Volume One, Chapter 22: Coughs, Poverty, and Affections

The book says there are three things a person cannot hide: coughing, poverty, and love.

The girl wanted to hide her affection, her obsession, and her adoration for him, but the slightest disturbance was enough to shatter her defenses. In the end, she had nowhere left to hide.

Shu Wan did not know when Meng Huaijin had first noticed. Perhaps it was while she was singing earlier. Perhaps it was in any of the countless small details during the mornings and evenings he had spent picking her up and dropping her off over the past twenty days. In any case, he held her in the palm of his hand, as easily as one might crush an ant. He had sent Meng Chuan away and deliberately put his phone call on speaker just to wait for her here.

"The person I like is you. The person I love is you." Having said it once, Shu Wan was no longer afraid to say it a second time.

Meng Huaijin’s expression was strange and indifferent; his eyes were calm, clear, and quiet. "And so?"

And so... Shu Wan was stunned by the question. That was right—what was supposed to happen after liking someone? She had never thought that far ahead.

"And so, you cannot go see Jiang Jie tonight." Since she had been discovered, she decided to abandon all caution.

Meng Huaijin let out a laugh—a laugh that was profoundly contemptuous and unpleasant.

"By what right do you presume to control me?" the man asked coldly.

Tears welled in the girl's eyes. She opened her mouth, but could find no answer. Before a man as experienced and sophisticated as Director Meng, her schemes had nowhere to hide.

The man continued, his voice devoid of emotion and deeply sunken: "There are plenty of people who like me. If everyone were like you, interfering with my whereabouts for no reason, forbidding me from seeing this person or that person, then what would I, Meng Huaijin, become?"

Shu Wan saw the ruthless side of him, a version completely different from the uncle who had once been sharp-tongued but kind-hearted toward her. This sense of loss made the tears stream down her face.

"Are you going to see her to sleep with her?" she asked, her voice trembling, refusing to concede. "I... I can do that too. Instead of her, why not me? I am younger than her."

A flash of thunderous rage finally appeared in Meng Huaijin’s eyes. "Shu Wan, take that back. I will pretend you never said it."

With that, he brushed past her and headed toward the door.

"I can't take it back!" Shu Wan turned to face him, her voice rising in pitch. "From taking cold showers during the New Year and getting a fever, to the internet cafe, to smoking and drinking on the rooftop—these were all things I did because I was so devastated to learn you were getting engaged. If I could take it back, I wouldn’t have waited until now."

"I am just crazy about you. I love you so much I can’t pull myself away."

The man turned around, his gaze like a blade scraping across her face, as if he could slice her to ribbons and scatter her ashes. "What did you call me?"

Shu Wan shook her head and backed away.

"Shu Wan, what did you call me?"

Meng Huaijin pressed forward step by step, his tall, imposing shadow looming like a storm cloud descending from the heavens, accompanied by thunder and rain, capable of annihilating everything in its path.

"Say it. Who am I to you?"

The girl covered her ears, tears flowing, and cried out, "Uncle!"

The air remained silent for a few seconds. The man’s voice was as cold as a dried-up well: "Only if you acknowledge me as your uncle will I have any dealings with you. How I treated you before is how I will treat you in the future. If you refuse to acknowledge me as your uncle and want to talk to me about some damn romance, wanting to be my woman, then Shu Wan, you don't even make the list."

The girl had been backed against the wall; words could not express her current despair and agony. "You are being so cruel, so cruel..." She sobbed, her shoulders heaving. "If I don't make the list, then who does? Do you really like Jiang Jie? If you really liked her, why don't you look happy at all, even though you’re getting engaged?"

The man narrowed his eyes, stunned that she could be this stubborn, unable to listen to reason, determined to crash into that wall.

Meng Huaijin looked at the girl's tear-stained face and warned her, word by word: "The same goes for you, Shu Wan. Acknowledge me as your uncle, and we will interact exactly as we did before. If you go astray or make a mistake, I will guide and educate you with care. If you do not acknowledge me as your uncle, then we have nothing more to say."

"So, tell me when you've decided: do you want me to be your uncle, or a stranger?"

Meng Huaijin slammed the door as he left. The "bang" was so loud and forceful that if the door had been of even slightly inferior quality, it would have shattered into pieces. Having lived alongside him for a year, she had never seen him this angry.

Shu Wan slid down the wall and buried her head in her arms, feeling like a speck of dust abandoned in a corner—small and helpless.

When Zhao Heng opened the door to the private room and saw this scene, he was startled. He first glanced at the table; only a few bottles from the two cases of beer had been opened, presumably by the captain and the others, while she apparently hadn't drunk any.

"Shu Wan?" Zhao Heng crouched down and gently touched her arm.

The girl did not respond.

He touched her again, and only then did the girl slowly lift her head, revealing eyes swollen like walnuts.

"Did my uncle send you to pick me up?" she asked in a low voice. "Where is he?"

Zhao Heng, well-trained, naturally could not disclose his superior's whereabouts. He shook his head and sighed, "Let's go. I'll take you home first."

Shu Wan’s legs were numb, and it took her a long time to stand up with the help of the wall. She packed the unopened alcohol into her backpack and limped out of the room, following the guard.

***

Meng Chuan had not expected that just as he arrived at the hospital with Zhou Zhenglin, he would receive a call from his brother asking him to find a place to have another drink.

And so, the two changed locations. They drank quite a bit and talked even more.

"So, brother, did you find out who that jerk is?" he asked out of curiosity.

Meng Huaijin gave him a cold, sidelong glance and did not answer.

"I feel like a pig has dug up a prize cabbage, and that's not even mentioning you. The amount of care you’ve poured into Shu Wan this year—I’m afraid it’s more exhausting than raising your own daughter."

He received another icy glare, leaving Meng Chuan baffled. "No, seriously, do you intend to let her date that person or not?"

"I do not," the man stated cleanly and decisively.

"That makes sense. She doesn't understand anything right now; it's easy for her to be deceived. If Sister Meng Xian were still alive... with her temper, she wouldn't have allowed it either."

"Sigh... speaking of my sister, I still remember how the two of us used to circle around her in the compound. Especially you—you were scolded by her plenty, but she loved you the most. In the blink of an eye... she’s gone. Life is just so damn unpredictable," Meng Chuan lamented.

Meng Xian was exactly eighteen years Meng Huaijin's senior. When she was eight, her biological parents were both killed in a case, and she was taken in by Meng Zhenting, a comrade of her parents. To protect her from vendettas, he renamed her Meng Xian.

When Meng Huaijin was born, Meng Xian was already an adult. By the time he entered kindergarten, his eldest sister was already an outstanding model soldier in the military. In those years, Meng Zhenting and his wife were too busy with work to look after Meng Huaijin, and it was this eldest sister who took full responsibility for his studies and daily life until he was ten.

At that age, when even dogs would find him annoying, Meng Xian treated Meng Huaijin like her own brother, and he naturally respected her as such.

When Meng Xian met the man she wanted to spend her life with at twenty-eight, decided to marry him in Nancheng, and planned to cut ties with the Meng family completely, ten-year-old Meng Huaijin had stolen his father’s service pistol, determined to shoot the man who was "stealing" his sister away