Picked Up the Female Lead When She Was Young (GL) - Chapter 2

That was a good question!

“Don’t you know?”

[System]: I don’t know, QAQ!

“You’re a system, you can tell me how much money is in the card, but you don’t know the password?”

Xia Wanshuang thought the system would be able to know everything.

[System]: That’s a query function. I can see it but I can’t hack it. It’s a necessary defense mechanism. If systems were allowed to do that, there’d be chaos.

Xia Wanshuang thought about it, and it made sense. There was surely more than one system, and if they could do that, it would cause major problems. But this also meant that she couldn’t withdraw that hundred thousand yuan!

“Let me think. Let me think.”

Xia Wanshuang massaged her temples, carefully searching the little girl’s memories for any mention of the bank card.

Not long after the girl’s mother left, the neighbor aunt said she could help her withdraw money and found a bank card. However, the child had no idea what the password was. She had tried the birthdays of all three family members, but it didn’t work.

The neighbor aunt tried to talk to the bank teller, but bank regulations dictated that only the account holder could perform transactions. It wasn’t even allowed if they brought the household registration book to prove the parent-child relationship.

“This is difficult.”

Xia Wanshuang rubbed her brow and went to look for the cash the system had mentioned.

This money was likely left by the original owner’s mother before or even earlier than she disappeared. The original owner probably never touched it. She opened the dressing cabinet, and everything inside was covered in dust. Wrapped up were two hundred yuan bills, as well as a few scattered coins.

Xia Wanshuang took out the money, not missing a single coin, blew off the dust, and put it on the bed. Then she went to look for the nightstand.

A book sat inside the nightstand, its cover also dusty. Xia Wanshuang brushed the dust off and found five bills tucked between the pages: two twenty-yuan bills and one five-yuan bill.

“Is this all our property?”

Seven hundred forty-seven yuan and eighty cents.

[System]: Yes, excluding what’s in the bank card.

How depressing.

Xia Wanshuang stared at the money for a while, then found a small pouch in the room and put the money inside.

This was her lifeline now.

Xia Wanshuang looked around the room. This was the original owner’s parents’ bedroom, the master bedroom. A wedding photo hung on the wall. The room was a bit messy, and some spots were dusty. The original owner was just a child, and cleaning was a struggle for her, so many places were not very clean.

Beyond the master bedroom were two main areas: the dining room, which was small, and the living room, which was connected to the balcony.

A cross-stitched clock hung on the wall. A flash of memory told Xia Wanshuang that the original owner’s mother had stitched it herself. The clock’s hand showed it was now 2:30 in the afternoon.

This was a three-bedroom, one-living room apartment, about 100 square meters. Xia Wanshuang mentally took note of everything she saw.

The three bedrooms were on the same side, lined up. Xia Wanshuang pushed open the door to the middle room, which was the original owner’s own room. It was decorated cutely, about two-thirds the size of the master bedroom, and the curtains had a cute underwater world pattern.

Xia Wanshuang glanced at it a few times and closed the door, then opened the last one. It was the study. As soon as she pushed it open, a cloud of dust billowed out, a little choking.

The original owner’s mother had been gone for over half a year, and no one had cleaned it, so this was to be expected.

Xia Wanshuang waved away the dust, covering her mouth and nose as she looked at the room’s furnishings. The desktop computer on the desk was off, and the bookshelf was filled with books.

Xia Wanshuang wanted to turn on the computer, but the sound of the thunder and heavy rain outside made her reconsider.

As she was leaving, Xia Wanshuang glanced at the calendar on the desk and remembered something crucial.

“System, what year, month, and day is it?”

[System]: July 16, 2005, Saturday.

“2005? One hundred thousand yuan is worth a lot of money then!”

Xia Wanshuang felt a pang of heartache.

“But in 2005, I should have been…”

Xia Wanshuang remembered something and murmured to herself.

[System]: Host, ahem, Shuangshuang, this isn’t your original world. This is another, independent world. Don’t think about it too much.

“I know.”

If this wasn’t a parallel world, Xia Wanshuang would have gone to her father and told him what would happen, and everything wouldn’t have turned out the way it did.

Xia Wanshuang collected her thoughts, continuing to feel bad about the unwithdrawable one hundred thousand yuan.

“Oh, by the way, System, has the female lead arrived here yet?”

Xia Wanshuang remembered the key point in the plot, feeling a sense of pity for the female lead’s fate. It was truly tragic.

According to the setting, the female lead, Zhou Qinglang, was originally a young heiress from a wealthy family in Haicheng. But a nurse, for her own selfish reasons, swapped her, took her out, and abandoned her in a trash can, wanting her to die there.

However, she was found by an old woman who was a scavenger. The old woman couldn’t bear to leave her and took the infant away to raise.

Born not knowing who her parents were, she thought she was just an abandoned child and picked through garbage with the old woman.

After the old woman died, she was sent to an orphanage, but it closed down not long after. She was then sent to Tongli, which was the city Xia Wanshuang was in now.

