Chapter 14

Friday afternoon should have been Yan Qing's class time, but the Shen family was in complete chaos.

"What's going on?" Yan Qing grabbed Aunt Chen, who had come to open the door, wanting to ask what was happening. Aunt Chen remained silent, glancing cautiously at the children's bedroom, then shook her head and walked away without saying a word.

Yan Qing stood outside the children's room door, and Cheng Jiaming's voice came through the door clearly: "I didn't hit his eye, he was clumsy and fell down and hurt it!"

Another voice, clearly belonging to Shen Hanyang, asked: "He said you asked him out and then yelled at him. Is that true?"

"Yes, but he provoked me first, and I got angry with him!"

"What did he do to you?"

He talked badly about me behind my back!

"say what?"

He said, "Cheng Jiaming's father found him a stepmother, and Cheng Jiaming won't have a good life from now on. His stepmother will poison him with a poisoned apple!"

"Stepmother? What nonsense!"

"The last time I met this big sweet potato at Disneyland, he immediately decided that Teacher Yan was the stepmother you found for me!"

There was a few seconds of silence inside the door, then Cheng Jiaming's voice came through again: "I cursed at him. I said, 'Even though you have a biological mother, you have no manners. It proves that your mother doesn't care about you or love you. You're more pitiful than an orphan!' Then he came up and hit me. I pushed him away, and he broke his eye on his own. He deserved it!"

"Jiaming, your father has told you that you need to learn to control your emotions."

"Why should I be in control!" Cheng Jiaming shouted. "He provoked me first!"

Shen Hanyang's voice deepened: "Come with me to Cao Xinchen's house to apologize."

"I'm not going!"

"You have no choice; if you make a mistake, you have to admit it."

"I did nothing wrong!" Cheng Jiaming shouted in protest.

But Chen Hanyang's tone was serious and left no room for doubt: "We absolutely must go."

"I'd rather die than go!"

"Don't worry, Dad will be with you."

"You're being unreasonable, you're biased towards outsiders, you're not my father!"

Say it again.

"You're not my father, everyone knows that! We don't even share the same surname!"

Yan Qing felt a chill run down her spine.

Shen Hanyang remained silent for a long time.

After a long while, Shen Hanyang's voice finally rang out again from inside the door. His voice was less stern and contained an emotion that Yan Qing couldn't quite understand: "It's not important that we don't share the same surname; what's important is that you treat me like your father."

"You're just like that character in the novel, deceiving yourself."

"Jiaming!"

"I'm not apologizing! If Cao Xinchen doesn't back down, I'll beat him up again next time I see him!"

The door suddenly opened, and Cheng Jiaming bumped into Yan Qing's arms. His sleeve was torn, and his upturned face was covered in tears and dust, like a disheveled little animal.

"Teacher Yan!" Cheng Jiaming, who had just been riding high on his victory, buried his face in Yan Qing's arms and began to sob.

Yan Qing patted Cheng Jiaming's heaving back and comforted him softly, "It's alright, Jiaming, your teacher is here."

A few steps away, Shen Hanyang's gaze slowly moved from Cheng Jiaming to Yan Qing's face.

Cheng Jiaming kept crying, and Shen Hanyang gave him a wink. Two servants came up and pulled him away from either side.

Cheng Jiaming struggled and shouted, "Teacher Yan, help me!"

Yan Qing's gaze followed Cheng Jiaming with concern, but was suddenly blocked by a tall figure.

Shen Hanyang had walked up to her without her noticing. He was a head taller than Yan Qing, and from his angle, he looked down at her, his voice carrying an air of superiority: "They were just taking him to take a bath. Teacher Yan, you don't need to look at him like that."

"Mr. Shen, Jiaming is still a child, we need to be patient with him..."

Shen Hanyang's voice was icy: "You heard everything?"

Yan Qing hesitated for a moment: "I heard a few words, not many..."

Shen Hanyang coldly glanced at her: "You just stand there at the door and listen to us talk?"

"So brazen?" Yan Qing frowned. Both Shen Hanyang and his secretary Gao occasionally displayed a simple, crude, and unreasonable attitude that gave her a terrible headache, yet she was helpless. She knew explaining was pointless, so she clenched her fists, tightening her grip on the canvas bag strap. "I'm sorry to have bothered you. It seems inconvenient right now; I'll come back another day to make up for today's lesson." She prepared to leave, but Shen Hanyang blocked her way, showing no intention of moving aside.

"Could you please move aside?" she said.

Shen Hanyang moved slightly, getting a little closer to her.

Yan Qing took two steps back, staring at him warily.

“Jiaming likes you a lot,” Shen Hanyang said with a half-smile. “He confides in you when he’s unhappy, he wants you to come with him when he goes out, and even his conflicts with his classmates are because of you.”

Yan Qing turned her head away, avoiding Shen Hanyang's piercing gaze: "Children's thoughts are simpler. As their father, you should communicate with them more."

Shen Hanyang continued to approach: "It's very difficult for me to communicate with him. You heard it too, he doesn't acknowledge me as his father at all."

Yan Qing continued to back away: "I really didn't mean to pry into your family affairs..."

A faint, enigmatic smile appeared on Shen Hanyang's lips: "But I see you seem quite concerned about Jiaming. You don't really want to be his stepmother, do you?"

With a "thud," Yan Qing bumped into something. It turned out she had retreated to the edge of the desk.

Shen Hanyang approached her to within half a step, leaning slightly forward and staring intently at her, as if he were about to devour her, the uninvited guest who had stumbled upon their secret, at any moment.

Yan Qing suddenly snapped to attention, said "Excuse me," pushed Shen Hanyang aside, and rushed out the door.

Shen Hanyang gazed in the direction she fled in panic, then reached out and touched his chest, where the warmth of Yan Qing's hand still lingered.

He snorted coldly: "Not bad."

Yan Qing ran desperately under the shade of the plane trees lining the path, as if a giant python with its tongue flicking was chasing her relentlessly. She ran until she was drenched in sweat and exhausted, and only stopped when she ran into the bustling crowd.

She had run too fast and was panting heavily, leaning against a tree by the roadside. Suddenly, the world spun before her eyes, and she felt weightless, as if she had fallen into an abyss. Her weak legs could no longer support her body, and she stumbled and fell onto the stone steps by the roadside.

She understood that the snake's tongue hadn't come from the Shen family; it had been lingering in her memory all along, and all she could do was temporarily put it into hibernation. Before she knew it, the terrifying venomous insect was awakened again, its fiery red tongue thrashing and flicking within the black hole of its mouth, emitting a horrifying hissing sound, like a poisoned whip that could tear her skin apart in an instant.

She cried, her breath trembling uncontrollably. She kept her head down, trying her best not to attract attention to her distress.

After crying for a while, she felt much better. Looking up, the sunlight momentarily blinded her. The sun hung high overhead, this fireball that had burned for 4.6 billion years was at its most energetic moment of the day, and pedestrians hurried away under parasols. The scorching sun, though terrifying, was Yan Qing's favorite. Sunlight could dispel her fear of darkness and cold, and she often lamented that if she could choose, she would want to live in the tropics. Everything about the tropics held a fatal attraction for her. In her childhood imagination, the tropics were a place kissed by the gods, even the rain was fragrant and warm.

Just as she was wandering aimlessly through a jumble of thoughts, Dr. Lu's phone call pulled her back to reality.