Chapter 25 Giving me a green hat...
Xie Tang stared blankly at the trash can, a storm raging in her heart.
This doesn't resemble Gu Chang at all.
Only after Gu Chang disappeared did she silently pick up the beautifully packaged box from the trash can.
A complex emotion welled up inside me, but more than that, I felt bewildered by the deeper meaning behind his loss of control.
"You like him?" Chu Song's voice suddenly rang out.
Xie Tang was startled and instinctively retorted, her voice tinged with apprehension at being misunderstood, "Brother Song, you can't say such things! He's a very good friend of mine."
"That's good." Chu Song picked up the chess set and said calmly, "But he likes you."
"How did you figure that out?" Xie Tang asked, her face full of confusion. It seemed that her question had helped to untangle the mess in her mind, and hidden clues that she had overlooked began to surface.
Chu Song paused, her gaze falling in the direction Gu Chang had left. "Didn't you see? He was so angry with you that he almost cried."
"N-nothing." Xie Tang's heart skipped a beat, and a strange, cool clarity was struggling to break through the tangled mess.
She paused for a moment, then her tone became unusually frank and firm: "He and I are just friends. We've known each other for so many years, and I've never thought about it that way. Besides..."
She looked up at Chu Song and said, "I'm already married to you."
"You know that much." Chu Song smiled slightly, placed the chess set on the table, and teased, half-jokingly, "You can't let me be cuckolded."
"I won't." Xie Tang said, somewhat amused and exasperated.
"Want to play a game?" Chu Song set up the chessboard, the wooden pieces making a crisp clinking sound. "We played this when we were kids, remember?"
"I remember." Xie Tang nodded, his dormant memories awakened. The dream of his crushing defeat to Chu Song under the locust tree was crystal clear, and the resentment and shame he felt were exactly the same as those he had felt in his childhood.
She smiled and pleaded, "Brother Song, please have mercy!"
"Give me three steps?"
"Alright!" Xie Tang said without hesitation, taking the first move.
However, her three-step advantage quickly crumbled under Chu Song's meticulously laid plans, and she was once again forced into a desperate situation.
She pushed the chessboard away in frustration, saying, "I'm not playing anymore."
Aunt Yu came in carrying a fruit platter: "Lunch is ready, would you like to eat now?"
Xie Tang stood up: "No, Aunt Yu, I'm going to the hospital to have dinner with my mother."
Aunt Yu noticed that Chu Song's fingers, which were fiddling with the chessboard, paused, and his previously focused expression seemed to have faded a little.
She smiled and took Xie Tang's hand: "Tang, your mother is sick and has a weak appetite, so she needs to eat light food. You and A-Song can eat at home, and I'll pack the food so you can take it with you when you're done eating."
She patted Xie Tang's hand affectionately, "Listen to your aunt, if your mother likes it, I'll make an extra portion every day from now on."
Unable to refuse such hospitality, Xie Tang smiled and said, "Thank you, Aunt Yu, for your trouble."
“Don’t bother us, we’re family!” Aunt Yu smiled and glanced at Chu Song, noticing that his expression seemed to have softened a bit. “Song, come and eat.”
After the meal, Xie Tang carried the heavy insulated food container out the door. A message from Yin Xi popped up on her phone: "[Yao Xinyu has been transferred back to Shenzhen.]"
She didn't reply, but silently prayed in her heart for a happy ending to her friend's seven years of perseverance.
Chu Song remained alone on the rattan chair on the living room balcony.
The book lay open on his lap, but his gaze was fixed on the distance.
Sunlight filtered through the clouds, casting shadows on his sharply defined profile, his slender back conveying a sense of silent loneliness.
Aunt Yu brought over washed grapes and a pot of hot tea, and looking at his lonely figure, she said, "Why don't you go with A-Tang to see her mother?"
"She didn't call me." Chu Song's gaze remained fixed on the pages of the book, his voice indifferent.
As soon as the words left his mouth, his brows furrowed slightly involuntarily, and an indescribable sense of stagnation quietly settled in his heart, both unfamiliar and clear.
