Chapter 36: 36 Chapter 36 Part 2

Ji Qingyou liked silence. Ji Xiruan was the one most afraid of it.

“I can’t tonight.” Ji Qingyou interrupted her rambling.

“Huh? Why not?” It seemed she hadn’t expected to be refused. Ji Xiruan’s head instantly popped up from the chair. Her surprise turned into a look of grievance. “Miss Alps hasn’t left, so you don’t even have time to eat a meal with fragile little old me?”

“How can you be like this? You said before that after this was over, you’d do anything I asked. Now you won’t even have a meal with me!”

“I really can’t tonight.” Ji Qingyou said, turning her office chair to face her. She looked at her for a moment, then said calmly, in a voice only the two of them could hear.

“Haven’t you heard that my sister and Yu Muzhou didn’t get married? They have to split up some shared property. I have to go with her.”

She was sure she had made every word clear. But Ji Xiruan seemed to not have heard a single one. She held her neck up straight, neither getting up nor lying back down.

No expression. No reaction. Like a zombie frozen in place.

“So I really can’t tonight.” Ji Qingyou added.

Before she could get a reaction, she was called away by a nurse to check on a patient.

Before she left the office, she was afraid Ji Xiruan would hurt her neck holding it like that. She casually placed a neck pillow in the gap between her head and the chair, and told her,

“Watch out for a stiff neck.”

As she said this, she turned around. She heard the sound of the pillow falling, and the sound of the chair moving. The frozen Ji Xiruan finally reacted, springing up from the chair.

Just as she was about to walk out of the office, she heard Ji Xiruan ask, somewhat uncertainly, behind her, “You only have one sister, right?”

Ji Qingyou stopped, looked back at her, and said calmly,

“What do you think?”

Qin Shuangchi and Yu Muzhou’s situation had caused a huge uproar. From yesterday until now, messages on the group chat hadn’t stopped. There were Yu Cheng cursing Yu Muzhou while apologizing to Qin Bailan. There was Gu Xi crying and screaming, telling Yu Muzhou to kneel and apologize to Qin Shuangchi. And there was Qin Bailan’s extremely calm statement:

[Tomorrow, we’ll split the property and other assets we bought.]

Qin Shuangchi never showed up, and didn’t say a word.

But Ji Qingyou knew she had already made an appointment with Yu Muzhou to sit down face-to-face today to discuss the division of assets. Yesterday’s scene was too chaotic, and there was no time to sit down and handle it calmly.

But all those messy things needed a result and an explanation.

After work.

Ji Qingyou saw Qin Shuangchi at the hospital entrance. Without her white coat, she seemed to have shed her aggressive exterior. She stood there quietly, her hands in her pockets. Her hair was unkempt. Her hands were still bandaged. Her eyes were dark and bruised. Her face was pale.

Before yesterday, she had been whole.

Ji Qingyou watched her silently for a while, then walked over. Her gaze stopped on the bandage on her hand. “How’s your hand?”

Even though she had been standing there for a while.

Qin Shuangchi seemed to be startled by her. She took a step back, then let out a breath when she steadied herself. “It’s fine. It didn’t damage the nerves. I can still operate.”

Ji Qingyou looked at her, not saying a word.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and forced a weak smile. “I can handle this alone. I won’t go soft.”

“I know.” Ji Qingyou said. “But Mom is worried about you…”

She added, “And so am I.”

This sentence seemed to touch a nerve. Qin Shuangchi’s dry eyes began to moisten. But the hospital entrance was crowded with people. She could only try her best to compose herself, patting her cheeks to try to wake herself up.

“Let’s go.”

They arrived at the coffee shop they had arranged to meet Yu Muzhou at. At a table by the window, Yu Muzhou was sitting alone, hunched over.

When Ji Qingyou walked over, she noticed that Yu Muzhou’s face was swollen, as if he had been slapped several times in a row. When he saw them arrive, he breathed a sigh of relief, looking somewhat ridiculous.

From the moment they entered until they sat down.

Yu Muzhou remained silent. It wasn’t until Qin Shuangchi’s gaze fell on his red, swollen face that he looked at her bandaged hand, stared blankly for a few seconds, and asked,

“Is your hand okay?”

Qin Shuangchi used the menu to cover her bandaged hand. Her voice was cold. “I don’t think we’re in a position to talk about this.”

Yu Muzhou was silent.

Qin Shuangchi let out a cold laugh, then said,

“It’s a good thing we hadn’t had the wedding yet when you were caught. As for the houses and cars we bought, I’ll consult a lawyer and draft an agreement to send to you. Logically, this counts as infidelity on your part…”

She seemed to have prepared these words for a long time. She was exceptionally calm, not even pausing when she said the word “infidelity.”

