Forcibly Taken by My Student’s Mother - Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Crazy, I Must Be Going Crazy!

For the rest of the lesson, Su Xiaowan actually behaved quite a bit.

Perhaps she was truly afraid of her mother coming back to deal with her; although she still wasn’t very focused, she at least put her phone away.

“Teacher Tao, how do you think Mommy will scold me?” During a break, Su Xiaowan slumped on the table and asked listlessly.

“I don’t know,” Tao Yao said truthfully. “But if you continue like this, if I were the parent, I would be angry too.”

“Ugh, studying is so boring,” Su Xiaowan mumbled. “Why do I have to learn Chinese anyway? I was doing perfectly fine in America, but she just had to drag me back…”

“Because you are Chinese.” Tao Yao looked at her. “Your roots are here.”

Su Xiaowan fell silent.

After a while, she said in a small voice: “But I feel like a foreigner. I have an accent when I speak, my writing looks like drawing, and reading Chinese is like looking at a heavenly script… Teacher Tao, you don’t understand this feeling; it’s really frustrating.”

Tao Yao was stunned for a moment.

This was the first time Su Xiaowan had revealed a vulnerable side in front of her.

That pink-haired girl, who was usually flamboyant, overbearing, and heartless, actually looked a bit… lost right now.

“I understand,” Tao Yao said softly. “I took French as an elective in university. It was like that at first; I felt like an idiot. But do you know? Learning a language is like opening a new window. At first, it’s foggy outside and you can’t see anything. But as long as you persist, the fog will slowly lift, and you will see a brand-new landscape.”

Su Xiaowan raised her head and looked at her.

“Chinese is beautiful—those ancient poems, those idioms and allusions, the exquisite expressions… behind them are thousands of years of cultural accumulation.” She paused, her voice softening: “Su Xiaowan, you are very smart. As long as you are willing, you can definitely learn it well. Why not give it a real try?”

Su Xiaowan stared at her for a long time, then buried her face back into the crook of her arm.

“We’ll see.” Her voice was muffled.

Tao Yao didn’t try to persuade her further; some things require a person to figure them out on their own.

When class ended, Su Xiaowan suddenly called out to her: “Teacher Tao.”

“Hmm?”

“If… I mean if, I study seriously, can my Chinese really improve?”

Tao Yao looked at her earnestly: “I can’t guarantee you’ll become incredibly amazing, but I can guarantee that as long as you study seriously, in three months, you will definitely be able to communicate normally with people without making a fool of yourself.”

Su Xiaowan thought about it and nodded: “Okay. I… I’ll try.”

Tao Yao felt a sense of relief.

Although she didn’t know how long this “try” would last, it was at least a good start.

When she left the villa, the sky was nearing dusk.

Returning home, Tao Yao simply cooked a bowl of noodles for dinner and then opened her computer to prepare for an update.

But with her fingers on the keyboard, her head remained empty; she couldn’t type a single word.

She simply gave up on writing and opened a browser, aimlessly browsing web pages.

Suddenly, a news push popped up, and the cover was actually Lu Xuelan.

Tao Yao was startled and instinctively clicked on it.

The news article was very formal. The accompanying photo was from a signing ceremony; Lu Xuelan stood in the middle, wearing a powerful white suit with her hair pinned up and exquisite makeup. She was shaking hands with a foreign executive, a proper and confident smile on her face.

In the photo, she was radiant and full of presence.

Tao Yao stared at that photo for a long time; this was another side of Lu Xuelan.

A massive sense of absurdity washed over Tao Yao again.

She once again felt a strong urge to expose Lu Xuelan’s fake-sanctimonious act to her face.

She wanted to see that face, which was always calm and waveless, show expressions of panic, embarrassment, or even annoyance. She wanted to hear her use that cold voice to explain those late-night “consultations” and those deliberate provocations.

Once this thought appeared, it was like a wildfire on a prairie, making Tao Yao’s whole body feel hot.

She closed the news page and opened a document. The cursor blinked in the white space as if waiting for something.

Tao Yao took a deep breath, and her fingers began to tap the keys.

This time, she didn’t write an update for her old book; instead, she opened the Yuri story modeled after Lu Xuelan.

She wrote about Leng Yue, that cold and abstinent female president, finishing the last document in her office late at night. Then, Lin Ye walks in, boldly leaning over with both hands braced on the desk, trapping her between the chair and the office table.

“President Leng. You look very tired today. Do you need to… relax a bit?”