Although the outline didn’t go into detail, only vaguely saying that Zhou Qinglang felt something was wrong, Xia Wanshuang immediately realized that the orphanage was likely trafficking children or providing them to people with certain perversions. Either way, it was extremely evil.

[System]: She should be here by now.

“Then can you find her or pinpoint her location?”

[System]: Host… Shuangshuang, what are you trying to do?

From the system’s perspective, the female lead’s storyline was the female lead’s storyline, and the female antagonist’s storyline was the female antagonist’s. Currently, they were running parallel and not intersecting.

“If she hasn’t gone there yet, I want to…”

Although the plot said the female lead felt something was wrong and escaped, she was only a six or seven-year-old girl. If she hadn’t been put in that dangerous place, Xia Wanshuang wanted to help her.

If she had the ability, she would want to help more. There was more than one child in that orphanage, but she was powerless.

[System]: You don’t have to worry. She’s the female lead, nothing will go wrong.

“Are you sure nothing will go wrong? My dear, something has already gone wrong with us.”

The system was stumped and didn’t know how to answer.

“What did you mean by ‘unstable structure’ at the beginning?”

Xia Wanshuang still remembered what the system had said when it first told her about the mission. She wanted to know the reason behind the necessity.

[System]: This is a novel, and the main characters are the pillars of the world, while the supporting characters are the structures that support them. But we found that some worlds become unstable.

[System]: We discovered that the original owner in this world would die before the plot started at age twenty-four. This would prevent the male and female leads from having their misunderstanding, which would keep the female lead from returning to Haicheng, and she wouldn’t start the wealthy family storyline. So we needed to find someone to step in and fix it, to maintain the original timeline.

[System]: So, Shuangshuang, you really shouldn’t interfere.

“I understand what you mean. I just want to know if you can locate her.”

[System]: I can’t. I don’t have that authority.

“Then can you help me check the timeline?”

[System]: Okay, wait a moment.

The system knew Xia Wanshuang was worried. It had chosen her as a host because she was kind and deserved a second chance, so it dove into the chaotic database.

Silence returned to her mind. Xia Wanshuang stared at the heavy rain on the balcony for a while and decided to start cleaning since this was now her home.

The water and electricity hadn’t been cut off; the neighbor aunt helped pay the bills. She was a very kind person.

Xia Wanshuang went to the balcony, grabbed a small basin and a rag, tiptoed to fill it with water, and went into the bedroom.

After cleaning the bedroom, Xia Wanshuang’s back was aching.

A child’s body was too weak. Xia Wanshuang rubbed her back, poured the dirty water into the bathroom, and took a good look at herself in the bathroom mirror.

She hadn’t paid much attention to her appearance before, but this one glance made her stop in her tracks.

She looked so much like herself when she was little.

She was a little thinner, but her facial features were very similar.

Xia Wanshuang was about to ask the system but didn’t want to disturb it while it was searching for the timeline. She pushed the question aside and continued cleaning, planning to wipe down the study.

The rushing sound of the faucet mixed with the thunder and rain outside. Xia Wanshuang thought she heard a knock on the door, but it seemed like her imagination.

She turned off the faucet, and a sudden thunderclap outside almost burst her eardrums.

Xia Wanshuang frowned, put the basin in the study, dried her wet hands, and walked towards the door. She moved a tall stool, carefully climbed on it, and looked through the peephole.

A small boy was standing outside. Xia Wanshuang had a good idea who it was. She climbed down, pushed the stool aside, and opened the door.

“Shuangshuang, what took you so long to open the door? I’ve been knocking forever.”

The little boy, wearing a plaid shirt, had soft, obedient-looking hair. He was holding a phone and complaining in a low voice as he walked in.

“The thunder outside was too loud.”

Xia Wanshuang answered softly, making herself seem a little flustered, fitting the image of a ten-year-old girl.

“My mom’s at work. She called and asked me to come check on you, in case you were scared to be at home alone.”

Zhao Tianhang sat down on the sofa, looking at the little girl standing there, feeling a bit strange.

“Shuangshuang, what’s wrong? Did you get scared?”

Usually, when he opened the door, his little sister would rush over and hug him, calling him brother. Today, she felt a little odd.

“Oh? Yeah, I’m a little scared.”

Xia Wanshuang turned away and gave a soulless, scared reply.

She couldn’t bring herself to act cutesy and whimper at a ten-year-old boy.

“Don’t be scared, I’m with you. Come on, let’s play Snake.”

The little boy beckoned her, a sunny smile on his face that was very comforting.

Xia Wanshuang understood why the original owner liked this child. She could only abandon the basin of water in the study and go play Snake with the boy.

“This snake is too fast, Shuangshuang, you try.”

Zhao Tianhang turned to look at his neighbor sister but saw a smile on her face that sent a shiver down his spine.

“But you’re playing so well.”

Xia Wanshuang’s face was full of gentle, maternal warmth.