Chapter 65

Chapter 65

Yang Ming Li Wan (2)

Wow.

This was the only thought that ran through Yu Manyi’s mind when she saw Song Qi’s aunt.

When a person sees something that truly exceeds their understanding, the first reaction in the brain isn’t judgment or an attempt to comprehend; it’s just:

Wow.

The clothes she wore weren’t particularly unique: a relatively common ingot-collar, three-row button dark blue qipao, draped with a common yellow fox fur shawl. The most expensive thing on her was a sapphire ring. It was clear that she hadn’t put much effort into her attire; she didn’t feel the need for others to find her beautiful.

But the two young men beside her obviously needed her to think they were handsome. Therefore, they were both dressed very carefully and exquisitely. This kind of meticulousness was different from Song Qi’s—it had a much stronger sense of trying to please.

When the two of them came closer, Yu Manyi couldn’t help but "wow" again in her heart. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed one of them had bells around his ankle, attached to silver rings…

This image was a bit beyond her expectations, and just then, Song Qi also stood up. Yu Manyi took the opportunity to step in his direction. She heard Song Qi, in a voice that seemed nonchalant and unbothered, say, “Didn’t I say I was coming today?”

“You’re here, so what? Am I supposed to delay my heart-to-heart session for you?”

...Heart-to-heart session.

After Song Qi’s aunt finished speaking, she turned around, taking one of the men by each hand, and warmly addressed the one on her left: "Sweetheart, you go ahead and wait. Sister has some personal things to handle."

Then, she spoke to the one on the right: "And you’re a sweetheart too. What are you to Sister?"

Yu Manyi: …“Little cat~”

Song Qi: ………………

Every time he came, his aunt got more outrageous than the last!

He had long been used to it, but for Yu Manyi, this scene was quite shocking. Song Qi, momentarily concerned that she might not be able to handle it, began to worry about what she might think of him as well.

However, when he turned his head, the formerly feudal second miss was just watching the interaction between his aunt and the two men with shock, but also curiosity, as if she had opened a brand-new door...

“Ahem,” he said.

On his aunt's side, the social interaction was far from over. These two handsome men seemed to have been waiting in line for quite some time to reach this day, but Song Qi’s arrival interrupted it, forcing them to extend their parting moment as much as possible. His aunt let out a long sigh, blowing a kiss and soothing them, “Don’t be jealous of others, you’re all my... little, kittens!”

“Yu Manyi,” on this side, Song Qi twisted Yu Manyi’s dazed head around, “What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking about you,” Yu Manyi replied honestly.

Song Qi didn’t understand.

“I was thinking that you grew up with people like this,” she said. “All your past behavior suddenly makes perfect sense. I won’t argue with you anymore…”

Her expression suddenly shifted to one of pity: “I think you must have made a lot of effort behind the scenes to grow up like a normal person.”

Song Qi: …Fifteen minutes later, Song Qi’s aunt, the normal person, finally ended her social activities and moved with Song Qi and Yu Manyi to the living room of the villa.

The living room was also luxuriously grand, with furniture that seemed like it could have all been airlifted antiques. This clearly showed the aunt’s strong material desires. In contrast, Song Qi seemed to live a much simpler life, more akin to a monastic one. It appeared that his behavior was more influenced by his grandfather, with the aunt only leaving some spiritual remnants.

Yu Manyi thought that Song Qi was fortunate to have inherited more from his grandfather, but his aunt clearly did not think so. From the way she spoke, it was obvious that she found Song Qi terribly boring and dry. He was more fun when he was younger, but after he grew up and studied engineering, his brain had practically learned to be as dry as a watt!

“He talks just like someone clicking an abacus,” she said to Yu Manyi, describing it vividly and with a string of witty remarks. “Click! There. Click! Again. Click once, click again, so stiff, no surprise at all.”

Did Song Qi's speech have no surprises? Yu Manyi didn’t know what kind of surprises his aunt was expecting. Maybe bells on his ankles would suffice...

Apparently, Song Qi thought the same. He said, “The kind of surprise you want, regular people can’t give you.”

“Nonsense, isn’t it?” she replied, “What I want isn’t a surprise. I want emotional value. If you can’t give me emotional value, that just means the person isn’t trying hard enough.”

Such trendy vocabulary, Yu Manyi had just learned. If all her previous progress came from the admiration and imitation of the women she had seen, today’s meeting with Song Qi’s aunt was truly an intense intellectual collision.

Yu Manyi weighed things carefully and decided that for now, it was safer to still consider Jiang Yu as her model. Song Qi’s aunt, oh, this lady named Song Huazhang, would be much more dangerous to imitate. One misstep, and she could easily go down the wrong path.

What surprised her was that the aunt actually knew Jiang Yu.

“Principal Jiang, famous everywhere,” she said, leaning back on the sofa and slowly sipping her coffee. “I’ve always wanted to meet her. She’s your teacher, huh?”

Song Qi immediately warned, “What do you want to meet her teacher for? She still has to work at the Commercial Press. Don’t cause any trouble.”

“You’re not being polite when talking to elders.”

