The Lady I Flirted With Is Here - Chapter 45

Chapter 45: Secrets

Lin Xian had only just left. The very next day, before the sky had even fully brightened, Fang Daiyu was jolted awake by the shrill ringing of her phone.

“Hello… Mom?” It was five in the morning; Daiyu had no idea why her mother would be calling at such an hour.

The train station was a sea of people. Liu Hongqin, Daiyu’s mother, strained her voice over the noise, surrounded by four or five large bundles. “Daiyu! I’ve reached Beijing. I’m at the place you live—no, wait, I can’t find the way. Come pick me up.”

Still half-asleep, Fang Daiyu sat bolt upright, her mind blank for a long moment. After a while, thinking the signal was bad, Liu Hongqin barked “Hello?” several more times.

As her vision cleared, Daiyu’s voice sank like a stone into a deep well. “Okay. Stay where you are and wait for me.”

The early morning streets were sparse and wide. The taxi ride was smooth, reaching the station in just over half an hour. Even so, Liu Hongqin, feeling she had waited an eternity, was already bristling with resentment. She wore new clothes and had clearly dressed up for the trip. However, her demeanor betrayed an underlying nervousness; she sat by her mountain of luggage, warily eyeing her surroundings. Seeing Fang Daiyu approach, she stood up and waved frantically. “Over here! I tell you, girl, making your old mother wait this long—you’re really asking for a beating!”

Fang Daiyu wore a black wool blazer and patent leather boots that hugged her long, straight calves. A fedora sat atop her head, giving her the air of a refined young gentleman. As she reached Liu Hongqin, the older woman’s chatter died down the moment she caught the gaze in Daiyu’s clear, steady eyes.

Daiyu glanced at her mother briefly but said nothing.

She flexed her arms, the muscle definition showing beneath her sleeve as she reached down to hoist the bags. These were huge snakeskin sacks; she grabbed two in each hand. Even an adult man would find them heavy, let alone a woman.

Liu Hongqin pursed her lips uneasily and picked up the only remaining light bag. she followed behind Daiyu quietly, hardly daring to breathe.

Her daughter was no longer that tomboy who climbed trees and caused trouble—the one she could just swat on the backside whenever she pleased.

…

A faint fragrance lingered in the air, becoming strikingly obvious the moment they stepped inside.

As Liu Hongqin entered, she frowned, sniffing the air suspiciously. She grabbed Daiyu’s hand to stop her from moving. Signalling for silence, she began to prowl through the rooms on tip-toe. Daiyu closed her eyes for a moment, centering herself. When she opened them again, she was a picture of calm.

She followed her mother as Liu Hongqin rummaged through the living room, checked the kitchen, and peered into both bedrooms. Finding nothing untoward, the disappointment in the older woman’s eyes quickly faded into a look of relief. She turned around, nearly jumping out of her skin when she saw Daiyu right behind her. “Trying to scare your mother to death?!” she scolded. “Walking without a sound—are you a ghost?”

Daiyu quietly placed an orange on the coffee table, a faint, knowing smile playing on her lips. “I was just getting you fruit. Don’t you need a rest after arriving?”

Liu Hongqin’s expression grew awkward, her face flushing with embarrassment. She turned away and began critiquing the furniture. Picking up the orange, she grumbled under her breath while peeling it: “Hmph, little brat! I can’t even get good fruit at home, and you buy an orange this big. Must have cost a fortune!”

Daiyu didn’t answer. Her mother then pointed around the room. “The smog here is terrible. And this place… you turn around twice and you’ve seen the whole hundred square meters. Isn’t it suffocating? You could have been a civil servant, but instead, you come here to suffer!”

By then, Daiyu had pulled a carton of milk from the fridge, thoughtfully inserting a straw before handing it over. Liu Hongqin simply tossed the orange peels into Daiyu’s palm. Bits of white pith were stuck in her teeth; she picked them out with a fingernail and wiped them on the sofa. Taking a sharp gulp of the milk, she nearly spat it out. “Don’t you know your mother can’t stand mango-flavored milk? This is all processed chemicals. If you’re going to drink milk, drink pure milk. Didn’t I tell you?”

Daiyu thought to herself: Thanks to Xianxian, there was at least one carton of milk left in the fridge for you to fuss over.

Of course, she didn’t say it. A mother knows her child, but a daughter also knows her mother.

Seeing Daiyu’s indifferent expression, Liu Hongqin let out a frustrated laugh. “You’re lecturing your mother in your head right now, aren’t you?”

Daiyu remained silent. She checked her watch: 9:45 AM. She was nearly an hour late for work.

