Sheet music 18
Tang Xi held a stack of light papers in his hand, but it felt as heavy as a thousand pounds.
She was still extremely nervous, but it did not affect her steps towards her mother at all. She was only one step away from turning the door handle, but for some reason she could not muster the strength.
Song Duzhou patted her shoulder, but he did not doubt her ability to tell the story. Instead, he asked a straightforward but extremely sharp question.
"Have you thought clearly about the consequences of opening this door? Xiaoji and I don't require you to make a choice, but you should be aware that Tang Guangyao will definitely force you to choose sides."
Will her father force her to take sides?
Tang Xi didn't dare to say that he didn't know, in fact he already had the answer in his heart.
She and her mother had drifted apart countless times, and each time she was indifferent to the consequences, while he used all kinds of sweet words to naturally direct her anger towards her mother.
He just wanted her to hate her mother.
Song Duzhou didn't wait for Tang Xi to answer the question. He patted her shoulders twice, put his arm around her and pressed it on the door handle. He chuckled and said, "Okay, I said we don't intend to force you to make a choice. There's no need to rush."
She walked in smoothly and isolated Tang Xi from the outside.
Tang Xi stared blankly at the closed door in front of her. Her gaze fell on her toes again. She rubbed her heels against the ground and said in a voice as thin as a mosquito's hum: "Sister Xingchui, am I really useless?"
Song Xingchui naturally put his arm around her shoulders and smiled in her ear, "I actually think that if your mother insists on forcing you to make a choice right now, she's definitely a super villain."
Tang Xi raised his head suddenly, and the tip of his nose hit Song Xingchui's cheek. Both of them stepped back due to the pain.
Tang Xi covered her nose and said in a slurred voice: "Aunt Duzhou is not a bad person. I know she is doing this for my own good."
Song Xingchui pressed his cheek with one hand. He wasn't upset by the pain, but his expression was a little helpless. "Xi, I find you really strange. When you hated your mother, you thought everything she did was wrong. Now you like our mother. You're doing the same thing as before, but you accept it so well."
Tang Xi blinked twice quickly, completely unable to understand what Song Xingchui meant.
She clenched her fist and tapped her shoulder lightly: "In other words, if you feel that my mother forced you to do what you wanted to do today, and you can accept it as long as it is for your own good, then you should not hate Aunt Ji back then, and you should not hate Tang Guangyao now."
"But--"
Song Xingchui covered her mouth, his expression much more serious than before: "The difference doesn't lie in whether they say 'I'm doing this for your own good', but in whether you want to do it yourself. If you don't want to, their words are moral kidnapping. Do you understand what I mean?"
The difference is whether she wants to do it.
What does she want to do now?
Tang Xi clasped her ten fingers tightly on both sides of her thighs, until she pressed down hard enough to leave bruises. When the pain was enough to clear her mind, she was surprised to find that the answer had not changed from the beginning to the end.
She not only wants to be with her mother, but also wants to do the right thing.
The good or bad relationship between her, her father, her mother and herself, as a family of three, in the past actually has no impact on the objective facts at this moment.
She was totally wrong to ignore her grandmother, and her father had no reason to prevent her from being discharged from the hospital.
The force she pressed on the door handle was no less than that on her thigh.
"Sister Xingchui, I don't know when I'll be able to figure out what my relationship with Dad should be like in the future, but I know that my decision to pick up Grandma from the hospital today is correct, and I won't change it. So I'm going in and face it with Mom. Is that okay?"
Song Xingchui still thinks that humans are truly amazing. She still remembers how "timid" Tang Xi was when she first met her.
The bar was the first time Tang Xi saw her, but the first time she saw her was much earlier.
In the suffocating upper-class cocktail party, where a bunch of pretentious people gathered together to brag, she saw another girl who was just like herself, hiding in the corner, feeling lost.
She clearly hated social situations, but under her father's 'teaching', she smiled sweetly and obediently one after another.
Time and time again, until she was exhausted, she still didn't dare to show it in front of her father.
Just because he said, "Alice, you are always daddy's most obedient child, so you won't let daddy down, right?"
Now.
Song Xingchui took a step back and made a gesture of invitation: "No need to ask if you can. I said the key is what you want to do, so whether you choose to face it together with your mother or postpone the conflict with your father, I support you."
Tang Xi exhaled and smiled brightly, "Sister Xingchui, I'll leave grandma to you!"
