Chapter 33: Seeking Shelter

Rong Xiu’s slender fingers suddenly stopped, his pale skin almost sinking into the table surface like dark water. His cold eyes were unfathomable: “Help me investigate Wen Lan Sheng’s hometown.”

Chen Yu Ze nodded.

On the other end, Fan Xia spent the whole night comforting Wen Lan Sheng, who had cried himself into a mess.

She spoke gently, with infinite patience: “Alright, Lan Sheng, stop crying. We have to try on wedding clothes tomorrow. If you keep crying so hard, your eyes will be swollen like walnuts tomorrow, and you won’t look good when trying on the wedding clothes.”

Wen Lan Sheng wiped his tears, with a teardrop still hanging on his eyelashes, looking pitiful: “Do you think I’m ugly?”

Fan Xia laughed: “How could I think you’re ugly? You’re so handsome.”

Comforted by Fan Xia, Wen Lan Sheng laughed through his tears, choking back half his sobs: “Then who do you think is more handsome, me or senior Rong Xiu?”

Faced with this loaded question, Fan Xia said seriously: “Of course my fiancé is the most handsome.”

Wen Lan Sheng’s tearful eyes sparkled with laughter as he lay in her arms coquettishly: “Then Xia Xia, help me apply a compress. I don’t want to look ugly when trying on wedding clothes tomorrow.”

“Alright, I’ll go boil some water.” Fan Xia got off the bed and went to the kitchen. She filled the kettle with water, and it soon began to make heating noises. A few minutes later, the water boiled.

Fan Xia dipped a towel in the hot water, wrung out the excess, and returned to the bedroom.

Wen Lan Sheng was lying on the bed waiting for her. Seeing her enter, he obediently rested his head on her lap.

The hot towel was gently placed on his eyelids. Wen Lan Sheng let out a comfortable hum: “Xia Xia, my manager just sent me a message asking when I’m going back to work.”

“How did you reply?”

Wen Lan Sheng snuggled closer to her: “I don’t know… I don’t really want to go back.”

Ever since he took leave to care for Wen Ming Yue after her fall, he hadn’t returned to work. Working was essentially selling precious time in exchange for pitifully little money. Wen Lan Sheng’s dream was never to be an excellent career man; he was very traditional and just hoped to be a qualified husband and father.

Even though Xie Cen had previously mentioned it to him, he was still apprehensive about bringing it up himself. He wanted to peek at Fan Xia’s expression, but his eyes were covered with the hot towel.

“If you don’t want to go back, then don’t. Quit your job. It’s hard work anyway, and we’re about to get married. After the wedding, you can focus on being a house husband.” Fan Xia’s voice was as gentle as soft clouds.

Wen Lan Sheng happily tilted his head up for a kiss: “So I’ll go resign tomorrow?”

“Go ahead.” Fan Xia held the hot towel that was about to slip off, her intoxicatingly gentle eyes filled with imperceptible coldness.

The next day, Wen Lan Sheng and Fan Xia went to the company together, one to work, the other to resign.

After completing the resignation procedures, Wen Lan Sheng distributed wedding candies he had prepared to his office colleagues. Although they all knew Wen Lan Sheng was the fiancé of Director Fan’s assistant, they were still surprised by how quickly the wedding was taking place.

Some offered congratulations, some were jealous, and some were sarcastic.

“Look at how smug he is!” Xiao Jin accepted the wedding candy, congratulating him on the surface but rolling his eyes at Wen Lan Sheng behind his back.

“Indeed, I really don’t know what Director Fan’s assistant sees in him. His looks are barely passable,” another colleague stared at the candy in hand, almost mad with jealousy.

“Can’t be helped, they’re childhood sweethearts after all.” Xiao Jin’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“So, Xiao-ge, will you attend his wedding?”

“Pay 600 yuan to see his smug face? Am I crazy?” Xiao Jin tossed the wedding candy aside and started working.

“True, Wen Lan Sheng has resigned, we might never see him again in this lifetime. Director Fan’s assistant is still in the company, but she’s by the CEO’s side, much higher status than us little clerks. They wouldn’t even look at small fry like us. Forget it, I’d rather keep that 600 yuan gift money for hotpot.”

After getting his resignation certificate, Wen Lan Sheng was in high spirits, eagerly anticipating the wedding and the sweet life of a full-time house husband.

He walked out of the Shanhai Group building and posted his latest update on the forum.

Since his last post complaining about Rong Xiu, the views had been astonishing. Every day, different people in the comments creatively cursed Rong Xiu’s entire family, and some even wanted to expose Rong Xiu’s true identity, going offline to his company to protest with banners.

Fortunately, Wen Lan Sheng had deliberately omitted Rong Xiu’s core identifying features, preventing these netizens from tracking down Rong Xiu.

However, this wasn’t because Wen Lan Sheng was showing mercy. He never went easy when dealing with love rivals.

In high school, many boys in the budding stages of love had secret crushes on Fan Xia, who excelled in grades, looks, and personality. Their class’s study representative even secretly wrote a love letter and slipped it into Fan Xia’s desk drawer. Fan Xia didn’t discover it, but Wen Lan Sheng did.

That night, after the evening self-study session when all the classmates had left, he placed this love letter on the homeroom teacher’s desk. Later, the study representative transferred schools.

