Chapter 04
There had also been a time when she’d been in the numbing view of the pain of losing everything, drawing away from emotions that were otherwise hard to escape, but there hadn’t been a moment more tormenting than the present.
She prayed for the man to take a giant step away and not look back.
The extra second of scanning her eyes at the moment made it impossible to steady her breathing, to stifle the frantic beating of her heart–
He shouldn’t be in her world.
Zhou Yinchu could have appeared at any moment, only he shouldn’t have appeared at the moment when she was most down and helpless.
She could accept the unusual condescending look down, but sympathy was no less than a bone-chilling lynching for her.
Wenning only knew that she shouldn’t freeze at this moment, shouldn’t indulge in the faintest of top-down pity.
They had fallen in love, even if the economic conditions were vastly different, but she always thought that even if she took the money to end the love of the original before the end, they had stood equally in front of God.
A true or false heart had been recounted.
So, please, ask God not to tease too much.
Her heart had not yet completely calmed down, but she still blushed miserably and braced herself, “I’m fine.”
She couldn’t ignore her son’s concern without seeing that, what little pride she had left, she was still a mother.
The gust of slowing down made it impossible to loosen her footsteps and no longer stagnate, as if facing a hastily glimpsed picture scroll, closing it up again before spreading it out, without having to look at the shocking scenery again.
“Mom, I’m sorry.”
Memories of the past swept over her in unpleasant ways, and she navigated the power of the fragments, avoiding them, tugging at the child, still always patient, explaining, “It has nothing to do with you.”
The more well-behaved the child became, the more she could not restrain the deep-seated guilt-inducing self-condemnation she felt inside.
Deep in day-to-day poverty, how could she dare to be unsuspectingly delusional.
If there was any way to get her child across the higher threshold of the academy, perhaps she as a mother could do anything, she could go out on a limb for it, she could banish this life of hers-
Wen Ning could never have imagined that there was a possibility of a turnaround in the matter of school enrollment.
Not long after that, the opportunity to let her go out of her way, leaving her face and figure behind, just like an olive branch thrown into her hands.
At that moment, Wenning was more wrung out than she had imagined. The past that she had stammered and covered up for so long was probably just a page that had been accidentally turned over in the life of a bystander.
At least, Zhou Yinchu’s behavior was the same as the breakup, and he was too dry to speak.
The moment he turned to leave, there was no shadow of being shackled between his hands and feet.
Now she, the stinking rat, must drag her half-grown mice back to the sewers where they belonged.
There was a new batch of Kaiyo at the Hundun restaurant.
The smell was often cloying to Wenning, and while the Kaiyo scent was fragrant, it was permeated with a fishy odor that couldn’t be covered up at the bottom of the ocean. She familiarly dunked small shrimp . . into a glass seasoning jar, with a flimsy white plastic bag over it. But that familiar smell, every now and then as she dug into the seasoning, still tumbled up from time to time, evaporating.
“Ningning, don’t worry about it, we’re so smart Chuchu, if we can’t go to a school like Xin’an, there’s always a better way to go …….”
Her mother was wearing an old-fashioned blue cloth apron, her movements no longer as flexible as they were back then, yet she insisted on boiling a pot of water for her.
Wen Ning nodded, “I know.”
“Mom, you rest.”
Wen Ning’s mother was already in her late seventies, her parents had been married for dozens of years and had not been able to have a child as they had wished, finally giving birth to her in the summer of the year when she was almost forty.
However, her father hadn’t even finished spending that childhood summer with her, but a cold had given him a lung infection and he was gone.
Leaving Wenning’s mother alone to raise her.
“Wait, I’ll help you get all the hot water boiling.”
“My poor daughter ah,” Wen Ning’s mother is old, there are times when she will always show a more fragile side than her daughter, she sobbed uncontrollably, “you’re still so young to have to live this kind of life …… ”
“Ningning, tomorrow Saturday, you’ll be sleepy a little longer in the morning.”
The mother kept crumbling, the hand of the work is a moment did not stop: “Mom to help you under the ravioli, you forget, mother under the ravioli kung fu is also first-class …… ”
Wen Ning politely refused, “Don’t bother, you take Che Che to the Children’s Palace, I’ll open the store, and Xiao Yang is helping, I’m sure I’ll be busy.”
“Mom, I’m fine.”
Fearing that others would see through her lost soul, and even more so, fearing that her mother would see through the root of her lost soul at this moment.
“Then I’ll drop Chulch off first and then come over to help you.” Her mother was stubborn, and by relying on this stubbornness she had supported herself and paid for herself to go to the best private high school in Jiangcheng.
Wen Ning greeted Xiao Yang, who had been unoccupied with her hands and feet, to come over and rest for a while, and Xiao Yang smiled sweetly for a while, but turned her head and still wrapped the wontons without any distractions.
Three years ago, she met this little girl in the neighborhood’s cheapest rental garage facing north.
She talked about her family in a mercenary dialect for the old people around Southern Jiangsu, her own mother who ran off with another man, her father who stabbed his lover and went to jail.
The contempt for her family, which was like a devil’s den, spread to her as a child.
No one wanted to associate with her.
Even if she kept the disorganized garage spotless, the landlord was afraid that she was ruining the feng shui of the place and wanted to evict her in a couple of months.
Out of that little bit of often flirted with the heart of the Virgin Mary, she beckoned towards Xiao Yang, will be only seventeen years old she received his store to help, Xiao Yang is a particularly grateful girl, a few days ago, he wandered on the verge of collapse, this store hard to rely on her alone to support the store.
Again wrapping ravioli, again cooking ravioli, but also to take care of the wholesale of all kinds of fresh meat …… finally a dime not to take the eyes of the eye to take that month’s account book to her.
