Chapter 69 Freshman, you confessed to my wife and got rejected. ...

"Thanks." Liang Minghe wasn't one for formalities. He raised his chin, gave Jia Yang a simple thank you, and started to walk into the house.

Jia Yang looked at the calm, uncomplaining man in front of him and felt a strange tightness in his chest. He would have preferred if the man had questioned him or said something to him for no reason, but the man simply didn't say anything.

His mood at that moment was like eating a bowl of food without salt—it just didn't taste right.

Jia Yang rubbed his aching temples, hesitated, and called out to him, "Liang Minghe, I have to apologize to you..."

Liang Minghe retracted his foot from the air and stood still, raising his left eyebrow and leisurely looking at his handsome face, his tone light and airy: "Oh? This time it's for a few things, or to apologize to a few people?"

"I confessed my feelings to Zhou Jinqin." Jia Yang ignored his teasing and struggled to say what she wanted to say, word by word.

His weary face was framed by a pair of clear, bright eyes, brimming with an unwavering determination, neither regretful nor cowardly. If he were declaring a vow to a lofty ideal, the listener would surely be filled with fervor. But instead, he was confessing to a husband his illicit affair of trying to steal his wife…

The air fell into a brief stillness, with only the low chirping of birds and animals in the mountains and the occasional sounds of machinery from the rescue team in the west.

Liang Minghe's face remained calm, but Jia Yang could sense that his aura had turned completely cold, and the gaze directed at him was icy and deadly.

After a long silence, Liang Minghe finally spoke, his posture languid and still with a cynical air: "Remember not to take things out of context. I guess you want to say that you confessed your feelings to my wife and got rejected."

Being rejected was the inevitable outcome, and Jia Yang wouldn't get angry because of the other party's verbal insults. However, he didn't expect that Liang Minghe, who was sometimes childish, would be so calm in this matter, and wouldn't even bother to use sarcastic banter on him.

He pursed his pale lips and said, "I thought you would be very angry..."

"I'm quite angry, and I even want to beat you up." Liang Minghe looked at him with a half-smile.

Jia Yang gave a weak smile: "But you didn't. I'd rather you beat me up."

"Are you going to lock me up in jail? Or do you want to see my wife fight me for you?" Liang Minghe said jokingly. "I don't need to hit you, because your mental pain is no less than your physical pain right now. You have indeed acted recklessly and even morally corruptly in this matter, but who told you to fall in love with Zhou Jinqin? It's normal to become blind and lose your mind."

Jia Yang smiled bitterly: "You're right. It's perfectly normal to lose your temper when facing her. I even fantasize now that I knew her before you. If I had put aside my inferiority complex and entered her world first, would you have been out of the picture?"

“Feelings aren’t measured by the length of time. When you think like that, it’s inevitable that you’ll lose to me.” Liang Minghe said smugly, with a flamboyant smile on his face. “And you probably don’t know, it was she who took the initiative to propose to me.”

Jia Yang was speechless for a moment, and even wanted to laugh a little. He said helplessly, "For someone like me who could explode at any time, wouldn't you want me to stay away from her?"

In his view, Liang Minghe, out of disgust, should have nodded in agreement without any attempt to hide it, saying that it would be better to let him go far away, but the other party's response was not like that.

"That was your decision, so why blame us for the outcome?"

Jia Yang was stunned. He shook his head with a laugh and said, "Yes, I shouldn't have tried to shirk my responsibility. I'm sorry."

Liang Minghe lost his patience: "If you just want to talk to me about these trivial things, then let's stop here."

“Even though you find it annoying, I still have to apologize again.” Jia Yang was very patient. “I had agreed with you that I would take good care of Jinqin while you were away, but instead I dragged her down with me to help with the rescue work.”

Liang Minghe countered, "Do you know why you and she aren't a good match?"

"Why?"

“You don’t understand me, but you don’t understand her either,” Liang Minghe said. “Just like she helped you without expecting anything in return, she is willing to help everyone. Even without your help, she would have gone down the mountain on her own.”

After saying that, he pushed open the door and went inside without looking back.

Because of the mudslide, the entire village was temporarily without power, and only a single candle emitted a small amount of light in the dark houses.

Tuantuan had already caught Liang Minghe's scent, and now she climbed onto his body like a nimble squirrel, rubbing her head against him and acting cute.

The kitten in his arms was meowing softly, and Liang Ming's heart melted. He soothed it silently and carried the cat to the bedside.

Zhou Jinqin seemed to wake up. She opened her blurry eyes and stared blankly into the darkness, muttering, "Xiao He, was I dreaming?"

Liang Ming smiled and walked over to kiss her on the lips, shamelessly saying, "If I were to enter your dream, I certainly wouldn't be this innocent."

Zhou Jinqin was instantly jolted awake by these words. She opened her eyes wide to look at the handsome man so close to her, and only when she could clearly feel his warm breath did she realize that it was all real.

"Aren't you not coming back until tomorrow?" She sat up quickly, her face showing a mixture of surprise and joy, and unconsciously snuggled into his arms.

"I saw the news as soon as I came out of the studio after filming the show. Do you think I could stay calm?" Liang Minghe put the cat in his hat and used his free hands to hug the person tighter. "They said you worked non-stop for more than ten hours at the health center. Aren't you tired?"

Zhou Jinqin shook her head, hesitating to speak: "I'm not tired, it's just..."

"Just what?" Liang Minghe gently shook the person in his arms and asked softly, "Do you feel like you haven't done enough?"