Song Xingchui gave her an OK gesture: "Don't worry, cousin. By the time you guys get out, grandma might already be sitting in the car enjoying the air conditioning. Of course, the driver is definitely not my mom."
*
Tang Xi pushed open the office door with force. The loud creaking sound made the three people inside turn their heads. She held her head high and chest out, which was something she had learned during military training. When they met his gaze, they almost saluted and shouted,
"Hello, elders!"
Song Xingchui considerately closed the door for her. At this point, she had no "way out", and of course, she couldn't take a single step back.
She had already prepared herself to deal with the situation seriously, but when the three people's costumes came into view, she couldn't help but feel like laughing.
Her parents are one Chinese and one Western, and their styles are very different. However, she has seen them so many times that she is not used to it.
Song Duzhou, her decisive and reliable aunt, she really didn't know how to describe her "weird" outfit.
The man in the flowery clothes didn't think there was anything wrong. His expression changed from serious to surprised when Tang Xi entered: "Xixi, how did you get in?"
Tang Xi quickly replied, "Don't worry, Aunt Duzhou. Sister Xingchui will take care of it on Grandma's side."
"I'm not worried about grandma, I just... forget it, just think it over carefully." Song Duzhou waved his hand, frowned and quickly relaxed.
Yu Ji stood beside Song Duzhou, his expression even more cheerful than before: "I told you Tang Xi would definitely come in."
"Yes, yes, you know your daughter best."
"Of course I understand my daughter."
Song Duzhou snorted and waved at Tang Xi: "What are you doing standing at the door? Come here."
Tang Xi said "oh" and just as she walked between the two women, Tang Guangyao intervened and blocked her way with his big body.
When she saw her father's back, she didn't feel any sense of security today.
His gaze seemed to be fixed on his mother, and the words that came out of his mouth were undoubtedly angry accusations: "Yu Ji, you really went too far today. First, you brought the child to this place and talked to yourself. And now, you are not thinking straight, and you actually taught the child to lie to his father!"
What lie did she tell her father?
Tang Xi poked his head out from the side with a surprised expression, just in time to meet his mother's smiling eyes.
She raised her chin at her: "He was referring to you not telling him that you didn't plan to buy a massage chair, but secretly called Song Duzhou and her daughter, and finally allowed your grandmother to be successfully discharged from the hospital."
Tang Guangyao's face flushed crimson. When he turned to look at Tang Xi, he forced himself to put on a kind smile. He grabbed his daughter's shoulders with both hands and said, "Xixi, don't listen to your mother's nonsense. I never said anything about not letting your grandmother leave the hospital."
He didn't say it directly, but just used various hints to let her, or someone else, take the lead in speaking up for him.
She pushed her father's hands away in disappointment and shook her head, "Dad, I'm not stupid. Don't deceive me with such clumsy lies anymore."
Tang Guangyao's pupils widened slightly, and he said in disbelief: "Xixi, how could you miss Daddy so much?"
His lips trembled slightly, and his eyes were slightly red: "No, Dad knows that it's not Xixi's fault."
He twisted his neck again, unreservedly hurling his anger at Yu Ji: "It must be you. You clearly don't love Xixi. Why on earth did you lie to your daughter and destroy our father-daughter relationship? Yu Ji, you're so vicious."
Yu Ji was not angry at all, but instead chuckled from his throat.
"Tang Guangyao, if you're saying that I didn't care about my child's emotions and that I was hurting her by acting on my own, I have nothing to say. But you're lying—for the past ten years or so, it wasn't me who was actually trying to influence her with a mask of hypocrisy."
For the first time, Tang Xi saw his father's body trembling more and more violently. His gentle and polite manners completely disappeared, and his eyes were bloodshot. "A hypocritical mask? Do you think everyone is like you, not caring about other people's lives?"
Yu Ji's eyes widened slightly, this time genuinely confused. "I don't care about other people's lives? I think it would be more reasonable if you said, 'I don't care about what others think.' If you want an answer, I can tell you clearly, Tang Guangyao, you know the reason why we got married better than anyone else. You know exactly whether I've cared about you in the past ten years."
Tang Guangyao's eyes were about to burst: "Yu Ji, you——"
Yu Ji just smiled. After a while, he punched his thigh and said through gritted teeth, "My parents tried to persuade me, and your dad also told me that you were a cold-hearted woman without a conscience. I didn't believe it. I treated you with all my heart, but you didn't remember a single thing. I'm not as good to you as I would be to a dog!"
