Chapter 22 Chapter 22 The atmosphere suddenly...
The atmosphere instantly froze into ice.
The light fell from overhead like a knife, nailing the shadows of the two people to the marble floor.
Jin Man stopped thinking about it. He had considered so much on the way here, but when he heard those words with his own ears, he felt nothing, no sadness, no anger, and no disappointment.
He was like a person who had been ill for a long time and finally received a death notice. The feeling of finality crushed the last bit of hope.
Those words, those accusations, were never false, they were always true. They came from the mouths of different people, telling him how wrong he was and how he had sold himself down. But he was blind in heart and eyes, he could neither see nor hear, and people treated him as a joke.
In Lu Yanlin's heart, he was never a partner, but just a service bought with money.
He was too stupid to hear it. In essence, there was no difference between him and Aunt Yu. The only difference was that the money used to buy him was paid in one lump sum.
But is he that mean?
If Lu Yanlin had told him at the beginning, he would never marry him. He would rather work himself to death than sell himself. He is also a human being. He is not a piece of iron without feelings. He has his own thoughts and is not a stray dog on the street who can't find a home.
Jin Man didn't want to ask anything. He had always lived a simple and contented life in the past, but in the past five years he had experienced sadness, irritability, jealousy, pessimism, and lovesickness.
Lu Yanlin's indifferent eyes wavered, his fair jaw tightened into a sharp line, and he blurted out: "No."
Jin Man looked at him in surprise, his eyes slightly red. He seemed to not understand, but also to be trying to figure it out. He gritted his teeth and said, "Why not?"
Alpha's voice was hoarse. He tried to remain calm and objective, but he couldn't stop his shoulders from shaking slightly. He said, "Even if I owe you something, can't I pay it back in five years?"
He can accept people who have no food to eat begging, he can accept people who can't survive kneeling down to accept charity from others, because living is about having no choice, living is about being forced.
He knew that many things in the world were unfair, and that he was just an insignificant little character among the vast number of people in the world, but it didn't matter. Because he was humble, he knew what it felt like to be bullied, despised, and ignored. Only after he was trampled into the dust and mud did he know how to reach out and help others.
For him, love is just an instinct, so how could anyone use this to deceive others?
So the only thing he couldn't accept was that someone used this to deceive others.
Lu Yanlin paused. He noticed the Alpha's trembling and endurance, and stopped approaching him. For the first time, he softened his voice, as if to coax him, and said, "You don't look well, and the decision you're making now is not calm either."
"Manman, Xiaozhi is still here. Let's go home first and have a good talk after we get home."
Jin Man subconsciously looked towards the children's area, but didn't see Lu Zhi. His heart suddenly relaxed. He admitted that he was always soft-hearted, and he was afraid of letting Lu Zhi see the torn side of the family.
Jin Man said calmly: "Okay, then let Lu Zhi stay at grandma's house and we will talk it out."
After saying that, he turned and walked away, as if he was afraid that a child would run out from somewhere.
Jin Man waited outside the mall for a long time. Lu Yanlin came out, apologized, and explained: "I told him that we will pick him up tomorrow."
Where did we come from? Jin Man raised the corner of his mouth coldly. He remained silent until he returned to Lu Mansion and did not say another word to Lu Yanlin.
The living room of the main building was brightly lit. Lu Yanlin sat opposite Jin Man. He lowered his eyelashes, and the profile of his face was quiet and beautiful, indifferent and calm, as if he had recovered from his previous emotions.
However, the scene that Jin Man imagined of signing the divorce agreement happily did not appear.
The lawyer who arrived overnight was dressed in a suit and tie. He sat aside, spread out countless documents, and used extremely professional terms to explain the various troubles they would encounter after their divorce.
"Divorce is not a simple separation of two people. It involves the division of property and child support. We must also consider Mr. Lu's identity, his privacy, and the impact on social opinion and his public image."
"From any perspective, this is not something that can be accomplished in the short term."
During the long silence, Alpha suddenly smiled softly.
He seemed to let out a long sigh, and also seemed to have woken up from a painful dream.
"I want to ask you something."
Lu Yanlin stared at him for a while: "Go ahead."
Jin Man's voice was faint, and he clenched his fists: "You have to promise that you won't lie to me."
Lu Yanlin looked straight into his eyes: "Okay."
This man has never asked Lu Yanlin for anything, so Lu Yanlin shouldn't refuse.
When he was a child, he already knew that if a person only had a piece of cake in his hand, then as the heir of the Lu family, he had much more than that, and no matter how much he wanted it, he must never reach out.
You cannot take away other people’s precious things out of curiosity, and then watch them being thrown away like garbage when you get tired of playing with them.
Mom's cake is freedom. She is no longer able to maintain her bad marriage and wants to kill her partner. So she is indifferent, irresponsible, hates her children, hates her old-fashioned and conservative parents, and hates everyone in the world who deprives her of freedom.
She left the feverish Lu Yanlin at her grandmother's house and rushed to attend the coming-of-age ceremony that was twenty years late, using carnival to mock all the voices that mocked her for being doomed to ruin and unhappiness.
"We are doing this for your own good, but you don't understand."
