Chapter 42 The Will: Little Maple Leaf, Don't Be Afraid
After Yu Xue finished speaking, she suddenly felt lightheaded and about to fall.
Wen Feng quickly grabbed her hand, turned around like he was dancing, and caught her.
Yu Xue took a couple of deep breaths in his arms. She broke free from Wen Feng's embrace and stood up straight, like a swaying tree branch. She held onto Wen Feng's shoulders, keeping an arm's length distance between them.
She tried to take root in the ground, and tried to feel her limbs.
Wen Feng quietly stayed by her side, waiting with her.
About ten minutes later, Yu Xue moved her legs, swallowed the bitterness in her throat, looked up at the snow falling all around her, and said, "Let's keep going."
Wen Feng tried to grab her hand, but Yu Xue refused.
Yu Xue said, "I want to try, to see if I can do it on my own."
They didn't hold hands again along the way. Yu Xue was mostly steady, but occasionally she would lean slightly and stagger, as if she were half-drunk. But she still stood very straight.
She had confirmed that Wen Feng was real, and she had confirmed her own feelings; she would not seek death.
If she wants to live in this world, she can't always rely on Wen Feng. She needs to have the ability to stand up on her own, the ability to keep moving forward even in pain.
She remembered Wen Feng saying that she was just sick.
This illness came on hard, but it will get better eventually.
She has been sick for a long time, and she has been immersed in this feeling of helplessness for a long time. She should start rehabilitation.
She was in pain, she was in agony, she didn't want to get up, didn't want to eat, didn't want to exercise, but she didn't want to die, she just wanted to go home.
Now that she knew there was no hope of going home, she got up, ate, exercised, and tried to come back to life.
After walking for another twenty minutes, the two finally arrived home.
Yu Xue turned around at the door, looked at the man behind her who was covered in snow just like her, stretched out her hand to him, and smiled, "Look, I've come back."
Wen Feng strode forward, grabbed her, and pulled her into his arms. They were both cold, but Wen Feng holding her made her feel much better.
Wen Feng: "Yu Xue, we're getting better and better."
Wen Feng guessed that Yu Xue might catch a cold the next day, so he found some cold medicine for both Yu Xue and himself in advance, but Yu Xue still caught a cold the next day.
Her whole face was flushed; you could tell she had a fever without even taking her temperature.
Yu Xue leaned against the radiator, took out a thermometer, and handed it to Wen Feng. "39.1."
Wen Feng sprayed the alcohol on his face repeatedly and said, "I've already called the doctor. Don't bother helping Mom move; I can manage on my own. Are you alright staying home alone?"
Yu Xue nodded and smiled, "There's no one here. Auntie and the cook are home too. The doctor will be here later. I'll call them if I feel unwell." She suddenly felt lucky that her throat wasn't very sore, just a little uncomfortable.
Having a fever before would definitely affect your voice.
Wen Feng was still a little worried about her. He took Yu Xue's phone and placed it on the bedside table. "Keep the voice call on. If you have any symptoms and it's inconvenient for you to get out of bed or you can't make a sound, just talk into the phone or make some noise and I'll call Auntie."
Yu Xue: "No need, my throat is fine, it's not too sore, and it's not... cough cough... cough cough cough cough..."
She waved her hand, indicating to Wen Feng that it wasn't necessary.
Wen Feng took the thermos and held it to her lips.
Yu Xue took a couple of sips, paused for half a minute, and said, "There's no need for that. It's inconvenient for Mom to contact you if you keep calling, and it would be troublesome if your phone ran out of battery on the way. It's okay, I'll go to bed after seeing the doctor, it'll be fine."
Wen Feng hesitated for a moment, then said, "Okay, then I'll be going."
Yu Xue nodded and gave him a gentle push: "Go quickly, don't keep Mom waiting."
She was looking forward to her mother moving in, so that it would be more convenient for them to visit each other. The two houses were only a ten-minute walk apart, and with the Lunar New Year approaching, she wouldn't have to spend the holiday with her grandparents this year. She could bring her mother to stay with them for a few days.
When Wen Feng arrived, his mother was packing her bag. When she saw Wen Feng, she said, "Perfect timing. Go to your father's study and take the ring from the last drawer."
Wen Feng glanced at his mother's fingers.
Liu Xin noticed her gaze and explained, "I took this out once when I was playing with clay and asked your dad to keep it for me. I remember he said he put it in the bottom drawer, but I almost forgot."
Wen Feng: "Okay."
He pushed open the door to the study, which was a mess. His mother usually didn't go into the study, and his father didn't like others coming to his workplace. He would often tidy it up himself, just enough to make it barely presentable.
Wen Feng picked up the messy documents on the table and glanced at them. Many of them had already been printed. When he went back to work a few days ago, he saw many duplicated documents on his father's desk. His father was indeed getting old and his memory was failing.
He put down the documents and reached for the drawer, where he accidentally cut his hand. Upon closer inspection, he saw a lock on the drawer. He opened the other two drawers and searched for a long time, but couldn't find the keys.
He suddenly remembered that when he was a child, he would go to his father's study to read books and he would see that his father liked to hide things on the top of the bookshelf.
Thinking this, he pulled over the ladder, stepped onto it, and reached out to feel around on the top of the bookshelf. Finally, on the far right of the top of the second bookshelf, he found a key.
He took it down, looked at the key, and curled the corner of his lips slightly.
My childhood was a truly happy time.
He suddenly realized that he had wasted too much time, so he quickly climbed down the ladder and opened the last drawer of the desk.
