Feng Yun only discovered Xue Tianze's existence at the beginning of this year.

Since their son started his postgraduate studies in China, the relationship between the couple and their child has deteriorated rapidly. Xue Lianwu scoffs at Xue Jing's flashy but ineffective "career." Feng Yun has repeatedly tried to persuade Xue Jing to back down and mediate between father and son on behalf of her husband. However, Xue Jing not only refuses to accept financial assistance from his parents anymore, but also refuses to step into the house since his big fight with his father.

On New Year's Eve, Xue Lianwu returned home late as usual. Feng Yun sat alone in front of the TV, watching the large New Year's Eve dinner. 78-year-old Li Guyi was absent from the Spring Festival Gala, as was Xue Lianwu, who was over 60 years old.

At one o'clock in the morning, Xue Lianwu, reeking of alcohol, was helped home by his driver. Feng Yun, who was dozing on the sofa, rushed over to serve him.

Inside the bedroom, Feng Yun first took off her husband's leather shoes and socks, then climbed onto the bed to pull off his belt. As she bent down to untie his tie, Feng Yun smelled a pungent woman's perfume. Over the years, she had always turned a blind eye to Xue Lianwu's extravagant nightlife, so she remained unfazed.

Before throwing the clothes into the laundry room for the maid to wash, Feng Yun, as usual, carefully checked Xue Lianwu's pockets for any important items. When she took out her husband's phone, she had no intention of peeping, but as soon as she put the phone on the bedside table, a message lit up on the screen.

Over the years, as his wife, Feng Yun has always followed the same rules they had when they first started dating: she never kept a close watch on Xue Lianwu, and Xue Lianwu never set a password for his phone.

That night, Feng Yun inexplicably clicked on the voice message from "Fangfang," expecting to hear a charming female voice coquettishly speaking to her husband. However, the message contained a child's voice that Feng Yun never dreamed of.

The child called Xue Lianwu "Dad" and said, "Dad, Happy New Year! Today, Mom and I ate dumplings at Grandma's house!"

After two months of investigation following the holiday, Feng Yun obtained all the information about Xue Tianze and his mother, "Fangfang".

Li Fangfang is 25 years old this year. She joined Xue Lianwu's group company five years ago after an interview. Although her position is affiliated with the general manager's office and she has her social insurance and housing fund paid on time, she has not worked a single day since the day she joined the company.

To be precise, Xue Lianwu offered Fangfang, a young, beautiful girl from a poor family, a job, but the job involved keeping her as a mistress.

To cover their tracks, Xue Lianwu arranged for his subordinates to marry Fangfang. Less than a year later, Fangfang's son was born in a maternity ward in Philadelphia. He was born with American citizenship and his surname was Xue.

If the mother and son hadn't returned to China to seek refuge during the pandemic, Feng Yun would probably never have had the opportunity to confront Fangfang face to face, and she wouldn't even have known that her husband had another son.

Even though he knew the mother and son's address, and for a week straight, he drove to their usual route every day to wait for them.

But Feng Yun remained hidden in the car, unable to muster the courage to go down. She hunched over in the car, repeatedly picking at the dead skin around her fingernails, watching almost numbly as Li Fangfang held Xue Tianze's hand, chatting and laughing, walking home.

During her nearly one hundred attempts to evade the situation, she considered running the person over with her car, but she couldn't bring herself to do it because looking at the other person reminded her of herself decades ago.

Xue Lianwu's genes were so strong that Xue Tianze was so beautiful that he looked exactly like her son when he was a child.

Unable to sleep at night, anxious, and suffering from severe liver and gallbladder pain, Feng Yun discovered a patch of hair missing from her scalp while doing her skincare routine one morning.

She sat at her dressing table, tugging at the clumps of hair that had fallen from her head, finally shaking her snoring husband awake and demanding to know why he was treating her this way. She had known about his infidelity for a long time, and she could endure anything to keep the family together, but she couldn't bear the fact that her son wasn't his only heir.

