Ji Ziming lifted his head, looked at Pei Ge, and asked, “Aren’t you worried?”
“What am I worried about? If you’re unable to change in such a short time, it’s normal because you still haven’t fully grasped the change in relationship yet. I don’t get why he’s now suddenly my uncle. I’m thinking that, perhaps, my mother doesn’t even know we have this relative.”
Tears of either agitation or regret welled up in her beautiful eyes.
“Let’s go upstairs to meet Mr. Qu. Hmm… We need to change the way we address him slowly.”
He shrugged as helplessness filled his eyes and his lips trembled slightly.
“Mhm-kay. Let’s go, then.”
Pei Ge stood up. There was a smile in her eyes as her mood felt great from this sudden news.
Just as they arrived at Qu Xiujie’s door, the man’s phone rang. It was a special line from home, and seeing that it might be an urgent call, he picked it up.
“Hello, Ziming? Where are you and Pei Ge?”
Madam Ji spoke with a tinge of excitement and anxiousness.
“We’re outside, mom. You’re back?”
He did not receive news that the private plane had been used recently. In fact, he did not expect his mother to be back so early.
“I came back earlier. I didn’t take the family’s plane to fly over here and boarded a first-class domestic flight, instead. The driver has just picked me up at the airport. You and Pei Ge should come home early. I prepared a table of your favorite dishes with Auntie Zhang.”
Madam Ji acted as though she was presenting them with treasures when she talked about the dishes she had prepared. As a result, the couple stood in front of Qu Xiujie’s door for a good ten minutes.
“How is it? Are you able to smell the fragrance from the phone?”
The woman on the other end was all smiles.
“That’s right, mom. Wait a while more, and we’ll be back shortly,” replied the man in his clear voice. He thought that, if they rushed home now, they could reach it before his mother put the last soup on the table.
“Okay. Then, I’ll wait for you guys here with the three children. Return quickly; I noticed that something is odd about Ran Ran.”
Madam Ji was worried because, ever since she arrived at the house, her granddaughter’s face was red, though the latter did not seem to have a fever. She had no idea what the problem was; the girl just looked listless.
“I got it, mom. We’ll head back now.”
Ji Ziming hung up the phone and pulled Pei Ge downstairs.
She looked perplexedly at him. “What’s wrong with you? What’s said on the phone? Why are you so worried?”
She asked these three questions at one go. The man merely replied with: “Let’s go home now. Our daughter seems to be ill.”
He was so anxious. Other than his woman beside him, he had never felt this way about a person before.
“What’s wrong with our daughter?”
Pei Ge’s heart was suddenly in her mouth. The man was shocked to see her nervous expression.
“Mom said that Ran Ran might’ve caught a cold. Don’t worry; I’ll call the family doctor on our way there, so he’ll reach home earlier than us. We can catch him if he leaves now.”
Ji Ziming was also worried. At this moment, he was more concerned about Pei Ge and his daughter than Qu Xiujie.
“What about uncle?”
Pei Ge halted her steps as she thought of the middle-aged man, who was waiting in the room for the explanation, not knowing that they were leaving him alone here to return home.
“Why don’t we bring him home with us and let him stay there?”
After giving it a thought, Ji Ziming made this decision decisively. Since he knew about Qu Xiujie and Pei Ge’s actual relation now, he could not treat him like an old man who fancied his wife.
“Sure, I’ll inform him of this, while you get the car ready and tell Auntie Tian about our plan to leave.”
She immediately pulled her hand out of the man’s grasp and ran upstairs to her uncle’s room. The guy was in the middle of reading a book about Ji Ziming’s motivational story inside the room.
“Uncle.”
Pei Ge mustered up all her courage. This time around, she did not say the wrong thing.
“What’s wrong, my good niece?”
Qu Xiujie lifted his head. The wrinkles at the corner of his eyes looked especially alike Pei Ge’s.
“Go back with me now. My daughter is sick,” was her anxious reply.
“What? Your daughter is ill?”
He suddenly jumped up off the chair, thinking that if he went with Pei Ge to the Ji mansion, they could bring the girl to the hospital.
“Why are you in a daze? Hurry up and let’s go.”
Qu Xiujie hurriedly slipped on his shoes and walked out of the door past Pei Ge. Standing behind him, she did not realize that he could be so fast when he wanted to.
“Uncle, slow down.”
The man was so swift that she feared him of accidentally slipping on the floor. Instead, the spirited fella found her to be a tad too slow.
Looking at the car parked at the entrance, Qu Xiujie hurriedly opened the door and signaled to Pei Ge. “Hurry up and get in; let’s go back quickly.”
“Sure, sure, sure.”
Pei Ge nodded and entered through the door that Qu Xiujie had opened. Sitting in the driver’s seat, Ji Ziming saw the middle-aged man’s expression from the rearview mirror and narrowed his eyes. It seemed that this uncle was not bad.
He seemed more reliable than he had pegged him as.
Once they reached the Ji family’s house, the bodyguards tailing them quickly returned to the hillside mansion. Ji Ziming instructed them that, regardless of if Qu Xiujie was in that mansion, they had to be there.
“Aiya! Why are you guys only back now? I’m so anxious from waiting.”
Madam Ji rushed outside when she saw her son’s car entering the courtyard, but the moment she spotted Qu Xiujie alighting from it, she frowned slightly and asked, “Why are you here?”
“Why can’t I be here?”
Qu Xiujie stood up straight and realized that, even though he was part of the Qu family, he was Pei Ge’s relative—her biological uncle. He looked at Madam Ji with confidence and pride as he waited for Ji Ziming to alight and introduce him.
“Are you here to pick up Jingwan? She’s already gone home while I wasn’t here.”
