Married A Man I Hate - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The Annoying Man · 50% “I don’t want to have a baby.” …

“So, you two met just once, and decided to get married?”

On the coffee table in the living room sat a laptop currently on a video call. A red-haired woman was on the screen, looking at the two people sitting side-by-side on the sofa.

“Right, right, right,” Le Qingfei nodded repeatedly, “That’s exactly how it is.”

Ten minutes ago, Le Qingfei had been caught talking nonsense and had been speechless for a long while. It was Fu Li who solved the dilemma for him, took the phone, and with just a few words temporarily appeased Shi Yun’s anger, deciding to have a proper chat over a video call.

The living room fell quiet.

Shi Yun’s gaze scanned Le Qingfei’s face, attempting to discern something.

Le Qingfei raised his hand, wanting to touch the small braided ponytail on the top of his head, but Fu Li calmly and unobtrusively pressed it down, smoothly holding his fingertips.

Le Qingfei went stiff all over. He turned his head to look at Fu Li, but the hand he wanted to pull back was held even tighter.

Fu Li’s tone was sincere: “Shi Yun, I am very sorry to let you find out about our marriage news in this manner. As Feifei’s elder sister, we were originally planning to visit you in America during the Christmas holiday. Such an important matter, naturally, requires a face-to-face communication.”

Le Qingfei was amazed by Fu Li’s calmness and self-possession, and how everything he said sounded so real.

Shi Yun was indeed angry. It was not even 7:00 AM New York time when she was woken up by a failing-grade email sent from Beijing-Hong Kong University.

But what shocked her was not the number of Le Qingfei’s failed classes, but rather that in the CC of the email, she had become Le Qingfei’s third emergency contact. She immediately called her parents, only to find out that Le Qingfei had gotten married behind her back.

“If you two are truly mutually attached and in love, at most I would just scold Le Qingfei. However,”

Shi Yun held a lady’s cigarette in her mouth, staring deathly at Fu Li, “if you used any kind of underhanded means…”

“No, no,” Le Qingfei, like those long-armed hugging monkey plush toys often sold at zoos, raised both hands and hugged the man beside him, “I love him super much.”

Fu Li’s face showed no emotion, but the fingers resting on his thigh curled slightly.

In the screen, Shi Yun closed her eyes deeply, finally understanding Elsa’s inner breakdown when Anna dragged a man she had just met for one day and wanted to marry him.

Fortunately, Fu Li was not some poor boy popped out from some remote and desolate place; his background information was more transparent and public than a celebrity’s. The eldest son who needed to use his status as an heir to fight for the family estate against his stepmother’s family—if it wasn’t true love, she really couldn’t think of any reason why Fu Li would marry Le Qingfei.

Looking at the way Le Qingfei was hugging Fu Li gave Shi Yun a headache, so she hung up the video call.

The moment the screen went dark, Le Qingfei released his hands, picked up the jelly on the table, and walked away humming a song, completely lacking any self-awareness regarding “cleaning up the aftermath.”

In his view, this matter was already over, and there was nothing to worry about. It was just like seeing a bad guy on the roadside and immediately rushing over to punch them—simple and direct. Even the basic logic of “when meeting a bad guy, one should call the police uncle” was something he could not think of in the first instance.

But Le Qingfei’s brain circuitry was just like this. In the past, he was the “trouble” in Le Wangzong’s words; now, he had become Fu Li’s.

It was just that Fu Li did not feel this was trouble.

The only trouble was that just now when Le Qingfei got up to leave, the ends of his soft long hair had very lightly swept across his cheek, like being touched by a firework.

Fu Li sat on the sofa for a while, then went upstairs to find Le Qingfei, intending to talk to him again.

According to his understanding of Shi Yun, it was absolutely impossible for her to believe them so easily.

Before he could even knock, the door was pulled open with a “shua” sound.

Le Qingfei stared with wide eyes, holding his phone up right in front of his face, “Look, look, look…!”

[Sister: I just bought a plane ticket, arriving tomorrow night. Bring your precious husband out to meet me.]