What came into view was a yellow kraft paper. He reached out and picked it up. He knew that if it were an ordinary thing, it wouldn't be locked. His mother rarely went into his father's study and never went through his things. Ever since she saw that the last drawer in the study was locked, she hadn't even come in.
Wen Feng picked up the envelope, turned it over, and saw the word "Will" written in conspicuous black on the envelope.
Wen Feng tore open the seal, took it out, unfolded it, and only glanced at it briefly.
Suddenly, the door opened.
He quickly folded the paper and envelope and stuffed them into his pocket.
"What are you hiding?" Liu Xin asked. "I suddenly remembered that the cabinet in his study is locked, so I figured if I couldn't open it, I'd just leave it."
"Ah, I opened it." Wen Feng rummaged through the drawer for a long time, but there was no ring inside. Apart from the will, there was nothing else. "Mom, nothing."
"Oh..." Liu Xin was clearly disappointed. "It's okay, who knows where he put it? He has a bad memory, he probably remembered it wrong. Let's go."
Wen Feng responded and followed Liu Xin downstairs.
Along the way, Liu Xin asked a few more questions. She frowned with worry when she heard that Yu Xue was sick.
"It's alright, there's a doctor here. He just called me to say that she's received the injection. He's staying there until Yu Xue finishes her IV drip before leaving," Wen Feng reassured her.
Liu Xin squeezed Wen Feng's hand. "Why are your hands so cold? You've been working so hard, you need to take care of yourself. Go back and take some cold medicine as a precaution, so she doesn't get better and you get sick."
Wen Feng nodded and said, "Okay."
Liu Xin: "You two shouldn't hug or kiss each other for the next few days. Separate for a couple of days to avoid infecting each other. You can talk, but keep a little distance."
Wen Feng felt he couldn't do it, but he still nodded: "Okay."
Wen Feng had the two pieces of paper stuffed in his pocket. He felt guilty and didn't dare to move, afraid that the paper would rub against his clothes and make a sound, which would attract Liu Xin's attention.
He glanced at it briefly, not looking closely, but he was certain that the will was very simple: after Wen Yuan's death, all of his personal property would belong to Wen Feng.
Wen Feng remembered that his father didn't have much money in his account. A few years ago, his father said that since he had handed the company over to Wen Feng, he should transfer all the money in his account to Wen Feng as well. He would keep tens of millions for his retirement and ask Wen Feng for more if needed, saying that he was afraid Wen Feng would have trouble with cash flow.
Wen Feng declined, saying it wasn't necessary. He said it would be too much trouble to transfer such a large sum of money back and forth, and he had more money in his own account than he could spend.
But her father insisted, and Wen Feng didn't mind, so she let him be.
So, by this calculation, the couple has no joint property, including the house they currently live in, which the father bought before the marriage. The mother never considered adding her name to the deed after the marriage because she owned her own house. Their relationship has always been good, and she never considered divorce, so she never thought about adding her name to the deed.
She doesn't care about the house, but she cares about the relationship.
She married Wen Yuan for love. If she knew now that Wen Yuan and she no longer had any love for each other, she would definitely get a divorce.
But how could I not let her know?
My father may have written more than one will. He's still in the ICU. What if he doesn't make it through and my grandparents come with a second will to claim the house?
Wen Feng understood his mother. That moment of embarrassment was enough to break Liu Xin. He was about to lose his father, and he couldn't lose his mother too.
He needed to give his mother a heads-up beforehand.
Seeing his serious expression, Liu Xin ruffled his hair and asked with concern, "What's wrong? Didn't you sleep well last night? Are you in a bad mood? I was about to ask you the same thing: how did you open the drawer in your dad's study?"
"Oh." Wen Feng came to his senses, changed his posture, looked at his mother, and said, "I saw it when I went to play in his study when I was little."
"Oh." Liu Xin's expression darkened. "He never told me... Well, isn't that lock meant to keep me out?"
She knew Wen Feng had seen what was in the drawer, but she didn't want to ask and had no interest in knowing.
After so many years of marriage, it would be a lie to say she wasn't curious about Wen Yuan's secrets at all. But she disdained to have such ulterior motives. If Wen Yuan was wary of her, then so be it; she didn't care.
When they arrived home, Liu Xin was about to get out of the car when Wen Feng suddenly grabbed her wrist.
Liu Xin looked at him with a puzzled expression.
After the driver got off the bus, Wen Feng stuffed the envelope and paper into her hand, saying, "Mom, what's mine is yours, and what's mine is our property."
Liu Xin was stunned, not understanding why he suddenly said such heavy words.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught two words on the envelope. She glanced at Wen Feng's eyes, then turned back and incredulously unfolded the piece of paper with only a few words written on it.
Wen Feng thought she wouldn't dare to finish reading it.
But she calmly held the paper and read it over and over again, as if reading it only once was not enough to appreciate its meaning. She had to chew it over and over again, like an old cow ruminating, pulling out what she had finally swallowed and rereading it in her mind over and over again.
Wen Feng grabbed her hand.
Liu Xin shook her head slightly; her eyes were red, but she didn't cry.
Years of work experience have enabled her to control her emotions at any time.
She folded the paper, put it in the envelope, and handed it back to Wen Feng, saying, "This is from your father."
"Mom..." Wen Feng wanted to say something more.
Liu Xin interrupted him, saying, "I'm a little tired right now, and I don't want to hear anything."
She turned her head and looked at Wen Feng with the same gaze she had when they were children. "Little Maple Leaf, no matter whether your mom and dad get divorced or not, you will always be your mom's child, and your dad will always love you. Don't be afraid."
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