What are you thinking? I told you to get your legs down.
"What nonsense are you thinking? I told you to get your legs down."
32.
Chongming meant to tease Meng Lanjian, but after saying it, he himself was so ashamed that he got goosebumps.
Referring to oneself as "senior brother," even if it's just quoting someone else's words, sounds really awkward.
Meng Lanjian buried her face in his shoulder in terror, keeping quiet for a long time until she was almost suffocating, before finally pouting and raising her head, saying, "How embarrassing."
Chongming patted the back of her head and kissed the top of her head. "Let's go eat!"
Before Lan Jian could reply, Chongming took the initiative and picked her up. Although she would occasionally follow Chongming around like a little shadow, she wasn't used to being carried around by him.
"Put me down!"
"Didn't you say your back hurt?"
"I'm much better now!" Lan Jian struggled a few times, but Chong Ming stopped her because she didn't have slippers. It wasn't a long walk to the restaurant, but Chong Ming walked slowly, even leisurely. Lan Jian poked his lower back. "I have another question!"
"Are you a primary school student? You have to report to the teacher before asking questions."
"If I'm a primary school student, then what are you? A pervert who secretly leaves hickeys on primary school students' waists?"
Chongming's grip on her suddenly loosened, and Meng Lanjian's body fell uncontrollably. She instinctively tightened her embrace, her eyes filled with a hint of reproach: "Even if you're angry, you can't throw people like that!"
"I won't drop you." Chongming placed the person on the chair next to the table. "Get down!"
Upon hearing this, Meng Lanjian shrank back.
She hadn't forgotten that when she forcefully straddled him to sit down, he slapped her buttocks with his hard, hot penis, and told her to "get off" in a fierce tone.
Chongming didn't miss Meng Lanjian's sensitive reaction, his eyes darkening. "What are you thinking? I told you to get down."
Lan Jian then realized that her legs were still wrapped around his waist—a position they had used last night.
She took a deep breath, ordering herself to stop thinking about last night.
Chongming suddenly chuckled, "Looks like you really slept like a log in the latter half of the night."
The two sat down. Chongming served rice, and Lanjian ladled soup. Lanjian still wanted to know everything about the marks he left on her body. Chongming couldn't resist her pestering him, so he said, "If you drink another bowl of soup, I'll tell you."
The pork rib soup contained cordyceps flowers and red dates, as well as some medicinal herbs that Lan Jian couldn't recognize; it looked very nourishing. She finished another bowl, and Chongming finally told her, under her expectant gaze, the origin of the hickey on her waist.
"After you showered, I helped you put on your underwear, but your legs kept trying to dodge and wouldn't obey me. I had no choice but to kiss your side. You seemed to really like it when I kissed you there, and you twisted your waist and tried to get into my mouth. I couldn't help but peck at you a few times, and that's how I left the mark."
Having grown accustomed to it, Meng Lanjian, who had been "served" by Chongming to put on her underwear several times, couldn't help but touch her waist after hearing this. "Then I'll try to gain some weight. If I'm more fleshy and my skin is stronger, I won't be so sensitive."
Chongming curled his lips into a smile, "I'd be happy to see it happen."
That evening, the couple sat together on the edge of the bed, a rare occurrence. Lan Jian's eyes grew tired after looking at her phone for a while, and she decided to keep Chongming company while she fiddled with something on her laptop. Chongming simply turned off the computer, left a bedside lamp on, and coaxed her to go to sleep early.
“What shall we talk about? Let’s talk about why you keep saying you’re a ‘poor student’!” Chongming started the conversation, naturally asking him what he was most curious about. “If Mom hadn’t said the other day that your father used to be the president of the Chamber of Commerce, I wouldn’t have known that Miss Meng’s family was a real wealthy family.”
"No, no, no!" Meng Lanjian waved her hand. "I'm really not a rich heiress."
"So your dad only became the president of the chamber of commerce because he's rich?"
