21. Inclusivity

At 6:30 in the morning, Ding Xiaojuan woke up in a bed that was half empty.

The spot beside her was cool and smooth, without a single wrinkle. Since Gao Sheng's message last night about "living at the company," there had been no further contact. She stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, listening to the faint sounds of traffic outside the window and the slight movements of her mother-in-law in the kitchen, before briskly getting up.

The breakfast table was unusually quiet. Haha sipped her milk, glancing at her mother and grandmother every now and then, barely daring to breathe. Her mother-in-law hesitated, then simply placed the peeled egg on Ding Xiaojuan's plate.

"Mom, there's a lot going on at the office today, I might be home a little late." Ding Xiaojuan said in her usual tone, "Haha, thank you for picking me up after school."

"Okay, alright." The mother-in-law nodded, then hesitated for a moment, "Then... promote him..."

“He’s busy with work,” Ding Xiaojuan interrupted, finishing the last sip of her coffee. “I’m leaving.”

The door closed, leaving only the grandmother and grandson at home. Haha whispered, "Grandma, is Dad not coming back?"

"Nonsense." Grandma patted his head. "Dad's busy. Eat quickly, don't be late for school."

All day long, Ding Xiaojuan buried herself in mountains of case files and meetings. Her mind was clear, her words sharp, and she held her ground at the negotiating table. Only during occasional breaks to drink water would she gaze out the window at the gray sky, lost in thought, recalling Gao Sheng's slammed door and departing figure from the previous night, and the unspoken accusation.

It was well past her usual work hours before she finally shut down her computer. Her phone was silent; there were no new messages. She took a deep breath and drove home.

Pushing open the door, I was unexpectedly greeted by the aroma of food and saw Gao Sheng wearing an apron, carrying soup out of the kitchen. He had changed into his pajamas, his hair was a little messy, and he looked... tired, and somewhat different.

Their eyes met. For a moment, the air seemed to freeze.

Haha ran out of the room, saw her father, paused, and hid behind her grandmother.

Gao Sheng placed the soup bowl on the table, took off his apron, and said to Ding Xiaojuan, "Wash your hands and eat." His tone was flat, revealing no emotion.

The atmosphere at the dinner table remained awkward. Gao Sheng placed a piece of pork rib on Haha's plate, and Haha whispered, "Thank you, Dad," before lowering his head and eating silently. Gao Sheng seemed to want to say something, opened his mouth, but ultimately only served Ding Xiaojuan a bowl of soup as well.

After dinner, Grandma took Haha to take a bath. Only the two of them remained in the living room.

“Last night…” Gao Sheng began, his voice somewhat hoarse, “I was rude.”

Ding Xiaojuan remained silent, waiting for what was to come.

“I’ve been thinking about it all night.” Gao Sheng rubbed his face, a gesture that made him look somewhat dejected. “You’re right, I might have been… too hasty. After being absent for so long, I always wanted to make up for everything at once, to correct everything. When I saw him doing something ‘wrong,’ I couldn’t help but get angry, as if… as if it was all my fault for being absent, and I had to correct it immediately.”

He looked up at Ding Xiaojuan, his eyes no longer sharp as they had been the night before, but instead filled with a deep-seated confusion and helplessness: "Xiaojuan, I don't know how to be a father. Especially a father who... has come back. All my experience is wrong. All the principles I thought were right seem to fall apart when applied to him."

Something hardened in Ding Xiaojuan's heart slightly because of his rare self-revelation. She sat down opposite him.

“No one is born knowing how to be a parent.” Her tone softened. “We are all learning. But you have to understand, Gao Sheng, haha, is not your project, not your subordinate. You can’t use KPIs and deadlines to demand things of him. He’s a child, he has his own rhythm, he makes mistakes, he has emotions, and that’s normal. You have to accept this ‘normality’ instead of treating it as a ‘bug’ that needs to be eliminated.”

“I understand.” Gao Sheng smiled bitterly. “I understand the reasoning. But when I see him being careless and unserious, images of him failing to get into a good school, not finding a good job, and constantly hitting walls automatically pop into my mind… and then I get anxious. I can’t control myself.”

