Chapter 19
Jiang Wan always felt that the reason Jiang Huainan and Li Wan became a couple must be that there was something wrong with the earth's magnetic field back then.
Ever since Jiang Wan could remember, they had been arguing constantly, big and small. Although Jiang Huainan was a good-natured person who believed in keeping things peaceful, when Li Wan pushed him to the limit, he would still retort, "Am I pedantic? Am I aloof and hopeless? Wasn't it my pedantry and my aloofness that attracted you to me in the first place? It's only been a few years, Li Wan? If you wanted to live a life of wealth and luxury, you shouldn't have married me in the first place!"
So the divorce ended happily for everyone.
Chen Meiyu was washing her face in the bathroom, while Jiang Wan was leaning against the door, boredly browsing Jiang Huainan's circle of friends.
"What's going on? I thought you got up early in the morning and were looking at some photos of handsome men taking a bath, but after all you've been looking at your dad?" Even with the mask on Chen Meiyu's face, she couldn't hide the speechless expression on her face.
Jiang Wan used her hand to push away Chen Meiyun's head, which was dangling from her elbow. "Watch to see if he's having a second affair behind my back, ready to run away with the money at any time."
"Tsk tsk tsk, fake father-daughter relationship." Chen Meiyu said bluntly.
"I always thought you were more inclined towards your father."
"Why? Just because they got divorced, I took the initiative to follow Lao Jiang." Jiang Wan was not surprised that Chen Meiyu thought so. After all, that was how she acted.
"I thought you would hate your mother." Chen Meiyun walked to the closet and found a T-shirt of Jiang Wan's and put it on. She and Jiang Wan had known each other since childhood, and she had also heard a little about the methods her mother used to deal with her. "I'm not saying anything bad about Ms. Li Wan, but if my mother had treated me like this, I would have cut myself off from the people long ago."
Jiang Wan went to the bathroom to wash her face and came out: "How do you know I don't hate her?"
Whether it was Li Wan's blatant preference for boys over girls, or the brutal and harsh education she imposed on Jiang Wan, both made Jiang Wan suffer.
It also made Jiang Wan wish that he was a boy.
If Li Wan was just a stranger who had no blood relationship with her, Jiang Wan would be willing to hate her directly and stay away from her.
But she was Jiang Wan's mother, so as Jiang Wan grew up, she was willing to peel back the layers and slowly understand her. She understood that she grew up in a family that favored boys over girls, lived under the humiliation and beatings of her grandfather all day long, and also understood that because she gave birth to a daughter, she was neglected and looked down upon by Jiang Huainan's relatives.
But understanding does not mean forgiveness.
She just found a way out for their relationship which had reached a dead end.
As a woman, Jiang Wan can understand Li Wan's predicament.
But as a daughter, she may not be able to forget the past so easily.
After changing her clothes, Chen Meiyu lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling above her bedroom. "But I understand now, Wanzi, you love your mother more than your father. You chose to be with your father because you didn't want to burden her. You wanted her to escape the burden of family and be her true self."
"And your mother actually did it."
Chen Meiyu has always known that Jiang Wan is not very good at loving, but her love has always been very real and passionate, and once you have been loved by her, it is a feeling that is hard to forget.
So Chen Wulin has always been thinking about Jiang Wan.
Jiang Wan turned off his phone and lay down, staring at the ceiling with Chen Meiyun, both silent. The increasingly intense sunlight shone on the white sand curtains. Early risers passed by, calling out to their parents, and the sounds of neighbors chatting, washing, and drying clothes gradually became lively.
Chen Meiyun stared at the ceiling and suddenly asked, "Is that Lu Jiyu's bedroom up there?"
Jiang Wan picked up her phone again and nodded, "Yes." Then she opened the food delivery app, intending to order a KFC deluxe double meal for herself and the princess next to her.
"Is the soundproofing here not very good?" the other party asked again without thinking.
Jiang Wan casually nodded "hmm", still calculating in his mind which set meal was more cost-effective.
"Then..." Chen Meiyu's eyes suddenly flashed with a few different lights. She patted Jiang Wan's leg with her hand and smiled maliciously: "If he brings his girlfriend home to do something in the future, will you have to passively listen to a restricted live version?"
"My friend said that he was very chaste in junior high school and even had very few friends of the opposite sex."
"I don't know what it's become now. If you ask me, Devin is a big melting pot. I guess he can't escape it."
…
"I don't think I've seen him bring a girl home, and he probably doesn't have a girlfriend." Jiang Wan placed the order and put down his phone: "We should put aside our prejudice against his appearance."