Liu Hongqin gave a sarcastic sneer. “What? Can’t wait for your mother to disappear? I must have owed you in a past life, coming all the way to Beijing for a brat like you! If you don’t want me here, I’ll go stay with your uncle!” She was quick-tempered; before the words were even out, she grabbed her bag from the sofa to leave.

Daiyu stood up and pressed a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Sit down. How could I not welcome you?” Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

This only made Liu Hongqin angrier; a sob caught in her throat. “Poor Liu Hongqin, a life of misery! I ended up with a bastard husband, and then I gave birth to a debt-collector of a daughter!” She wailed, throwing herself onto the sofa as if burdened by a thousand grievances.

Daiyu spoke dryly. “Mom, don’t overdo it. You know I don’t like being a civil servant; I only took the exam to put your mind at ease. The night I left for Beijing, you called every aunt and great-aunt to the house to persuade me. We reached an agreement: as long as I could stand on my own feet in Beijing, you wouldn’t interfere in my life!”

Seeing that Daiyu was finally willing to engage, Liu Hongqin peeked out from her arms with red-rimmed eyes, then went back to wailing. “My life is so bitter! The elder one is unreliable and drowning in debt; the younger one is heartless! Two years away from home… only my Shiyu loves her mother, but she had to go to that freezing Northeast for university!”

Daiyu pulled her phone out and laid it on the table. “Mom, just say it. How much this time?”

Liu Hongqin held up five fingers.

Daiyu’s heart sank. “Fifty thousand? Didn’t I just transfer a hundred thousand to you? I haven’t been in Beijing that long. Giving you half my salary every month was already doing my duty, and I gave you my savings last time.”

Liu Hongqin laughed—a tearful, deadly serious laugh. “Fifty thousand? You think I can’t scrape together fifty thousand myself? I need five hundred thousand!”

Daiyu’s fingers sank into the sofa cushion. She sat in silence, her back ramrod straight, her posture mirroring her father’s perfectly. Looking at her from the side, real tears finally welled up in Liu Hongqin’s eyes—a mixture of hate and agonizing pity.

Daiyu’s short hair suddenly seemed like an eyesore.

She reached out a rough finger to touch the hair at the nape of Daiyu’s neck, murmuring, “Why did you cut it short again? Last time you left home, you finally had it long. Now you look like a tomboy again!”

As she spoke, anger bubbled up in the eyes of this aged, weathered woman. “You had it all… why did you have to learn the wrong paths from that old bastard?”

Daiyu’s straight back shifted away from her hand. She turned, her eyes looking at Liu Hongqin with the depth of a dark sea.

Liu Hongqin was startled by that look. It took her a long time to recover.

By the time she snapped out of it, Daiyu had returned from the bedroom and placed a card on the table.

Liu Hongqin was still shaken by that terrifying gaze—it looked so much like Fang Qiaoguang: fierce and malicious. She couldn’t help but shiver, her voice trembling. “Daiyu, listen to your mother. Stop this lesbian business. You don’t know… back in middle school, when I saw Ningning lying naked in your bed, I nearly died of fright!”

As she spoke, she thought of that late autumn five years ago—the day her husband was taken away in handcuffs. It felt as if time had frozen at that moment. That man she loved—cowardly yet violent—had finally ruined himself.

It was early winter in the north, and the window was open for ventilation. A chill drifted in, but a cold sweat broke out on Liu Hongqin’s back.

Her daughter’s voice, like a steady stream in a rice field, pulled her out of her memories with a natural warmth. “Mom, do I have to say it a hundred times before you understand? I was not the one who ‘got’ Ningning into that bed.”

Daiyu pushed the bank card toward her. “This was the money I saved for a house deposit. It’s four hundred and seventy thousand. I’ll give you the remaining thirty thousand when I get my salary this month.”

Liu Hongqin took the card with trembling hands. For a moment, mother and daughter were silent.

Daiyu grabbed her coat from the rack. “Mom, I have to go to work. You know how it is—I’m not my own master.” Before leaving, she glanced at her mother. Liu Hongqin had shrunk over the years; even with the new clothes, she couldn’t hide the marks of a lifetime of labor. The stylish beauty in the old photos was gone, replaced by a rustic woman covered in wrinkles and an air of coarseness.

As she stepped out, Fang Daiyu sighed.

The moment the door closed, a single tear fell from Liu Hongqin’s eye onto the coffee table. She choked back a sob, gripping the card tightly in her palm and pressing it to her forehead. She knelt on the floor between the sofa and the table, crying like a child. “Liu Hongqin, you’re heartless! You deserve to have your children hate you!”

Between her sobs, she wailed.