"To put it simply, my dad is a third-generation rich kid."
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"They come from a prominent family."
"No, people say that the richest people don't last more than three generations, so I'm from the poor generation."
Chongming was stunned by Meng Lanjian's serious expression. "Is this some nonsense you just spouted off, or... is it true?"
Chongming's mind flashed through news stories about "tycoons donating all their assets and leaving nothing to their children".
Meng Lanjian laughed, "When I was a teenager, my dad almost went bankrupt once. I heard that he only got through the crisis with the help of his dozens of brothers and sisters from all over the world."
"Your father has a lot of connections."
“Those aren’t connections; they’re all my father’s nominal cousins,” Meng Lanjian added. “Oh, I don’t think I told you, our family has relatives all over the world, even in Iceland.”
This story begins with Meng Lanjian's great-grandfather.
The old man was an industrialist who became a philanthropist after he made money. During the war, he adopted ten orphans. Together with his own five children, Meng Lanjian's grandfather had a total of fifteen brothers and sisters.
When Meng Lanjian's grandfather got married, besides the three sons and two daughters who had multiplied, the ten children listed in the Meng family genealogy also started their own families. Later, when the North and South were divided, many of the siblings chose to settle abroad to avoid conflict. Grandpa Meng, inheriting his father's legacy, adopted three more children in addition to Meng Lanjian's father and aunt. Meng Lanjian's aunt, the eldest, was precocious, but her father had to compete with the other three children for Grandpa Meng's attention since childhood.
By the time of Meng Lanjian's generation, the tense and competitive atmosphere of the past had transformed into a harmonious and loving extended family. Everyone wanted Grandpa Meng to live as long as possible and enjoy the company of his children and grandchildren. Grandpa Meng indeed passed away peacefully, and there were no disputes over his estate after his death. Most of his assets were divided equally among his five children. Since the grandchildren were still young, Meng Zhihe's eldest sister, Meng Zhixing, took charge and distributed $600,000 USD to each of the younger generation from Grandpa Meng's cash account. In the words of Meng Lanjian's uncle, Zhou Puzhao, it was just a token gesture for the younger ones.
For the vast majority of Meng family members, six hundred thousand US dollars is indeed just a token amount.
For Meng Lanjian, however, it was the largest amount of money she had ever received that was exclusively hers. She didn't know anything about investing or managing money, so she kept the money in three different foreign currency accounts. Apart from paying the annual card fees, she usually ignored the money.
Hearing this, Chongming couldn't help but interrupt, "Didn't your father and mother give you any living expenses before you were financially independent?"
“My dad gave me a supplementary card, and he said I could use it however I wanted.” Meng Lanjian hesitated for a moment, unsure whether she should say what she was about to say. But with the Spring Festival just around the corner, according to tradition, even Chongming would ask her if she was going back to Beiluan for the holiday out of basic politeness. Meng Lanjian was afraid that she would have to explain things at length later, so it was better to be clear now. “But apart from when I was in college, I only used that card once a semester after paying tuition to withdraw my living expenses for half a year, and to pay for my plane tickets home during winter and summer vacations. Otherwise, I don’t think I ever used it much.”
"How could you not need it? Don't you buy things? When you see clothes and bags you like at the mall, don't you want to buy them?" At this moment, Chongming naturally thought of his younger sister, that true heiress who never felt guilty about using her parents' cards whenever she saw something she liked at the mall. Whether in Nanlu or Beiluan, in most well-off families, the idea of spoiling daughters is like an unwritten rule.
But Lan Jian's words seemed to indicate that she was quite distant from her parents.
“I have everything at home. If I need anything, I can bring it from home or have it sent to me. I’m not materialistic and rarely shop.” Meng Lanjian paused for a moment, finally ready to lay bare the topic of “family of origin.” “I don’t think I’ve told you something yet. My relationship with my dad and mom is only so-so. They respect me, but that also means they’ve always kept a certain distance from me.”
