Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Cheng Zhaohui was a simple person who worked as a teacher for his whole life—he had never met a person like Grandmother Qi. He lied on the bed, startled and at a loss of words.
Sun Shaoyun quickly spoke, “Madam, why did you come and visit us? We should be the ones visiting you.”
Grandmother Qi simply waved her hand. “There’s no need to be so fussy. Furthermore, Xiao Cheng is sick, right? We’re just paying him a visit.”
Sun Shaoyun did not expect Grandmother Qi to be so amiable. “Our Lao Cheng’s matter had brought so much of trouble to you all.”
Grandmother Qi held Sun Shaoyun’s hands cordially. “Xiao Sun, you shouldn’t talk like this. We’re so close now—you’re one of us. Don’t mention it.”
“Hello, Madam Cheng, I’m Chengyue’s mother. Her father, eldest uncle, and second brother are working overtime at the company today, so we’re the only ones who could come. All these things that we’ve brought are good for health. After Mr. Cheng goes through the surgery, they’ll be helpful for a good recovery,” said Guan Liya with a smile.
“It’s too kind of you. You had helped us contact this hospital. We’re very grateful to you all for arranging Lao Cheng’s surgery to be done so soon and for having Director Zhou to be the surgeon in-charge. We’re embarrassed as we should be the ones who visit you all and express our gratitude.” Sun Shaoyun did not expect everyone in the Qi Family to be so friendly and easy to get along. She blushed a little when she thought of her bad opinions on them earlier. “I initially planned to visit you all and say thanks when Lao Cheng gets discharged after the surgery.”
“Madam Cheng, my grandma just said that we’re a family now. There’s no need for these formalities as we’ll be in-laws in the future. Shouldn’t we help each other when any one of us is in trouble? Our Qi Chengyue isn’t very good at plenty of things, and it’d be a lot of trouble taking care of her.” Guan Liya was quite satisfied because Cheng Dongge’s parents were truly different from Zhou Mingyan—they were appreciative people.
“Chengyue is a good girl,” praised Sun Shaoyun as she smiled. “Oh yes, please have a seat. Silly me, I didn’t welcome y’all in properly when y’all came.”
They sat down and Qi Chengyue properly introduced them to the other family. Sun Shaoyun was caught unprepared when Grandmother Qi talked so enthusiastically to her, then it was continued by Guan Liya. She was finally able to calm down.
Truly, she had never met someone like Grandmother Qi.
Only then did she noticed the cute little boy who was standing beside Song Yu.
“Hmm, is that your son? He’s very good-looking,” said Sun Shaoyun to Song Yu.
That little chubby boy looked like Qi Chenglin. Qi Chenglin and Qi Chengzhi were cousins and they shared some similar facial features, so it was not surprising that Sun Shaoyun guessed wrong.
Qi Youxuan was blinking his big beautiful eyes and he had long eyelashes. His eyes were very attractive and Sun Shaoyun felt delighted when admiring them.
“Grandma, you should never tell my uncle about this—he’s very narrow-minded.” Qi Youxuan was quite happy.
“This kid… How could you bad-mouth your uncle? Make sure to not let him hear what you’ve said just now.” Grandmother Qi dragged Qi Youxuan toward her and smiled sheepishly at Sun Shaoyun. “This is the son of Chengyue’s second brother,” she explained.
Everyone in the room fell silent.
Grandmother Qi, what you have just said was not praising Qi Chengzhi either!
Song Yu glanced at the ceiling. Hubby, your grandmother and nephew bad-mouthed you when you were not around. Do you know about it?
Xia Wenna was blushing due to embarrassment.
“Hello, granny. I’m Qi Youxuan,” greeted the little boy.
Sun Shaoyun liked Qi Youxuan very much as he did not have the finicky behavior and arrogance of a typical child from a rich family. She reckoned that it was because of the fine attitude and inner qualities fostered into him in a prominent family.
“What do you want to eat, Youxuan? I don’t have junk food here. Why don’t you follow me to the small supermarket downstairs? Granny would buy any food that you want.” Sun Shaoyun’s heart melted when she saw Qi Youxuan’s chubby and round little face.
“No no no, please don’t trouble yourself. Give him some fruits to eat will do,” Guan Liya insisted. “Children shouldn’t be pampered. He’s getting fatter because he eats junk food every day. We’re thinking of ways to help him lose weight.”
Therefore, Sun Shaoyun gave Qi Youxuan some grapes after washing them.
Song Yu thought at first that since they were here in Chutian Hospital, she could simply go for a prenatal examination. However, Qi Chengzhi insisted that he must be with her during prenatal examinations so that he would know about the baby’s gender with Song Yu. Therefore, Song Yu left together with Grandmother Qi and others, and she could only postpone the examination to the next weekend.
