Just like this moment.
The hope they clung to despite knowing it was false was like a fish hauled from the river and left on muddy ground, its scales dried by the sun as it lay dying.
"Shushu, my Shushu... my daughter..." Ma Shu's mother broke down and covered her face with both hands. Tears streamed uncontrollably through her fingers, dripping onto her bright red coat and staining it with dark red spots.
The guests at the other tables watched in surprise, wondering why she had suddenly become like this. Even if she was emotional about her daughter getting married, surely she would not get this worked up.
"It's all right, it's all right. She's just overwhelmed for the moment..." Miao Yue explained to those watching curiously.
Lin Hanzhi said, "Let's talk somewhere else. This really isn't a convenient place."
The newlyweds had toasted the head table first, so a few people temporarily leaving it now would not cause any problems.
Qi Gu and Lin Hanzhi led Ma Shu's parents away from the table and into an empty private room next door.
Ma Shu's father held his sobbing wife, tears streaming down his own aged face. "Master Qi, is that really not our Shushu? But some of her habits are just like Shushu's..."
When Ma Shu had first returned home, he and his wife had already noticed some differences in her. For instance, she had nearly put on her mother's slippers by mistake. And when she came home, rather than first wiping the wheels of her suitcase clean, she had dragged the mud-stained case straight across the clean tiled floor.
These were things Ma Shu, who had always been slightly obsessive about cleanliness, would never have done before.
At first, her parents had only thought their daughter had been through