She had once married into the wealthy Fang family with great fanfare, only to endure the bitterness and targeting of her in-laws. When she finally thought she’d made it, her husband was out chasing other women while her daughter was rebellious and arrogant. Then, the year her husband went to prison for arms smuggling, her friends and family turned on her. It was the same time her in-laws fell gravely ill. She had endured it all with two girls in tow.

The suffering that didn’t kill Liu Hongqin became the strength that kept her going.

But her beloved daughter was drifting further and further away.

…

When Daiyu returned from work, Liu Hongqin was gone. However, she had left a meal on the table—the braised pork and noodle flakes Daiyu had loved as a child. She opened the fridge to find it neatly packed with dangshen, goji berries, millet, and sorghum from home, along with the “bowl cakes” she ate as a kid.

Boxes of local specialties—fruits and dried nuts—were piled on the floor. At the thought of Liu Hongqin lugging all these bags on a crowded train, Daiyu’s tears splashed into her bowl as she took a bite of the pork.

Her family had been rich when she was little, but without a father’s discipline, she grew up wild. Her grandparents ignored her because she was a girl. Little Daiyu had plenty of money, and only money could bring a crowd of children to follow her; only money could buy noise and happiness.

When her cousin from her aunt’s side visited, her grandfather would unlock the cabinet to bring out snacks and fruit. If Daiyu so much as glanced at them, he would glare. “Useless girl, what are you looking at?”

Daiyu had been a beautiful, porcelain-like child. When her mother took her out, people praised her as a “child who brings wealth.” Her grandmother would sneer, “A useless bird hatched from a hen that can’t lay eggs? A child who brings wealth? More like a child who scatters it! A girl that pretty is nothing but a vixen.”

Liu Hongqin’s face would change instantly.

Even as a small child, Daiyu understood: her father enjoyed a massive mine thanks to her grandfather, but her father only listened to her grandmother. Thus, she never felt a shred of familial love.

As she grew older and even more beautiful, her grandmother grew anxious, constantly worried she would “seduce” people. In a fit of rage, Daiyu shaved her head into a buzz cut—a look she kept from middle school through high school.

When her heart first stirred, she was teased by a senior girl. One wrong step led to another. Perhaps the disdain she heard from her grandmother since childhood had fostered a natural aversion to men. Yet, deep down, she craved something else.

She craved being a truly beautiful girl, craved a mother’s soft love, craved gentleness and cherishing for women.

As Daiyu finished her meal, her mother called.

Liu Hongqin’s voice was loud and cheerful on the other end. “I’ve settled in at your uncle’s place. I’m not squeezing into that tiny hovel of yours. You can live there by yourself!”

Daiyu simply told her mother to have a good time. The empty room still carried a hint of sweetness—the scent of Lin Xian.

Daiyu missed her.

She remembered how Liu Hongqin had been acting suspiciously upon entering, clearly worried that she was dating a girl.

But after all these years, besides the “incident” in her youth, Daiyu had admitted her preference in a moment of reckless abandon. But wanting to be in a relationship… it was never as simple as just saying it.

Since her father’s imprisonment during her college years, Daiyu—who had finally broken free from her cycle of arrogance and insecurity—had fallen into a different abyss. This time, she hadn’t been able to climb out.

…

Lin Xian arrived at the Dali high-speed rail station in the afternoon. Though it was 7:00 PM, the sky was still bright, giving the illusion that it was early.

In the South, the sun always sets slowly.

The sky was draped in rosy clouds, the “burning clouds” painting the horizon red. Her grandmother had been waiting for a long time at the exit; seeing Lin Xian emerge, her round face broke into a smile.

Lin Xian was like a fish returning to water, flying into her grandmother’s arms. “Where’s Jianjian? That bratty sister didn’t even come to meet her own sister!”

She scanned the crowd. Nope, no sign of Lin Jian.

Her grandmother gave a helpless, doting smile, stroking her hair. “Our Xianxian has become even prettier. Come, let Grandma look at you.”

She looked Lin Xian up and down, then let out a sigh. “Too thin, too thin! Skin and bones—what is this?!”

Lin Xian pouted, ignoring the comment. “You’re talking nonsense again! I gained three kilograms this time! My belly is full of fat; I came home specifically to lose weight.”

The taxi ride home was a blur of flowers. Even in winter, the roadside trees remained lush and green.

Lin Xian sang cheerfully all the way, recording the warm southern winter on her phone and sending it to Fang Daiyu.

“Reporting to Commander Sister! Little Sister Xianxian has successfully reached home!” Her voice was exuberant. When Fang Daiyu opened the message and listened, her heart was suddenly filled with sunshine.