Did My Ex-Wife Agree to Remarry Me Today? - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: The Answer

“What if I need to think all night?” Li Zhou asked.

Chi Yun replied, “Then I’ll just sleep in the car. It’s too dangerous to drive tired in the middle of the night anyway. I’ll be right downstairs; you can tell me the moment you’ve decided.”

Everything came back to the inconvenience of being blacklisted. If Chi Yun left and Li Zhou made up her mind quickly, Chi Yun wouldn’t find out until much later and she’d lose valuable time. If she knew sooner, she could start preparing sooner.

Li Zhou considered this, stopped trying to drive her away, and said, “Sleep in the car for a while. I’ll give you my answer when you wake up.”

Chi Yun obeyed instantly. “Okay.”

Li Zhou returned to her small house and headed straight for the second floor. Chi Yun tracked her movements from below; a light flickered on in one room, then went dark, followed by a light in the next. Chi Yun pinpointed Li Zhou’s bedroom—the easternmost room, the one closest to where her car was parked.

Chi Yun didn’t bother moving the vehicle. She sat in the driver’s seat, reclined it low, and rested her head on its side, gazing up at the illuminated window. After a while, sleepiness washed over her. She let out a yawn, her long lashes fluttered, and she succumbed to exhaustion.

Being near Li Zhou had many perks. One of Chi Yun’s favorites was that in her dreams, Li Zhou was incredibly easy to talk to; she yielded to her every whim, and they were perfectly in sync.

After going upstairs, Li Zhou didn’t immediately ponder the question Chi Yun had posed. Instead, she leaned against her headboard and pulled out that heavy photo album, flipping through it page by page.

Her first impression of Chi Yun as a child was that she was an incredibly talkative little thing. She didn’t treat Li Zhou as just a tree or a “pet” she could ignore; she treated her as a protector, a confidante to whom she told every secret and every grievance.

What Li Zhou found miraculous was that even though she never spoke, the child seemed to hear her inner responses and reacted accordingly. They truly seemed to communicate. In all her long years of existence, no one else had ever been able to do that. Perhaps it was a unique ability born from the child’s mixed heritage of two superior species.

Furthermore, the young Chi Yun was exceptionally delicate. Being hit by a tiny fruit falling from a branch, getting splashed by water from an air conditioner, or having her arm go numb from sleeping in one position too long whenever she felt wronged or “injured,” she would run to the tree to report it in a tattling tone.

In contrast, in front of outsiders—even her own mothers—she was a proud child who cared deeply about appearances. Even when she cried, she wouldn’t let it last long, always mindful of others’ feelings.

There was one time Li Zhou hadn’t even seen how she fell. She heard a sharp “Ouch!” and looked over to see Chi Yun sprawled flat on the ground. The poor thing was so stunned her head was pressed against a flowerpot and she didn’t even think to move it.

Li Zhou watched the child, who was barely a meter tall, lie there for a full minute. She must have truly been hurt; when she finally scrambled up, she ran toward the tree clutching her head and wailing, “A-Li, I fell! It hurts so much! The flowerpot made my head bleed, there’s so much blood, it’s all over my hands…”

Li Zhou was so focused on the hand supposedly covered in blood that she didn’t notice Chi Yun pressing her “bleeding” wound directly against the rough bark.

In that moment, Li Zhou panicked. She didn’t know how deep the wound was; if the child pressed her injury against the uneven surface of the bark, a protrusion might make it worse. Li Zhou urgently retracted the bark at that spot, bringing forward the soft, smooth cambium layer.

As the child pressed hard against the smooth wood, Li Zhou tasted blood. The child’s head was indeed cut, though not nearly as catastrophically as she had described. Li Zhou pressed back firmly for a while until the bleeding stopped.

The child was still sobbing, and her grief took a sudden turn: “Mama is going to laugh at me and call me the Phoenix who loves to fall down the most!”

Phoenixes had the innate talent of never hitting the ground; the higher the jump, the safer the landing. Chi Yun would often jump from the third floor to get to kindergarten faster without a scratch. Her falling was purely a personal habit she didn’t like lifting her feet high enough, so if a paving stone was slightly raised, she’d trip.

Of course, the root cause was the stone. If every stone were perfectly level, falling wouldn’t be a possibility. Li Zhou’s deep roots shifted through the earth, reaching under the sidewalk tile that had tripped Chi Yun, pulling away a layer of soil to level the stone perfectly.

After crying for a bit, the little one moved her head away. She suddenly remembered something and looked at the tree with panicked, teary eyes. She told A-Li she had to stop crying because her mothers were coming home; she had to go inside and clean up the wound and the tears so they wouldn’t find out she had fallen.

Li Zhou had already noticed the two mothers standing at the gate; they had certainly heard the whole performance. One asked the other in confusion, “Did I ever say that? That she’s the Phoenix who loves to fall?”

The other thought for a moment. “I think you hinted at it, but it was just a joke.”

The mother immediately reflected: “Then I won’t say it again. Let’s walk around the block before going in. When we get home, we’ll act like we didn’t see a thing.”

The two mothers were excellent actresses. After their walk, they found the little one hiding in the house. They hung a new hat on the door and called out, “A-Yun, Mama bought you a new hat. It’s adorable. Do you want to try it on?”

Then they walked away to the kitchen to start dinner. The hat saved Chi Yun. Previously hiding, she now ran around the house confidently as long as the hat was on. She wore it through dinner and even to bed.

In the dead of night, the mothers snuck into her room to lift the hat and check. It was a “massive” wound—barely half a centimeter long, no thicker than a scratch from a pen. If they had waited any longer, the scab would have fallen off on its own. One mother applied ointment, whispering, “I’ll put it on thick so the scar is gone by tomorrow.”

“You apply it, and then I’ll kiss her. Poor little thing,” the other said, stroking the child’s soft hair. “Mama was only joking. I won’t say it again.”

Through that incident, the mothers realized their child had a pride far beyond the norm. She didn’t show it to the world, but she took everything to heart.

And Li Zhou realized that although Chi Yun always exaggerated her injuries when “tattling,” she herself had infinite patience. No matter how small the scratch, she would listen intently and offer comfort. Whenever she saw Chi Yun looking at her with those pitiful, red-rimmed eyes, her heart would simply soften.

As she finished the album, the sky began to turn the pale grey of dawn.

Li Zhou thought to herself: I have the answer.

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