The Comeback of the Cannon-Fodder Supporting Actress

Xiao Yuan received a call from Gu Zhiyuan.

”Brother Xiao, we’re in your hometown, can you come back for a bit?”

Xiao Yuan understood what it was about. ”Okay, I’ll be back soon.”

Gu Zhiyuan knocked on the guesthouse room door.

When the door opened, he went in and said to Gu Huai Ren and Yao Na, ”Uncle, Auntie, I already called the second son of the Xiao Family, he’ll be back soon.”

Gu Huai Ren nodded. ”What about the Yang family? Is everything arranged there?”

Gu Zhiyuan gave a hum. ”Anning happened to be at home. I contacted her, and she also sent over her sister’s and her father’s hair.”

Yao Na was in a bit of a bad mood. ”And the last family?”

Gu Huai Ren was very worried about her, he put his arm around her shoulders. ”If I remember correctly it’s the Su family, the man there is called Su Liang.”

Yao Na thought for a while. ”It’s Su Liang’s house. Back then I was on the same tractor as Su Liang’s wife.”

Gu Zhiyuan stood to the side. ”We’ve found the Su family too. I had someone collect hair from the Su family girl and from Su Liang.”

”Get the collected samples tested for paternity as soon as possible.”

Gu Huai Ren said this.

Gu Zhiyuan smiled. ”It’s already arranged. The Yang family sent theirs in the earliest, and I delivered those to the testing center first, so that result should come out very soon.”

Yao Na lowered her head, a bit sad. ”Who could have imagined something like this? Back then we never even thought we could have taken the wrong baby.”

Gu Huai Ren gave a bitter smile. ”You don’t even see this kind of plot on TV, yet it just had to happen to us. More than twenty years... if Anning hadn’t casually said that one sentence, we’d never have thought of it.”

Gu Zhiyuan said softly, ”The key thing is, there was no paternity testing in the past.”

”Right.”

Gu Huai Ren nodded. ”Before there was no such DNA thing. Even if we suspected, there was no way to test it. If it was just two families switched, it’d still be easier to talk about. The key is it’s four families—who would know which family’s child got switched with which?”

It turned out that when Yao Na went to the countryside as an educated youth, she and Gu Huai Ren were in the same village. The two of them had been junior high classmates, and they already had feelings for each other before they were sent down. After going to the countryside, spending day in and day out together and helping each other, they naturally fell in love.

At that time, the two of them saw no hope of returning to the city, so they got married in the countryside.

As it happened, the place where they were sent down was Sujiatun, the same village as Su Liang’s house.

When Yao Na went into labor, it just so happened that Su Liang’s wife was having a difficult labor too. The production team sent people to drive a tractor to take the two laboring women to the town health clinic.

The weather wasn’t good that day; a light rain was falling the whole way. The road back then was full of potholes; when it rained the surface got slippery. On top of that, they ran into He Fangfang on her way back from her parents’ home, and she slipped on the road and went into premature labor. And Li Cuixia was about to give birth as well, so Yang Erchou pulled a flatbed cart, hauling her in a rush toward the town health clinic.

So like that, the four families ended up together, and when the tractor skidded it caused an accident.

Luckily, none of the four women in labor suffered any major injuries. But in that kind of weather, plus the tractor crashing into the flatbed, the tractor was ruined and the flatbed couldn’t move either. So they could only find someone who could run fast to go to a nearby village and fetch a barefoot doctor.

Yang Erchou and Gu Huai Ren took the plastic sheeting from the tractor and rigged up a small shelter, moved the four women inside, and the men turned their backs and formed a circle while the barefoot doctor delivered the babies for the four women.

The condition of all four women was poor, and the doctor was busy. After each woman delivered, she fainted. The doctor didn’t even know which baby items belonged to which family, so he just grabbed a bundle at random and wrapped the babies. In such a panic, it was only natural that the babies were switched.

Back then none of the four families thought too much of it. They just figured a doctor couldn’t get something that basic wrong. On top of that, they were worried about the mothers’ health. After the births, once they went home they were busy taking care of the women; who would even think that the babies had been switched?

As a result, it wasn’t until more than twenty years later, because of an offhand joke from Anning, that the idea of doing a paternity test occurred to Gu Huai Ren.

The result of the test, of course, was that Gu Xueqing wasn’t the Gu family’s child at all.

