"Sir Song Menghwa, do you really think this is appropriate?"
"Sir Song Menghwa…"
Song Menghwa was not fazed by the tsunami of questions directed his way. He stood calmly on stage. With a smile on his face, he made a sign for the crowd to quiet down. "Please, hold your questions for now. Let me explain myself."
…
The chaos in the hall gradually dampened; however, some of the reporters still had straggling questions. One of them was exceptionally grating to Song Menghwa"s ears. "Don"t you know that the child between biological siblings will often end up with crippled limbs or a r.e.t.a.r.ded mind? Do you still wish to keep such an unfortunate child?"
"What absurdity! Why are you cursing my grandchild‽" Song Menghwa glared angrily at the reporter who had asked this rude question before continuing to explain into the microphone. "I, Song Menghwa, do admit that I couldn"t wait to have a grandchild, but I"m not someone who is so depraved as to allow my children to do stuff that is totally immoral!
"The only reason I allow my daughter to keep her child is because of a Song family secret that is known only to the Song family."
Actually, that number was exaggerated by Song Menghwa. The only people who knew about this secret was himself, his wife who already pa.s.sed away, and his loyal butler. He said what he did to preserve the reputation of his son and daughter. Even though he knew that they would not have known this secret beforehand, he had to create an illusion for the media to believe that Song Qingchun and Su Zhinian had known the truth from the very beginning and had always shared a normal relations.h.i.+p.
"This secret is related to my daughter. My daughter, Song Qingchun, is not my biological daughter."
The hall started to get rowdy again. Su Zhinian frowned as he turned to look at Song Menghwa. The mouth of the seated Song Qingchun, who had her eyes fixed to the reflections of the light on the marble floor, fell slightly open.
"Qingchun is a child adopted by myself and my wife from the hospital when she was three months old. All my old friends here should know that my wife has been pregnant twice, but the second child was a stillborn birth.
"At the time, the hospital was crowded, and my financial situation wasn"t as good as it is now, so my wife shared the maternity ward with another woman.
"The unfortunate thing was while my wife suffered from a stillborn, the other woman died from excessive bleeding three hours after her childbirth. The woman"s husband was a police officer, and he died on duty when she was six months pregnant. The baby girl was thus born as a parentless child. After discussing it with my wife, we decided to adopt the child at the hospital to give her a whole family."
The hall was silent, and Song Menghwa continued. "Of course, you might suspect me of creating this story to prevent a financial crisis to Song Empire or to wipe away the scandal from my children. I understand that. To prove our innocence, I am willing to conduct an open DNA test with my daughter before the media.
"Of course, my children have known this a long time ago. Therefore, they are not as you all would like to believe, getting together while thinking that they were biological brother and sister."