"Please, if you're the first one to discriminate against handsome guys, I don't dare to be second, okay?"
＊
Because Princess Chen didn't like KFC, Jiang Wan had to accompany her to a tea restaurant in the Financial Building for breakfast.
Chen Meiyun had classes in the afternoon, so she had to leave after breakfast. On the way here, she held Jiang Wan's hand and said countless words of reluctance to leave, but once they arrived, she sat across from her, scrolling through her phone non-stop without even glancing at her.
Jiang Wan simply grabbed her phone and started scrolling through her Moments. She'd cleared out her WeChat friends list years earlier, and the ones left were mostly her high school and some middle school classmates. She glanced at her own number of friends: ninety-nine, a pitifully small number compared to those with hundreds or thousands.
Who will be her 100th WeChat friend?
She thought aimlessly, picked up the half-cold tea in front of her and took a sip. It was bitter and astringent. On Jiang Wan's side was the floor-to-ceiling glass window of the tea restaurant, and outside the glass was a curved corridor. It was almost dinner time, and families with children on weekends, as well as sisters and couples who were out shopping, were passing by in an endless stream. The sixth and seventh floors of the financial building were all filled with various restaurants. She thought about it and realized that there seemed to be a popular Japanese restaurant right next to their tea restaurant. She saw online that the queues were at least an hour long and the smell was not there at all.
From the angle where Jiang Wan was sitting, she could just see the long row of waiting chairs outside the Japanese restaurant. She fixed her eyes on the third person from the left. She recalled that this was the first time she had seen him wearing light-colored clothes since she met him. His top was a wide-cut short-sleeved shirt, with two buttons lazily open as usual. He wore a pair of khaki overalls with cuffs, and a pair of black lace-up Martin boots. His black hair hung softly between his eyebrows, and he looked like he had just been snapped out of a fashion magazine.
He was propping his head up, flipping through a thin menu in his hand, seemingly idly. He blocked out all the scrutinizing glances from those around him behind his natural barrier. She could sense in this barrier a sense of alienation, apathy, indifference, the frivolity of youth.
But Jiang Wan still found it hard to imagine how he, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, could beat an adult so hard that he was sent to the hospital and broke his wrist.
She couldn't help but touch her intact wrist. She couldn't imagine the pain.
"Jiang Wan." Chen Meiyun, standing opposite her, suddenly raised her head and asked, "That Zhou Paopi said they were also having dinner at the Financial Building and asked where we were. Should we tell them?"
Jiang Wan didn't even turn around, her first reaction was, "Did you add them on WeChat?"
"No. Who wants to add him on WeChat? He's dirtying up my friend circle. We talked about it in text messages."
"Well, tell them." Anyway, he saw her.
The moment Lu Jiyu's eyes lifted from the menu, they unexpectedly met a pair of beady, cat-like eyes glimpsed diagonally in front of him, behind the glass window. He was a man who rarely felt embarrassed, and he had a knack for embarrassing others. But after meeting Jiang Wan, he sometimes had to admit that the devil was always stronger than the good.
How would a normal person react at this moment? Blushing and turning their head away, or feigning composure and raising their hand to greet him? She did none of those. Instead, she stared at him motionlessly with her beautiful eyes, as if she were in a glare contest, her desire to win was overwhelming.
Lu Jiyu thought to himself, you are not playing with me anymore, you are playing with my mentality now.
So he turned his head away first, and in order not to appear too deliberate, he put his hand to the tip of his nose and coughed lightly twice.
Zhou Zifang, who had just gone to the bathroom, came back. He climbed up from behind, his elbows resting awkwardly on Lu Jiyu's shoulders, and said deliberately, "I just asked that Chen Meiyun. They're also in the Financial Building. How about I arrange afternoon tea with them after dinner—"
Before he finished speaking, a smirk hung on the corner of his mouth. His men suddenly stood up and handed the ticket in the queue to a mother with a child next to them: "We won't eat anymore. If you need anything, we can give you our number."
The mother hugged her daughter, who was crying out in hunger, and thanked Lu Jiyu repeatedly: "Thank you, thank you. Ruirui, thank you, brother."
The little girl named Ruirui raised her pretty face, stared at Lu Jiyu with a pair of black eyes, and glanced coldly at him. She seemed to be trying hard to say, "Thank you, brother."
Lu Jiyu felt as if he was possessed by a demon, and thought that someone must have been this cool and stubborn when he was a child.
