Chapter 58 It took a long time for Xu Ji to finish listening...
"Just the two of us having dinner?"
Xu Ji pulled out a chair, sat down, and looked around quietly. He didn't see Tao Siyun, so he was sure she was not at home, so he looked towards the kitchen.
"Oh, didn't Tao Siyun have winter vacation a few days ago? She returned to Beijing at noon. I sent her to the airport, and she's already home now."
Tao Siyun specifically told Tao Qian to stay here for two days, asking him not to waste food and to be responsible for processing the remaining ingredients in the refrigerator before leaving.
Tao Qian came out of the kitchen carrying the last dish, not noticing Xu Ji's expression at all. He said helplessly, "My girl is quite clingy. She insisted on waiting for me to go home together, but it's too early for me. I might as well just buy her a plane ticket and let her go back first, so that my parents won't nag me again."
Xu Ji felt a little uncomfortable and his sense of loss was very obvious.
Tao Siyun didn't even say a word to him and just left suddenly without saying a word. What happened?
Haven’t they been having a great time chatting on WeChat during this period?
Tao Qian had no idea what was going on in his mind, so he casually asked during the meal, "Hey, for a family with only one child like yours, has it been quite lonely since you were little?"
"Not bad." Xu Ji thought of Song Liwei and didn't feel particularly lonely. "My uncle is fourteen years older than me, and he's the one who takes me out most of the time. He's a tennis player and a former world champion."
Although they are uncle and nephew, they grew up like brothers.
Tao Qian was a little surprised, "World champion? So awesome!"
"Yes, but he retired early due to injury and is now a tennis coach."
In the early years, Xu Ji's parents invested in Song Liwei and opened a tennis hall in the west of Shanghai, and received dividends in proportion every year.
After more than a decade of development, the tennis center has grown more than tenfold since its inception. In addition to professional students and tennis enthusiasts, they also collaborate with private schools on annual courses, creating a very mature educational system.
In first-tier cities like the west of Shanghai, education and training can be very profitable, especially tennis, which is known as a "money-burning aristocratic sport."
Xu Ji was taught tennis by Song Liwei personally. He has participated in many competitions since he was a child. Song Liwei once had high hopes for him and even wanted to train him in a professional direction.
…
This learning experience reminded Tao Qian of the scene when Qin Ru taught Tao Siyun to play the cello when they were young.
"Really? My sister's situation is similar to yours. My aunt taught her to play the cello for a while, and she's been learning it for over ten years. She was originally planning to apply to a music conservatory."
Xu Ji ate absentmindedly and asked casually, "...But isn't she studying design?"
"Oh, that happened after I went abroad."
After being together for so long, Tao Qian and Xu Ji had already developed a very good relationship. Thinking that he was not an outsider, Tao Qian did not hide it from him.
"My sister went to high school in Shanghai West, you know? I told you last time. When she was in high school, my aunt found a professor from the Conservatory of Music to teach her cello. She lived in her aunt's house for two years. Later, she took the college entrance exam and ranked first in her major in two schools on the preliminary exam. You have no idea how happy she was when the results came out. We all thought it was a sure thing. But unexpectedly, my aunt died in a car accident on the afternoon my sister took the re-examination at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music."
Tao Qian sighed, his expression gloomy. He rubbed his brows and calmed down before continuing, "The death of my aunt was a huge blow to her. She was at the scene of the accident and saw everything."
After a moment of silence, Xu Ji gradually recovered from his shock. "Is it because of this reason that she went to France?"
"Well, we're worried she'll have a psychological trauma, so we're planning to change her environment, maybe send her to a music school abroad. Anyway, according to our original plan, after she graduates from university, her family was going to send her abroad for further studies, whether it's joining an orchestra or attending a university." Tao Qian rubbed his hair, hiding the complex emotions in his eyes, and spoke in a calm and low voice, "But she told us that she can't get into the music school because her hands shake when she plays the cello..."
Xu Ji didn't speak for a long time after listening.
He never expected it to be like this.
Tao Qian only used a few words to solve the doubts that had been bothering him for a long time, but after so many years, has Tao Siyun's knot in his heart also been resolved?
The two men each had their own thoughts, and finally Xu Ji, for the first time, accompanied Tao Qian to drink some white wine.
After such a long time, Tao Qian could no longer remember what he was busy with before he received Tao Daiming's call. He only remembered that after hearing the news, he felt like he was suddenly hit on the head with a club from behind. He was stunned, the blood in his body instantly ran cold, and he had no feeling in his hand holding the phone.
He had absolutely no way of stringing together these unrelated keywords, "car accident," "aunt," "deceased," and "now in the funeral home," into a complete sentence. It was as if he were dreaming, a muddled journey, his soul and body having gone their separate ways. He had no idea how he got back home from school...
By the time they finally arrived at the Huxi Funeral Home from Jingfu, it was already dark.
Tao Siyun was accompanied by a female staff member. After seeing them, she could only shed tears and couldn't even cry. She couldn't even do the most basic communication.
Qin Shu was greatly traumatized by Qin Ru's death and fainted several times.
Tao Daiming hugged Qin Shu, he was holding his trembling sister.
In my ears is the mother's heartbroken cry, suppressed and forbearing.
Tao Qian's eyes were blurred and he could not see anything clearly. He held Tao Siyun in his arms, covered her ears tightly with his hands, and forced himself to remain numb and clear-headed in the midst of great sorrow.
The phone seemed to be ringing all the time, with calls from the hospital and relatives.
Everything is so confusing.
In the middle of the night, after everything was settled, the relatives helped take care of Qin Shu and Tao Siyun in the hotel, and he accompanied Tao Daiming to the hospital.