Yu Ji smiled instead of getting angry, and seemed to be in a happier mood than before. His eyes once again turned into crescent shapes.
"I told you back then that if you want a shoe licker, you might as well find a dog. But as long as a person is a person, even if they are only after your money, it is impossible for them to be completely without temper and not think about themselves, don't you think?"
Tang Guangyao took a step back suddenly: "I don't understand what you are saying."
Tang Xi was no less surprised than his father.
Yu Ji took advantage of the situation and pulled Tang Xi to his side, holding her hand and gently squeezing it twice, as if to comfort her, while continuing to look at Tang Guangyao.
"It's normal that you can't notice. Although he's wearing a mask like you, he's still somewhat sincere. As for his own selfish motives, I understand."
She was stunned. She had heard a lot of gossip at the banquet, but she never thought that such a thing would happen to her parents.
However, she didn't think her mother telling the truth would embarrass her.
"Oh my god, my dad claims to be affectionate, but he's actually a jerk!"
She only hated herself for not realizing it at all, and actually believed that the mask he carefully drew was his true appearance.
Tang Guangyao's face turned redder and redder. "Yu Ji, I really don't understand what you're imagining. If you really want to make a fuss, why don't we talk about this in private? Why do you have to say this in front of the children and outsiders?"
Yu Ji said calmly: "Tang Xi has the right to know, and Song Duzhou is not an outsider."
He didn't listen to what she said at all, and kept on telling her his opinion.
"Yu Ji, let me tell you, you're just spreading rumors! Don't think that just because you're the type of person who waits for Xiaoxi to go to school every day before going out to meet other men, I'll do the same thing as you!"
Song Duzhou shook his head slightly: "The wild man you are referring to, is it me?"
Tang Guangyao didn't believe it at all: "Even if you two were wearing the same pair of pants, you would still think they were too big. If she killed someone, you would definitely tie her up and dump the body. Besides, you are a promiscuous woman who has affairs everywhere. You don't even know who the father of your child is, and you are still thinking of testifying for others. I think you two sisters might have found the same man."
Song Duzhou and Yu Ji looked at each other and both chuckled at the same time.
Song Duzhou's expression was very frank: "I know who the father of the child is, but he really doesn't know, because I have never met him."
Seven or eight question marks popped up above Tang Xi's head almost at the same time.
She really didn't understand what was going on.
Yu Ji pursed his lips and chuckled, "Song Duzhou, what strange things are you saying in front of Tang Xi?"
"Is it weird?" Song Duzhou had a lot of opinions on this. "Children's sex education is very important. Otherwise, if she gets deceived by Le Se, she won't even know what happened. Besides, I don't think a child of this age would be ignorant."
Tang Xi met his mother's gaze and his ears turned red.
She was about to open her mouth to say something in defense, but Tang Guangyao would not allow the three of them to have fun together. He suddenly grabbed Tang Xi's hand and pulled her out. He once again drew everyone's attention to himself.
"Alice, Daddy is very disappointed in you. You don't even have the ability to judge right from wrong."
Tang Xi felt that his sudden accusation was quite baffling.
She has not yet blamed him for his inconsistent words and deeds over the years, deliberately worsening the relationship between them.
He even had the nerve to accuse her of not standing on his side.
However, Tang Xi still thought his father was too "kind".
He suddenly laughed, not caring about the mask, and actually showed a smug expression to Tang Xi.
Many years later, Tang Xi still remembered this smile. It was at that time that she completely realized that her expectations of her father should not exist at all.
He took out a crumpled piece of white paper from his pocket and held it in front of Yu Ji with both hands. Tang Xi knew just by looking at the back that it was definitely not the registration form for the piano competition.
"Pop Music Competition Registration Form." Tang Guangyao repeated the title word for word, letting out a cold laugh. "Yu Ji, look at your daughter. She's only average at piano playing and hasn't inherited any of my talent. She should be working hard, but instead she's stuck with these lowly things. Ha, she's worthy of being your daughter. She has the same lowly, country-born blood as your mother!"
He turned back to look at Tang Xi, and his expression had returned to its former kindness.
"Alice, Daddy is really disappointed in you."
He smiled and shook his head.
She clearly saw the hidden meaning in his words.
"Tang Xi, it doesn't matter if you don't intend to stand on my side, but I will never allow you and your mother to live in peace."
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