At the time, Gu Huai Ren and Yao Na felt truly complicated as a couple. There was a sense of relief, but also reluctance to let go, and on top of that, worry about where their own biological child was and whether she was living well or not.

So Gu Huai Ren started having people check which families the four women who’d given birth with Yao Na back then belonged to. That was actually pretty easy to trace and they found out quickly. He and Yao Na couldn’t wait another moment; they immediately brought Gu Xueqing over.

Xiao Yuan got back fairly quickly.

After he returned, he didn’t go see Gu Zhiyuan first, but went back to Yangjiazhuang once, and then took his and Xiao Qun’s hair over to Gu Zhiyuan.

Anning stayed at home for a few days. Yang Anzhen had already been discharged from the hospital the day after Anning came back.

Anning helped her pack up and move back to the dorm at the factory, then stayed at Yang Anzhen’s place for another day before going home.

After she came back, Li Cuixia urged her to hurry back to school so she wouldn’t miss classes.

The test results hadn’t come out yet, and Anning said there was no rush; she wanted to stay at home a few days.

Li Cuixia and Yang Erchou missed Anning too, and they doted on their child. If Anning wanted to stay home, she could stay; so she didn’t push her anymore.

As it turned out, after Anning had been home a few days, early one morning the phone at home rang.

Anning answered it. After she heard the call, her expression changed slightly. When Li Cuixia came in carrying the meal, she asked Anning, ”Who called?”

Anning put down the phone, waited until Li Cuixia put down the bowls, then pressed her down to sit. ”Where’s my dad?”

Yang Erchou wandered in from outside. ”What are you looking for me for?”

Anning looked a bit troubled. ”Dad, sit down. I have something to tell you both.”

Seeing her expression, Yang Erchou’s face changed a bit too. ”What is it? You’re not thinking about being with Xiao Yuan again, are you?”

Anning shook her head. ”It’s not that. It’s, it’s... do you still remember what it was like when my sister was born?”

Yang Erchou nodded. ”How could I forget? It was really dangerous back then. Your mom was in terrible pain, and I was taking her to the hospital when we had that accident halfway. If it weren’t for our good luck, our whole family could’ve died there.”

Exactly. If something really had happened, if Yang Erchou and Li Cuixia had been killed in that crash, the baby would have been gone too. If the two of them had died, there would’ve been no Anning later on.

”Was it four women in labor crashing together?”

Anning asked softly.

Li Cuixia also still remembered some of it. ”Of course it was. Oh right, back then it was me, He Fangfang, and two women from Sujiatun all caught in it together. If you hadn’t brought it up after all these years, I would’ve forgotten. Now that you mention it, I remember. Oh, and your sister and Xiao Yuan were born on the same day too.”

Anning took Li Cuixia’s hand. ”Mom, one of the families who gave birth with you did a paternity test. Their daughter isn’t their biological child.”

Uh?

”Did his wife cheat on him?”

Li Cuixia froze for a second and asked.

Anning shook her head. ”She’s not his, and she’s not his wife’s either. The babies were switched back then.”

”Th–that’s impossible.”

Both Yang Erchou and Li Cuixia were badly startled; their first reaction was disbelief. ”How could the babies get switched? Even if their family got the wrong one, our family didn’t...”

Anning’s eyes were already red. ”I didn’t believe the babies were switched either. I...I gave my sister’s and my dad’s hair to the Gu Family. They did a paternity test. My sister... my sister isn’t ours, she’s the Gu family’s. The Gu family girl is actually the Xiao Family’s. Xiao Yuan is the Su family’s child. The Su family’s girl is my real sister.”

Yang Erchou and Li Cuixia were almost dizzy from all the twists.

”No, you—you say it again. You mean all four families got the wrong babies?”

Anning nodded emphatically. ”Yes. All four families got the wrong babies.”

”My god, how—how is that possible? How can something like that happen?”

Li Cuixia just couldn’t accept it. ”The elder daughter I’ve raised for more than twenty years isn’t my own? How is that possible? An Zhen is so good, so sensible and filial, how can she not be our own child?”

Anning waited a bit before telling Yang Erchou, ”The Gu Family has come. They’re staying at the county guesthouse now. They want to invite all four families over. This has to be settled one way or another.”

Yang Erchou was a man, after all, and he could hold things together. ”We should meet. No matter how we feel about it, we have to get to the bottom of this.”