A quarter of an hour later, Le Qingfei was carrying a pile of things, reappearing in the living room once again.

Fu Li walked over holding sliced fruit, “Do I need to apply for a strategic meeting room?”

“No need, no need, this is enough.” Le Qingfei picked up a strawberry, “These are all my things from when I was little… so sweet, thank you for your strawberries… Didn’t you say we need to understand each other? So I brought everything over.”

“Mm,” Fu Li pulled out a tissue, gently pinched Le Qingfei’s hand which was stained with juice, and placed the fork into his hand, “Let me see.”

Fu Li sat down, picked up a document, and adjusted his glasses, “Hadrin Boys’ Public School Graduate Report…”

Le Qingfei sat on the carpet by his feet, biting the fork, and curiously turned his head to look at the person who had suddenly gone silent, “Why did you stop talking?”

Fu Li kept his eyes lowered, his gaze falling on the bareheaded ID photo in the top left corner. Le Qingfei was wearing the navy blue uniform of Hadrin Public School; the golden buttons were unfastened, slightly open, revealing the pure white shirt and the blue-gray wide-striped tie inside.

Pinned to his chest was a golden school badge, as well as a small white nameplate: High School Department…

“Le. Qing. Fei.”

“Mm?” Le Qingfei blinked his eyes, “That’s me, do you not recognize me anymore?”

Fu Li raised his eyes, looking past the edge of the paper at the Le Qingfei who was truly appearing in front of his eyes.

He had grown up, his hair was longer too, his eyes were still that round, and when he wasn’t aggrieved, the eyelashes at the corners of his eyes didn’t press down so heavily. The flesh on his cheeks… seemed a bit less.

“What are you do-ing…”

Le Qingfei’s face was pinched by a large hand. He stared with wide, dark eyes, looking at Fu Li in disbelief.

“My apologies,” Fu Li loosened his force, the pad of his thumb rubbing gently against the soft cheek, avoiding his gaze, “Was the photo taken in summer?”

So annoying.

Le Qingfei covered his face with both hands, “You…”

——A strawberry was stuffed into his mouth.

“Yes, at the time of graduation.” Le Qingfei took a bite, “Is it different from now?”

Even cuter.

Having just distracted the child’s attention, Fu Li was not confident he could pull it off a second time, so he swallowed his words back. Instead, he asked, “Where shall we start from?”

Le Qingfei picked up the remote control, and a shaky, handheld video recording appeared on the television screen.

“Is the baby awake?”

A female voice rang out from off-camera, and immediately following that, an infant stood up while holding onto the crib. He had a pacifier in his mouth, and the flesh on his cheeks was abundant, ruddy and plump, like an apple about to drop from a branch.

“This is me, Le Qingfei.”

Le Qingfei was afraid Fu Li wouldn’t know, so he provided a meticulous tip.

Fu Li smiled lightly, watching the ten-month-old Le Qingfei on the screen attentively.

The Le Qingfei who had just woken up let out a yawn and was lifted by a pair of large hands to sit properly on a lap, starting to comb his hair.

Le Qingfei had a lot of hair even back then. However, unlike the current light chestnut color, it was pitch-black and shiny just like his eyes. A small tuft on the top of his head was pinched in Le Youbai’s hand, and Jiang Ling was reminding him from the side to tie it loosely, not to hurt the baby.

After saying that, a hand stretched out from off-screen, took out a strawberry hair clip, and clipped it to the top of Le Qingfei’s head.

“Ah, whose family’s strawberry baby is this, why is he so cute?”

The camera always focused on Le Qingfei; the faces of the two adults could not be seen, and only voices filled with love could be heard.

“These are my dad and my mom. They were both professors at Huaihai University, very amazing. However, after I was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and almost died, they didn’t go to the university anymore. They stayed with me every day, not wanting to miss me growing up.”

The lights in the living room were turned off. The light and shadow from the screen fell onto Fu Li’s glasses lenses, blurry and mottled, as if grieving on behalf of the person who was not sad.

