Chapter 093: No Need for Thanks

Chapter 093: No Need for Thanks

It was Li Ruobing who had sent Wu Chen to take Su Qingying away. That was Madam Su’s guess, and she felt it was probably right—otherwise there was no explaining Li Ruobing’s current attitude. So she asked it outright.

“Madam Su, first I need to correct your wording.” Seated across from her, Li Ruobing spoke with perfect composure. “My boyfriend did not forcibly take your daughter anywhere. Miss Qingying and I had arranged to meet. Something came up for me at the last minute, so I asked my boyfriend to go and pick her up.”

“That’s right! Miss Ruobing and I had an appointment.” From the sofa chair off to one side, Su Qingying spoke up at once.

Madam Su’s eyes cut toward her and fixed there.

Su Qingying wilted on the spot. She looked ill at ease, and she didn’t dare say anything more.

“Oh, is that so?” Madam Su turned back to Li Ruobing. “Then why do I hear that it was Mr. Wu who dragged my daughter off by force?”

“Madam Su, your daughter isn’t a doll. If she’d truly been forced, wouldn’t she have called for help?”

“Perhaps my daughter was taken in by sweet words. Sold off and helping count the money.”

“Your daughter is twenty-seven. She isn’t some sheltered girl with no experience of the world. Do you honestly think that’s possible, Madam Su? Being taken in?”

“My daughter is too kind.”

Madam Su and Li Ruobing looked at each other.

Neither woman’s tone carried a trace of heat, yet a handful of lines in they were already going at each other point for point.

Madam Su never asked Su Qingying what had actually happened.

She wouldn’t even let Su Qingying speak.

Because she knew her daughter had already defected. Her daughter would not speak for her side.

And she was not going to lay the blame on her own daughter in front of outsiders.

Because then the fault would be Su Qingying’s.

And then whom else could she blame?

Then there would be no quarrel left to pick. Certain questions would become impossible to ask.

“Madam Su, don’t you want to know why I arranged to meet your daughter?” Li Ruobing changed course abruptly and put the question straight to her.

“Please, Miss Li. I’m all ears.” Madam Su gestured with the hand that held her teacup, then took an elegant sip, her gaze staying on Li Ruobing, still without heat.

“The truth is…” Li Ruobing paused before going on. “The Su family’s affairs are nothing to do with me. I had no wish to get involved. But Miss Qingying has told me privately, more than once, that she envies me very much. That she wants to become someone like me. A woman who loses to no one, who can decide her own life, who can succeed in business the way a man can.”

“Miss Qingying and I have a great deal in common. In many ways she is more outstanding than I am. But she has no life of her own. I don’t know whether Madam Su understands what I mean by that.”

As she spoke, Li Ruobing sat up much straighter, leaned forward slightly, and fixed her eyes on Madam Su. “Miss Qingying isn’t a living, breathing person at all. She’s a marionette you’ve dressed with such care. A puppet who can’t even decide how many bowls of rice she eats.”

Madam Su’s expression changed at once. She turned her head toward Su Qingying.

What exactly had her own daughter told this outsider? Everything? Had she told her everything?

Su Qingying avoided her mother’s eyes.

“Miss Li.” Madam Su looked back at her, her face far more severe now. “Forgive my bluntness, but you are an outsider. Stay out of my family’s affairs. Please conduct yourself with propriety.”

Madam Su had turned hard in an instant.

“I already said it has nothing to do with me, and that I had no wish to get involved.” Li Ruobing didn’t flinch from her. “But Miss Qingying has told me too many times that she hoped I could help her. Perhaps because I can feel it as she does. In my own family I once went through something similar. I nearly wasn’t allowed to decide my own marriage.”

“So when I met Miss Qingying today, all I wanted was to talk her through things.”

She paused there, then drew her brows together at Madam Su. “Do you still not understand, Madam Su? Truly not? Because your control over your daughter is too severe, because you insist on controlling everything, she has already developed certain psychological problems. Madam Su, surely you don’t intend to drive your daughter to her death?”