Aunt Yu, with the knowing look of someone who's been through it all, laughed and said, "Silly child, she didn't call, so why can't you ask? If you ask, that child, Atang, definitely won't refuse."
"Tang girl is a rare and wonderful girl."
Chu Song gave a soft "hmm" and didn't reply.
Chu Yun said the same thing.
He could sense it too.
That gentle resilience, that unintentional concern, is indeed like the warm breeze of early spring.
But... they will eventually become strangers.
Aunt Yu quietly withdrew.
Before long, he led in a middle-aged man in a suit and tie with a serious expression.
“Young Master Chu,” the man bowed respectfully, “I am the steward of Young Master Dou Xiao’s family. The young master instructed me to deliver a small gift to congratulate you and your second wife on your marriage and wish you a long and happy life together.”
As he spoke, he presented a red envelope with a gold-embossed "囍" character on it.
Chu Song closed the book, accepted the red envelope, and said in an emotionless tone, "Please thank Young Master Dou for me."
"Yes, Second Young Master," the butler replied, but his Adam's apple bobbed as if he wanted to say something but then stopped himself.
Chu Song raised his eyes, his gaze falling on his face with an undeniable air of authority: "Does he have anything else to say?"
"This..." The butler nervously wiped his sweat. "Young Master asked me to pass on a message... to the Second Madam..."
He stammered, his face burning, as if the words were too hot to swallow.
Chu Song raised an eyebrow and a cold smile curled at the corner of his mouth: "I reckon he can't say anything nice, so there's no need to say anything more."
Dou Xiao, that treacherous and wicked son of the Dou family who they desperately wanted to expel, acted in a bizarre and absurd manner to the extreme.
He once provoked his elder brother Shen Jialang by messing with his sister-in-law Yu Ning, but Yu Ning broke his leg, causing a huge uproar and almost forcing Yu Ning to leave the Dou family with nothing.
Now, he actually dares to present this frivolous and humiliating act to Chu Song's wife!
The butler, feeling as if he had been granted a pardon, repeatedly replied "Yes," and almost backed away, disappearing from Chu Song's icy gaze, drenched in cold sweat.
Aunt Yu saw the guests off with a livid face.
Chu Song's slender fingers unwrapped the red envelope, revealing a million-dollar check inside.
He took out his phone expressionlessly and dialed Shen Jialang's number directly.
The breeze on the balcony carried a hint of coolness, but it couldn't dispel the chill that had settled between his brows.
When the call connected, Shen Jialang's clear, teasing voice came through: "Dou Xiao said he lost to you at billiards last night, and he was like a lion with its mane bristling. He insisted that I deliberately threw the game and looked down on him."
Chu Song's tone was icy, directly cutting off the other party's interest: "Keep an eye on your brother, don't get any funny ideas."
"Heh, I can't control that ancestor. However, I can't guarantee anything else, but his feelings for his sister-in-law are just something to annoy you with his words at most."
"He's going to die sooner or later if he keeps acting like this."
"I couldn't be happier!" Shen Jialang sneered, a twisted sense of pleasure in his voice. "With your father keeping the Chu family in check, you all have to be 'brotherly and respectful.' Our family? Ha, whoever gets favored is the king of the world!"
Chu Song hung up the call expressionlessly, his knuckles turning white.
The mess that was the Dou family made his heart ache.
After seeing the guests off, Aunt Yu cautiously approached and asked, "Ah Song, Madam asked if you want to go back to the old house together?"
"I'm not going back." Chu Song refused decisively. He didn't want to stay in that magnificent cage for even a second longer. "Have the driver take you there."
"Okay." Aunt Yu didn't try to persuade him any further, only worrying about dinner. He was used to her cooking skills, which was why he had come to live with her after he got married.
"What would you like to eat? I'll have another nanny make it for you..."
Chu Song simply replied, "Let's eat out."
"good."
Seeing the worried glance that Aunt Yu gave as she turned away, Chu Song turned his face away.
