Chapter 251: Senior’s Back in Donghai?

Chapter 251: Senior’s Back in Donghai?

Wu Yurong could not let her daughter learn about her relationship with Wu Chen.

She did not even want Song Xuan coming up to this private room to find her. Granted, even if Song Xuan came in, there would be nothing for her to see. Everyone was formally dressed and having dinner, and Wu Chen’s official girlfriend, Li Ruobing, was here as well. Even if an outsider saw the room—even someone who knew precisely who every person at that table was—they would find nothing amiss.

They would assume only that Li Ruobing was having dinner with her boyfriend and some friends.

So there was little chance of anything going wrong. Even so, Wu Yurong felt they had to be careful. Ideally, Song Xuan should not even know that her mother was acquainted with her senior.

“We just got downstairs. I came to eat with some friends. Mom, which private room are you in?”

Song Xuan asked it, then added, “Would it be convenient for me to come up?”

She meant nothing by it. She had simply run into her mother by chance and felt she ought to come and say hello.

“I’m having dinner with friends.”

Wu Yurong chose her words with care.

“Xuanxuan, are you all on the first floor? Let’s do this—I’ll come down…”

She would not let her daughter come up. She would go to her instead.

Everyone in the private room watched her on the phone, but apart from Wu Chen, no one sensed anything unusual.

A mother taking a call from her daughter. That was all.

Another exchange or two, and Wu Yurong hung up.

“My daughter… she’s happened to come here for dinner with some friends too. I’ll just be a moment. Keep talking, all of you.”

Wu Yurong smiled sweetly as she rose, came around the table, and went out.

She left.

Once the door had closed again, Su Qingying visibly let out her breath. Nothing in her earlier conversation had looked amiss; she had been smiling naturally the whole time. But she had been under pressure.

Not because she was afraid of anyone. Respecting Wu Yurong was one thing. Wu Yurong being with Wu Chen was another.

Of course she was not afraid of her.

The pressure came from Wu Yurong and Li Ruobing together.

Su Qingying could already tell perfectly well that something was wrong between those two. Something had certainly happened before. They had not argued at the table, but the way they refused to engage with each other was far too obvious.

She was worried they might clash.

And she wanted even less to pick a side, taking one woman’s part against the other. Just thinking about it made her head ache.

Now that Wu Yurong had stepped out for the moment, Su Qingying felt considerably lighter.

“Hubby, you and Ms. Wu… when did that happen?”

She leaned forward suddenly, coming a little closer to him past Mu Qianqian, and asked it quietly.

Having asked, she instinctively glanced at Li Ruobing.

“A few days ago. Not long,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“But how did you— how did it— how did you manage it?”

Su Qingying did not quite know how to frame the question. She was intensely curious. It was simply too unbelievable.

With Wu Yurong present she had not felt able to ask outright. Now that she had gone—with only the others here, Su Qingying did not mind.

“It’s complicated.”

Wu Chen smiled at her again. He plainly had no intention of explaining.

“Big bad man. Playboy. Hmph.”

Mu Qianqian spoke up then, huffing the words at him and shooting him a little look. Before Wu Yurong’s phone rang, she had been murmuring in his ear—pestering him to explain what exactly was going on between him and Wu Yurong.

Wu Chen raised a hand and flicked her forehead, very lightly, then smiled.

“Calling me a bad man again? Who’s a playboy? Shall this playboy send you abroad?”

“Sister Qingying, look, he’s bullying me…”

Mu Qianqian leaned at once toward Su Qingying, pouting as she complained and made a show of seeking protection.

Clowning a little.

Su Qingying smiled with pursed lips.

“If he’s bullying you… he bullies me too. I can’t help you. Why don’t you ask your Sister Ruobing?”

And as she said it, she gave Mu Qianqian a look.

Mu Qianqian glanced at Li Ruobing, then stood, went around Wu Chen to the other side, and clung pitifully to Li Ruobing’s arm.

“Sister Ruobing, your man is bullying me…”

Sharp and mischievous, Mu Qianqian knew exactly what to say.