…
…
Qi Chengzhi had yet to return at ten o’clock at night. Song Yu stayed awake and waited for him in the living room while watching the television.
According to the arrival time of Qi Chengzhi’s flight, he should be back earlier than now.
After thinking for a while, she sent him a message. [Where are you now?]
Qi Chengzhi did not inform her that he was not coming back, so he would surely rush back home by today.
Right after she sent the message, the doorbell rang.
Song Yu already asked Aunt Yang to go to bed. She went to open the door and saw Chang Lai following Qi Chengzhi to their house.
Qi Chengzhi looked like he was not feeling well. “How are you feeling? Anything happened?” Song Yu asked immediately.
“I don’t know what contaminated food Director and Special Assistant Cheng had eaten, but it looks like they’re having food poisoning. They had vomited a few times during the journey. Miss Qi waited for them at the airport and she had sent Special Assistant Cheng to the hospital. Director insisted to come back here and refused to go anyhow.”
Song Yu said nothing else as she took a pair of sneakers from the shoe cabinet to put them on.
“Where are you going?” Qi Chengzhi stopped Song Yu by pulling her.
“I’m going to the hospital with you. Your face is wax yellow, how could you not go and see a doctor?” Song Yu felt heartbroken when she saw that Qi Chengzhi was unwell.
“It’s okay.” He walked through the door and bent his body to untie the shoelaces. He changed into a pair of slippers and asked Chang Lai to leave.
Chang Lai looked at Song Yu—he was in a dilemma. Song Yu saw Qi Chengzhi had already walked into the house and was going upstairs.
Song Yu could only say, “You go back first, I’ll bring him to the hospital if there’s anything.”
After Chang Lai left, Song Yu quickly followed Qi Chengzhi into the bedroom. “Chengzhi, let’s go to the hospital. Your legs seem weak.”
Qi Chengzhi sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Song Yu to sit on his legs. “Do you want to test whether I’m weak or not?”
“Stop joking, I’m talking seriously. Why do you dislike going to the hospital so much?” Song Yu embraced his neck with her arms, her tender palm touched his forehead to feel the temperature, luckily it was not hot. “Your face is wax yellow. I’d be relieved if you could just go to the hospital to check on it.”
“It’s not some serious disease—I’ll be fine after I sleep.” Qi Chengzhi was hugging her and blew air into his palm. Then, he sniffed at it. “Does my mouth smell?”
He vomited a few times during the journey and the odor was surely unpleasant.
“No.” Song Yu held his face right away and kissed his lips. She did not try to avoid it at all. “Isn’t your stomach empty after all the vomiting? Are you hungry? How about I cook a bowl of millet porridge for you? It’s good for your stomach.”
“Don’t trouble yourself.” Qi Chengzhi lied sideways while hugging her. “I’ll be better if you let me hug you for a while.”
Song Yu stayed in his embrace for a while, then she raised her head and kissed his stubble-covered chin. She was getting calmer after she laid in his arms.
However, not long after, Qi Chengzhi suddenly stood up and ran to the bathroom. He was vomiting into the toilet bowl again.
Song Yu followed him inside. Worry overwhelmed her as she watched him vomiting. She went to pour a glass of water for him. When she returned to the bathroom, Qi Chengzhi had finished vomiting because he had already vomited all the food in his stomach during the journey back. Now, he only vomited stomach acid.
She gave him the water-filled glass. “I’ll go and see if there’s any medicine you can take.”
Song Yu went downstairs. Qi Chengzhi was having food poisoning, thus the usual gastric medicine probably would not help. The priority was to treat the inflammation—he might develop a fever if the inflammation was not treated.
However, Song Yu dared not simply feed him any medicine. Eventually, she decided to call Chu Zhaoyang.
Chu Zhaoyang simply said these four words to her. “I’ll send the medications there.”
He then hung up the phone.
Before Chu Zhaoyang reached, Song Yu made some millet porridge for him so that he would not need to take the medicine with an empty stomach.
Song Yu carried the bowl of millet porridge to the bedroom. “Better have some porridge first because you’re taking medicine later.”
“I don’t have the appetite,” Qi Chengzhi answered feebly.
Song Yu quietly held the bowl and took a spoonful of porridge, then she held the spoon beside Qi Chengzhi’s mouth and looked at him with a gentle and firm gaze.
Wordlessly, Qi Chengzhi obediently opened his mouth and ate the porridge.
Song Yu took the bowl downstairs after it was emptied. Just after she finished washing the bowl, Chu Zhaoyang reached their house.
Song Yu opened the door for Chu Zhaoyang and accepted the medicine that he brought. “So sorry we needed you to come, even when it’s so late now.”