"You've already lent him all your anxiety in advance," Ding Xiaojuan pointed out incisively. "Besides, Gao Sheng, have you ever thought about whether you're also dissatisfied with your job? That uncertain position is putting pressure on you, isn't it?"

Gao Sheng fell silent. After a long while, he let out a long sigh, which was considered an admission. "Maybe. I feel like I've been working hard outside for ten years, but coming back, I feel...out of place. I'm stuck at work, and my home is a mess. It feels like everything is out of control." He looked towards Haha's room. "Maybe...I'm in a place where I can still control things, and I'm desperately trying to prove that I can still control things."

This honesty melted another layer of ice between the two.

“We’re partners, comrades-in-arms.” Ding Xiaojuan reached out and took his hand, which was resting on the table. “We can share the pressure, we can process the anxiety together. But don’t pass it on to the children, and don’t let it become a thorn between us. Okay?”

Gao Sheng grasped her hand tightly in return. He nodded and said nothing more. Some promises don't need to be spoken.

Late at night, the door to Haha's room was gently pushed open. Gao Sheng went in; his son was already asleep, his eyelashes still seemed a little damp. He stood by the bed for a moment, then leaned down and gently kissed his son's forehead.

"I'm sorry," he said in a barely audible voice.

The door was carefully closed. In the living room, Ding Xiaojuan watched Gao Sheng walk back to the master bedroom, and the tension that had been building in her heart finally eased slightly. She knew the problem wouldn't be solved overnight, but at least the channel of communication had reopened. This long and difficult period of adjustment for "reunion" had finally given her a glimmer of hope for getting closer to each other.

Meanwhile, another "big show" is unfolding in He Miao's family.

"Whose is this?!" He Miao held up the strangely shaped dinosaur eraser, her fingers trembling slightly, and her voice squeezed out from between her teeth.

Gun Gun was startled by her unusual sternness, shrinking his neck and muttering softly, "It...it's Zhou Zihan's. I thought it looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, so I wanted to..."

"You just want to take it?" He Miao's tone suddenly rose. "Taking it without permission? That's stealing!"

"I didn't steal it!" Gun Gun's grievances and fear burst forth instantly, and he cried out loudly, "I just wanted to see it! I'll return it to him tomorrow! You're wronging me!"

"I won't hit! I won't hit! I'm not a thief!" Gun Gun cried, gasping for breath, his little face turning red, stubbornly twisting his body.

The mother and son's cacophony of cries and confrontation startled He Tian in his study. He took off his headphones, slowly walked out, looked at his furious wife and then at his son who was crying his eyes out, his face expressionless, he just rubbed his ears: "What's going on? The noise is making my code wrong."

He Miao, as if she had found an outlet, quickly recounted the whole story, ending with red eyes and pointing at Gun Gun: "You better control your son! This is outrageous!"

He Tian ignored her comment, walked over to Gun Gun, and squatted down. He didn't rush to comfort or criticize him, but simply picked up the dinosaur eraser and looked it over. "Hmm, it's pretty cool, like a Velociraptor from Jurassic Park," he commented, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather.

Gun Gun's crying subsided a little; she sobbed softly, looking at her father with a puzzled expression through her tear-filled eyes.

"Do you particularly like dinosaurs?" He Tian asked.

Rolling nods, still gasping for breath.

"So when you see this dinosaur eraser, you really want to take a closer look, and even hold it in your hand and play with it, right?"

Gun Gun nodded again, adding softly, "I...I just want to touch its teeth..."

“I understand.” He Tian nodded. “When Dad sees someone with a really cool car model, he wants to take it over and look at it too. That’s normal.”

He Miao was about to interrupt when He Tian stopped her with a look.

“But, Gun Gun,” He Tian changed the subject, his voice still calm, “if your favorite Ultraman transformation device were taken by another kid without telling you, how would you feel?”

Gun Gun was stunned, then thought for a moment: "I will... I will be very anxious. I will search everywhere."