But Yu Muzhou seemed to be in pain when he heard the word. He covered his face in agony, interrupting her. “Shuangchi…”

“Don’t say my name.” Qin Shuangchi didn’t let him finish. “It’s disgusting.”

Yu Muzhou lowered his head, silent.

Yu Muzhou finally looked up at her, but his face was so swollen it was hard for him to open his mouth. “I know nothing I say matters. But I really didn’t sleep with her. I was just… so tired. I know you’re tired too. That’s why I planned the whole wedding myself. I wasn’t unhappy about it. But I’ve been so tired lately. Dad keeps putting pressure on me. He wants me to call Gu Xi ‘Mom,’ but I don’t want to. I don’t want to be an illegitimate son. You know that. I really hate myself…”

“And your mom never gives me a good look. I’ve put up with it all. But whenever I was having a hard time and came to you, you were either in surgery or at the hospital. She just happened to show up at that moment. I…”

He said, burying his head in his hands and crying.

“Shuangchi, I’m so tired…”

“Are you? Then you don’t have to be so tired anymore. The child you have with her won’t be an illegitimate son either. You should be happy. Why are you crying?” Qin Shuangchi’s face was wooden as she wiped her own tears. She let out another cold laugh. “So you were going to blame your affairs on me. What a clever plan.”

“Too bad…”

Her face expressionless, she picked up her bag and stood up. “I’m not going to give you that excuse, Yu Muzhou. Listen to me. In the past ten-plus years we’ve been together, I have never wronged you. I never even told my mom you were an illegitimate son. I hid it from her and was still willing to marry you…”

“Little Jiu was suffering so much because of you. Little You is such a good friend of hers. I didn’t care what they thought of me, I still resolutely chose to be with you. Because I thought being born an illegitimate son wasn’t something you could decide. So I couldn’t break up with you for that reason. I didn’t abandon you when you were going through a tough time. I didn’t cheat on you in the ten-plus years we were together. How dare you say you’re tired?”

“As for the reasons you mentioned, I don’t accept a single one. If you felt I was neglecting you because of my work, you should have handled it properly. You could have broken up with me. Instead, you were planning our wedding while soaking up sweet talk from another woman!”

At this point.

Ji Qingyou noticed Qin Shuangchi could barely stand without leaning on the table. She stood up and tried to support her. But Qin Shuangchi refused her help, emphasizing every word.

“Yu Muzhou, you remember this. You haven’t done right by any of us. You’re truly your father’s son! Destined to be nothing but an illegitimate son!”

With that, she released her pale fingers, not giving another glance to the sobbing, face-covering Yu Muzhou. “It seems there’s nothing left to say between us today.”

Before she left, Ji Qingyou glanced at the red, swollen-faced Yu Muzhou and said very calmly, “It doesn’t matter if you slept with that woman or not. It’s still cheating.”

“I remember you hated your father. But you still ended up doing the same thing he did. Why?”

“I don’t know.” Yu Muzhou shook his head blankly, repeating “I don’t know.” But just as Qin Shuangchi was about to leave, he struggled to ask one more question.

“Are we not even friends anymore?”

It was a strange question. No one asks that after cheating.

But when the question was asked, Ji Qingyou only then realized, in a daze, that before they became lovers, Yu Muzhou and Qin Shuangchi had also been friends since childhood. Their relationship was even closer than hers with Yu Qinjiu.

An intimate relationship that had lasted nearly thirty years.

The day after their wedding, it was reduced to rubble.

Qin Shuangchi probably found the question unbelievable too. But she was silent for a long time. Just before she left, she said very calmly,

“We stopped being friends a long time ago.”

Maybe it was the moment they became lovers. Maybe it was the moment Yu Muzhou cheated. Or maybe she had just realized it now. Who knows?

Ji Qingyou didn’t know what Qin Shuangchi meant by that. Just as she didn’t know, before she left the coffee shop, whether the expression on Yu Muzhou’s face was “regret for cheating” or “remorse for permanently losing Qin Shuangchi, who had been a part of most of his life.”

In any case, she didn’t play an important role in this negotiation. She just quietly listened to the stories of Qin Shuangchi and Yu Muzhou.

But.

After a few steps, she heard Yu Muzhou say behind her, in a strange tone, “Little You, I hope you don’t end up like me. Don’t lose Little Jiu.”

Because of this sentence.

Ji Qingyou turned back and looked at Yu Muzhou. He was sitting there. His face seemed to be getting more and more swollen. Every breath he took seemed incredibly difficult.

If he were a pig, he would probably think he was a very hardworking pig.

But no matter how hard he worked, he should still try to be a human.

Ji Qingyou thought this very calmly. But she followed the head-turning Qin Shuangchi out, leaving behind only one sentence. “I don’t think you have the right to say our names so intimately.”

People came and went in the shop.