Chapter 233: So Well-Behaved, So Obedient

Chapter 233: So Well-Behaved, So Obedient

The dark mass of a hundred-odd people scattered in every direction.

They still could not work out exactly what had happened, but Mao Qi’s attitude had plunged from the heavens to the ground, and that told them everything they needed to know.

This was serious.

They had called the man “Uncle.”

They had bowed to him.

So naturally, everyone left as fast as their legs would carry them.

Mao Qi himself moved fastest of all.

“He—” Tang Shanshan started to ask as he came striding over, but Mao Qi said nothing. He seized her wrist, pulled her around, and gestured for her to get in the car.

Leave first. Talk later.

“Brother Daqi…” Fourteen-year-old He Xinxin was still utterly bewildered. She had no idea what was going on. All she felt was terror. She had never before seen a person or a situation that Brother Daqi could not handle.

“Your brother can’t help you this time, Xinxin. Take care of yourself… Good luck…” Mao Qi tossed the words off, then pulled the door open and got in.

That “good luck” made her heart lurch again.

The area was in chaos. A hundred and more people were leaving at once, like a crowd streaming out after a school assembly. Everywhere she looked, there were people moving away.

He Xinxin stepped onto her board to flee.

“He Xinxin… and where do you think you’re going?”

Wu Chen’s unhurried voice drifted after her. She had barely started rolling before she stopped dead. She knew perfectly well that if Wu Chen did not want her to leave, she was not getting away.

Brother Daqi had called all those people in, and now it was as though every one of them had somehow become Wu Chen’s. They had even called him Uncle.

Besides, it was not as if Wu Chen did not know where she lived.

The engines roared again. Soon the dozen-plus sports cars had cleared the small plaza, and the hundred-odd others were gone too. Even the teenagers who had been skateboarding there before any of this began ran off. Nobody wanted to linger.

Only Wu Chen and He Xinxin remained.

She had popped her skateboard up and caught it by one edge, then stood side-on with her head lowered, perfectly still. She had exactly the air of a troublemaking middle-schooler made to stand as punishment by her homeroom teacher. She simply froze there.

Once most of the crowd had gone, Wu Chen smiled faintly.

“Come here.”

She stayed where she was for a few more seconds. Then she turned and came toward him in small steps, head down. Once, she darted a glance up at him, then lowered her head again and shuffled the rest of the way over.

Still looking at the ground.

She did not dare look at him.

A child who knew she had done wrong.

Wu Chen stood with one hand in his pocket, gaze angled slightly down at her. He said nothing more. He simply watched her, that faint smile on his face, not a word.

Several seconds passed.

Very carefully, He Xinxin lifted her eyes to him. The instant their gazes met, her head dropped again.

Over the next ten-odd seconds she stole several more looks. Every time their eyes met, hers fell away. Wu Chen went on watching her with his habitual faint smile and never spoke.

Pat. Pat.

A few tears struck the ground and scattered into tiny glints.

He Xinxin had begun to cry. First a sniffle, then a small sob, and then she was crying aloud, quietly but unmistakably.

Clack!

Her hand went slack and the skateboard fell. She scrubbed at the corners of her eyes with the back of her wrist, but the tears would not stop. Her shoulders shook with the force of it.

She looked utterly pitiful.

“Why are you crying?” Wu Chen asked, looking at her.

“Teacher… I’m sorry… Teacher…” she said through her sobs.

“Sorry for what?”

Wu Chen bent slightly, leaning in to see her face. “I haven’t even said anything yet, and you’re already crying like this. Is it real this time?”

He laughed as he finished, his easy tone edged with teasing.

“Teacher… I, I only wanted to… get the recording back… I… I’m sorry…”

She cried harder. The tears simply would not stop.

“Then you were being very bad. You wanted the recording back, so you brought all these people here, and you wanted them to hit your teacher. He Xinxin, you’re a bad kid.”

Wu Chen straightened as he said it.

