Chapter 268: I Saw Him Waiting In The Lobby After Returning From Lunch With Zuo Qiu

“Don't go anyway. I'm getting Shao Huai to pick you up. He's safe with me right now, so don't panic like you did the last time,” Yan Beicheng said. He had obviously remembered the last time Lin Chu walked around in a daze, which ended up in both of them arguing.

Yan Beicheng had spoken with urgency then and sounded quite stern because he was worried about her. If she repeated the same mistake, he would get really angry.

It could be because Lin Chu was getting close to labor, but she was gradually reverting to how she was before the pregnancy. Now that she thought about it, she could not believe that the person who kept throwing emotional tantrums was really her.

Lin Chu did not get angry over Yan Beicheng's stern words since she knew that he was just worried. Besides, after what she had happened the last time, Lin Chu had learned her lesson and was not about to repeat the same mistake.

“Don't worry, I'll wait here for Shao Huai to pick me up. I won't go anywhere,” Lin Chu promised.

Yan Beicheng only hung up after she made that promise, but he still could not help but worry.

After listening to Lin Chu's conversation on the phone, Zheng Yuntong said, “I'll accompany you while you wait. Don't worry, I'll leave after you get into the car.”

It was lunch break, so there was no rush for them to return to the office immediately.

Lin Chu smiled and agreed. Then, both of them headed to the café.

Five minutes later, Lin Chu saw Shao Huai's car appear. Thus, she said goodbye to Zheng Yuntong and got into the car.

When she arrived at Yan Hui and walked into the office, she saw Mo Jinxi sitting on the sofa. There was McDonald's takeaway meal spread out on the coffee table in front of him.

Mo Jinxi was still wearing the Jixia Academy uniform as he held a half-eaten burger in his hand.

When he saw Lin Chu, Mo Jinxi immediately put down his burger and climbed down from the sofa before running toward her happily, “Chu Chu!”

Lin Chu had always adored Mo Jinxi, but this time, she looked at him grimly. There was a stern expression on her face as she looked at him.

Mo Jinxi's little body trembled slightly while he lowered his head weakly until all Lin Chu could see was his dark head of hair.

“Don't you have cla.s.s? Have all your afternoon cla.s.ses been cancelled for a holiday?” Lin Chu pursed her lips as she asked.

Mo Jinxi took in a sharp breath. “There's no holiday.”

“Does your grandparents and uncle know that you're here?” Lin Chu's voice lowered as she asked.

Mo Jinxi's shoulders trembled and felt even more guilty. He said quietly, “They… They don't.”

“So, you snuck out of school this afternoon? Are you planning to go back to cla.s.s later?” Lin Chu did not sit down. She stood where she was while Mo Jinxi did the same. She sounded very stern while questioning him.

Lin Chu had always spoken to Mo Jinxi gently all this while, and she had never treated him this way before.

This was why Mo Jinxi felt a little afraid of Lin Chu's stern tone.

“I…” Mo Jinxi shrank back. Judging by the time it took for him to travel to Yan Hui from Jixia Academy, he was not going to make it for the first cla.s.s that afternoon if he were to make a return trip back to school.

The first cla.s.s that afternoon was archery. However, this was the syllabus for primary school syllabus, and once he got into secondary school, archery cla.s.s would be replaced with shooting cla.s.s.

This was why Mo Jinxi had felt that it would not matter much to miss one session of archery.

Lin Chu could tell what he was thinking and asked grimly, “Jinxi, when did you start learning to play hooky? When you were in the orphanage and your living conditions were not as good, you could not study at such a good school, only in a normal primary school. Back then, you were able to take your studies seriously and never made the adults worry. But now that your living conditions have greatly improved and the Mo family is giving you every opportunity available by arranging for you to attend such a good school, you've decided to play truant instead?”

Lin Chu knew that Mo Jinxi would not have done this without a good reason, but even so, she was still upset about it. No matter what the reason was, he should not have been cutting cla.s.s!

Mo Jinxi lowered his head as teardrops started falling from his eyes. His little feet shuffled uneasily on the floor as he replied, “I… I wanted to see the old princ.i.p.al, as well as my brothers and sisters. I've been staying at home for a few months now, but Grandma refuses to take me to see them. Grandpa promised me that if I did well in school, he and Uncle would take bring me there for a visit even if Grandma refused to.

“I've already done well with my homework. Jixia Academy's textbooks may be different from my previous school, and the syllabus might not be the same, but I managed to catch up. I even tried my best and caught up in the cla.s.ses that I've never attended before in my previous school and am now on par with everyone else. I've done all my homework well. No matter how difficult it was, I've managed to overcome it,” Mo Jinxi said. He felt a little upset about the matter.

