Chapter 36 Chapter 36 Strawberry Sandwich.
"Where is Xu Jiren?"
"I'm going back."
The faint scent of lily of the valley lingered in the air. Tao Siyun rubbed her nose. She instinctively resisted the smell now. Frowning, she asked, "Brother, why are you still wearing this T-shirt? Where are your own clothes?"
“Even intra-city express delivery may not be delivered on the same day.”
That's true...
"Eat your strawberry sandwich. It's really tiring."
This is Tao Siyun's own way of eating——
Remove the stems of fresh strawberries and cut them in half with a knife. Squeeze fresh cream in the middle of the red strawberries and spread strawberry jam in the middle of the white strawberries. Put them together and finally garnish with a small circle of chocolate sauce.
Tao Siyun picked up the fork and stabbed a strawberry into Tao Qian's hand holding the plate. With the tone of a proud princess, she ordered, "Put it down."
Tao Qian tutted, "Who are you ordering around? Are you looking for a fight?"
Tao Siyun took a bite of the strawberry tip, and the cream quickly melted on the tip of his tongue.
The sweet taste of strawberries and the soft and delicate cream are just the right match.
Sweet and sour but not greasy.
The brother and sister chatted about some random things. Tao Siyun thought about the scene he saw in the mall last time. After much hesitation, he decided to tell Tao Qian what he had seen: "Brother, I met an acquaintance in Nanze... a few days ago."
Tao Qian lowered his head and replied to the WeChat message, not taking it seriously. He thought she had run into some elementary school classmate she hadn't contacted for eight hundred years. Without even looking up, he asked, "Who is it?"
"Hmm..." Tao Siyun licked his lips, his eyes flickering, and he stammered, "It's... my uncle."
Tao Siyun suddenly felt that this name was very unfamiliar to her, perhaps because she hadn't called it for many years, and even the pronunciation seemed to have become a little unfamiliar.
Tao Qian frowned and was silent for a long time. He put down his phone and asked in a deep voice, "Where did you see him?"
"In the mall. That day, my friend and I went downtown to buy clothes and I saw his ex-wife." Realizing something was wrong, Tao Siyun bit his tongue and quickly changed the subject, "His...current wife. They look like two different ages together."
"Did you go and talk to him?"
"No, I was in the elevator at the time and he didn't see me. By the time the elevator reached the first floor, they had already left, but I was sure I wasn't mistaken. It was him."
Tao Qian pressed his eyebrows and said nothing more. He just told her not to tell Qin Shu about meeting Yan Bin in Nanze, "Just pretend you didn't see it, otherwise Mom will be sad when I mention my aunt."
Tao Siyun nodded obediently, "Yeah, I understand."
Over the years, the name Yan Bin has become something that cannot be mentioned in their family, and Tao Daiming and Qin Shu have never taken the initiative to talk about anything about this person in front of her.
The passage of time often makes people feel sad, as if it happened in the blink of an eye. If she didn't have the concept of "time", she wouldn't know that so much time had passed.
Now Yan Bin can only spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Tao Siyun feels mixed emotions and has thought a lot unconsciously. He can't tell what he feels.
Not long after her aunt passed away, she went abroad to study. Later, she learned from Tao Qian's fragments that the car accident had left Yan Bin with a lifelong disability.
The next news I heard was that Yan Zhiru's parents remarried.
Tao Siyun carefully observed Tao Qian's expression. Seeing no other reaction, he continued, "He doesn't look well. He's very haggard and extremely thin." Yan Bin's frail appearance seemed to be caused by long-term malnutrition. He was less than fifty years old, but his hair was covered in white. "I almost didn't recognize him."
Even if you are mentally prepared, seeing it with your own eyes is another matter.
Before going to Nanze, Tao Siyun's last impression of him was many years ago.
At that time, Yan Bin was still a healthy person with all his limbs intact.
Although he is middle-aged and no longer young, he is still handsome and elegant.
However, my grandma and grandpa looked down on my aunt's first love boyfriend. The reason was very simple and realistic.
Not only has Yan Bin been married, he also has a son and a daughter with his ex-wife. The burden on him is too heavy.
The most important thing is that he still maintains a complicated relationship with his ex-wife, who uses the child to "blackmail" him from time to time.
This kind of family is extremely complicated. No matter from which point of view, they cannot accept this son-in-law.
The traditional concept of the older generation can be summed up in four words: being a stepmother is difficult.
Qin Ru is a DINK. It is very unrealistic to rely solely on love to maintain the so-called marriage for the rest of her life. Over time, family conflicts are inevitable.
Men all value children very much. Otherwise, he would not have broken up with you after graduation because you insisted on being a DINK. Now that he has his own child, he chooses to marry you. Doesn't this explain the problem?
If you get involved with such a family, you will definitely suffer injustice in the future.
Considering their daughter's future life, the two old people were not optimistic about them at first.
Seeing that her parents refused to give in, Qin Ru had no choice but to go to Jingfu to find Qin Shu, hoping that her sister could help persuade her parents.
…
So Tao Siyun, who was only fourteen years old at the time, met Yan Bin for the first time that summer.
She still remembered the first thing Yan Bin said to her when he saw her: "You are Si Yun, you really look like your aunt."
But Tao Siyun didn't think so at the time. She felt that she looked more like her mother Qin Shu.
She looked at the strange adult in front of her, feeling a little shy and reserved.
Maybe it was because she and Qin Ru both learned cello, and her aunt was her first teacher. Qin Shu always said that her movements and back view when playing the cello were very similar to Qin Ru's when she was a child.