“Teacher… Xinxin isn’t a bad kid. Xinxin isn’t…”

She shuffled forward several steps and caught the hem of his jacket, tugging at it again and again.

Now she dared to look at him. She tilted her tear-streaked face up and insisted that she was not a bad kid.

She was desperate.

There was real fear in her.

“You’re not?” Wu Chen asked.

“Xinxin isn’t. I’m not.” She shook her head over and over as she wept.

“Really not?”

“I’m not. I’m not.” She grew even more frantic.

“All right. Xinxin isn’t a bad kid.” Wu Chen smiled as though she had convinced him. “A child who knows her mistake and corrects it is a good child.”

Her mood lifted at once. Still tugging at his hem, she sniffled and said, “Teacher… don’t be angry with Xinxin, okay…?”

“What makes you think I’m that generous?” Wu Chen asked with a smile.

“Teacher… please… please… Xinxin knows she was wrong. I’m sorry, I’m sorry… Teacher… don’t be angry…”

She pleaded with him, sliding back into that wheedling note.

“I won’t be angry… but you have to behave. Understand?”

“Xinxin will behave. Xinxin will listen.” She nodded hard as she promised.

“I’ll believe you for now.” Wu Chen smiled.

“Then, Teacher… Teacher, you…”

She seemed to have something more to say. Still clutching his jacket, looking up at him pitifully, she sniffled.

“Teacher… can you… not let my mom know about today…?”

That was what frightened her most.

If her mother, He Shiqin, found out that her own daughter had called in over a hundred people to beat up her private tutor—

The consequences did not bear thinking about.

“Not tell your mom…” Wu Chen repeated. Then he smiled. “That depends on how you behave. Be good. Understand?”

“Mm-hm, mm-hm! Xinxin will be good. Super good!”

She nodded like a chick pecking at grain.

“Then it’s settled. All right, wipe your eyes.”

Wu Chen smiled, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and handed it to her.

An hour later.

In another part of the park, Wu Chen and He Xinxin sat together on a bench. She had recovered her composure. After they came to their understanding, they had not left right away, but wandered the paths and talked.

Once she felt better, she had all sorts of questions for him.

Why was Brother Daqi afraid of him?

What did his family do?

Wu Chen answered with half-truths. He Xinxin refused to believe the one about his family running a noodle shop. She thought he was teasing her.

But it did nothing to stop the little stars from gathering in her eyes.

There was admiration there now. She thought Wu Chen was unbelievably impressive.

Around half past five in the afternoon.

At last the two of them left the park together. On the way out they passed a small shop selling ice-cream cones, and He Xinxin ran over on her own to buy two. She came running back with both and handed one to Wu Chen.

Her treat.

She really was being incredibly good.

Before long they reached the entrance to Century Garden Residential Complex. Wu Chen went in with her. They had only just started inward and had not yet reached the building when his phone rang.

Ring-ring-ring…

Both of them stopped.

Wu Chen took out his phone and looked.

Mao Rusong.

He answered and put it to his ear. “Boss Mao.”

“Mr. Wu, I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Mao Rusong said quickly. “If you’re busy, we can talk another time!”

The words were a little strange. He was the one calling, yet he sounded terrified that he might actually be interrupting something.

His feelings were contradictory too. He was anxious. The kind of anxious that leaves a man unable to eat or sleep.

“No. What is it, Boss Mao?” Wu Chen asked.

“It’s like this, Mr. Wu. If you have the time, I’d like to invite you for a drink… Whenever you’d be willing to honor me…”

“I have time. Just a little later,” Wu Chen said.

“Later is no problem at all. Name the hour and I’ll be waiting,” Mao Rusong replied at once.

He really was anxious.

Wu Chen knew exactly why. It was his son, of course. This was not the kind of thing Mao Rusong could stop worrying about simply because Wu Chen had said it was fine.

Wu Chen could even guess that Mao Rusong was certain to prepare a substantial “gift” for him.

Otherwise the man would never be able to set his mind at rest.