Chapter 39: The Ex-Boyfriend

Cold spicy rabbit, mala rabbit heads, and spicy giant rabbit legs—these are all extra spicy, and that completes your order.

The owner placed the dishes, generously sprinkled with chili peppers and radiating a rich, savory, and spicy aroma, onto the table. Then, with a warm smile, he asked, "Both of you sisters are so gorgeous. Are you locals here in Chengdu?"

Wang Xin offered a gentle smile. "We are locals. I'm her mother."

Jiang Ying didn't join the conversation. In silence, she put on a disposable plastic glove, picked up a rabbit leg, tore the meat away, and began to eat.

Hearing that they were mother and daughter, the owner started showering Wang Xin with compliments, saying she looked so youthful, just like a young girl, and that her husband must be blessed to have these two treasures at home—enough to make him smile even in his dreams.

Jiang Ying, quietly devouring her food, swallowed a mouthful of rabbit meat and let out a sudden, faint chuckle at those words. The smile that had been hanging on Wang Xin's face instantly turned somewhat awkward.

After the owner walked away, Wang Xin watched Jiang Ying eating with her head down and said, "Yingying, talk to mom."

Without lifting her head, Jiang Ying replied, "Let me finish eating first."

Hearing the coldness in her tone, Wang Xin stopped talking and simply sat there, gazing quietly at the daughter across the table.

When she left, Jiang Ying was only nine years old.

Back then, neither she nor Jiang Zhiwen had the heart to care for a child, leaving nine-year-old Jiang Ying much thinner and frailer than her peers. Jiang Ying had inherited her facial features—large, dark eyes and fair skin—and she had been a quiet child. When they lived in that rundown house in the county town, Jiang Ying would often look at her with a cautious, timid expression, like a tiny hamster terrified of being abandoned inside a broken cage.

Over the years, Wang Xin had thought of this daughter in countless moments.

Yet whenever she simultaneously recalled that peeling, shabby, cramped room and her daughter's malnourished, timid appearance cowering in the corner, a wave of fear and guilt would surge within her, prompting her cowardly desire to flee from this nightmare of the past.

Wang Xin hadn't even dared to listen to any news about Jiang Ying. She had heard from acquaintances that Jiang Zhiwen kept drinking heavily, and she guessed that Jiang Ying might not have made it to college, might be working in some factory, or might have succumbed to temptations because of her good looks and strayed down various wrong paths.

Yet amid all the countless hazards that a broken family might inflict upon a child's life, Jiang Ying had blossomed into a poised, graceful young woman and had been admitted to the country's top university.

This gave Wang Xin a sense of relief, as if she had narrowly survived a catastrophe. She even felt a twinge of regret that she had only been willing to answer Jiang Zhiwen's phone call and learn this news this very year.

If Jiang Ying was doing well, she certainly deserved none of the credit.

But if Jiang Ying had been doing poorly, she would undoubtedly have borne the blame for it.

The suspicion of such wrongdoing had, with the passing years, turned into a curse that constantly enveloped Wang Xin's life, turning her into a prisoner of her own existence.

When Wang Xin decided to see Jiang Ying again, she had already prepared herself to comfort her and make amends.

Yet to her surprise, apart from her eyes turning red the moment they first met, Jiang Ying had quickly calmed down and even taken the initiative to suggest talking to her in private.

Jiang Ying laid down a rabbit bone, took a sip of soy milk, and looked expressionlessly at the woman staring at her without blinking. "Aren't you going to eat?"

"You go ahead. Mom doesn't eat rabbit."

Jiang Ying lowered her head again, picked up a rabbit head, and cracked it open right in front of Wang Xin.

"You really are strange—overflowing with empathy for animals, yet so cruel to human beings."

Her daughter really had changed a great deal. While she still looked gentle and soft on the surface, her temperament had grown a stubbornness that exceeded all expectations.

Wang Xin wanted to speak, her mind filled with words she had rehearsed a thousand times, yet when the moment came, she still didn't know where to begin.

After another moment, Jiang Ying finished eating.

She took off her gloves, wiped her mouth, and cleansed her hands before finally looking straight at Wang Xin. "Stop contacting my dad. You are no match for him in a game of wits. There's nothing else to talk about."

Wang Xin paused for a second before saying, "Your father was the one who contacted me. I..."

"Then ignore him."

Jiang Ying cut her off directly. "He's contacted you more than once over all these years, and you ignored him in the past. Why pop up now?"

"Your father said you applied for a Ph.D. program at an Ivy League school in the United States and will be leaving for America very soon, so I..."

"What does that have to do with you?"

Wang Xin was instantly left speechless.

After a brief silence, she smiled again, softening her tone. "Yingying, actually you also have a little sister. Her father and I got divorced, but she's always lived with me, and in a few days..."

Before she could finish, Jiang Ying abruptly stood up. "I don't want to hear anymore. That's enough. Just don't ever show up again from now on."

Ignoring Wang Xin's stunned expression, Jiang Ying paid the bill at the counter, picked up a bag of takeout food, and hailed a cab back to her so-called new home.

When her dad opened the door for her, his face was full of apprehension as he looked past her and asked, "Where's your mom?"

Jiang Ying shoved the bag of food into her father's hands, slammed the door shut, changed her shoes, took off her coat, and said gloomily, "Eat your meal first."

The father and daughter sat at the dining table. Jiang Ying emptied the takeout food into bowls, heated them up, placed them before her father, and watched him eat.