“Is his condition quite serious?” asked Chu Zhaoyang expressionlessly.
“He vomited a few times already, I could see that his face had turned yellow.” She knew the feeling of getting food poisoning. She had experienced it before—the nausea and vomiting were unbearable.
However, Qi Chengzhi pretended like it was nothing in front of her and tried to stay calm and collected. It made her more anxious instead.
“Let me have a look,” said Chu Zhaoyang.
Although Chu Zhaoyang was not a doctor, the Chu Family had set up a hospital and they were involved in the pharmaceutical business and medical equipment research. Song Yu felt that he might have some knowledge about the field.
Chu Zhaoyang followed Song Yu upstairs and entered the bedroom. Qi Chengzhi had just vomited again. He had vomited almost all the millet porridge he ate just now. Looking at him now, he had truly appeared to be more haggard.
“Why are you here?” Qi Chengzhi narrowed his eyes and stared at Chu Zhaoyang.
“He came to send the medicine,” explained Song Yu. “You refused to go to the hospital and I don’t know what medicine should I give you, so I looked for Chu Zhaoyang to help.”
Chu Zhaoyang pouted but said nothing. However, it looked like his eyes were smiling. He quietly took out his cell phone and snapped a photo of Qi Chengzhi who had a weak and weary appearance. Then, he turned around and left.
Song Yu was dumbfounded.
Did he not come to look at the condition of Qi Chengzhi?
“Just take the medicine will do,” explained Chu Zhaoyang and he left.
Song Yu was still speechless.
In fact, he came just because he wanted to take a photo of Qi Chengzhi.
Regardless, Qi Chengzhi felt better around one hour after he took the medicine Chu Zhaoyang had brought for him. Although he still felt sick, the nausea was gone and he had stopped vomiting.
After his stomach got better, he could feel it was empty. Luckily there was still some of the leftover porridge that Song Yu had cooked in the pot. She heated it and served it to Qi Chengzhi.
Song Yu was sitting beside him. She leaned her body slightly toward him with her cheeks supported by her hands and observed Qi Chengzhi eating the porridge. One of his hands was holding the bowl, his slender fingers were holding the spoon. The movement of him eating the porridge one spoon by one spoon slowly was extremely elegant. Even though he was sick, he still displayed a steady and graceful manner.
Qi Chengzhi glanced at her and his thin and elegant lips curled into a gentle curve. Then, he looked down and continued to eat the porridge.
Song Yu saw his distinct eyelashes when his eyelids drooped a little. They appeared long and curly. Although they seemed drawn due to the sickness, Song Yu felt that they were still attractive. She was going a little crazy as she thought that he looked like a beauty who was ill. She could not imagine how it would look like if Qi Chengzhi clasped his chest like Xi Shi 1 .
As she thought about it, their cell phones rang almost at the same time. It was the sound of WeChat’s notifications for new messages.
Song Yu took her phone, unlocked the screen and looked at it. As expected, Chu Zhaoyang had uploaded the photo that he took just now into the 8X8=64 group.
In the photo, Qi Chengzhi was sitting on the bed and his back was leaning against the pillow. One of his ankles was overlapping the other, his elegant hand was holding a book and when he saw Chu Zhaoyang walking into his bedroom, it just so happened that he was looking directly at Chu Zhoyang’s camera as he turned his head. The timing was spot on.
From the photo, Qi Chengzhi looked sick and waned. The posture of him holding the book was extremely refined like a gentle scholar.
[What happened? Qi Chengzhi, are you sick?] Han Zhuoli.
[Look at his drawn appearance.] Gui Zhiqian.
[Is Song Yu making you too tired? Looks like you’re not young anymore, you have to admit that you’re already old.] Yan Beicheng.
[Lao Chu, your company have medicine which could help in this aspect, right? And also those supplements for kidneys, why didn’t you bring some for Qi Chengzhi?] Wei Ziqi.
Song Yu was speechless when she read their conversation. They usually acted like some graceful and steady people when they were in the public, but they would show their true colors in this group.
…
…
The next day, Song Yu asked Qi Chengzhi to take some medicine with him to the company. He ate some food during breakfast but he still had a poor appetite. Song Yu reckoned that his inflammation had not completely resolved yet.
At noon, Qi Chengzhi called and informed her that he had a luncheon now.
Song Yu was unable to interfere in the matters of work, so she could only say, “Then you should drink less alcohol, or try your best to avoid drinking at all. You still haven’t recovered from the sickness.”
“Mhm.” He glanced toward the outside of the car window and saw a shop selling children’s wear. He smiled gently and remembered it. He said, “We’re going for the prenatal examination this Saturday. After we find out our child’s gender, we should go shopping at a shop for infant products.”
