Aunty Hong went through the list again in her head. She had certainly aged over the years but she didn’t want her employer to know that. Besides, it wasn’t a very long list so she didn’t have a hard time remembering it. But nonetheless, Aunty Hong was a very thorough woman and she happened to like been a perfectionist.

She turned the corner to reach the mansion, the two groceries bags in her two hands were beginning to get heavy, and at the sight of the looming house, she stopped in her tracks.

Kris, being the new annoying him, was already there. Today, he was again dressed in all black, hair stark golden against his attire, and was leaning lazily against the fence. He straightened up when he caught the elder woman heading towards the house. And he actually cowered when he noticed the livid look on her.

“Yi Fan, for the love of God, do you not have anything better to do?” Aunty Hong burst out.

“I just want to make sure that she’s not too mad about yesterday,” he defended himself quickly. But he still followed her as she made her way to the front porch to the main door. “Is she still angry?”

Aunty Hong rolled her eyes as she fished out her keys to unlock the door. She had placed her bags down and Kris picked it up without being told to.

“Xiao Shan didn’t say,” she replied. “And no, I didn’t ask her. I have better things to do than play matchmaking for you.”

“You could at least try, Aunty Hong,” Kris put in sulkily and a tad too whiny for Aunty Hong’s liking. “Can’t you do that for your favorite guy?” He tried again.

This time, she whirled around, her eyes widened in disbelief. Forgetting about unlocking the door, or ignoring Kris’s blatant attempts to annoy the life out of her, she asked.

“Yi Fan, what do you even see in Xiao Shan that drives you to this level? It’s not like you’ve never had your fair share of girlfriends.” And by that, she had meant his meaningless flings with various girls she had seen him with for the past years. “Do you even know her well enough to say that you want to be with her?”

“Aunty Hong, of course I know her well enough!” he jumped to the defense again. And when he saw her folded her arms in a challenge, he continued, “She’s considerate, polite, gentle, pretty, and most importantly, she understands me.”

“You still haven’t said what do you know about her?”

His stance faltered slightly. Finally, he admitted, “Fine, I only know what you told me. That she’s a daughter of a business tycoon in China and her relationship with her family is rocky so she moved here. Her mom passed away when she was young and her dad remarried so she has a stepmom and a stepsister.”

Aunty Hong sighed, contemplating hard to tell him more. “There’s more than meets the eye, Yi Fan. You should stop obsessing about Xiao Shan and just stay away.”

“Why?!” he demanded, again to the degree of whining again.

“Because Xiao Shan is pregnant,” she said at last.

There was a stagnant pause as she literally saw possibilities ran through Kris’s eyes. The childlike expression he had on disappeared almost instantly, replaced by the usual impassive mask he wore. But she had raised him since he was a child and she knew him. He wasn’t angry or annoyed. He wasn’t really shocked either. Rather, he was putting on a front for her sake.

“Now that you know, Yi Fan, don’t come here again.”

Kris looked down at the lady, his sharp gaze piercing hers, probing more for answers. “Did her family abandon her because of this?”

*

Xiao Shan sat propped against stacks of fluffy pillows, covered by a warm blanket and looking at a parenting magazine when Kris knocked softly at the door. He didn’t wait for a response from her and had taken the liberty to walk in. There was a bouquet of daisies in his left hand.

She sighed softly. “Kris…”

“Aunty Hong told me everything,” he cut her before she finished her sentence. Walking over to her bed, he put down the flowers at the foot of the bed but never sat down. “Will you ever tell me?”

“Tell you what, Kris?” she asked simply. She closed the magazine she was reading and placed it aside. His gaze followed the book but quickly, redirected to her again.

“About your story,” he answered. “I’ve told you mine but now only do I realize that I’ve never asked yours. It’s funny because I don’t believe in a person’s background since that made us prejudice. And so I don’t want to know about yours.”

He looked away and started playing with his fingers shakily. “Aunty Hong said that I’m stupid for not wanting to know. How else can I say that I like you even when I know nothing about you?”

Slowly, he turned back to her, and steadily, he took another step forward, closer to her, and asked softly, “So would you tell me, Xiao Shan? Tell me your story because I want to know you.”

Xiao Shan closed her eyes but still, she could feel Kris’s eyes boring into her. She shook her head and re-opened them. Pretending to smooth out the creases on the blanket covering her torso, she said, “Kris, I ran away from my family. They didn’t abandon me nor did they treat me badly. My family loves me and I love them too.”

“They didn’t even know that I’m pregnant except for my stepmom. She was the woman you saw that day at your dad’s clinic.”

“Then what happened? Did someone…” Kris held his tongue, afraid to venture his guess.

She shook her head again. “I fell in love, Kris. He is my sister’s boyfriend. He’s beyond my reach but I held on this tiny hope that he’ll one day be mine instead.  I have to leave in order for them to be together. I was going to become the third party.”

“But he…”

“He was drunk that night and I took advantage of that. He didn’t even realize. It was before I leave so I thought maybe…” She stopped talking. Tears slipped down her cheeks and fell onto her lap. Silently, she cursed herself for being weak all over again.

Kris stepped forward again, biting his lips painfully, torn between allowing her to continue or stop there. Xiao Shan cradled her stomach, already slightly showing.

“He’s all I have of him now. That’s all I ask, to have this piece of him with me. I’m sorry that you have to know this, Kris.”

Unknowingly, a tear fell from his eye as well. Now he knows. All the fast rejections, the lonely haunted look on her face, and the ‘he’ she said once. It wasn’t because he’s imperfect. It’s because there’s already another man inside her heart.

“That guy, the one you love so much but can never have; does he know that you are here and carrying his child? If he does, will it change anything?”

Xiao Shan looked up. Slowly, a pained smile dawned on her face. “He will never know. To him, Lee Xiao Shan is dead.”

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Another update~ A reader pointed it out about stating the time lapse in the chapters, so I've made some corrections. Hope this makes it easier for everyone to read. ^^ And the mark * actually denotes the same time frame but different person or situation. 

Finally the truth has been revealed!! From hereon, Kris plays a greater role. Hope everyone enjoys reading this. ^^