Even as they reached the entrance of the tea restaurant, Zhou Zifang was still hanging on Lu Jiyu's heels, tearfully complaining, "Lu Beibei, you're such a jerk. You were so hung up on her yesterday, and now you're completely paralyzed again! Tell me, tell your brothers, that fish at least took the bait, but what's wrong with you? Straight hook! There wasn't even a hook, and you just tangled yourself in the line and sent it packing!"
"If you ask me, this Jiang Wan must be the reincarnation of Jiang Ziya. Damn, he's such a great fisherman."
Lu Jiyu stepped through the doorway, and the cool breeze from the shop washed over him, accompanied by two voices calling out, "Welcome!" He told the clerk, "Looking for someone," and then casually opened his phone and handed it to Zhou Zifang, who was chattering away behind him. Sure enough, the head behind him immediately popped over, staring at the brief exchange on the screen.
In the white dialog box: [Want to come over and eat with us? We ordered a bit too much.]
Zhou Zifang glanced at the note "jw" at the top of his phone and immediately realized who this person was. Lu Jiyu's reply came two minutes later. It must be said that this person was quite good at making trouble.
He responded with his usual term, "OK."
When Zhou Zifang took a closer look, he saw a cheesy "～" lingering behind the word "good." He had known Lu for so long, but he'd never seen him use such frivolous punctuation.
"You little guy, you're still quite amorous--." Zhou Zifang hooked his arm around Lu Jiyu's neck and exerted force viciously.
Lu Jiyu didn't shy away: "Indeed, I couldn't help myself." He lifted his shoulder to separate Zhou Zifang's hand, his eyebrows half-raised, and the cynical air in his expression suddenly became brighter. He tapped Zhou Zifang's shoulder with his cell phone, and said with the attitude of "seeing the flowers of Chang'an in one day": "Jiang Wan is not Jiang Taigong, she knows how to play the bait."
Zhou Zifang thought to himself, stop flattering yourself, you're still attracted to her even if she doesn't hook you.
Jiang Wan and Chen Meiyun had indeed ordered a bit too much, but it wasn't enough for four people. She picked up her phone and scanned the QR code next to her. She looked at Zhou Zifang, who was sitting across from her. "What do you want? I'll order more for you."
But just as she finished her words, a slender, strong arm suddenly reached out from the middle. Lu Jiyu, holding his phone, said nothing as he scanned the code and then looked down at the menu. Jiang Wan looked at his usually cold profile and somehow saw a hint of self-abandonment in his tense jawline, as if to say, "Yes, yes, yes, leave me alone. I'll order and eat by myself. You don't need to ask for my opinion."
Jiang Wan wasn't ignoring him on purpose. Chen Meiyun seemed to have a particular problem with him. As soon as Zhou Zifang sat down next to her, she scurried closer, as if avoiding the plague. Zhou Zifang wasn't blind; of course, he saw her desperate attempt to hide. The two of them immediately became tense, and it looked like a quarrel was about to break out. Jiang Wan had to use the excuse of ordering food to distract them.
Therefore, Jiang Wan didn’t know what Lu Jiyu was unhappy about.
She clicked into the menu, thinking the durian pastry she'd just ordered was delicious. Unfortunately, there were only two. She and Chen Meiyun each took one, and they were gone in two bites. Jiang Wan scrolled down to the dessert section, found the durian pastry, and just added it to her cart. Then, a message flashed across the screen: "Gazer ordered a durian pastry," followed by another: "Jiang Ziya ordered a durian pastry."
Zhou Zifang...
Lu Jiyu...
Zhou Zifang, still a bit inexperienced, couldn't help but choke on his phone, spilling half of the tea he'd just put into his mouth. Chen Meiyu clicked her tongue in disdain.
Jiang Wan picked up a few pieces of paper and handed them to him: "This tea has just been served, it's a little hot."
"No—." Zhou Zifang wanted to laugh and cough at the same time, his eyes switching between Lu Jiyu and Jiang Wan non-stop. It was a double torture: "Jiang Ziya is it you?"
"yes."
"Nice name." Zhou Zifang said gloatingly, not caring at all about Lu Jiyu's gaze that was so cold that it could cut him into pieces of human flesh.
"Really? What do you think? My dad asked me to change it, saying that this name is not suitable for a girl." She turned her head and asked Lu Jiyu.
Lu Jiyu thought, "Your father asked you to replace him, and you still ask me why? Who am I to you? Why don't you listen to your father's opinions and listen to me?"
"So you like fishing?" He took the tea just served by the waiter and looked up at Jiang Wan, who immediately handed his teacup to him.
Jiang Wan was surprised how he knew that he was thinking about learning to fish recently: "Do you think I'm suitable for fishing?"
Not suitable.
You are only suitable for fishing me.
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