The words “your man” pleased Li Ruobing. And she had never had any intention of making things hard for the girl. Naturally she did not see someone so young as a threat.

“If he bullies you, there’s nothing I can do either. I can’t control him.”

Li Ruobing turned her head and gave a faint smile. There was plainly something else underneath the words.

She was only humoring her.

Li Ruobing was in no mood to clown along.

Finding no help there either, Mu Qianqian went around her and came to Zhuang Xiaodie’s side. Familiar with people almost instantly, she took Zhuang Xiaodie’s arm and pouted. “Big sister…”

“I can’t help you.”

Zhuang Xiaodie answered at once, looking helpless. Then she smiled.

“How about you try… asking him to forgive you, little sister?”

Mu Qianqian pouted. She turned and swept her gaze around the table, then muttered huffily to herself, “None of you will help me. I’ll just have to rely on myself!”

And with that she headed back toward Wu Chen.

At the same moment—

Wu Yurong reached the restaurant’s first-floor lobby and found her daughter, Song Xuan, together with her friends—a good dozen of them, a whole crowd of young men and women around Song Xuan’s age, the friends she made music with.

“Hello, Auntie.”

“Hello, Auntie!”

The instant they saw Wu Yurong, every one of them greeted her with extraordinary politeness. They were one small step short of bowing.

They were Song Xuan’s friends, so naturally they had heard who Wu Yurong was. Song Xuan was a third-generation heiress from an ultra-wealthy family, a fortune in the tens of billions of yuan behind her. They had looked into her family before, and had heard every sort of rumor and hearsay besides.

They knew what kind of presence Wu Yurong was in Donghai.

“Quite a crowd. Did you reserve a private room?”

Wu Yurong asked it with a gentle smile.

“We didn’t book ahead. We asked just now and they said there aren’t any left.”

Song Xuan’s voice was sweet as she looked at her mother.

“We’ll eat in the main dining room. It’s fine.”

“No private rooms?”

Wu Yurong repeated it. She knew a top Cantonese restaurant like this generally kept a few in reserve for particular situations.

“I’ll speak to them. There should still be one.”

Song Xuan had always kept a low profile.

Wu Yurong could easily imagine that precisely because her daughter never traded on her status, the restaurant had slighted her.

Had the same thing happened to Wu Yurong herself, she might not even have counted it as a slight. It would depend on the circumstances. But when it happened to her daughter, her first instinct as a mother was to feel that her daughter had been slighted.

“Don’t bother, Mom. It’s too much trouble.”

“What trouble? A whole group of young people at dinner—you’ll be noisy. Aren’t you afraid of disturbing the other guests if you sit in the main dining room?”

Wu Yurong said it in the same soft, sweet voice, smiling as though she were joking.

She was only finding a reason to move her daughter and her friends into a private room.

There was another reason she wanted them in one.

If her own group finished first and came downstairs together, Song Xuan would not see them.

“Wait here a moment. I’ll go and talk to them.”

She said it to Song Xuan’s friends as well, then headed for the front desk without letting her daughter follow.

“Auntie is so beautiful.”

“She looks so much like Xuanxuan.”

“She looks so young. The two of them are almost like sisters.”

“Is this the first time all of you have met her?”

Once Wu Yurong had walked off, Song Xuan’s friends began murmuring among themselves, boys and girls alike, heads leaning together. Since none of it was unkind—quite the opposite, they were paying compliments—they made no effort to hide it from her.

Song Xuan turned to look at them, her face full of resignation.

Again. Every time a different set of friends met her mother in person for the first time, they always said more or less the same things.

She looked at them and was about to tell them all to calm down when she opened her mouth—and paused. She seemed to have caught sight of something. Tilting her head, she looked past them and out through the windows.

A very familiar car was parked at the curb outside.

A blue Lamborghini.

The new model.

“Senior’s back in Donghai? Is he eating here too?”

Song Xuan studied it for a moment, then murmured it, her face lighting with excitement. She had recognized Wu Chen’s car.