"I've heard enough of you!"
Grandpa was so angry that he broke off relations with her, and they argued upstairs, their voices so loud that they echoed in the house.
Lu Yanlin slowly raised his hand and stroked the piano keys with his fingers. He was calm and indifferent, and asked his tutor whether his fingering was correct.
The tutor was so frightened by the quarrel that she couldn't speak and nodded uneasily. Lu Yanlin calmly began to play the song, which was a farewell song.
Yan Qiong rushed down from upstairs, smashed the vase beside the stairs, and cursed her parents to death. She was the closest person to them in the world, but also the one who hated them the most. She resisted in the most brutal way, wishing she could use all her blood as fuel to burn herself and them, and destroy this life in which she couldn't even choose the color of her skirt in the first half of her life.
The sound of the piano accompanied Yan Qiong as she walked away. Her elongated shadow overlapped with the child's shadow and then quickly receded.
Yan Qiong's irrationality, anger, and sorrowful crying were just an old image imprinted in the past. Tell him that love is not an innate instinct, but a skill that takes a long time to learn and requires careful restraint to avoid falling apart like a vase.
The child of the Lu family does not have the worry of no one listening to him, and he has never felt uneasy or lonely. He has long been accustomed to being omnipotent and will not feel confused or uneasy about his life.
Jin Man was an exception he met. He was ordinary and unlike anyone he had ever met.
Although he has nothing and looks a little funny and pitiful, he always manages to squeeze out a little strength from somewhere and gently give others a hand.
The Alpha's concern for him was ridiculous. At first, he just thought it was interesting, but as time went on, he started to care about him and didn't want to get rid of him easily.
He knew that Jin Man was actually a difficult person to get close to, but he had an inexplicable tolerance for him, a pure liking with no purpose and a little shyness. He didn't even want to do anything, and would not contact him actively, as if he knew very well what he should want and what he didn't want.
Compared to him, Lu Yanlin's own mind was much colder, but he unconsciously began to conceal it more or less, because the sincerity offered by the other party was less than one tenth of what he was willing to exchange. Once it was discovered, he would probably be rejected immediately.
He was very careful to restrain himself, and his gentleness was somewhat unlike his usual self. When people around him teased him, he just smiled. His indifferent look made people feel uneasy and change the subject awkwardly.
When he chose to marry Jin Man, the entire Lu family was in the most chaotic period. If it were now, there might be many ways to deal with it.
But at that time, even he didn't have many choices. He could not come up with a suitable solution, so it would be better to do each other a favor.
He proposed twice, and he might have had some selfish motives, but if he were to be honest, he probably couldn't even say the word "love" or "like". He thought Jin Man could more or less understand that this was a deal.
That Alpha is not someone who is worthy of deep love in the secular sense, nor is he worthy of being treated well. He grew up in an unknown mountain and has the same background as the various people around him. You can see his clumsiness, silence, and kindness, but you also have to examine his mediocrity, ordinariness, and boredom. He cannot detach himself and wholeheartedly love such a person who has nothing enough.
But later, when I had to reveal the truth, and saw that Alpha was so clueless and somewhat happy, I felt sorry for him.
He didn't know how long he would be interested in him, nor how long he could endure him. When he was a child, he got things on a whim, and gave them away when he got tired of them. But Jin Man was not an object that could be given away when he didn't like it anymore.
This is somewhat unfair. The man brought out his own cake. It was not a precious treasure, but all his sincerity. I could clearly see that he liked me, but I could only apologize because there was no way to be sure that I would love such an ordinary person.
But no matter how careful we are, things have come to this point today.
He looked at Jin Man and said word by word, "Lu Yanlin, more than ten days ago, when we were arguing and in a cold war, do you know what I did?"
Lu Yanlin recalled in his mind, but there was no relevant information. More than ten days ago, he was abroad and his secretary did not report any news about Jin Man to him.
Jin Man's eyes grew darker and darker in his silence. He rubbed his face roughly, covering his eyes and rubbing them. Then, in a calm and indifferent tone, he laughed miserably: "Damn it, I really am..."
He felt a dull pain in his heart, and the almost numb feeling made him completely give up all expectations.
Lu Yanlin simply disdains to lie, which is probably the only advantage of this man.
In order to increase the success rate of the operation and fearing that he would become desensitized to pheromones if there was really a problem with the gland, he gritted his teeth and had the operation under partial anesthesia.
He didn't want to be unable to perform even the basic duties of an Alpha. Now that he thought about it, it might not be his glands that were sick, but his brain.
Jin Man took out the crumpled divorce agreement from his pocket and flattened it out again.
"Lu Yanlin, listen carefully."
"I'm not irrational. I've been thinking about this for a long time. I came up with this idea half a year ago, and I started thinking about it more than ten days ago."
"I don't want to know why. I don't want to know anything about the past. We are not suitable for each other. No matter whose fault it was for getting married in the first place, even if you think it's my fault, I accept it. But I don't want to admit it for the rest of my life."
"I also asked the lawyer, and all the problems he just mentioned can be solved in one way."
"No need for division or negotiation. I don't want anything, just a divorce."
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