Chapter 44
Huang Ruoyu explained to Xie Yiling that Cheng Yushan and Cheng Yusi had gone to a classmate's birthday party as an excuse, but Cheng Shi was not convinced. However, the Hu family did not seem to doubt this reason, because Xie Yiling was complaining that the property management of Central Park was getting worse year by year. This year, the trees in the community were full of white moths, but the property management had not sprayed any pesticides on the trees.
However, Xie Yiling stopped talking after a while because she noticed that Cheng Shi and Huang Ruoyu had focused all their attention on her son—Hu Zhizhi was pacing around the Cheng family's living room, his steps slow and his body stiff, wearing his strange beanie.
Hu Zhizhi's devilish gait looked like a poorly designed humanoid robot.
This made Xie Yiling feel anxious again, because she didn't know what Hu Zhizhi would do next.
At this moment, Hu Zhizhi finally stopped. He was carefully observing every piece of furniture in the Cheng family's living room, and it was unclear whether he was calculating which piece of furniture to smash first.
"Not bad," Hu Zhizhi finally nodded at the 75-inch color TV in the living room. "Really good. You have a nice TV and a rather realistic little villa."
"Please come and sit down, everyone. I just brewed a pot of Longjing tea and prepared some snacks." Seeing this, Huang Ruoyu quickly invited the Hu family of three to sit down in the living room again.
The elderly couple obediently sat down on the sofa, but Hu Zhizhi showed no intention of sitting down. Instead, he took off his beanie, casually tossed it onto the TV cabinet, and then, like an old farmer, tiptoed and squatted on his heels, his body trembling slightly, as if practicing some kind of light-body technique. He then reached between his knees, skillfully flicking the ash into the rolled-up cuffs of his work pants. When he looked up again, everyone noticed that his brows had relaxed, his expression had become much more normal, and he even showed a hint of cleverness, making him seem like an ordinary, talkative, and cheerful young man from Beijing.
"Zhizhi, don't smoke in someone else's house, it's so impolite. Look how clean your sister Ruoyu has kept the house!" Xie Yiling said to her son, slightly embarrassed.
But Hu Zhizhi ignored Xie Yiling and looked at Cheng Shi and Huang Ruoyu, saying, "That old lady Lingzi has been nagging about your family for months. She's always talking about the young and lovely Cheng family in Central Park, or the cute young couple in Cheng Family Park. I'm getting a bit confused. Whenever she speaks, I'm mostly lost in the conversation, and part of the reason is that I'm not really listening. You know what kind of person Lingzi is, right? She's always talking and talking, but she doesn't really say anything. Once she starts talking, you'll want to plug your ears immediately. But I think she's finally right this time. This place is different from what I imagined; it's quite comfortable. Of course, my 'comfortable' is completely different from her 'comfortable.' I mean comfortable. I really like this place; it feels like a place for a person to live. Unlike Lingzi, who decorates her house like the Forbidden City."
“Hahaha,” Narumi said with a laugh, “Thank you for the compliment.”
"Chengshi just made some gin and tonic, does anyone want some? There's also a side dish that will be ready soon," Huang Ruoyu asked, while her hands nervously twisted and turned on her waist.
"No need, don't trouble yourself, Xiao Huang," Xie Yiling quickly replied. "We'll just sit for a bit and then leave, so please don't bother us..."
“Mom, could you please shut up for a minute?” Hu Zhizhi interrupted Xie Yiling. “Just for a little while, okay? Uh, sis, I’d like some gin and tonic, thanks. Or you could give them all some, so they don’t have to be so polite. By the way, if Lingzi insists on not drinking, then give me hers too. Oh, but I think…”
Suddenly, the clever look on Hu Zhizhi's face vanished completely. He leaned forward from his squatting position and suddenly stretched out a hand towards Huang Ruoyu, as if to grab her leg, muttering, "Do you have Collins Glass at home? A big glass will do, put in two or three ice cubes, and then pour in a full gin and tonic. I like to drink it like that."
Xie Yiling sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa, like a statue. After hearing Hu Zhizhi's words, she quickly closed her eyes, wishing she could disappear into the ground: This rascal of hers! He actually wanted Collins Glass, and he even threw that dirty, tattered hat on someone's TV stand, and today he's wearing such shabby, indecent clothes!
Every two weeks, Xie Yiling would go to the Sixth Hospital to bring Hu Zhizhi some seasonal clothes: brightly colored polo shirts, soft and comfortable sweatpants, expensive ramie jackets, pure cotton shirts… She believed that children Hu Zhizhi's age liked certain types of clothes, so she would buy him those, and always the most expensive ones. But she never saw Hu Zhizhi wear any of those clothes. No matter how many nice clothes he had, Hu Zhizhi always wore his shabby, worn-out clothes. Every time Xie Yiling saw Hu Zhizhi dressed like this, she would think in despair: her son was doing this entirely to disgust them, his parents! And now, he was being so disrespectful in front of outsiders!