Xue Tianze's existence rendered all her years of hard work futile.

Li Fangfang is so young. If Xue Ting were still alive this year, he would be twenty-nine. How could Xue Lianwu have an affair with a mistress who is much younger than his own daughter and have a child?

Xue Lianwu is no longer as handsome as he used to be. The once dashing gentleman has turned into a piece of cheese that has fermented and melted in the summer, covered with hair. This is simply inhuman and disgusting.

However, just like their first confrontation more than 30 years ago, Xue Lianwu was cold to the point of being inhuman. He threw her body over and said, "But didn't my daughter die long ago? Isn't it your fault that I want another child? Look at your son's character. Literature? A writer? He pretends to be crazy all day long. How can I leave such a large business to such a mentally weak piece of trash?"

"Don't you know what he's writing about in his latest novel? Making money by airing his dirty laundry in public, he's a hopeless case. And what kind of mother are you? Your job is to educate him properly, have you done that? And his girlfriend, isn't she just a poor girl who cheated him before? Can you marry a woman like that? What good will she do for his future? She's such an idiot."

Xue Lianwu angrily got out of bed and went to the bathroom to take a shower. Feng Yun got up from the floor and sat back down at the dressing table, trying to fix her hair. But no matter how she combed her hair, put on hair clips, or tried to cover up the bald patches at her hairline, the bald spots were still very obvious.

Just as her self-esteem has shrunk infinitely, it is now like a tiny, invisible speck of dust.

The designer bags, fancy clothes, mansions, and cars that once surrounded her seemed to have suddenly vanished from her life; her life was nothing more than a barren, pale scalp.

Xue Lianwu must have sensed her inferiority complex. When he came out of the bathroom again, he didn't even speak to her. Feng Yun, like the deceased Li Shulan, immediately got up and gave him a mocking smile, pretending nothing had happened. Feng Yun asked him: "Do you want to come back for dinner early tonight?" She would find a way to win Xue Jing back.

That's why there were so many phone calls and messages.

She repeatedly accused Xue Jing of being unfilial, repeatedly begged him to take a job at Xue Lianwu's company, and urged him to break up with Ha Yue. Her excuse was that she had endured so much for his benefit all these years. However, Xue Jing remained unmoved and instead told her that he was no longer a child who needed a father. If she really cared about him, she should divorce Xue Lianwu immediately.

During their last phone call, knowing that communication was futile, Xue Jing remained silent, simply placing his phone aside and letting her vent her anger.

Overwhelmed with grief, Feng Yun choked back tears and asked him, "Who do you take after to be so heartless? You even abandon your own mother. You were so sensible and obedient when you were little."

When she was young, she had a conflict with Xue Lianwu and lost control of her emotions, once pressing her young son's head into the bathtub. When she pulled Xue Jing out of the bathtub that time, she was terrified by her own actions and cried while holding Xue Jing in fear. Xue Jing was only four years old, but he would comfort her, patting her shoulder and telling her, "Mommy, I'm holding my breath, I won't die, so don't cry."

But the child who loved his mother was gone too. Instead, on the other end of the phone, Xue Jing suddenly chuckled and told her in a lazy voice, "It's probably like you. Your grandfather passed away the year before last, and your grandmother has no income and still carries waste paper in the streets and alleys to exchange for money. Have you ever thought about going back to see her? Maybe we are just naturally emotionally detached, and our hearts are not as warm as others."

This was also the last time Xue Jing answered her call last month. After that day, Xue Jing refused to answer her calls, and all the messages she sent went unanswered.

After learning yesterday that Xue Jing had returned to his residence in Jicheng, Feng Yun came here this morning to try her luck. However, she did not see Xue Jing, but instead saw Ha Yue's sick mother.

A large meeting is held in the morning, and a smaller meeting is held in the afternoon.

At 7:30, as the sun was about to set, Xue Jing sat in Zhou Shuang's office fiddling with his phone.