“Xiao Yang, let’s close the door early today.”
Xiao Yang muttered, “Don’t.”
“Sister Ning, we need to earn more to send Chuchu to a better school ……”
“Not being selected,” Wen Ning acted relieved, but her hand mechanically repeated the action of wrapping wontons, but she was slow to spread a new crust, “It’s also quite good, it’s as if it’s saving money for both of us.”
“Sister Ning, our Che Che is gold, it can shine anywhere, they didn’t pick Che Che to be their student, it’s because they don’t have the eyes to see–”
“Well, I still have a little more savings on hand, next month you enroll yourself in a vocational class,” Wen Ning had seen all of Xiao Yang’s hard work during this period of time in her eyes, she couldn’t say anything that was heartbreaking, she was just advocating for her to really learn a trade, “You like to cook then you can be a big chef and go open a restaurant of your own.”
“I don’t want to–” Xiao Yang said so decisively, leaving no room for maneuver.
“Sister Ning, I just want to follow you for the rest of my life.”
“Quickly try the new dessert I’ve been working on.”
The molded red bean pudding suddenly collapsed after only one scoop.
A hint of sweetness rippled through her mouth, and along with the dented dessert and Xiao Yang’s self-complaints, Wen Ning dug in spoonful after spoonful without restraint until her throat choked and was completely overwhelmed by the sweetness, still not putting down the fork in her hand, “Yummy.”
She said it with force and sincerity, but Xiao Yang still observed a touch of perversity that was normally hard to glimpse from her expression.
“Sister Ning, you’re really nice.”
What if she wasn’t a good person at all, what if she had done anything for money. A love dominated by vanity that ended in a hundred thousand dollars.
Is it small?
Perhaps, one hundred thousand is not a big number for many people nowadays, after all, nowadays romance novels can easily be five million checks.
But back to reality, even in the present, one hundred thousand dollars is still two years of rent for her wonton restaurant, which opened in a residential building.
She had to refuse compensation and fight the damn lawsuit while taking care of the other members of this family –
So she simply wouldn’t be stupid enough to scrape together a hundred thousand dollars to pay him back, for that dispensable ego.
She needed the money, more desperately than ever.
“Let’s close the door in another half hour.”
Wen Ning felt unprecedentedly tired, but the day’s ready-packed wontons, always have to find a way to sell, good thing it happened to be the evening rush hour, after work, hungry pedestrians come to the wonton restaurant to have a bowl of small wontons is always not a bad choice.
Although the store’s location was mediocre, her customer traffic had always been reasonable.
Wen Ning forced herself to get busy again.
Perhaps only in the process of constantly laying down the pot, the old wontons, and spreading the open ocean, she gradually pulled out from among those pretentious emotions.
As the boss’s wife, her eyes were really slow today, and she didn’t have time to look around and listen to all sides–
Until that moment of complete busyness was over, she suddenly noticed an offending car parked at the corner of the old neighborhood, and the license plate number was just as she remembered it.
Should she be afraid?
Afraid of the growing difference between the two, afraid of the humiliation that came late but never broke out, afraid of the man who would take the money back if he felt that the 100,000 shouldn’t be given either, but she hadn’t been flush with cash lately.
She should have something to look forward to?
Expect him to see the year the first love of the child can not enroll in school, alms that a humiliating nature of the school qualifications.
Wen Ning actually felt afterward that he was pulled by the world’s ideas, perhaps, sympathy is not all bad, may be able to win a future for their own children.
That unknown burning emotion enveloped her periphery, she took off her apron, and went back to the door of the toilet where Xiao Yang often wandered, facing the mirror and looking at it again and again, trying to pat away the traces of flour residue on her body. But the white powder was on her loose sweater, and she couldn’t pat it away.
Just as she couldn’t deny who, or what, she was at this moment.
Whatever.
Wenning reassuringly took the bowl of ravioli, carefully stuffed it into the plastic box, and jogged all the way to the direction where the car was.
She didn’t dare to take a breath, but women were always like that, for thousands of years they always considered others before they considered themselves, she loved her child’s future more than the pride buried in the dirt at the moment.
The knuckles of her index fingers gently knocked on the other’s window.
“Ms. Wen, finally waiting for you to finish your work.”
The man in the driver’s seat got out of the car, not Zhou Yinchu, it looked like his assistant.
His assistant was very young, his skin was white, and he looked like an educated and well-mannered look.
“May I ask what’s the matter?”
“Miss Wen, is this bowl of wontons of yours intended for Mr. Zhou?”
The assistant took it, but found that the woman did not let go.
Wen Ning hesitated, and her head whirled back down, “Forget it.”
Since he did not come, it also means that he simply do not want to see himself, send a bowl of cheap wontons and what can be done, close to his son can be stuffed. The best international school in Jiangcheng?
That would be too unreasonable.
After a few years of effort, Zhou Yinchu suddenly changed sex, no longer reserved and self-possessed, and every day to look at the general public such as her general always in the mud of the clouds hate to do charity?
The assistant’s action obviously also froze, “Miss Wen, Mr. Zhou said you want him to help, he will do his best.”
Wen Ning felt more and more untruthful, as if overnight the man returned the favor with virtue, but instead more set off her bad past.
The young assistant seemed to be planning to say something else, but was unable to do so.
Until that condition still through a rather professional and rational way out of the mouth. No one would give up their job for a slender, beautiful woman.
There was no free lunch under the sky.
“You should understand what Mr. Zhou means.”
At the same time, a Ritz-Carlton room card subtly fell into the palm of the woman, who was unable to make any extra room because she was holding the bowl of wontons up, so that she was pinching the card in a comical manner.