Yan Bin has been in the emergency room for five or six hours and is still in danger.
The doctor issued several critical illness notices, but the person who signed the surgery form was his ex-wife, who had been divorced for many years and had remarried...
What is this?
Tao Qian looked at the strange woman he had never seen before with mixed feelings. The scene before him made it hard not to doubt the relationship between them.
Tao Qian could almost be sure that Yan Bin had rekindled his affair with his ex-wife behind Qin Ru's back.
He then heard her tell the doctor, "I am his lover."
Tao Daiming frowned and stopped Tao Qian, "Don't make a scene in the hospital, and don't tell your mother."
The operation took a long time.
The walls of the hospital are as cold as those inside a funeral home. It is no exaggeration to say that when a person leans against them, they will feel a temperature close to death.
…
In the following days, the woman brought Yan Bin's parents to the hotel to visit them. She did not say a word of sympathy throughout the whole process, and her words were all about asking about the compensation for Qin Ru's death in the car accident.
Tao Qian was so angry that he pointed at the woman's nose and yelled at them: "Do you have any conscience at all?! My aunt just passed away and hasn't even been buried yet, and you're already desperately wanting this money, right? If it weren't for your son and daughter, my aunt wouldn't have died! It was someone in our family who died! You want compensation? On what fucking terms do you have to ask for it?!"
The woman was immediately speechless after hearing what Tao Qian said.
Upon seeing this, Yan Bin's parents knelt down in front of Qin Shu, crying and shouting -
"Oh my God! The dead cannot be brought back to life! My son is still in the intensive care unit, and the daily treatment costs tens of thousands of dollars. What do you want us to do... You have to leave us two a way out!"
"Go! Get out of here right now!"
"Calm down!" Tao Daiming hugged his emotional wife and said to them, "Find a lawyer. Whatever happens will be done."
These days, the family has been exhausted.
Those matters were eventually resolved through lawyers.
After discussion, the entire accident compensation was given to Yan Bin for his subsequent medical treatment. Qin Ru's property, including the house they had bought before marriage, was divided into two parts: one for support to her grandparents, and the other for Yan Bin, treated as joint property of the couple.
Tao Qian was the first to disagree, slamming the table, but he had no say.
The old man sighed and said, "Your aunt is gone now. There's no point in having these material possessions. Just treat it as a good deed to accumulate merit for her. We can't let others say that we mistreat a living person."
After Qin Ru passed away, the two old people were moved by the scene and did not ask for the house, but gave it all to him.
Later, Yan Bin remarried his ex-wife and moved back to his hometown in Nanze.
…
The memories are not smooth. The fragments of memories in my mind are as short as the live photos taken by a mobile phone. It is also like putting a damp tape into an old radio, pressing the switch, and there is a pause during the reading process, and it is intermittent.
"When Tao Siyun first went to France, she rarely answered her parents' calls. Sometimes she would just say a few quick words or just say 'hmm' and hang up. We all thought she was too busy with language classes. One day, I video-called her, and she put her phone on the table with the camera facing the ceiling. She refused to let me look at her and rarely spoke to me. I called her name, and the call was disconnected the next second."
Tao Qian's eyes began to well up as he spoke. "Later I learned that every time we called her, she would hide under the covers and cry secretly, but she was afraid we would hear her, so she didn't dare to speak. My residence permit wasn't approved during the first summer vacation, and I said I wanted to go to France to see her, but she refused. I returned home for Christmas, having lost several pounds. There was a mark on my arm that hadn't faded yet. I asked her what happened, and she hesitated for a long time before finally saying that she accidentally got burned in the oven while learning to bake bread... My mother was heartbroken when she found out..."
Tao Qian was a little drunk and completely treated Xu Ji as the person to confide in.
Xu Ji listened very carefully, not missing a single word.
That entire evening, he learned from Tao Qian which university Tao Siyun attended in France, that the apartment she initially rented in Paris was said to have been built during World War II, that she had been pursued by men from several different countries while studying abroad, and that she celebrated her graduation with friends with champagne instead of red wine...
He knew everything that had happened to Tao Siyun during these years that he was unaware of.
He did not participate in Tao Siyun's life from the age of 18 to 24. The blank six years were filled in bit by bit through Tao Qian's narration and slowly pieced together.
Xu Ji found her social media account abroad. The timeline spanned her colorful university life and recorded every detail of her life in Paris during those years.
They are all very everyday fragments.
Travel, visit exhibitions, go shopping, eat delicious food...
But no matter what she does, she is always alone.
Xu Ji couldn't help but think that if Tao Siyun had gone to college in China, things would not have been like this.
She will definitely make a lot of friends, eat with her roommates, go shopping with them on weekends...
Unconsciously, she turned to the day she graduated two years ago——
In the photo, she wore light makeup, and her long hair was curled into a beautiful curve with a curling iron, with a natural transition at the ends; she wore a black one-shoulder dress, standing among a group of foreigners making funny expressions, smiling faintly.
She is the only Chinese face in this photo, and the smile on her face is full of confidence, subtle and charming.
***
In the evening, the other three people in the group of four in the university dormitory were chatting animatedly, discussing how much gift money would be appropriate for the class monitor's wedding.
Dormitory Head Chen Feng: [@Xu Ji, Old Xu, when are you coming to Jingfu? We're short one of four people, and we're waiting for you.]
Duan Jingyi: [@Xu Ji, Lao Xu, when are you coming to Jingfu? We're short one of four people, and we're waiting for you.]
Xu Chen: [@Xu Ji, Lao Xu, when are you coming to Jingfu? We're short one of four people, and we're just waiting for you.]
“…”
Xu Ji replied to them: [The day after tomorrow]
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