This old man, who watched him grow up and witnessed how he was "tamed" into the perfect heir of the Chu family, understood best how much unspeakable grievance and anger had accumulated in his heart.
The humiliation Chu Yi felt when he was brought back, the helplessness his mother felt forced to accept, and his desperate desire to escape through marriage...
Each piece felt like a heavy shackle.
Aunt Yu sighed inwardly: When will this child be able to break free from this shadow and truly be happy?
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In the hospital garden, Xie Tang helped Xie Shuang take a walk. Her mother's complexion was improving, and she was smiling more often.
Xie Shuang gazed at the few scattered golden ginkgo leaves on the ground and suddenly sighed, "It's been a long time since I visited your grandparents..."
Xie Tang knew that this was a deep-seated knot in her mother's heart.
Her mother inherited her maternal grandfather's pride, but her insistence on marrying Qin Ruhai back then created an irreparable rift with her family.
After the divorce, she quietly fulfilled her filial duties. After falling ill, she never mentioned her illness and only asked Xie Tang to visit them every year.
“I’ll go see them during the National Day holiday,” Xie Tang gently put her arm around Xie Shuang’s thin shoulder, her voice as tender as if she were coaxing a child. “I’ll also bring them to see you. The condition is that you have to take good care of your health.”
Xie Shuang's eyes suddenly reddened, and she gripped her hand tightly: "A-Tang, I'm sorry... Mom didn't give you a complete family, and I've only been a burden to you..."
Xie Shuang had said these words countless times, and Xie Tang had comforted her countless times as well.
But illness is like an invisible file, which will always, at some unexpected moment, cut open the deepest wound in her heart, causing the guilt that was temporarily soothed by comforting words to grow wildly like weeds.
"Mom!" Xie Tang's gaze shifted slightly, interrupting her self-reproach, "Do you remember when I was five years old? The time I broke Grandpa's precious Chengni inkstone..."
Xie Tang's words instantly opened the floodgates of Xie Shuang's memories.
Those long-forgotten fragments of Xie Tang's childhood, carrying the scent of sunshine and grass, came vividly to life in my mind.
"How could I not remember?" A genuine smile appeared on Xie Shuang's lips, dispelling some of the gloom that had been hanging over her. "That thing was so precious; it was a gift from your grandfather's old comrade-in-arms, a rare find, one of the three out of ten that survived the kiln fire..."
She looked at Xie Tang, her eyes filled with no reproach, only a gentle recollection of the past, "And you, you used it as a food bowl for the stray cats outside! And when you broke it, you complained that the inkstone was too fragile. Your grandfather was heartbroken back then, sigh..."
“I don’t know if Grandpa felt bad about it, but he’s very magnanimous. He said, ‘It’s just an object, it’s fine if it’s broken.’ But you,” Xie Tang wrinkled her nose and laughed like a child who had caused trouble but was being favored, “you grabbed a broom and chased me all over the yard! That’s when I realized that my gentle mother could also ‘jump and stomp’ when she got angry! Luckily, I’m fast enough that you couldn’t catch me!”
"Is it because I can't catch up?" Xie Shuang laughed. "I just didn't want to hit you, I was just pretending to scare you."
Those images—her daughter's innocent smile and carefree figure chasing after something—are so clear as if they happened just yesterday, yet they are already deeply etched into the rings of her life.
And now, the little girl who once needed her protection has grown into a woman who is more resilient, more confident, and knows how to love better than she did back then.
This growth is the deepest comfort in Xie Shuang's illness.
Seeing a smile finally appear on her mother's face, Xie Tang's heart, which had been hanging in suspense, slowly settled down.
The cool afternoon breeze brushed against my cheeks.
Xie Shuang gazed at the azure sky, a thin layer of tears welling up in her eyes. "A-Tang, once Mom is better, I will definitely go and apologize to your grandparents in person."
"Okay, sure," Xie Tang replied, carefully taking her mother's slightly cool hand into her own palm.
As the wind grew cooler, Xie Tang escorted his mother back to her room.
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Author's note: Today's update is complete~ Wishing you a peaceful and healthy Qingming Festival.
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