Tang Li returned to her room, and it was already half an hour later.
Before long, Aunt Wu knocked on the door again.
"Miss Lailai, the birthday celebration is about to begin, are you ready yet?"
Before her words fell, the door was pulled open from inside.
Aunt Wu, just about to continue knocking, was caught off guard by the sight of Tang Li. Her hand stopped mid-air as she discovered Tang Li still wore jeans and a shirt, and she asked subconsciously, "Why didn't you change into that dress?"
"I'm just about to change," Tang Li replied with a faint smile.
After a pause of two seconds, she looked at Aunt Wu and asked, "Was that dress really prepared for me by you, Auntie?"
Aunt Wu had worked for the Lai family for more than a decade, and she had watched Lai Yuaner grow up. The lady of the house had always treated her kindly, so naturally, Aunt Wu's heart could not lean towards Tang Li.
Now seeing Tang Li digging for the truth, she held back her impatience and said only, "If it's something the lady tasked me with, there certainly won't be a mistake, please hurry and change then come downstairs, I have other things to attend to." With that, she left to go downstairs first.
Watching Aunt Wu's retreating back, Tang Li's eyes grew cool.
Returning to the mirror, she reached up and pulled off the gauze from her forehead.
It was a five centimeter scar, looking quite ghastly with the gauze removed.
After the birthday feast in her past life, in the brightly lit Lai family villa, she became the target of everyone's arrows. Only Ouyang Qian stood up to defend her, but in the end, Lai Wenyan sent her off in the middle of the night to a villa in the East Suburb.
From that day on, she had hardly ever set foot in the Lai family home again.
Tang Li looked at her reflection in the mirror, knowing that if someone wished for her to appear at the celebration, she shouldn't disappoint them.
When Tang Li actually walked into the Lai family's garden, she attracted a lot of gazes.
Not because she was particularly beautiful, but because she didn't fit in.
The girl wore jeans and sneakers, which were somewhat dirty. She donned a loose ponytail with a few strands of hair falling by her lips. Her sea-blue-grey hair made her skin look especially pale and brought her scar in the forehead under the scrutiny of many guests.
Sensing everyone's stares, the girl's expression became even more constrained.
She wrapped her right arm tightly around the other.
Some guests with sharp eyes noticed several bruises on the girl's forearm under the rolled-up sleeve of her shirt.
"Is she a guest invited by the Lai family?"
"It doesn't look like it."
Female guests sitting at the banquet table whispered to each other: "How did she get in? Look at the dirty clothes she's wearing, even the Lai family's servants would dress better."
"… She does resemble the Lai family's Miss slightly though."
Tang Li went straight to the swimming pool beside the garden.
Indeed, that's where she encountered Lai Yuaner.
Because in her previous life, Lai Yuaner had fought with her right there.
Lai Yuaner was chatting with friends, occasionally letting out light laughter. The 18-year-old girl, dressed in a pink strapless cake dress, was beautiful like a dew-moistened bud in the early morning, her every smile and frown exuded vitality and energy.
The present Lai Yuaner had already become the spokesperson for Tianyi Group.
Having entered the entertainment industry at the age of five and rising to fame as a child star, Lai Yuaner had been admitted to a film college in the Capital, and her starry path was clear for all to see.
In contrast, Tang Li was attending a third-rate art school.
Remembering her previous life, the gap between them made Tang Li recall the line that Lai Yuaner said to her during their scene: "No matter how you hide it, you're still that rat in the gutter, and you'll never turn the tables in this life!"
Lai Yuaner's gaze flicked to Tang Li, and her pretty face instantly darkened.
Leaving her friends behind, she marched over with a confrontational air.
"Who allowed you to come here?" Lai Yuaner glared angrily at Tang Li.
"It's Grandma's birthday tonight, why can't I come?"
Hearing Tang Li's rightful tone, Lai Yuaner couldn't tolerate it and her voice uncontrollably rose, "Who is your grandma? Unless I die, you'll never have a chance to take over anyone in our family!"
Their eyes met, and Tang Li was the first to reveal a faint smile.
Her doe eyes curved into crescents.
She suddenly leaned close to Lai Yuaner and said softly by her ear, "Then you should just go die!"