49. Romantic
The next morning, all employees of the company received an email. The public relations department issued an internal statement about the Zhou Linsen incident so that employees could maintain consistent wording when communicating with all relevant parties.
"As you may have learned from Lin Sen's Weibo post, he recently needed to take some time off to attend to personal matters. We hope he can resolve his personal affairs as soon as possible and return to work. The company is currently operating normally, and all partners and employees are working diligently to ensure that our commitments to investors are fulfilled in an orderly manner."
It is translated from English, so it is difficult to read.
But it’s better this way, as if I said a lot but said nothing.
Vivian had no idea what Zhang Ruolin was going to do.
The chaos inside and outside the house was so intense that even Zhang Ruolin, a seasoned fox, couldn't help but get anxious and angry. Zhang Ruolin couldn't understand what Old Zhou was doing. He had his own confidantes, more than one, but there was no way he would leave for anyone. Not even a fairy.
At his age, all women are the same in his eyes. No matter how beautiful, gentle or unique they are, they are just flesh and blood, mortals, and cannot be compared with the career goals he strives for.
He didn't understand it at all, but he had to deal with this annoying thing.
Netizens' gossip was incredibly powerful, and before long, the identity of the woman who had driven Zhou Linsen to abandon his family and children was revealed. She was a partner at a small law firm, fifteen years Zhou Linsen's junior. It was speculated that the two met on a project, and while the exact nature of their relationship remained unknown, they quickly fell deeply in love.
But Zhou Linsen's wife soon discovered this and began to keep a close watch on him. Under such pressure, Zhou Linsen chose to run away from home like a rebellious teenager, cutting off all contact with the outside world. He turned off his phone, stopped replying to emails, and only occasionally posted on Weibo about his recent trip to a beautiful and secluded place.
Zhou Linsen was already fifty years old, but he was a man who remained young until his death. The old house caught fire, and the flames spread endlessly.
Netizens are speculating on how this matter will end. After all, two grown men cannot just hide forever and disappear from the world.
This accidental gossip shook Vivian's three views: Is it true that there are still middle-aged men who are pure in love in the world?
After all, I was naive.
Vivian didn't know at the time that within two days, Mrs. Zhou also expressed her feelings on Weibo, calling on him to come home as soon as possible, "The children and I are waiting for you."
Guess what? Within a month, he actually came back, a prodigal son, a devoted husband and father. When he left for love, he said, "I'm finding myself with the one I love." When he returned to his family, he said, "Please understand my pressure and give us some peace."
Vivian didn't know then that this daring act wasn't romantic, much less courageous. The trigger for the incident is both sad and amusing: Zhou Linsen was meeting his lover at a hotel that night when his wife, who constantly monitored his whereabouts, discovered him through his phone's location tracking. She angrily called to tell him she was on her way. The fifty-year-old man was so panicked that he simply turned off his phone and disappeared.
These two women and one man are over a hundred years old in total, and their love triangle is even more impulsive and bloody than that of a young man and woman.
Like most scandals in the world, it starts out great but ends in a mess.
In the end, this is not a romantic story of an old house on fire who abandons the world for love, but a weak man in his fifties who simply walks away because he is worried about being caught doing something wrong.
This isn't Gone Girl.
This is an elderly giant baby looking for his mother.
It's truly a story of the demise of romance.
Vivian thought, what a disappointment! There are still no unexpected men. The core of the struggle of natural selection is food and sex, while the struggle of men is nothing more than money and power.
But there is no such thing as true love being invincible.
Everyone sincerely admires Zhang Ruolin's handling of this crisis. When Zhou Linsen disappeared for two weeks, Zhang Ruolin tracked him down before his wife did and quickly approved his resignation. Soon after, Zhang Ruolin announced that Zhou Linsen, one of the company's founders, had left the company for personal reasons. Currently, all company operations are proceeding smoothly and unaffected.
Whether Zhou Linsen resigned voluntarily or was forced to leave is unknown. But Zhang Ruolin's ability to release his leadership with a single phone call is truly admirable. He emerged unscathed from such a sensational scandal, protecting the company's interests and his personal status from any impact.
Zhang Ruolin was very proud, and from then on he had one more thing to express his feelings about: Alas, it’s a pity about Old Zhou.
Zhang Ruolin had every right to be so complacent. He had surrounded himself with countless women, yet he never lost a single one. This was due to his iron-hearted composure and his generosity with money. He was always willing to pay the money he was given; money was something he had no shortage of, and since you couldn't bring it with you when you died, he wasn't stingy. But it was impossible for anyone to claim status; his perfect family was untouchable and irreplaceable.
Zhang Ruolin and his wife are a perfect match. His wife manages their two children and the family fortune, living a peaceful life in Vancouver. Zhang Ruolin, on the other hand, flies around the world, enjoying supreme freedom, with the exception of the fact that he is not allowed to have any more children outside the family.
In Huang Biyun's novel "Lost City," the male protagonist complains that after immigrating to Canada, his wife "endlessly prepares food in the kitchen: Cereal, raw fruit, cheese, smoked salmon, pasta, chocolate mousse, apple pie, nut cookies, lobster soup, foie gras, roast duck…" The two of them stare blankly at the table of food. The TV is constantly on, just like a Hong Kong housing estate. Zhao Mei also got a sheepdog. She feeds the dog first, then Mingming, and then me. Any uneaten food goes into the trash can—my existence is just between the sheepdog, the child, and the trash can.
But this complaining man did not realize that if the male host was removed from this cycle, there would be perfect peace and stability in the world.
Zhang Ruolin and Mrs. Zhang have such a consensus.
This is probably why even the most outgoing wealthy ladies and glamorous female celebrities endure the pain of bearing children one after another, "until menopause." Blood ties always outweigh the bonds of sex. From this perspective, marriage, while unreliable, is the best safeguard. Otherwise, after wasting their youth, who wants to end up with nothing but a few designer bags, which, despite their supposed value preservation and appreciation, can only be sold at second-hand luxury stores. The legendary gift of luxury cars and houses is extremely rare; being able to afford a down payment is considered conscientious.
As for Zhou Linsen, that anonymous Weibo account never updated again. After leaving the company, his name disappeared from the social scene. It's unknown if he continued to write those romantic poems. And the woman who had briefly gained fame with him was forgotten even faster.
Even if a man abandons his wife and children, as long as he is willing to go home, he is still a good man.
But the fate of this woman made Vivian particularly sad.
She recalled a romance novel she'd read, about a young man who falls in love with a married woman. It was a cliché, but the fact that it was narrated in the male's first person voice gave it a fresh twist. After all, the world is full of innocent girls being betrayed. Those stories often ended with the scumbag turning over a new leaf, the wife becoming forgiving, and the woman who ended up in trouble. Such commonplace stories were unlikely to be written into novels; at most, they would simply remain online as gossip, like the Zhou Linsen incident.
In this world, even if you are the third party, men are more valuable.
The ending of this story is also the same: the charming heroine finally returns to her family, and the third party, the young man, finally realizes that he is just a gadget used by the middle-aged couple to pass the time when they are emotionally tired.
"I continued to talk incessantly, my soul gradually leaving my body and rising to the corner of the wall. I looked at myself with cold and sad eyes as I sat in a chair, pretending to be nothing, and telling stories with a happy expression.
Finally, the soul couldn't help crying, for the summer of 1986.
Ah, her soul really wanted to cry bitterly for this extremely complicated year.
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