Across from him on the sofa, Zhou Shuang chatted eloquently about the contract finalized that afternoon, and then proceeded to suggest dining locations that left everyone breathless, while enthusiastically drafting a list of guests for the welcome banquet.

Xue Jing was in low spirits. He wouldn't eat Chinese food, Western food, or French food. He didn't want to see this person or that person. Every word he uttered was a downer.

He really had no interest in the welcome dinner that evening, but he had been away for ten hours and Ha Yue hadn't called him home for dinner at all.

Even love-struck people have tempers. The things that Ha Yue complained about this morning are far from over. It's only been half a year and she already finds him annoying?

Not only that, she ignored him all day and started giving him the silent treatment, right? He suspected he was being manipulated.

If Ha Yue doesn't send him a message to break the ice first today, he won't go back before midnight.

The phone was suddenly snatched away, and Zhou Shuang threw it angrily onto the table. "Stop looking at your phone, okay? What's so interesting about your phone? You're like a teenager addicted to the internet. Tell me, what do you want to eat? If you don't eat soon, it'll be dark, and you won't even be able to eat hot shit."

Xue Jing rubbed his back teeth together a couple of times, and as he took back his phone, he said in a sinister tone, "There's nothing to see." His girlfriend was giving him the cold shoulder, and he didn't like reading other people's messages.

He put his phone in his pocket and walked straight out. When he got to the elevator, he saw Zhou Shuang still in the office and yelled at him in an unhappy voice, "Aren't we eating? Hurry up, you're such a dawdler."

We finally chose "Artisan" in Financial Street as our dining location. It's a Japanese restaurant that costs 3,000 yuan per person, and even a two-person table needs to be booked six months in advance.

However, Zhou Shuang, being a social butterfly in the financial district, always managed to squeeze in. Besides a few close friends, he also specially invited two die-hard fans of Xue Jing to support him. Since Xue Jing couldn't find a female fan, he had to invite two male fans instead. As soon as the two fans sat down, they began to shower Xue Jing's talent with compliments. One of the male fans was a graduate student at Jizhou University, a junior of Xue Jing in the Chinese Literature Department, and was currently preparing his own poetry collection.

He saw Xue Jing say a few humble words, then lower his head to look at the menu and stop talking.

So he started anew, attempting to discuss some profound literary insights with Xue Jing, such as the meter of modern poetry and the successes and failures of Chinese literature in the last century.

He rambled on for a while, elaborating on the language, and Xue Jing, out of politeness, had to reply. So he smiled gently and said, "I'm sorry, I don't understand poetry. Actually, my understanding of literature isn't very deep either. I mainly just write whatever comes to mind. Sometimes, I feel like I'm quite illiterate. So these days, we don't seem to have anything to talk about, so let's just leave it at that."

As soon as Xue Jing uttered those words, the people around him burst into laughter.

The junior student was already nervous, and now his face turned even redder. He muttered softly, "Professor Xue, you're too funny. Please stop joking with me."

Xue Jing frowned, his usually good face instantly turning sour. He thought to himself, "We're not even that close, why would I joke with you?" But thankfully, he hadn't fully revealed his eccentricities yet, because his phone vibrated in his pocket.

Ha Yue eventually messaged him, saying, "Did you see the group message? Xiao Yu gave birth. Mother and daughter are safe."

Half an hour later, Xue Jing, carrying takeout Japanese food in his left hand and a large bouquet of jasmine flowers in his right, pressed the electronic lock on his front door.

At 11 p.m., the usually empty house still had a floor lamp on. Wu Fangtian and Zhao Chunni had already gone to their room to sleep. There were gifts on the island table, which, judging from the brand, were probably bought specifically for him. Ha Yue, who bought the gifts, was wearing silver headphones and his T-shirt, with her back to him, nestled on the sofa, holding a laptop and reviewing a proposal.

It wasn't some elaborately arranged, special romantic scene, but within those few seconds of stepping inside, Xue Jing's heart suddenly softened drastically. How can one live a fulfilling life? It's all about having someone like this in the family.

