Chapter 28
Chapter 28
He cupped her face and looked down at her eyes which had turned red from crying. “Don’t be like this, Anhao. I’m back. No one can hurt you anymore. Don’t be afraid, don’t hurt yourself like this.”
Seeing the pain in his eyes, she pushed him away with her arms forcefully as she retreated a few steps back. “You got engaged a month ago! You don’t have any right to care about me! No matter what I become, it doesn’t concern the members of the Yi family!”
Her eyes were distant. Yi Zeyang did not go near her any more, in case she stepped back to the roadside where it was dangerous. He only said, “My engagement is just a business marriage for the Yi family with my return. I have the final say on whether I get married or not! This has nothing to do with what we’re talking about right now.”
How did it have nothing to do with it?
If it had nothing to do with it, she would not have gone to work at a bar selling alcohol. It was all because she found out that he was engaged!
She would not have been so stupid to fall into Gu Shishi’s trap and gotten humiliated! She would not have gotten married to a stranger accidentally the next day!
She would not have escaped from Yi Zeyang’s world completely!
Even though Anhao had definitely changed a lot, she had been smart and clever since she was young. She would never go to extremes, even though she was emotional right now she would not go overboard.
Yi Zeyang was rather worried that something would happen to her being so emotional, after all they were right beside the road. He could only speak calmly, “Anhao, let’s talk some place else. Before I went abroad five years ago, the thing you told me about…”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Mr Yi. This is near A High, please act more appropriately.” Anhao did not dare to think about the past. She interrupted him— afraid to look at his face. She turned around and walked toward A High.
No matter what Yi Zeyang had experienced for the past five years, and what the Yi family had explained to him about the mother and daughter leaving. No matter how much she liked this man in the past, from the night he got engaged a month ago, everything had changed.
Yi Zeyang did not chase after her. He stared at her going toward A high and not running elsewhere.
Just like when they were young, when she was being immature and fooling around, he would sternly lecture her. He would let her walk alone, give her some peace and quiet so she had time to reflect and think things through.
What Yi Zeyang did not know was, his Anhao no longer had the freedom to think nor choose.
***
The weather in November was incredibly chilly when it rained. Chunchun and Huang Amao were in their room and had called Anhao several times but no one answered.
The sky had turned dark. She was gone for the whole afternoon and had yet returned.
Just as they were about to go out to find her, the door swung open and they saw Anhao, who was soaked by the rain, entering the room like a ghost.
Anhao was drenched from head to toe— it was obvious that she had been in the rain for a long time. Her face that was palm-sized was pale-white from the cold. She did not even care about the water dripping of her body as she dived into her bed.
Huang Amao and Chunchun ran toward her and dragged her up. They knew that she was feeling under the weather for the past few days, clearly something was wrong. The two did not say anything as they quickly took off her clothes. Finally, they brought in two towels and wrapped them around her body, and pulled her up so that she was seated on the edge of the bed.
Anhao was speechless when it came to Chunchun and Huang Amao’s relentless questioning. She closed her eyes—her pale face expressionless as she merely lay on bed. With towels wrapped around her, she pulled up her blankets and curled under it as she shivered.
“Let’s leave it. Don’t ask her anything.” Huang Amao realized that she was not going to talk as she sat beside her bed. “We’ve known her for more than three years now. This gal has always been laughing at us, when was she ever like this?”
“When Mr Yi called Anhao’s name today, I knew that something was wrong so I searched up about Yi Zeyang online just now. After reading about him online, I recalled that before Anhao returned to the Gu family, her mom married someone else. That person’s surname was Yi. Anhao mentioned it before, don’t you remember?”
Chunchun listened closely and her memory was jogged. “Are you kidding me…”
***
Anhao’s surname was not Gu. Her mom’s name was Anping so initially her surname came from her mother.
Her mother, Anping, used to be an intern working in the business administration department under F government. After she graduated from university, she met Gu Tianming who used to be the mayor in another city. She was attracted to Gu Tianming—because she had little social experience and was na?ve, she did not expect Gu Tianming to be a married man. She went ahead bravely for love and was together with him for two years.
After Anping found out Gu Tianming had a wife and kids, she rejected all the hundreds of thousands worth of cheque that was given to her by Gu Tianming to silence her and quickly cut ties with him.
However, a month after they broke up, Anping realized that she was pregnant. The child in her womb had taken on a shape. It was a healthy baby and she could not bring herself to abort it.
Anping was charming and she had a great personality. Not long after, she caught the attention of the president of Yishi Group, Yiwei, during an occasional business collaboration. At that time, she was already five months pregnant. There was no way she could hide it. Yiwei eventually found out about her secret but accepted her pregnancy because of his crazed feelings for her that kept growing. He promised that he would help her take care of the child, so he allowed her to give birth to the child.
The president of Yishi Group, Yiwei, had a seven or eight-year-old son at that time. His wife passed away due to an illness. Yiwei’s son, Yi Zeyang, was well-behaved. Anping loved the warm atmosphere in the Yi family and was slowly influenced by Yiwei. Just like that, she married into the Yi family with Anhao in her belly…
Everything was happy and peaceful just as Anping imagined. After Anhao was born, the Yi family took great care of her. When Anhao started to learn how to walk and talk at the age of one, she did not really like to follow her mother or Uncle Yi around, instead she kept pestering the eight-year-old Yi Zeyang. Even her first word was not “mother”, but “brother”.
Yi Zeyang was a child who performed outstandingly in his academics since he was young. His appearance was especially striking, and he was a humble, warm and polite person. He also loved his sister, Anhao, very much. Anhao who had been following Yi Zeyang for years was a princess in the household—a precious child to Yi Zeyang. Anhao was very obedient when she was a child, and under Yi Zeyang’s influence, her academic results were great too. Yi Zeyang also often tutored her.
The year Anhao turned fourteen, Yi Zeyang was twenty-two. The Yi family’s business needed an heir, so he had to go abroad to study about finance and business management. That was a once-in-a-lifetime separation that they had to face.
At that time, Anhao innocently said that if she were to get first place all year it would be the best gift for Brother Zeyang before he went abroad.
And she did. It was her first year in junior high school.