Wen Lan Sheng could tolerate any person or thing oppressing him, but Fan Xia was his bottom line. He wouldn’t allow anyone to try to snatch Fan Xia away from him.

The reason he didn’t take action against Rong Xiu was only because he considered that if exposed, Fan Xia’s job would also be at risk. That’s why he held back.

He updated the post with the news of his upcoming wedding, immediately receiving a flood of congratulations.

“Wuhu, lovers finally become a married couple.”

“Haha, that trashy little green tea must be crying in a corner.”

“The one above is wrong, it’s not little green tea, it’s old green tea. He’s even older than the OP’s fiancée.”

“Speechless, still being cheap at that age.”

“Am I the only one who wants to know if the fiancée is still in contact with the old green tea?”

“Replying to the above, women are very clear-headed. OP’s fiancée was obviously just playing with the old green tea. When it comes to marriage, she still chooses OP.”

“I agree!”

Wen Lan Sheng laughed as he finished reading the netizens’ comments, feeling content.

Now, he was no longer as petty as he was in his second year of high school, immediately entering battle mode to drive away any man who shamelessly tried to get close to Fan Xia.

For him, as long as Fan Xia’s heart was still with him and she was willing to make him the primary husband, he had nothing to fear.

Let those flowers and butterflies outside flock to her if they want. After all, their Xia Xia wasn’t losing out. Those stupid and foolish men were proud of themselves for being used by a woman, thinking they had gained true love.

Huh—if Xia Xia truly loved him, she wouldn’t have made him hide in the closet so pathetically back then.

Wen Lan Sheng raised his head proudly, like a rooster victorious in battle, ready to wait for Fan Xia to finish work so they could go try on wedding clothes together.

Until a phone call came.

“Lan Sheng, your mom and I have put the house up for sale, urgent sale. The house that could originally sell for over two million now can only sell for 1.1 million. Your mom and I have nowhere to live now, the neighbors are all laughing at us. Are you satisfied now?” Xie Cen’s voice trembled.

For the sake of their precious daughter, after a night of deliberation, they still decided to bring out the house deed.

Wen Lan Sheng’s good mood instantly vanished: “Mom, Dad, don’t say that. It sounds like I forced you into this situation. If it wasn’t for Wen Jing hitting someone, would you need to sell the house to clean up after her?”

“It’s all because of you! If you were willing to pay, how could your mom and I end up on the streets? What do you want us to do? Do you really want to see your father and mother begging on the streets?” Xie Cen’s voice shook with anger.

Beside him, Wen Ming Yue remained silent, surrounded by their luggage. Unlike ordinary residential areas, their work unit housing was surrounded by colleagues and neighbors they had lived with for half their lives. Wen Ming Yue cared about face; just a while ago, she was boasting to others about moving into her daughter-in-law’s apartment with an elevator. Now she had to slink back to sell the house.

The neighbors also knew about Wen Jing being expelled from school and taken to the police station for hitting someone. She felt utterly humiliated and couldn’t raise her head.

Wen Lan Sheng sighed: “Then you can stay with us temporarily.”

“At least you still have some conscience.” Xie Cen hung up the phone and turned to the silent Wen Ming Yue: “Let’s go to Lan Sheng’s place.”

Wen Ming Yue said coldly: “We were kicked out before, and now you want me to go back? I can’t lose face like this.”

Xie Cen tried to persuade her: “Even if we lose face, what choice do we have? Where else can we go? We’ve sold the house we lived in for a lifetime at half price. One million goes to pay Jing Jing’s debt, the rest isn’t even enough for our expenses. You still have a year until retirement. If we rent a place outside, it would cost two thousand a month. We might as well starve to death.”

Because it was a distressed sale of the property, the realtor quickly found a buyer. Both parties agreed, and since the buyer was paying in full, the process moved very quickly. The money would be in the account within five days.

Wen Ming Yue’s hand was in her coat pocket, tightly gripping a bank card. This card still had 100,000 yuan, which she had earned earlier from insider information provided by Fan Xia. In just over a week, she had earned 100,000 yuan, much easier than her hard work at the job earning 6,000 a month. It was both more lucrative and faster.

If she could get such insider information again, she would definitely earn it back a hundred or thousand times over. Then she wouldn’t have to look at Fan Xia’s face or be looked down upon by the neighbors.

“Alright, let’s go back then.” Wen Ming Yue started walking.

“Jing Jing’s mom, we can’t be like before now. After all, we’ve lost our house, we’ve lost our leverage. If Fan Xia gets upset again and kicks us out, that white-eyed wolf Wen Lan Sheng won’t speak up for us. Then we’ll really have nowhere to go.” Xie Cen dragged a cloth bag full of clothes, wiping his old tears: “At my age, this is the first time I’ve been kicked out. It’s so humiliating.”

Wen Ming Yue sighed with her head down, feeling even more ashamed. For so many years, she had worked smoothly as an accountant in the factory, who would have thought that in her old age, she would be kicked out by her daughter-in-law, and now had to swallow her pride to beg for shelter.

Wen Ming Yue gripped the last 100,000 yuan that belonged to her, staring at the ground with resentment. She must redeem herself!