The aunt placed her cup back on the tea table, ignored Song Qi, and continued kindly to Yu Manyi, “But she doesn’t teach classes at the press, does she? Your student-teacher relationship, was it at that correspondence school?”“She teaches every two weeks, it counts as a lecture,” Yu Manyi explained to her aunt. “I also go to that correspondence school on weekends. Sometimes she shows me her paintings privately and gives me some guidance.”

“With so many students, how does she specifically guide you?” Her aunt became curious.

Jiang Yu had actually told Yu Manyi once that she seemed naive and reckless, much like how she was when she first came to Shanghai. Though she didn’t have the talent that You Hong did, her brushstrokes had a stubbornness, and that stubbornness was far more important than talent.

It seems that her recommendation to go to the Commercial Press and the permission to enter the Eastern Library were both given by Jiang Yu. Although Jiang Yu hadn’t done much for Yu Manyi, every little bit she did was crucial.

“So it’s just because you two get along well?” her aunt summarized. “Well, that really shows her character. Makes me want to get to know her better.”

After finishing her words, she had someone bring over a hard-shell envelope from the study and wrote an invitation letter on it. Yu Manyi glanced over and noticed that her handwriting was almost identical to Song Qi’s—delicate and flowing.

“Well then, Miss Yu,” her aunt said, closing the pen and smiling as she slid the invitation across the tea table to Yu Manyi. “Please help me pass this on to Principal Jiang and see if she’d be willing to visit me here.”

It was suddenly so reasonable. Yu Manyi nodded, took the invitation from the table, and looked down at it. The thick, fine paper felt like a well-crafted ticket.

With this mysterious ticket in hand, the conversation in the living room returned to a more casual tone. Her aunt asked about Yu Manyi’s age and immediately began lamenting the passage of time, recalling how she had been heavily burdened by Song Qi in her youth, to the point that she never married or had children, only hoping to make up for the lost time when she had been forced to raise a child.

“What have you given me?” Song Qi, not wanting to continue the conversation between the two women, couldn’t help but defend himself at this moment. “If you like talking about romance, what does it have to do with me?”

“Even though I did nothing,” his aunt replied, “I am like a mother to you. The psychological burden I carry is heavy!”

His aunt patted her chest as she spoke, causing Yu Manyi to lower her head, trying to suppress her laughter. She had always found Song Qi amusing, but Song Huazhang was a hundred times more entertaining than him.

“Anyway, no one can control you now,” Song Qi said, completely helpless toward his aunt. “Grandfather passed away, your brother’s in prison…”

“What do you mean ‘my brother’? That’s your father.”“You won’t even recognize him as your brother, yet you want me to call him my father?”

“I can only refer to him as the widower of my late sister-in-law.”

“Then he is the widower of my late mother.”

……

“Can you stop laughing?”

On the way back in the rickshaw, Yu Manyi had been laughing at the invitation letter for three whole streets. The conversation between the aunt and nephew had such a strong aftertaste that it felt like she had just watched a spectacular comedy play, with those phrases constantly replaying in her mind.

Song Qi said she had a good character—this wasn’t good character at all, this was just hilarious!

But...

“If she really doesn’t get married or have children,” Yu Manyi sat up straight in the rickshaw and asked Song Qi, “Isn’t that a problem?”

“Does she look like she has a problem?”

“I don’t know,” Yu Manyi shook her head. “It’s just that, since I was little, the people around me have always treated marriage and having children as the most important things. If a woman can’t get married, the whole family will be looked down upon, and Aunt You is…”

Yu Manyi paused for a moment, unwilling to pass on the sudden sadness she felt to Song Qi. She then changed the subject:

“In any case, I thought that once a woman reaches a certain age, she should get married and have children. It may be delayed, but there will still come a day for it. Where I’m from, unmarried women are called old maids who nobody wants, and everyone feels free to belittle and pity you. But your aunt…”

Indeed, who in their right mind would belittle Song Huazhang or pity her?Anyone with a discerning eye could tell that Song Huazhang was living too happily—so happily that it shook the iron stamp of Yu Manyi's belief that “a woman who doesn’t marry will face a lonely old age.”

However, this stamp only wavered for a second before being branded back in place.

Yu Manyi sat in the rickshaw, quietly thinking:

Song Huazhang had a good background, good education, lived in such a beautiful house, and earned so much money—she could refuse marriage and children because she had these assets. Did I, Yu Manyi, have that?

This question was so complicated, really so complicated. It wasn’t something someone with a monthly salary of just fifteen yuan like Yu Manyi should be thinking about. The silence on the way there was due to her temper, but the silence on the way back was for reflection.

Finally, the rickshaw took her back to the dormitory at the Translation Bureau. Yu Manyi jumped out of the car and said goodbye to Song Qi. As she rang the doorbell and waited for someone to open the door, she suddenly remembered something and took the invitation letter out of her handbag.

She lowered her eyes and saw the four elegant characters written by Song Huazhang on the front of the invitation letter:

For Jiang Yu’s eyes only.

Well then.

She still preferred to handle practical matters—it required less thinking.