Chapter 140 - It’s Love, Actually (2)
Chapter 140: It’s Love, Actually (2)
“What do you mean by my opinion about her?!” Mu Tingfeng stiffened up. Although it was only for a moment, Su Ruixin keenly caught the sight.
Su Ruixin quirked her eyebrow. She stared at her son, who did not mean what he said, in mischief. “Of course I’m asking about your feelings for her.”
When Su Ruixin saw Mu Tingfeng open his mouth and was about to refute her, she tried to gain the upper hand by adding, “Tingfeng, don’t hide this from me. I’ve heard from Qing that you have been looking troubled lately, especially after your divorce from the woman. So, be honest to me, are you….”
Before Su Ruixin finished her words, Mu Tingfeng’s face darkened. He cussed Su Qing and his loud-mouthed chief secretary to himself.
Poor secretary Xia, it had taken him great pains to escape from his president’s clutches. Before he could even heave a sigh of relief, he was once again being accused out of nowhere, tragically. He kept sneezing while he was on his way back. He suddenly recalled that he must have caught a flu due to staying with his president in a chilly room for an extended period. Xia Zhetao was known for being tough and invincible. Now, he actually caught the flu. When he got back, he had to swallow a few capsules of cold medicine just in case.
“Mother, it’s better for you to stay out of this. She and I are…” Mu Tingfeng’s expression turned dark. He wanted to tell his mother the same as what he had told Su Qing that he and Zhao Youlin were over.
However, he could not say the words.
Meanwhile, Su Ruixin had been waiting for Mu Tingfeng’s following sentence. She asked anxiously, “What happened to you and her? Say it!”
A glimpse was caught in Mu Tingfeng’s eyes. He snorted, “Mother, I have my own way of doing things. So, don’t worry about it.”
“How could I just ignore it?!” Su Ruixin glared at Mu Tingfeng discontentedly. “You’ve been under my care ever since young for quite a long time. How could you behave just like your father when you grow up?! You keep everything to yourself and speak very little, especially about your feelings. You’re just like your father when he was young. He obviously has feelings for me, yet, he always put on a straight face. What he did was he often gave me various kinds of small gifts anonymously from the shadows. I thought he did not have any affection for me, and my heart sank. We nearly brushed past each other. How frustrating…”
Originally, she was complaining. But, when she recalled how Mu Tingfeng’s father had pursued her when they were young, she began to sound flirtatious and beguiling.
Mu Tingfeng glanced at a certain person who was smiling like an idiot, completely absorbed in her own memories. It was to the point where she found it hard to pull herself back to reality. So, Mu Tingfeng faked a cough just at the right time to summon back Su Ruixin’s sanity.
When Su Ruixin heard the sound of coughing, she shuddered. She remembered her original intention and immediately sat still. She resumed her usual graceful and noble appearance. When Mu Tingfeng saw this, he unwittingly shivered.
Su Ruixin fought to recover her image and said sternly, “Back to the point. You’re so much like your father. I’m worried that you might repeat your father’s mistakes. Even though your father and I didn’t miss each other, if not for your father’s cold appearance but passionate love for me, we could have been together a few years earlier. There’s no need to wait for so many years.”
Su Ruixin deliberately paused here to observe Mu Tingfeng’s expression, then she continued, “Moreover, not everyone in this world is as patient as me, who could wait for someone like your almost-mute father, to finally be enlightened. If your father hadn’t met me back then, maybe you wouldn’t have appeared in this world, right? So, you cannot hesitate over certain things. Otherwise, when you miss it, it’ll be too late to regret it by then.”
‘If Father hadn’t met you back then, it may have been a blessing for him instead,’ Mu Tingfeng thought to himself ruefully.
Being rueful was another thing. Su Ruixin’s certain words had hit Mu Tingfeng. For instance, she had mentioned that when one misses it, it would be too late to regret it. Was he… regretting it now?
Meanwhile, Su Ruixin had been watching Mu Tingfeng’s every motion. When she noticed slight changes on Mu Tingfeng’s face, she cheered to herself and strived harder, “Tingfeng, be frank to me, what’s your opinion about the woman? Four years ago, we know that you found her to be very annoying to the point that you hated her. Some of us don’t even have a good impression of her. But, most of us are practically overseas and hardly see each other. So, we don’t really know much about your affairs.”
Su Ruixin heaved a sigh and continued, “If it wasn’t for your grandpa’s concern about the woman who was already pregnant with your child and forced you to marry her, to be frank, we wouldn’t agree to have a trickster who had used force to gain your affection to be married into the Mu family. When we heard about your divorce, I heaved a sigh of relief. It would be good if you could start all over again. Just not long after, I heard from Qing that you and the woman…”
Su Ruixin abruptly held Mu Tingfeng’s hand and said, “Tingfeng, be honest to me, do you still care about the incident that happened four years ago? You’re reluctant to spare the woman so easily, so you…”
Mu Tingfeng was truly amazed by his mother’s wild imagination.
However, when Su Ruixin mentioned this, Mu Tingfeng recalled that he used to share the same thought before his divorce from Zhao Youlin.
It was just that after their divorce, the thought slowly dissipated following his concern for Zhao Youlin.
After speaking for a long time and not receiving any response from Mu Tingfeng, the smile on Su Ruixin’s face started to wear off. She frowned as she said, “If that’s the case, Tingfeng, I hope you don’t joke about such things. It could easily hurt yourself as well as others. If you couldn’t afford to stomach the insult, with the Mu family’s current status in Shalnork, there must be other ways to vent out your anger.”
‘Vent out my anger? Was my concern for Zhao Youlin purely for the sake of venting out my anger? No… It’s not like that.’
Mu Tingfeng instinctively refuted Su Ruixin, “Mother, it’s not what you think.”
“Then, what is it?” Su Ruixin was overjoyed when she saw Mu Tingfeng finally react to her, “Could you have… fallen for her for real?”
‘Fallen for her?!’ The words exploded in Mu Tingfeng’s mind like firecrackers, illuminating the deepest corners of his brain which had caused his heart to flutter that he was unaware of previously.
‘Who was the one who just told me last night that you were divorced and that it was impossible between you two now? But do you know what you looked like just now? You looked like a husband who was worried about being misunderstood by his wife! And before the divorce, you never treated her as your wife! Do you know what that means?’
Those words that Su Qing had yelled at him in the hospital kept echoing in his ears, troubling him for quite some time. But, at that moment, he got an answer.
What did it mean? It meant that, when one started to care about one’s every movement, every smile, every emotion, and even every reaction, such feelings were actually referring to affection.