Together Forever

Chapter 19.1

During That Season of Time

Gu Pingsheng went into the bathroom, held a towel once again under warm water, and then wrung it out, giving it to her to wipe her face. Throughout the entire time as she spoke, he watched her quietly, and after she had finished saying everything, he finally lay back onto the bed and patted his arm.

Tong Yan understood and lay down as well, nestling herself into the crook of his arm.

"These are things that need to be resolved. It is just a matter of sooner or later." He closed his eyes to rest and in a gentle tone, stated, "Since this is 'a son repaying his father's debts,' then our elderly grandmother's money should not be used. This weekend, I will give three hundred thousand to your father."

Tong Yan put her hands on the bed, wanting to push herself up to sitting, but he reached up with his arm and pulled her back down so she was pressed against his front. "You don't need to fight me for this. Everything of mine is yours."

His chin rested on top of her head, and it would rub against her hair as he spoke. "Today, I learned a saying from my assistant. 'Gold and jade adorn the exterior, rot and decay fill the interior.[1]' That's actually my situation. From the outside, I look to be pretty good, but when you truly live with me, you will become aware of all my real shortcomings. Just now, when I pushed open the door to come in and saw you crying, my heart ached so much."

He paused for several seconds, then repeated, "My heart truly did ache."

These words of his not only twisted the meaning of the idiom, the way he said them also so very saddened the listener.

She understood that he was not only speaking about what he had felt emotionally but also physically as well. Enclosing her arms around his waist, she wrote with her finger on his back through the thin fabric, "Sorry."

She contemplated quietly for two days. As Gu Pingsheng had said, this situation was a reality, and it was simply a matter of whether it would be resolved sooner or later. A sickness of the body could be treated, but a burden eating away at the heart was difficult to cure. If Grandmother was going to fill her mind with worries all day about this, it would actually affect her body and health anyway.

In the end, she accepted Gu Pingsheng's suggestion to pay back the money for her father.

"If you give the money directly to my dad, I'm worried he'll just take it and throw it into the stock market ..." Tong Yan's gaze was somewhat evasive. These words that brought her such shame were ones she had never thought she would one day say aloud. "How about I personally go repay the money to them and get the IOU slip back?"

"Alright. I have a very important meeting on Saturday morning. When it's done, I'll come home to pick you up and go with you there," Gu Pingsheng told her unhurriedly.

"How about I go myself?" She did not want him to also have to face the harsh, derisive words of people.

His answer, of course, was no.

Fortunately, the situation turned out to be much better than she had imagined. After all, regardless of how great the disputes in the past had been, someone was still personally bringing over three hundred thousand to make up a debt that had nearly become a sore on the heart. That former colleague of her father even very ruefully told Tong Yan, "Your dad was quite a good guy before, but once he got involved in the stock market, he changed."

Tong Yan smiled wordlessly, not wishing to speak a single word more than necessary.

In the main lobby of the bank, many people were lined up waiting for their number to be called. There, the of them sat in a row, maintaining an awkward silence between them. Electronic announcements that politely and mechanically called out numbers were constantly sounding out. There were people standing up from their spot in the waiting area while there were also others who could wait no longer, and crumpling in their hand the paper with their number and tossing it into the trash can, they would get up and leave.