Chongming's fingers, which had been caressing Lanjian's shoulder, suddenly stopped moving. Only then did he realize that he had activated more than one...
Such a serious and unavoidable topic.
"And they also hope that I can start my own family soon."
“Because of this, I won’t have to keep living as a family of three, squeezed between my parents.” Lan Jian glanced at Chongming, who looked bewildered, scratched his chin with her finger, and smiled at him. “Don’t overthink it! I really am my parents’ biological child.”
"Actually, to outsiders, my dad and mom seem like the perfect couple in a romance novel, loving each other until middle age. When I used to read novels, the extra chapters about children always seemed to say that the male protagonist's love for the child would never surpass his love for the female protagonist. In novels, this seems like a natural and beautiful thing, but what if... I were that child in the story?"
Because of the absolute intimacy between her parents, Lan Jian was clearly born as the fruit of their love, yet as she grew up, she developed a sense of loneliness and exclusion.
Why is it that every time I argue with Mama, even when she's clearly in the wrong, Dad always sides with her and accuses me of being impolite? Why is it that when we rarely have the chance to eat out alone with Mama or Dad, we always end up talking about what we ate and said at the same restaurant last time, or about someone who wasn't there this time? Even as children, adults only talked about adult things at meals; now that we're adults, we can only offer dry, lifeless comments about the food on our plates. When we lived together, I was the artist sketching for my parents; now that we live apart, I've become their distant daughter, someone they can never confide in.
Lan Jian had so many grievances and complaints she wanted to express, but she had already shared these words with her pen pals in letters before, and had received some inspiration and comfort from them. Now she wouldn't say them again, not even to Chongming. She would stop short of saying them; she wouldn't easily do anything to reopen old wounds.
She lowered her gaze, trying her best to suppress her affected, tearful expression.
"In a novel, it seems no one would care. But what if a child who grows up in such a loving family environment is separated from her parents one day? How will she find love of her own? Is her parents' love an optimistic model for her, or an unrepeatable and difficult mystery?"
Chongming's eyes stung with tears. He wanted to comfort Lanjian, but the words stuck in his throat, and he couldn't utter a single one. What right did he, a rich kid who had only recently come of age, whose parents had already started considering inheritance tax by buying him a bunch of houses and funds, living a comfortable and carefree life and never knowing what poverty or sorrow was, have to comfort Lanjian?
He lowered his eyes, about to kiss Meng Lanjian, when he heard her chuckle softly, “But none of that matters. I still have Xiuyun with me. When I was little, it was my maternal grandmother Xiuyun; now that I’m grown up, it’s the android Xiuyun and my grandmother from my memories.”
"Besides, I've always known..."
Meng Lanjian raised her stubborn and aloof face, which shone brightly in the dim light and under the turbulent undercurrents in Chongming's eyes.
"One day, I will become the heroine with complete happiness myself!"
"You agree, right, Dingyue?"
Chongming was captivated by Lanjian's beautiful eyes—this was the first time she had called him that, unlike the time before their marriage when she had provocatively called him by his real name. Instead, it was a tender "Dingyue," a light and airy sound that made Chongming's heart flutter.
As if she wasn't specific enough, she added before he could answer:
"Comrade Lu Dingyue in 'Pinglan Valley and Stabilizing Wuyue'".
"Yes, don't envy your mom, you will become the heroine with complete happiness yourself!" Chongming's kiss landed on the corner of her eye, "Comrade Meng Lanjian from 'Pinglan Valley and Stabilizing My Mountain'!"
@Author: Lan Jian's family storyline hasn't been fully developed yet. This storyline influences her later political career and the "heartbreaking" part about her divorce from Chongming. I'm laying the groundwork for now, so please don't find this sentimental TT
Oh, right, although nobody cares, I still have to spoil one thing: Lan Jian didn't force her uncle to his death. Although her uncle is dead, he will become one of the key figures who push things along later.
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