid voice came from inside.

Yu Dake, by contrast, was beside himself with excitement, his whole body trembling. That voice—though unfamiliar—stirred in him an inexplicable sense of closeness, so strong that he wished he could shove the door open and stride in that very instant.

Wei Zhao saw Yu Dake's reaction and patted him on the shoulder, giving him a reassuring smile. "Xiaoke, it's me," he said.

Yu Xiaoke opened the door, and at the sight of Wei Zhao her brows knit at once. "What are you doing here?"

"Xiaoke... I... I..." Yu Dake was so overwhelmed that he paid no mind to how Yu Xiaoke had greeted Wei Zhao; gazing at her, he was too nervous to get the words out.

"And who are you?" Yu Xiaoke stared in bewilderment at this hugely agitated leader-type standing beside Wei Zhao. "Do you know me?"

"I... of course I know you—you're my little sister!" Yu Dake said, quivering with emotion. Yu Xiaoke had grown up now, but she still bore a faint resemblance to the photograph, so Yu Dake was utterly certain that the girl before him was the sister he had lost as a child.

"Wei Zhao, did you bring me a lunatic?" Yu Xiaoke turned to Wei Zhao, her face dark with exasperation. "Who on earth is this person?"

"Xiaoke, his name is Yu Dake, and he's your brother," Wei Zhao explained, sweating a little on her behalf—though it was hardly surprising. Yu Dake was the elder and had already been old enough to remember things as a child, whereas Yu Xiaoke had likely been too young, and had no memory of him left at all...

"Yu Dake? My brother?" Yu Xiaoke was taken aback for a moment, but then the way she looked at Yu Dake turned suspicious. In her memory she did have a brother, but she had been too young then to remember much, and almost nothing about him remained—yet the name Yu Dake she did remember!

And she had never told anyone that, not even the old director of the orphanage. Which meant Wei Zhao could not simply have dragged in some random man to fool her; if he truly meant to deceive her, he would have made up a name like Yu Dake—wait, no—he would never have called the man Yu Dake.

"Yes, Xiaoke. You remember?" Yu Dake asked, his face alight with emotion.

"No..." Yu Xiaoke shook her head. "But I do remember that I had a brother—I just can't recall anything about him. Come in and we'll talk..."

Whether it was true or not, and wherever Wei Zhao had found him, Yu Xiaoke could not very well turn him away—though she still harbored some doubts about Yu Dake's origins, and those doubts were born of her wariness toward Wei Zhao.

Wei Zhao showing up out of the blue at night and bringing along a man who claimed to be her brother—anyone would be suspicious.

Wei Zhao made to step inside as well, but Yu Xiaoke blocked him at the door and said coolly, "Sorry, Wei Zhao. I'd like to talk to him alone."

"Ha, all right." Wei Zhao said nothing more; he simply nodded and came to a halt at the doorway.

Yu Xiaoke made to shut the door, and although Yu Dake felt it improper to leave Wei Zhao outside, he assumed Yu Xiaoke wanted to settle a few things with him and could hardly do so with an outsider present. So he could only say apologetically to Wei Zhao, "Mr. Lin, please wait a moment. Once my sister and I have confirmed who we are to each other, we'll let you in!"

"Fine, no trouble at all," Wei Zhao said with a smile.

Seeing how deferential Yu Dake was toward Wei Zhao, Yu Xiaoke felt a flicker of annoyance. Why did her own brother act like Wei Zhao's lackey? In truth, she was already eighty percent convinced of Yu Dake's identity—after all, very few people knew her brother's name.

Once the door was shut, Yu Dake was both excited and ill at ease, unsure whether to stand or sit. He glanced around Yu Xiaoke's dormitory: apart from a bed, there was only a desk, and before the desk stood its single chair.

So Yu Dake could either sit on the chair or on the bed—there was nowhere else.

"Please, sit," Yu Xiaoke said, then conjured a folding chair from somewhere as if by magic, opened it, and set it before Yu Dake. She herself took the chair at the desk and fixed her eyes on him. "Are you really my brother?"

"Xiaoke, I really am your brother!" Yu Dake nodded with certainty. "I know you must have doubts, but first, take a look at this photograph."

Yu Dake knew that no words could be as genuine as a photograph. Photoshop was formidable these days, true, but no amount of editing could reconstruct with perfect accuracy what a person had looked like as a child.

Yu Xiaoke watched as Yu Dake drew an old-fashioned pocket watch from his bosom and carefully handed it to her. Such things were rarely seen in modern society anymore. Yu Xiaoke took it at once and opened it—and gave a startled "Oh?"

The little girl in the photograph was Yu Xiaoke herself! Yu Xiaoke did not have this photo, but when she was small, just after the old director had taken her in, he had photographed her. And every child at the orphanage, upon first arriving, had been photographed by the old director—for no other reason than that when they grew up and went searching for their parents, there would be something to prove what they had looked like as children.

Yu Xiaoke had seen her own photograph, and the girl in this picture was identical to her! And the two photos had been taken from completely different angles, so this one could hardly have been photoshopped...

Then there was only one explanation: the man before her really was her brother...

"Is this you and me?" Yu Xiaoke asked after a moment's silence.

"Yes. This is the only photograph of the two of us as children that survives, and it's also the proof I've relied on all these years to find you..." Yu Dake sighed. "Only, for certain special reasons, I dared not search for you openly... I'm sorry..."

"No, that's not your fault... Are you really my brother?" Yu Xiaoke's heart was in turmoil. She had long known she had a brother, but he had existed only deep in her memory, barely even an impression—and now he had suddenly appeared before her, and she found it hard to accept.

"Yes. If you don't believe me, there is a small red birthmark on the sole of your right foot..." Yu Dake said. "I was old enough to remember things by then, though not much—and that's the only thing I remember..."