The bottom line of the Cold War suddenly vanished. He tiptoed to Ha Yue's side, leaned down and kissed her hard on the cheek, his smile even more vibrant than the jasmine in his arms: "Are you hungry? I brought back some midnight snacks."

Tempura, nigiri, mixed noodles, and sashimi were placed on the coffee table in turn. "Yu Qing Jasmine" and a bouquet of snacks were placed on the bay window. The two of them didn't care about their table manners and sat barefoot on the carpet, taking turns to take the half-eaten takeout box from each other.

As the fish roe burst in her mouth, Ha Yue was scrolling through photos of newborns on her phone screen. Xue Jing also leaned over and pressed his head against hers, looking down. Xiao Yu's due date was more than two weeks away. Before they left, she cried and complained every day about why the baby hadn't come out of her belly yet.

Now that the baby has finally been born, their hearts can finally rest easy.

However, they've heard that raising a child is more difficult than being pregnant, which is definitely a blind spot for them.

Four eyes stared at the screen for a long time. Ha Yue hesitated for a moment without commenting. Finally, Xue Jing said what she wanted to say, "Speaking of which, why is our goddaughter all wrinkled up like a Shar Pei?"

"Hey!" Ha Yue laughed and stuffed a rice ball decorated with foie gras into his mouth, still defending the child, "He'll grow out of it, right? Newborns don't usually look very good."

"Who said that?" Xue Jing's cheeks puffed out. Seeing that the beer bottle in front of Ha Yue was empty, he went to the refrigerator to open a new one for her. "My mom said I was very beautiful from birth. When she carried me out, all the passersby gathered around to praise me."

Ha Yue reached out and took the beer from his hand, ignoring his arrogance, and took a sip before saying, "Oh right, your mom came over this morning. I figured you were in a meeting, so I didn't tell you."

On her way back to the carpet, Xue Jing kicked the sofa with her toe, causing it to buckle and nearly fall flat on her face. "Huh? No, what's she doing here? What did she say?"

Without even thinking about it, it's probably about getting Ha Yue to break up with him.

Therefore, Xue Jing skipped the cause and went straight to the consequences.

"No, no, tell me what you said first? You didn't just agree, did you? Huh? No way!" He had spent so much time arguing with her mother on the front lines, practically praising Ha Yue as a first-class hero who saved the country and its people, and Ha Yue had just caused trouble in his own backyard!

Ha Yue watched Xue Jing lose his composure as if he were watching a puppy chase its tail, and said with the calm and collected demeanor of an old Taoist priest, "Don't overthink it. He didn't say anything. We just sat together on the island platform and had some tea."

"We talked about my mother's situation." After hearing that Ha Yue had always been devoted to her sick mother, Feng Yun remained silent for a while.

"Before she left, she asked me to tell you that she went back to Hong Kong last week and found out that you had been sending your grandmother living expenses in her name since you started earning money. She said she has been considering your proposal recently."

"But I don't know if she can do it in a short time. I think she has really changed."

Xue Jing was stunned for a moment, his eyes burning, so he covered his eyes and said, "Don't lie to me, Ha Yue, bad people will never become good." He didn't believe that his mother hadn't tried every means to trip up Ha Yue, nor did he believe that his mother would really change her ways. Just like he was still afraid that the blood of bad people flowing in his veins meant that he would eventually rot away completely one day.

Ha Yue knew what he was thinking. She was also the child of a bad person, and she had hated herself just as much.

Ha Yue reached out and hugged his neck, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. Her voice was loose, like a large quill tickling Xue Jing's tense nerves. "In April, I went to Yuecheng on a business trip and secretly went to that address."

That day, Ha Yue stood in front of her father's sickbed, looking at the middle-aged man who seemed like a stranger to her, and suddenly had a kind of epiphany.

“My dad used to have a very specific image in my memory, but when I saw him again, I realized that he actually looked completely different from the person I remembered. His eyes, nose, and mouth were all different. Maybe it’s because too much time has passed and he’s gotten old, or maybe it’s because too much time has passed and my memory has never been accurate.”

