Chi Hanshan was silent.
Chi Yao: “I’ll stay to take care of her. Anyway, I’ve already studied most of the high school senior year content in advance, so it won’t affect my college entrance exam preparation. Once the house matter is settled, after a while, I’ll go handle the school transfer procedures.”
Chi Hanshan was speechless for a long time.
Before Chi Yao suddenly came, he and Bai Qin had been struggling in this predicament for a long time.
What broke Bai Qin wasn’t the illness.
It was the sudden near-collapse of the business she had painstakingly built for many years; she couldn’t accept it all at once.
“Hanshan, do you remember,” one night, Bai Qin sat blankly in the living room, looking at the balcony, and said, “when we first started the factory, you had a friend surnamed Liu. We all called him Boss Liu, but later his business failed, and he jumped from the building. I couldn’t understand it before, but now, if jumping from here would help right now, I really wouldn’t hesitate for a moment…”
They had devoted themselves wholeheartedly to this work.
They even cared more about the employees under them than about their son far away in Lianyun City.
They weren’t qualified parents.
But they really couldn’t manage both; the work at hand, the many workers under them, and too many things beyond their control kept pushing the distance between them further and further.
From the first time Chi Yao got sick and they couldn’t go back, all the subsequent absences. Absent from parent-teacher meetings, absent on birthdays.
Even returning for the New Year became increasingly rare.
In a blink, more than ten years had passed, and that sickly little boy who often fell ill had grown up in places they hadn’t noticed.
Chi Yao’s attitude appeared more resolute than his.
Although he didn’t say it directly, he expressed one message: no matter what happened, he would face it with them.
This realization kept him dazed for a long time.
When he finally came to his senses, Chi Hanshan’s eyes were warm with tears.
He had been caring for Bai Qin alone, while also dealing with financial issues, gritting his teeth to hang on. He actually didn’t know when he would also collapse like Bai Qin. That day, he wanted to tell Chi Yao about the family situation, but immediately took it back in the next second.
But at this very moment, he was invisibly pulled up by the son he had neglected for many years.
“However, give me a little time,” Chi Yao finally said, “I need to… wait until after June to leave.”
“Because in June, there’s a day that’s very important to me.”
…
Thinking of this, Chi Yao lowered his eyes to look at the girl in front of him.
Lin Zhexia was wearing her school uniform and carrying a backpack. She seemed a bit nervous, afraid that he had encountered something bad during this trip, her words carrying caution and testing.
Chi Yao took off his mask: “Hey, Miss Lin.”
Lin Zhexia responded as if her name had been called in class: “Present.”
“June twelfth, keep your birthday free for me,” he said, moving closer to her, raising one hand and gently pressing his palm on top of her head, “I’ll take you somewhere.”