“You—” Madam Su shot to her feet, her face full of fury, her hand clenched so tightly around the teacup that her knuckles went pale as she stared her down.

Li Ruobing’s words were very heavy.

And what Madam Su hated most in this world was anyone pointing fingers at her over how she raised her children.

Li Ruobing was not the first person to say such things to her. Su Qingying’s father, her husband Su Ruiwen, had tried to advise her as well.

The more he advised, the more repellent she found it, and the higher her temper rose.

If the woman saying this to her now had been anyone but Li Ruobing, the teacup would already have been in flight.

Li Ruobing remained perfectly calm at the sight of her standing. She leaned back a little, picked up her bag, and drew out that crumpled white paper bag.

The pharmacy bag. The medicine Su Qingying had bought was still inside.

After Su Qingying handed it over, Li Ruobing had found a moment to tuck it into her own bag, and folding it had left it creased.

Clack.

Li Ruobing tossed the white paper bag onto the table.

A rather baffling gesture.

Madam Su glanced at it, then frowned at Li Ruobing. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Does Madam Su know what this is?” Li Ruobing gestured toward it and answered herself. “Medicine. Medicine I take. I’ve been unwell lately, so I’ve been on medication. But do you know who bought it?”

Madam Su stared at her and gave no answer. She knew Li Ruobing would go on.

“Your daughter bought it.” And she did, holding Madam Su’s eyes as she said it. “Today, at my boyfriend’s place, while I was talking her through things, I mentioned my medicine.”

“I found I hadn’t brought any in my bag. I meant to send a bodyguard out to buy it and bring it up. Your daughter heard me on the phone. Guess how she reacted.”

“She said she would go. She insisted on buying it for me. She even said that in her entire life she had never once gone into a pharmacy alone to buy medicine. A pharmacy you can find on any street in the city. One experience of walking in alone to buy medicine, and for her it was something new.”

Madam Su’s expression shifted. She threw her daughter a very strange look, then turned back.

“Guess what else she did today.”

“She cooked. For me and for Wu Chen. Washed the vegetables, cooked the dishes, all of it herself.”

“She even asked whether it tasted good. When we said it did, she was so happy. Truly. Extraordinarily happy.”

“She cleaned the room. She washed our clothes. We tried to stop her and couldn’t. She has simply been stifled too badly. Do you understand, Madam Su?”

“She knows perfectly well that whatever she does, having run from home, in the end she still has to go back. She still goes back under your control.”

“So it seems that today she wanted to take every ordinary thing an ordinary person can do, everything you have never let her do, and do all of it once. Do you know how frightening that kind of retaliatory rebound behavior can be?”

“Madam Su, ask yourself honestly. Do you truly not feel that you have controlled her too much?”

Li Ruobing said all of it in earnest, her tone grave. It could fairly be said that every sentence struck Madam Su in the heart.

Madam Su could not even have imagined her own daughter doing so many forbidden things in a single day. Her expression shifted by degrees as Li Ruobing spoke.

By the time Li Ruobing finished, the fury she had risen with was gone. What remained on her face was extremely complicated.

She looked at her daughter again, and found that Su Qingying, who had also heard every word, had reddened eyes.

Li Ruobing’s account was half true and half false, and it had still gone straight into Su Qingying’s heart.

For an instant Madam Su felt the faintest softening, the faintest guilt. She pressed the feeling down at once.

“So in that case…” She sat, drawing the words out. “I ought to thank you. Is that it, Miss Li?” She was calm again, and elegant again.

“No need for thanks,” Li Ruobing replied.

“I have one more question.” Madam Su suddenly picked up speed, cutting straight through and looking directly at Wu Chen. “Mr. Wu, I understand that you and Miss Li may have been, perhaps, well-intentioned. More or less.”

“But I wonder whether you can explain something to me. At the golf course with my daughter, why were you holding her, embracing her? You even put your hands on my daughter, and struck my daughter—on the bottom. You did strike her, didn’t you? Can you explain that?”

The moment she finished, the air in the room changed.

Even Li Ruobing’s expression went wrong.