A child's longing for "parents" always exists within the illusions formed in early childhood.

In short, when she looked at the photos of the once healthy Ha Jianguo and Jiang Yimei hanging on the wall, she suddenly realized that her childhood was just a part of her father's life, just as the "father" she had longed for was just a part of her life. The possibilities that existed between them, at the moment Ha Jianguo chose to leave, were like parallel universes, each giving rise to its own universe.

Ha Jianguo has already stepped into someone else's landscape; she need not linger.

She wouldn't forgive him on anyone's behalf, but she chose to forgive herself.

Marianne Moore wrote, "The visible power is invisible."

So that day, she was very quiet. She sat by her father's bedside, calmly feeling the invisible forces gathering and flowing around her until they finally settled. After drinking the tea that Jiang Yimei had prepared for her, she got up to say goodbye.

When Jiang Yimei saw her downstairs, she asked her with great confusion, "Don't you have anything to say to me?" Didn't she feel she could accept any accusations, resentment, or anger, regardless of whether Ha Yue would disrespect her or even beat her?

Because she stole a little girl's father, and those were years that money couldn't make up for.

But Ha Yue thought for a moment and only asked her one question, "What kind of person do you think he is?"

When Jiang Yimei answered without hesitation that she was a good person, Ha Yue remained calm and even sounded somewhat relieved. She said, "That's good."

One person's bad side becomes another's good side. Perhaps all things in the universe are like snakes biting their own tails, head and tail intertwined, life within death, death within life. Until the very last second of life, no one knows the ending of the story. Perhaps Xue Jing should give herself some more time, just as she gave herself a lot of time.

History may not repeat itself, because they all learned a new life from it.

Less than ten minutes after snuggling on the sofa, Xue Jing heard the sound of a mouse clicking beside her ear.

He hadn't recovered from his grief when he opened his eyes to find his workaholic girlfriend holding him with her left arm while her right hand continued scrolling through her computer. Her eyes were fixed on him, and her mouth was silently reciting the plans on the screen.

"Ha Yue!"

"what?"

"This plan is extremely urgent; we have to see it today!"

"We need to submit the report next week, so we should do as much as we can in advance." Fundraising is urgent, and two years is still too long.

Xue Jing frowned, pulled her other arm onto his body, and said in a resentful tone, "Let's be frank today. Do you think work is much more important than me? I know fundraising is crucial for your company, but you don't have to sacrifice our relationship like this just to raise money. At least in your heart, I'm not equal to your work, but at least 40/60, right?"

It's not just 40%; he now feels that Ha Yue has put in 99% of her effort into her work, leaving only a little for Zhao Chunni. This is completely unfair. He tailored a future for her, but it seems that he wasn't even in her blueprint.

"Company development can't happen overnight, I know you're in a hurry, but don't rush it..."

Before Xue Jing could finish speaking, Ha Yue stopped his rambling.

She hugged his neck, her eyes crinkling with laughter, her voice sweet. Her long hair, hastily tied back with a hair tie, made her look as refreshing as a summer's delightful orange smoothie. "I'm in a rush, Xue Jing! The deadline has arrived! I plan to reward myself with a proposal to my boyfriend after the funding round is successful. You don't know, my boyfriend is handsome, charming, a perfect gentleman, a domestic goddess, emotionally stable, very good at saving face, and incredibly kind-hearted—he even donated a library this year! I really want to spend the rest of my life with him. If I don't put a ring on his finger soon, I'm afraid he'll run away..."

While Ha Yue was still talking, Xue Jing had already run away. Before he ran back to the study, he didn't forget to put the computer back into Ha Yue's hands and told her seriously that she must revise the plan properly and that she was not allowed to sleep until it was done.

As for Ha Yue sending him a message from the living room asking what he was doing in the study?

He had to work overtime to finish the novel he had been working on for several months.

To avoid failing to secure funding later, he plans to start saving money for his wife's company starting today.

(End of article)