“Yes. You’ll be sad, won’t you? Because that’s your ‘favorite’ item.” He Tian placed the eraser in his son’s small hand. “This eraser is also one of Zhou Zihan’s ‘favorite’ items. If we take it away without telling him, he’ll get anxious and sad.”

Gun Gun looked at the eraser in his hand, then looked up at his father. His tears slowly stopped, and a hint of understanding and regret flashed in his eyes.

"Then... what do we do now?" he asked in a low voice.

"Now we know that doing this will upset our friends, right? So shouldn't we apologize and promise not to do it again?"

Gun Gun lowered its head, and after a long while, it gave a very soft "hmm".

“Okay.” He Tian stood up, took out his phone, and said, “Then we’ll call Zhou Zihan’s mother. You can talk to her, and Dad will stay with you.”

The call connected and was put on speakerphone. He Tian first briefly explained the situation and apologized, then handed the phone to Gun Gun. Gun Gun looked at his mother, then at his father's encouraging eyes, and spoke clearly into the receiver, his voice thick with a nasal tone, "Auntie, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have taken Zi Han's eraser without asking. I was wrong. I'll return it to him tomorrow and apologize."

After hanging up the phone, the living room fell silent. He Miao's anger had largely dissipated, leaving only a feeling of utter exhaustion and a strange sense of relief.

He Tian said to Gun Gun, "Okay, problem solved. Go wash your face. By the way, can we make an even cooler dinosaur ourselves with clay? Dad will help you find a picture."

Gun Gun's eyes lit up, and he nodded vigorously. As he ran towards the bathroom, he turned back and said, "I want to sculpt a Triceratops!"

Only the couple remained in the living room. Looking at her husband's calm profile, He Miao suddenly felt an inexplicable reliability in this man who usually only knew code and games and whose life skills were "negative."

"How...how did you do that?" she asked, her voice a little hoarse. "I was...almost furious just now, I felt like this was the biggest thing in the world. How could you...be so calm?"

He Tian pushed up his glasses, revealing his usual slightly naive smile: "Because I know that our Gun Gun isn't 'bad.' He's just 'curious' and 'forgot the rules.' Calling him a 'thief' will only scare him and make him feel like a bad kid. What he needs to know is where the 'line' is, and how to step back and say 'sorry' if he accidentally crosses it."

He paused, then looked at He Miao: "You're too nervous, Miao Miao. When you're nervous, you tend to magnify small things and try to suppress them in the most intense and fastest way. But sometimes, like debugging a program, the more you rush to use a force quit command, the more it might crash. It's better to find the line of code that's wrong and fix it slowly."

He Miao opened her mouth, wanting to retort, but found herself speechless. She suddenly recalled her earlier stern rebukes of "stealing a needle when young, stealing gold when old," and a wave of fear washed over her. Was she correcting a mistake, or was she branding her son with the label of "thief"?

“I…I’m afraid he’ll go astray.”

“He won’t.” He Tian’s tone was firm, with an almost naive trust. “He is our son. He is the kind of person we are. What we need to do is not to keep a close eye on him to see if he has ‘gone bad,’ but to stay with him and gently pull him back when he occasionally goes astray, telling him, ‘Hey, the scenery is better on this road.’ Trust is more useful than strict guarding.”

He Miao walked to the window, looking at the city's dazzling night view. Tonight, two families, two completely different storms and calms.

Ding Xiaojuan's home is a place where adults struggle to peel away their hard shells and try to get closer, a place to find a new balance between responsibility, anxiety and love.

In her family, the conflict between mother and son was resolved by the father's calm "understanding and guidance," a kind of instinctive trust and protection of "the beginning of humanity."

She turned around and watched as He Tian put his headphones back on, immersed in his world of code, his profile appearing focused and simple in the light from the screen. This man, whom she often complained was "incapable of taking care of himself," perhaps possessed a wisdom and strength in more fundamental matters that she had never truly grasped.

There really are no standard answers to marriage and parenting. There are only two immature people, raising an even more immature little life, stumbling and groping their way forward amidst the chaos and trivialities. Sometimes there are clashes, sometimes support, sometimes misunderstandings, and sometimes sudden enlightenment.

Love is the only constant in all these ups and downs.