While chatting and laughing, several adults explained the reason.
"No wonder." Yan Bin praised her a few words and started chatting with Tao Daiming again.
They talked about urban planning and construction, and finally talked about the development and rise and fall of real estate and other industries.
Tao Siyun observed for an afternoon and felt that this elegant uncle brought by his aunt was humorous, talkative, knowledgeable, and had a wide range of knowledge. He knew everything and seemed very powerful.
More than half a month passed like this, and Tao Daiming and Qin Shu seemed very satisfied with him. I don’t know how my mother persuaded my grandparents, but soon after, my aunt got married as she wished.
The next time she saw Yan Bin was after the high school entrance exam when she transferred to a high school in western Shanghai.
They got along very well, Tao Siyun thought, probably because of Qin Ru, so he loved his niece as well.
But the good times didn't last long. Before the end of the second semester of high school, Yan Bin took his daughter home because his ex-wife remarried.
Yan Zhiru is very hostile to her stepmother Qin Ru. She doesn't appreciate any of her kindness and efforts, and can't even achieve basic peaceful coexistence.
This was a kind of psychological pressure for Qin Ru, and she didn't know what to do to satisfy her husband's daughter.
There are often small quarrels every three days and big quarrels every five days at home, and the atmosphere is extremely tense and depressing.
From Tao Siyun's perspective, everything Qin Ru did could be considered "flattering", but the more cautious she was, the more Yan Zhiru became arrogant.
At that time, there were always some emotional dramas on TV with the main theme of reconstituted families. Whenever Yan Zhiru saw the heroine being bullied by her stepmother, she would deliberately turn up the volume and use the heroine's experience in the TV series to make sarcastic remarks to Qin Ru, as if she was Snow White who was fed apples by her vicious stepmother and Cinderella who was abused by her stepmother.
Living under the same roof, the identity of "stepmother" is extremely sensitive for well-known reasons. Qin Ru is such a proud and face-conscious person, and after being maliciously slandered like this, her heart has grown cold over time.
Yan Bin saw this and tried to persuade his daughter, but it didn't work. Instead, it only exacerbated the conflict. As a result, the father and daughter had countless conflicts and arguments.
Yan Zhiru blamed all of this on Qin Ru, thinking that she was the one who instigated discord.
It seemed that from that time on, problems gradually began to appear in my aunt's originally happy marriage.
It was summer when Yan Zhiru came to the west of Shanghai, and Yan Bin faced a very embarrassing problem at that time.
There are only three keys in the house, one for him and Qin Ru, and one for Tao Siyun, which means Yan Zhiru doesn't have one.
This house was bought many years ago. The door was imported from abroad. The brand has long withdrawn from the Chinese market. There is no identical key on the market. It is not realistic to replace the door with a new key.
Before meeting Yan Zhiru, Yan Bin had not thought about these details at all. Besides, the house was Qin Ru's pre-marital property, and even changing the door would require her consent. However, Yan Zhiru had an unpleasant first meeting with Qin Ru, so he had never been able to bring up the matter.
It was near the end of the semester and Qin Ru was very busy. He basically didn't go home for lunch. Tao Siyun also ate at school, so Yan Zhiru was the only one at home. He would go home during lunch break every day to prepare meals for Yan Zhiru, and then hurried back to work.
Later on, he became busier and busier and had no time left, so he simply gave Yan Zhiru money and let her eat out.
Everything was fine until one day he forgot to leave the key for Yan Zhiru.
At noon, Qin Ru received a strange phone call...
The neighbor downstairs was a middle-aged woman who had just moved in. She didn't understand the situation. After hearing what Yan Zhiru said, she started to scold Qin Ru as soon as she saw her.
"How can you be a parent? It's 38 or 39 degrees Celsius outside today, and the child has been outside for hours. You deliberately didn't give her the key to the house, didn't you? Look, her nose is bleeding. What if something happens? How are you going to explain to her father? You can't be a stepmother like that. It's pitiful for the little girl to live under someone else's roof, and you're even resorting to mental abuse."
"You're a university professor, respected as a role model in school, but how can you be so awful in private? This is outrageous! If you keep this up, I'm going to complain to the neighborhood committee!"
“…”
Yan Zhiru stood aside with a wad of toilet paper stuffed in her nose. The large bloodstains on her light-colored T-shirt had turned dark, looking a little scary, but she met Qin Ru's gaze fearlessly, with a provocative look and the attitude of a winner.
It was the first time that Qin Ru was scolded so harshly in person. In an instant, she was exhausted both physically and mentally, and her heart seemed numb. She had no desire to defend herself at all.
After returning home and closing the bedroom door, I finally found an outlet for the negative emotions I had been feeling for the past few days.
"I admit that I was not thoughtful enough about this matter..." Qin Ru took a deep breath and forced back the tears. However, she had been suppressing them for too long. She couldn't help it and finally broke down and hysterically said to the person on the other end of the phone, "But apart from this, what else did I do wrong? What did I do poorly? You said to bring her here, okay, I agree. I asked people everywhere to find a school for her and I even paid for the school selection fee. Ask yourself, how else did I let her down and let her treat me like this!"
"Yan Bin, you know exactly how I treat your daughter. I, her stepmother, treat her with all my heart, yet she accuses me of abusing her in front of others. What else should I do? Tell me! What else do you want from me? Ah? What exactly will satisfy you!!!"
"Qin Ru, calm down." Yan Bin calmed her down while driving home. "It's all my fault, okay? Don't worry. I'll definitely criticize Zhiru seriously when I get home..."
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