Jiang Zhiwen took two bites, sighed, and put down his chopsticks.

Jiang Ying remarked, "What are you sighing for? I haven't even started sighing yet."

Suppressing a bellyful of frustration, she walked over to the water dispenser in the kitchen.

In the open-plan kitchen, a built-in black direct-drinking water system stood alongside a refrigerator and oven of the same tone, blending harmoniously with the surrounding dark marble materials.

While waiting for her cup to fill, Jiang Ying stood in the kitchen and looked out, catching a view of the spacious living room with its wide-screen TV, light-colored sheepskin sofa, and designer floor lamp.

She returned to the dining table with her glass of water, placed one cup in front of her dad, finished the remaining water in her own glass in big gulps, and then asked:

"Dad, be honest with me. Who arranged for you to live in this place?"

"A friend, didn't I tell you on the phone?" Jiang Zhiwen raised his hand in a vow. "Your old man didn't steal or rob anything, I swear."

"What kind of friend lets you live in a place like this? The normal rent for a house like this is very high, and it's not like you saved someone's life."

Hesitating for a long time, Jiang Zhiwen finally recounted the whole backstory under his daughter's distrustful gaze.

And that was how Jiang Ying learned that her dad simply couldn't help himself back in July and had started drinking again.

Still, he had exercised some restraint this time, limiting himself to a couple of bottles of beer at a barbecue stall to satisfy his craving. That so-called friend was someone her dad had met right there at the barbecue stand—a man in the supply chain business who hit it off with him so well that the two quickly became fast friends.

The exact words that friend had told her dad were that he was preparing to go abroad, leaving a property vacant that he didn't want to sell, and he asked her dad if he'd be willing to move in simply to bring some life into the place. The rent was three thousand yuan a month, complete with housekeeping services included. Hearing about her dad's alcoholism problem, the friend had also provided the contact information of an expert friend who treated alcohol addiction, telling him to reach out directly if any issues arose.

If nothing had happened last semester, Jiang Ying might genuinely have thought her dad had run into a kind-hearted soul. But now, hearing how events had unfolded, she knew immediately who was pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Perhaps having witnessed Lu Zhixi's various methods, big and small, Jiang Ying no longer felt the surprise, disbelief, or anger that she once would have.

On the contrary, a bizarre sense of calm settled within her.

Even if Lu Zhixi were to call her the next second to ask if she liked the interior design here, and offer to replace the entire apartment immediately if she didn't, she wouldn't even find it strange.

"Sigh, Yingying, you don't understand. Living in that old house, whenever your dad's mind wandered, it brought back memories of marrying your mom. I'm almost fifty years old, yet I've ended up living like this, trapped in that rundown dump. My heart hurts, and whenever it hurts, I want to drink.

"Ever since I moved in here, Dad really feels much better. With a house this nice, nobody's trying to scam us. As for that expert, I've contacted him; he's a legitimate attending physician at a tertiary Grade-A hospital."

Back when he ran his restaurant in his earlier years, he had encountered all sorts of people, including plenty of generous and chivalrous businessmen, so he genuinely didn't see anything wrong with this.

Yet Jiang Ying still remained silent. Jiang Zhiwen then showed her the rent payment records. "Just to be able to pay this rent, Dad actually has the energy to cook now."

Jiang Ying lowered the phone displaying the transfer records and looked at her father with a sense of helplessness.

She had to admit that Lu Zhixi's tactics were clever enough.

He hadn't simply handed the apartment over to her father; instead, he had skillfully arranged things in a way that fit what her father was willing to believe. Even the monthly rent of three thousand yuan had been turned into a kind of motivation driving her father back toward a normal life.

If he hadn't stepped in, her return trip this time probably wouldn't have led to seeing her mother in this luxuriously decorated apartment, but rather finding her father blind drunk in that tiny, dilapidated house in the county town.

For a moment, she didn't even know what to say.

After a brief silence, Jiang Ying let out a long sigh. "Let's put the apartment aside for a moment. Dad, since you think life is going pretty well right now, why did you turn around and look for Mom? Weren't you always miserable precisely because of her?"

A trace of dejection appeared on Jiang Zhiwen's face. "I just wanted to let your mom know that I'm doing better than before."

"You live your life for yourself," Jiang Ying said. "Did you tell her that you rented this place?"

"...... I was planning to tell her, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet."

Jiang Ying was speechless.

Jiang Zhiwen explained further, "When you were little, you always said you wanted your mother, so I told her you were coming home today and asked if she wanted to come over and see you..."

"Dad, don't use me as an excuse."

At this point, Jiang Ying knew all too well what her father was really thinking deep down.

"I've never been against you dating, but did it have to be her? Didn't you hold out for two years without contacting her? How come you're suddenly—"

Sensing her tone was getting a bit too harsh, Jiang Ying abruptly cut herself off.

"I heard your mom got divorced and is raising a child, which isn't easy for her. Now that I've quit drinking, and this place is big, and the restaurant is up and running... when you go off to America in a little while, Dad is going to be lonely..."

Jiang Ying pressed a hand to her forehead.

"Yingying, if your mom and I got back together, what do you think?"

Jiang Ying wanted to make her father abandon such illusions.

Even when he still had a handsome face in his youth, Wang Xin had been able to walk away without a shred of ruthlessness; how could she possibly chew on this old piece of grass that had been ruined by alcohol now?

Yet as her gaze swept across her father's graying sideburns, a pang of sorrow welled up in her heart.