“Mom and Dad really liked to buy me strawberry hair clips. They even gifted me a very beautiful diamond strawberry hair clip on my birthday. I was afraid of losing it, so I didn’t dare to wear it… Look,”

Le Qingfei pushed the top of his head right in front of Fu Li, “These are the ones I bought myself, so even if they get lost, my heart won’t ache too much.”

Fu Li raised his fingers, lightly flicking the tied-up small ponytail, “Very cute.”

“Right, strawberries are just very cute.”

Le Qingfei smiled and turned back around, continuing to introduce his childhood recordings to Fu Li—from one year old to five years old. The final frame froze at an Austrian ski resort, where Le Youbai and Jiang Ling were celebrating Le Qingfei completing his first independent ski down a green trail.

“Feifei is truly amazing, next year…”

The footage came to an abrupt end.

“The camera ran out of battery. Mom was saying that next year she would take me to ski a blue trail.” Le Qingfei thought for a moment, continuing his thoughtful explanation, “But we didn’t manage to go, because Mom and Dad passed away in a car accident. Don’t remember it wrong.”

Le Qingfei was almost six years old then. His parents had picked out a seminar-style private school for him, Le Youbai was preparing to take over the company after returning to the country, and Jiang Ling also intended to return to the university to hold a position again.

In February, Jiang Ling was participating in an academic activity in Germany. Le Youbai drove to pick her up, temporarily leaving Le Qingfei in the care of his younger uncle’s family, who had come to Germany to celebrate his birthday.

The car accident happened on the Autobahn with no speed limit; there was almost no possibility of survival.

Leaving only Le Qingfei by himself, who on the night of his eleventh birthday propped himself by the window of the attic and fell asleep, yet never managed to wait for the owl that delivers mail.

There were only many things that he could not understand.

What is going to school? Why does one have to sit continuously on a chair without moving? Why can’t one go look at the butterflies outside the window?

Hadrin Boys’ Public School was the leader of the elite education world, yet Le Qingfei was the “anomaly” among them, unable to understand those rules that his mom and dad hadn’t had time to teach him. This was a completely foreign world to him, falling into it caught off guard, recklessly drifting outside of the rules.

“Why are you looking at me?” Le Qingfei asked, “Did you memorize it?”

Fu Li collected his expression and nodded, “Mm, I memorized it.”

Le Qingfei gave an “oh,” picked up Fu Li’s family photo album, and exclaimed that his mother was as beautiful as an oil painting.

“Is Auntie German?”

“Aryan, her father was Chinese.” Fu Li picked up his water glass, “Your sister probably won’t care about my parents’ matters. After all, she is not the gossip media.”

Le Qingfei did not catch the meaning that Fu Li wanted to change the subject, and pointed at the photo to ask: “Then, what does it feel like?”

“What?”

“Your mother is kissing you, what does that feel like?”

Fu Li smiled, “This is not an in-depth interview, she won’t ask questions like this.”

The angles of Le Qingfei’s questions were truly tricky, but they were all deflected by Fu Li with minimal effort, turning the conversation instead to personal information that was more likely to be asked about.

“My birthday is October 22nd, born in New York. The first pet I raised was named Popcorn, a golden British Shorthair. My parents divorced when I was six, and my mother took me to America, until this summer when I returned to the country after an interval of twenty years.”

“Do I still need to say these?” Le Qingfei held a pen, raising his head from his notebook, “Oh, my birthday is February…”

Fu Li: “February 18th, born in Seattle. Because you were always traveling, you haven’t raised a pet, but you have a strawberry plush toy named Rabbit, and you will take it out to bask in the sun to perform photosynthesis…”

“Wait a minute, the things before were correct on the profile data, but how did you know my Rabbit needs to bask in the sun?”

Fu Li was slightly startled. Under Le Qingfei’s gaze, he quickly replied: “Because it is still on the terrace right now.”

Le Qingfei ran to the terrace with deng-deng-deng steps and hugged the plush toy back, “Alright, you are so amazing that you memorized my information, I will memorize yours too.”

Looking at the posture he used to hold the plush toy, Fu Li teased: “Like holding a baby.”

It was just a joke, but Le Qingfei became visibly tense to the naked eye, “I don’t want to have a baby.”