Chapter 208: He looks exactly like his biological son.
A mother and her son.
The woman held the paper with the address written on it, looked up and compared it with the name on the gate of the courtyard for a while before she smiled and said to the little boy next to her, "This is it."
The little boy's eyes lit up.
The woman stuffed the paper back into her bag, walked to the gatehouse, and asked the guard, "Hello, we are Zheng Huaixin's...family, we've come to stay with him, could you ask him to come out and meet us?"
family?
The security guard glanced at the woman and shook his head. He knew all of Secretary Zheng's family members, but he had never seen this one before.
When the gatekeeper didn't believe her, the woman pulled the little boy over, took off his hat, and showed it to him. "This is Secretary Zheng's son. See, I wasn't lying."
The gatekeeper saw the little boy's face, which resembled Zheng Huaixin's by six or seven points, and exclaimed in surprise.
"How could that be? Secretary Zheng and his wife don't have children, do they?"
The woman's face turned pale instantly. Clutching her bag strap, she explained, "I... I was married to him when he was sent to the countryside. We got a marriage certificate. I'm not a concubine."
That's what I meant.
Secretary Zheng got married when he went to the countryside, and they have a child that big?!
The security guard gave an awkward smile and said, "Wait here for a moment, I'll go find someone for you."
He gave another guard a wink and then quickly entered the compound.
He found his way upstairs a short while later, knocked on the secretary's office door, and explained the situation to Zheng Huaixin. Zheng Huaixin paused slightly, frowned, and glanced at him, asking, "What wife? What child?"
The gatekeeper pointed in the direction of the gate.
Zheng Huaixin got up, walked to the window, and looked down at the main entrance from upstairs. He could only see two figures with their backs to the building, and could not see the faces of the people coming in at all. He glanced at the gatekeeper.
"It's fake. I guess some people are just trying to cause trouble because they don't want me to do well. There's no need to report this. Just kick them out. Go on."
The security guard said, "Secretary Zheng, that boy looks a lot like you..."
But Zheng Huaixin had already lowered his head and started doing his own thing, and upon hearing this, he simply waved his hand.
He said, "I don't have any male relatives who look like me. You must be mistaken. Now, go back to your post and stop disrupting our work."
Everyone else in the office was looking at him.
The security guard left dejectedly.
When he reached the gate, the woman and child eagerly surrounded him. Seeing that there was no one behind him, they stared at him with some disappointment.
"Secretary Zheng said he has no son, you are fake, you are sent by someone else to cause trouble."
The gatekeeper shooed them away, saying, "Alright, you should leave now and stop causing trouble."
"We are not fake."
The woman took two steps back, unwilling to leave. "I really am the wife he married when he was sent to the countryside, and this really is his biological son. We can tell him face to face..."
"Why can't you understand me?"
The gatekeeper sighed helplessly, "It's not that I don't want you to see him, it's that he doesn't want to see you. He doesn't even acknowledge that you exist, he says you're swindlers, and he told me to kick you out."
Before the woman could say anything more, the gatekeeper pointed outside and said, "If you're willing to wait, then wait outside. Don't come in; I can't let you in."
The woman's eyes reddened, and she obediently led the little boy to the spot the gatekeeper had indicated.
She whispered to the gatekeeper, "We're waiting for him to come out. We... have nowhere to go. Our hometown is flooded and we can't go back. Zheng Huaixin is my husband and the father of our children. He has to support us."
The gatekeeper frowned, feeling sorry for them, and told them to stand further away.
Seeing that they obediently stood a little further away, he reminded them, "Whether you're genuine or not, Secretary Zheng most likely won't acknowledge you. If you have other connections, you'd better start thinking about it quickly. There are too many people who abandon their wives and children to return to the city from the countryside. Besides, Secretary Zheng's wife's family is very powerful and won't tolerate you. You might even get yourself into trouble..."
The woman thanked them, took the little boy's hand, and stood there looking at the office building in the courtyard.
Another security guard whispered, "They don't even recognize someone who looks so much like Secretary Zheng? Could it be a fake?"
"have no idea."
The security guard shook his head. "We can't control whether it's true or not. Just watch our gate."
The man smiled and returned to his original position.
Just as the two regained their positions, a car slowly pulled up in front of the gate. The car door opened, and Sister-in-law Yao got out first. She then quickly opened the back door and helped the two senior leaders out of the car.
"Whether this investment promotion conference can be held or not depends on our two former leaders, we..."
Before Sister-in-law Yao could finish speaking, she glanced up and saw the mother and son standing not far away. Upon seeing the little boy's appearance, she exclaimed, "Oh dear!" and called out to the two leaders.
"This child looks so familiar, isn't he/she...?"
The old leader recognized him at a glance and said with a smile, "Isn't this a miniature version of Secretary Zheng? What, are you related to him?"
"If you hadn't told me, I would have thought it was his son."
Sister-in-law Yao smiled and called to the gatekeeper, "What's going on here?"
The gatekeeper glanced at Sister Yao, then at the two old leaders, swallowed hard, and explained the origins of the mother and son.
The former leaders exchanged a glance.
One of them frowned. "I haven't heard Xiao Zheng mention this before. What... what's going on? How long have they been here?"
"Just arrived."
The security guard replied, "I just went to see Secretary Zheng, but he said he didn't know him and told me to kick him out. He didn't say whether he had married a wife when he went to the countryside."
When the leader heard that he was going to the countryside, he glanced at the woman a few more times.
I asked her, "Are you really the wife that Xiao Zheng married when he went to the countryside? This child..."
“I am, and this child is truly his flesh and blood.”
Seeing that words alone were insufficient, the woman took out an old photograph from her bag and handed it to the former leader.
It is a black and white photograph of three people.
A man, a woman, and a child.
The man did indeed look like the young Secretary Zheng. The two of them smiled at the camera, and the woman was holding a drooling doll in her arms.
The old leader exclaimed in surprise, "This is..."
“This is my child with Secretary Zheng. After this photo was taken, he received his college admission notice from Beijing and returned to the city. He wrote a few letters afterward, but I haven’t seen him or his letters since,” the woman said.
The old leader frowned and told the gatekeeper to call Secretary Zheng down. Whether it was true or not, they had to make it clear in person. What kind of behavior was it to avoid seeing him?
These older folks can't stand people who abandon their wives and children to return to the city and climb the social ladder!
This is precisely why Sister-in-law Yao chose them to come to the municipal government together.
The security guard made another trip with a bitter face.
Zheng Huaixin's face was even uglier than before. "Didn't I tell you to kick them out? Why haven't they left yet?"
The gatekeeper said that two senior leaders from the investment promotion office had come and seen the woman and child, and asked him to leave. His eyes darkened.
He glanced at the gatekeeper and said, "I told you to kick them out earlier, why did you drag them out until the investment promotion office came and they saw us? You're just causing trouble for the city hall for no reason..."
The hat is too big; the gatekeeper doesn't dare wear it.
A low murmur, loud enough for most of the office to hear, escaped his lips. "This is Secretary Zheng's private matter. If you had gone down and resolved it earlier, would it have escalated to the point where the leader is now in charge?"
Zheng Huaixin gave him a deep look, said nothing more, straightened his clothes, and stepped out the door.
The office was silent for a few seconds before someone asked the security guard who hadn't left yet, "Does it really look a lot like Secretary Zheng's?"
"...He looks exactly like his biological son," the gatekeeper said.
The office is full of shrewd people, and many of them are exchanging knowing glances. Someone knocks on the boss's door, and a little while later, the boss comes downstairs.
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