Leng Yue feigned seriousness: “Do… do you know what you are saying?”

“I know.” Lin Ye smiled, a smile that was both wild and wicked. “I’m doing exactly what you’ve wanted me to do all along.”

She leaned down and kissed Leng Yue’s lips.

Tao Yao wrote very fast, her fingers flying across the keyboard as if some force were pushing her.

She wrote about that kiss moving from resistance to acceptance, about Leng Yue’s logic collapsing bit by bit, about Lin Ye’s hand reaching into the suit jacket, unbuttoning the shirt, and stroking that skin that had never been touched by anyone before.

She wrote about Lin Ye whispering in her ear: “President Leng, you’re usually so serious, I didn’t expect you to be… so sensitive here.”

Leng Yue gradually broke down, physiological tears seeping from the corners of her eyes as she begged for mercy intermittently: “Don’t… that’s enough…”

But Lin Ye was relentless, forcing her to say those shameful words through her tears.

As Tao Yao wrote, she felt her whole body heating up, her cheeks burning, and her breathing becoming rapid.

The words in the document seemed to have a temperature, making her fingertips go numb from the heat.

She could even imagine the scene: Lu Xuelan being pressed onto the office desk, her usually tidy suit becoming messy, her hair falling loose, her face flushed, those eyes that were always calm now filled with mist, her lips slightly parted, gasping for breath.

What kind of sight would that be?

Tao Yao stopped her fingers and stared at the bold words on the screen, her heart racing.

She had actually… written something like this.

And while writing it, she actually felt a hidden throb of excitement.

This was so wrong.

Tao Yao slammed the document shut and jumped up from her chair as if she had been burned. She paced back and forth in the small room, trying to calm herself down.

But it wouldn’t work. That image was lingering in her mind.

The way Lu Xuelan looked being pressed beneath her, crying and begging for mercy.

“Crazy…” Tao Yao whispered to herself. “I must be going crazy.”

How had she become like this?

She was actually fantasizing about her student’s mother and writing it in such… detail.

Was it because of Lu Xuelan’s push-and-pull flirting? Or was it because, deep down in her heart, she actually had some inexplicable feelings for women?

No, impossible.

Tao Yao shook her head vigorously. She was straight—straight as an arrow.

She was just frustrated by Lu Xuelan’s flirting tactics and needed a way to vent.

Yes, that’s it.

She sat back down at the computer. The document was still open, and those bold words were right in front of her eyes.

Tao Yao stared at them for a few seconds, then moved the mouse and clicked save.

She didn’t delete it.

When she turned off the computer, it was already eleven at night. Tao Yao lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, completely sleepless.

Her head was full of those images—real ones and fictional ones, intertwined until she couldn’t tell truth from fantasy.

If one day she really exposed Lu Xuelan’s fake-sanctimonious act to her face, how would that woman react?

Would she fly into a rage? Would she flatly deny it? Or would she… admit it?

Tao Yao didn’t know.

But she suddenly really wanted to know the answer.

The thought made her heart speed up and her blood boil.

Perhaps… she should do something to lay everything out on the table?

But if Lu Xuelan really admitted it, if she really said “Yes, I like you,” then what should she do?

Tao Yao turned over and buried her face in the pillow.

It was too complicated; all of this was just too complicated.

She was just an ordinary university student; she just wanted to earn money, help her family pay off the debt, and live a peaceful life.

Why did she have to run into this old vixen, Lu Xuelan? Why get caught up in this absurd entanglement?

The night was deep, and most people were already asleep.

But Tao Yao was still awake, her mind a mess, unable to find a thread of logic.

She picked up her phone and habitually clicked on her forum alt account; there were no new messages. L’s avatar was gray, and the last message was still from yesterday.

Tao Yao stared at that avatar for a long time, then logged out of the account and turned off the phone.

In the darkness, she kept her eyes open until the early morning before finally drifting into a daze of sleep.

In her dream, she was back in that office.

Lu Xuelan was pressed onto the desk, looking at her with watery eyes, her voice trembling: “Teacher Tao… you…”

She leaned down and kissed those lips that always spoke scathing words, making her cry for mercy in a trembling voice.

When she woke up, it was already broad daylight.

Tao Yao sat on the bed and spaced out for a good while before realizing it was just a dream.

But the sensation in the dream had been so real.

She raised her hand and touched her own lips; they seemed to still hold a trace of a certain soft, warm touch.

“It’s over.” Tao Yao covered her face in despair. “I’m really finished.”