Thinking of this, Xie Yiling opened her eyes and glared fiercely at Hu Yu, who was sitting next to her nonchalantly drinking tea. She thought to herself: Why does Hu Yu always seem so incompetent at times like this? All he does is hide in a corner, eating and drinking as if he's a useless old lady... Why can't he help at all?!
Xie Yiling was certain that Hu Yu's actions were not due to emotional stability, but rather a sense of indifference! He completely disregarded his son!
"Uh... this tea is really good, thank you, Xiao Huang." After glaring at the unmoved Hu Yu for a while, Xie Yiling finally calmed herself down. However, she still nervously picked up the teacup in front of her, took a sip, and then said in an excited tone, "Oh my, look at these tea snacks, they're so exquisite! You Shanghainese are really particular! But Xiao Huang, you really don't need to be so polite, we just came to sit down..."
At that moment, Hu Zhizhi grabbed the large glass that Huang Ruoyu had filled with gin and tonic and took two big gulps. Then he threw the glass onto the TV cabinet. He didn't touch the glass again until they left, perhaps because he thought Cheng Shi's bartending skills were not good enough.
Then, Hu Zhizhi wandered around the living room again, and ate most of the tea snacks on the tea tray on the coffee table. Every time he circled around to the coffee table, he would pick up a snack from the tray and stuff it into his mouth, wolfing it down and smacking his lips loudly, as if he hadn't eaten in eight hundred years.
Xie Yiling believed her main task at this moment was to control the situation, so she pretended to be calm and chatted with Chengshi, making sure that she spoke one sentence after another so that Hu Zhizhi wouldn't have a chance to interrupt her. Xie Yiling only hoped that she could fill this short time before the meal and not give Hu Zhizhi any opportunity to talk nonsense. To this end, Xie Yiling even explained the latest mortgage policy to Chengshi, regardless of whether Chengshi actually needed it.
Meanwhile, Hu Yu sat comfortably on the other side of the sofa, sipping Longjing tea and enjoying snacks with a smile. However, while his wife delivered her long speech, he still forced himself to keep a vigilant eye on his son's every move—like a careless nanny scrolling through her phone while watching her child in a park, but at least he was fulfilling his responsibilities as a father.
After circling around a dozen or twenty times, Hu Zhizhi was probably finally tired. So he squatted down in the middle of the living room like an old farmer, tilting his head to look at his mother who was giving a speech. Finally, after he managed to swallow the last bite of his snack, he found a chance to interrupt her.
"You're a lawyer, Cheng... Chengshi?"
"Me? A lawyer?" Cheng Shi was taken aback for a moment, then laughed. "No, do I look like a lawyer? How could you think I'm a lawyer?"
“Because I want you to be a lawyer,” Hu Zhizhi said seriously. “I need a lawyer, not just anyone. So what do you do? A celebrity or something? I haven’t watched many domestic movies, so I didn’t recognize you.”
“No,” Cheng Shi burst out laughing this time, “I work for Haosikai in China.”
"Oh, that's the American fraud company? I heard they went bust in the US last year, but I think they covered it up later, I can't remember." Hu Zhizhi put on a sarcastic look. "So what are you doing there? Making or selling counterfeit drugs?"
"Uh... I didn't study medicine or marketing, so I can't make or sell counterfeit drugs. I work in an office, doing pretty much the same things as the marketing department. It's actually a really stupid... idiotic job, really boring."
"Meaningless?" Hu Zhizhi seemed enraged by Cheng Shi's words, roaring, "You're worried about whether work is interesting or not?! I thought only women cared about these things. Women, or those little brats. Confucius said, 'Women and petty men are the most difficult to deal with,' only these kinds of people would take such stupid things seriously..."
"Look! The sun's out!" Xie Yiling exclaimed in a panic upon hearing Hu Zhizhi's words. She then abruptly stood up from the sofa, walked to the French windows in the living room, stood there stiffly looking out, and continued in an unnatural voice, "Maybe we'll see a rainbow in a bit. It's so beautiful!"
Cheng Shi blushed and explained to Hu Zhizhi somewhat embarrassedly, "What I mean is, I don't like this job, I've never liked it."
"Then why do you do this job? Oh, okay, okay..." Hu Zhizhi lowered his head, raising his hands weakly as if in surrender. "Okay, it's not my fault. In Lingzi-san's words, I'm just clueless. That's my problem, but I've always been like this. Dude, forget what I just said. If you want to get a house from Lingzi-san, you have to find a job. If you want to get a decent house and a sweet home from her, you have to find a job you don't like. Yeah, I understand the logic, and it's a really great logic. That's how 99.99% of people think and solve problems. So dude, listen to me, if someone comes up to you and asks, 'Then why do you do this job?', you don't even need to think about it to be sure that this person is a fucking idiot who just came out of a mental hospital and will be sent back in 4 hours. Lingzi-san, am I right?"
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