“Mmm,” Zhou Jinqin responded softly, tears quickly welling up in her eyes and falling one after another. “Among those people I’ve handled, I know that several lives are already on their last legs.”

She sobbed, "This is my twelfth year in the medical field, and I've almost lived a third of my life. I thought that with the passage of time, I should have learned to be calm and accept death with equanimity, but I can't."

Liang Minghe touched her damp cheeks and pressed his dry face against them: "Death is the responsibility of the King of Hell. Doctors can only control life, and you have done a great job in that regard. The thank-you letters from your patients in that tin can at home are enough to prove that."

"Besides, it's okay if you can't accept death, because it is a very cruel thing." He was telling Zhou Jinqin, and also telling himself, "I watch Coco every year. I believe that death is not the end. I believe that my mother and the deceased you have sent off will be reborn as a clump of grass, a flower, or a tree."

Zhou Jinqin nestled in Liang Minghe's arms, sobbing and crying until she finally fell asleep, almost from exhaustion.

Liang Minghe wiped away the tears on her face, stayed by her side for ten minutes before picking up the cat and walking out of the room.

He opened the back door of the car, and Lü Jianying was sitting inside, motionless.

When she saw Liang Minghe arrive, she suddenly sat up straight, staring at the large wet patch on his clothes. Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something, but in the end, she said nothing.

The car was rented by Liang Minghe after he got off the high-speed train. He searched around before finding the water dispenser at the rental shop. He unscrewed the cap and handed it to Lü Jianying: "She's fine."

"Hmm," Lü Jianying replied indifferently.

Liang Minghe got into the driver's seat and started the vehicle: "Let's stay at my house on the mountain for the night for now."

“No need,” Lü Jianying refused. “I’ll go with the tourists when the shuttle bus arrives at dawn.”

Liang Minghe didn't stand on ceremony with her. He picked up the cat again and played with it for a while, then said casually, "Mom, oh, you might like to hear me call you Auntie. If you just want to hear news about her, you don't really need to make this trip."

Lu Jianying paused for a moment, not answering the question. She looked at Liang Ming and the cat in his hand, which was glaring at her with a hostile attitude, and asked, "Is this your pet?"

"Xiaoqin raised it." Liang Minghe handed the cat to the back seat. "Would you like to hold it?"

"No, cats have never liked me." Tuan Tuan was already baring its teeth, so Lü Jianying didn't reach out to take it.

She never understood why, despite her years of butchering fish and her body reeking of fish, cats never liked her.

Liang Minghe seemed to have guessed her thoughts and said to himself, "I also wonder why you never seem to like me either."

Lu Jianying scoffed lightly: "In my opinion, you are not a reliable man."

"You're also denying your daughter's taste."

“She really doesn’t have good taste, whether it’s choosing a man or choosing a future. I made the best choice for her life. She could have seen a bright future ahead of her, but she arrogantly chose to give it up and even turned around and complained about everything I did for her.” Lü Jianying raised her voice, her tone full of resentment.

Liang Minghe calmly looked at her: "When it comes to choosing a man and a future, do you really have such good taste?"

Ignoring the other person's anger, he continued, "If you were to offer advice from the perspective of a successful person, then it would be fine to listen, but unfortunately, you are a failure in both aspects."

"Take choosing a man for example. You should know perfectly well that your husband, who is also my father-in-law, is having an affair, right?" Liang Minghe said jokingly. "And then there's work. Judging from your tone, you're not satisfied with your job. You don't seem to have the right to judge the merits of other options. Besides, how can you know that a path you haven't even walked will be easier?"

Lu Jianying growled, "I work so hard, I try so hard to maintain the facade of harmony in this family, isn't it all for her? Otherwise, I would have dumped her and gotten a divorce long ago!"

“Yes, you are indeed great in this respect.” Liang Minghe was unmoved by her desperate shouting and just looked at her calmly. “You are indeed thinking about Zhou Jinqin, but you have never asked if this is what she wants. What is a treasure in your heart may not be a treasure in someone else’s heart.”

"Besides, you are an adult and have to take responsibility for your actions. The choices you make are your own judgments, and there is no reason to impose the consequences on others."

"Furthermore, you said that working hard is to make Zhou Jinqin's future life easier, but why make her do painful things she doesn't like and walk a difficult path she doesn't like? You know perfectly well that she is a somewhat weak and timid girl, she doesn't even dare to watch you kill fish, so why do you believe that she can hold a knife in the face of life and death?"

“My mother-in-law, just like you grit your teeth and kill a fish, I bet you know very well that it was inevitable that things would turn out this way.”

Lü Jianying leaned heavily against the back of her chair. Indeed, she loathed killing fish. Every time she closed the shop, she would spray on deodorizer and air freshener to suppress the nauseating fishy smell. But sometimes, in order to save costs, she had to bring home the half-dead fish that was not sold and serve them on the table, forcing herself and her children to swallow them day after day.

She had long been tired of it and had thought countless times about giving up and closing the shop. She couldn't tell whether she had persisted until today for the sake of her child or to make her sacrifices seem more respectable.

After a long silence, Lü Jianying finally exhaled a breath of stale air and said very softly, "But what can we do? She has invested so many years of her life. Are we just going to give up now and let all her efforts go to waste? Life is too short to have so many chances to turn back."

Liang Minghe remained noncommittal, then asked with a smile, "What? Is this also your insight as a successful person?"

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Author's Note: I always feel like Xiao Ming's cheeky, grinning face makes him an easy target for a beating. [dove]

Jia Yang: I confessed my feelings to your wife.

Xiao Ming: Oh (He appears nonchalant, but is actually furious)