Song Yu did not expect Qi Chengzhi would take the initiative to suggest it. From the beginning, he appeared to be focusing on taking care of his health only and was not very enthusiastic about the baby in her belly.
Song Yu could not help but smiled gently. “Sure.”
At noon, Song Yu had her lunch with Ruan Danchen. After lunch, she supposed that the luncheon should be over, so she went to the staircase and called Qi Chengzhi again. “Did you drink a lot of alcohol?”
“Just drank a little less than usual,” said Qi Chengzhi.
“Drink some honey water to sober up, then take the medicine,” said Song Yu.
“I’m feeling much better today,” replied Qi Chengzhi.
“…” Song Yu was silent for a while. Then, she moved toward the corner and whispered, “Do you feel annoyed because I’m controlling you like this?”
Qi Chengzhi broke into a smile. “No, I wished you could straight away come and stare at me in my office.”
Song Yu smiled. “I’m hanging up.”
Qi Chengzhi smiled as he hung up the phone. The moment he raised his head again, he looked stern. His brooding eyes glimpsed at the manager of the planning department. “Continue.”
The manager of the planning department was slow to react because he was not as good as Qi Chengzhi in randomly changing his channels of thoughts.
Not just him, but the others in the meeting room still could not adapt to it.
They were gradually getting used to the director answering calls from his wife during the meeting. No matter how important the topics during their discussions were, so long as his wife called him, their director would discontinue the meeting and answer the call without any hesitancy, even if the call was about some trivial matters.
He would never let Song Yu know if he was busy or in a meeting.
However, previously their director would at least try to avoid the staff like going out of the meeting room or walking to the corner of the meeting room and talked softly and briefly. However, since some time ago the director did not even feel like avoiding them and always made a public display of his affection, totally disregarding the situations he was in. Not only did he simply answer the phone during a meeting, but the director also talked in such a corny way. Besides, he did not feel like he should lower his volume. Moreover, whether it was during the call or after it, he always behaved in such a cool and honorable manner.
When he talked with his wife on the phone, he would grin with such tenderness. After hanging up, however, his expression would become so stern like he was warning that nobody should come near him.
The change was too drastic and his subordinates still could not adapt to it no matter how many times they saw it.
There was just not enough time to recover from the shock, let alone switching back to their normal frame of mind.
“Ahem.” Cheng Dongge who was sitting beside Qi Chengzhi deliberately faked a cough to remind the manager of the planning department. The manager quickly adjusted his mood and continued reporting.
…
…
At night, Mu Huaisheng drove his car to pass by the entrance of Shengyue restaurant and he saw a few of his subordinates from MU, which included the manager and a worker from the sales department, the director of the design department, Yu Keyao, and two clients.
They shook hands with the clients and bid farewell, and one of them put his hand at Yu Keyao’s waist.
Mu Huaisheng lowered his car window and heard the client said, “I couldn’t tell that Miss Yu has a good alcohol tolerance as she was being truly humble just now. Let’s go to another place and continue drinking.”
“Manager Pang, I really can’t drink anymore.” Yu Keyao tried to free herself from his embrace but he was clutching her waist firmly and fondling it. Yu Keyao found it to be extremely appalling but she dared not show her feelings as she was worried he would be upset.
Her colleagues were discriminating against her more and more by the day. As a designer’s assistant, she was actually not required to attend this dinner party, but the manager of the sales department and Director Xu from the design department included her in this dinner party.
During the dinner party, the other staff only drank a small amount of alcohol as a gesture of courtesy. However, she was the only one forced to drink non-stop as if the two clients aimed to get her drunk. She did not even have the time to eat the dishes and none of her colleagues helped her out of it.
Yu Keyao was unaware that the staff could accept her joining the company through the back door, but the crucial point was that Mu Sisi brought her in. Mu Sisi had almost offended everyone in the company, and even those bootlickers who usually fawned over their superiors dared not flatter her in front of others. Otherwise, even if they managed to win her favor, others in the company would discriminate against them once Mu Sisi left the company. Besides, Mu Sisi would not necessarily remember about them, so they would be at a loss. Therefore, nobody in the company really tried hard to win Mu Sisi’s favor.
Since Mu Sisi was the precious daughter of the Mu family, her colleagues dared not criticize her even though they dislike the way she worked. However, they were not afraid of Yu Keyao at all, so they vented all their anger for Mu Sisi on Yu Keyao.
Yu Keyao was pitiful as she was not close to Mu Sisi. Mu Sisi got close to her just because she was Song Yu’s cousin.
Since she joined the company, Mu Sisi would call her to talk with her now and then or invite her out for a chat. Mu Sisi treated her like she was her good friend and she was extremely concerned about her. Yu Keyao was thinking of complaining to her once she got closer to Mu Sisi.