Lin Chu was aware that Jixia Academy was different from normal schools. There were many schools that practiced a form of education that involved shouting out slogans about all-round development, but those slogans were nothing but hot air. At the end of the day, schools would still need to prioritize learning. It was fine if Standard One and Two students did not focus too much on education as they did not have that much homework. However, for Standard Three and above, there would start to be a heavier focus on Cultural Cla.s.ses* [TN: Cla.s.ses to help students catch up with the syllabus or improve their results by focusing on self-development]. This was especially so for when a student reaches Standard Six, the threshold for getting into Middle School. By then, schools almost exclusively operated with systems surrounding test papers. Even if their cla.s.s schedule had allocated time for more well-rounded cla.s.ses, most teachers would, instead, use these sessions to teach important subjects and give extra tuition to students. After all, exam results would represent everything in school.

What was different about Jixia Academy was the school's focus on all-round development. From Cultural Cla.s.ses to the student's physical and even mental development, everything was taken into account. Besides the normal school syllabus which included the Cultural Cla.s.s, there was also horseback riding, archery, Karate, Taekwondo, and Chinese Kickboxing, all of which were taught to develop students' physicality. Students would need to pick two options from the selection on offer, and Mo Jinxi chose archery and Taekwondo.

Apart from these cla.s.ses, there was also the experience of camping in the wild, where student would need to prepare their own food, clothes, accommodation, and mode of transport. After this, students would be given certain necessities and would need to figure out for themselves how to start a fire or cook. There would be impromptu disaster drills too, which include fire and earthquake drills. This trained students to prepare themselves for the possibility of natural disasters occurring and allow them to practice how to survive in case of such occurrences.

Even their Cultural Cla.s.s was different from that of normal schools while their learning path differed as well. However, strangely enough, when the students reached High School and needed to take their exams, they would have no problems tackling the exam questions. They were no different from students from normal schools who woke up early and slept late to immerse their entire being into Cultural Cla.s.ses. It was as if they were running down different paths but were still able to meet at the same junction before heading down the long, lonely road up ahead.

For Mo Jinxi, who had just changed a new environment, it was a challenge to adapt to his new surroundings. In this scenario, getting along with his cla.s.smates was the least of his worries.

Yan Ningbai was in the same cla.s.s as him, and he made sure that Mo Jinxi would not get boycotted. As for Mo Jinxi himself, he was the first grandson of the Mo family, which gave him leverage over his cla.s.smates. Thus, no one attempted to boycott him as his old cla.s.smates did, nor did they say anything mean to him.

When he had first transferred over, Mo Jinxi's biggest pressure came from schoolwork, even though he had no problems at all with the Cultural Cla.s.s. Even though the books they used were different and the learning pathway was not the same, Mo Jinxi managed to keep up because he was a studious boy and took time to study lessons on his own. In reality, the elective cla.s.ses were the ones he was not able to keep up. He had fallen into many funny situations by accident when he first took part in camping in the wild.

However, Mo Jinxi remembered Police Chief Mo's promise to him. As long as he finished all his homework well, Police Chief Mo would bring him back to visit the orphanage when he had an off day, under the condition that Mo Jinxi did not allow this to affect his studies. This was why Mo Jinxi had worked so hard. Even if he did not have a strong foundation, he wanted to catch up with his cla.s.smates.

During this time, he had not mentioned the orphanage to anyone at all, and Mo Jinxi concentrated fully on his studies. When he had finally caught up to his cla.s.smates, he requested for Liang Xiulin to take him to the orphanage for a visit, but Liang Xiulin refused.

Mo Jinxi clenched his hands into little fists and wiped away the tears on his face with the back of his hand. “But… But… I worked so hard to catch up with all the cla.s.ses at Jixia Academy, and I did them really well. Yet, Grandma refused to let me visit the orphanage. Grandpa and Uncle are working every single day, and they hardly get to rest, even on weekends. Uncle is staying next to the police station, so it has been many weeks since he last came home, while Grandpa comes home really late, which doesn't work well for me since Grandma ensures that go to bed early. Grandpa never comes home before I go to bed, and when I wake up in the morning, Grandpa has already left for work. Most of the time, I don't even have the opportunity to speak to Grandpa.”

The more Mo Jinxi talked about it, the more upset he became. He could not control his tears. He covered his eyes with his arms and left it as it was. He sobbed really loudly.

“I miss the old princ.i.p.al, I miss s.h.i.+ Tou and Tian Tian. I told Grandma about it and even gave her my latest results, but Grandma just wouldn't let me visit the orphanage and didn't allow me to keep in contact with s.h.i.+ Tou and Tia Tian. Sob sob sob sob sob! Grandma said… Grandma said that I'm now a child who has a home and that I can't keep thinking about the orphanage. She doesn't want me to contact them often since they… they were children that did not have a good upbringing, and I am now different from them. This means we'll only just grow farther apart in the future. She said we are from two different worlds, and that even if we are friendly now, our friends.h.i.+p will change once we grow up. She told me that s.h.i.+ Tou and Tian Tian will make use of my status and friends.h.i.+p, and they will try to take things from me that doesn't belong to them,” Mo Jinxi cried so hard that he choked in between his sentences.

Mo Jinxi was a smart boy and had a good memory. When he did exercises at home, he would usually get the hang of it on the first try, otherwise, he would not have been able to catch up with Jixia Academy's schoolwork so quickly. This was also why he had remembered everything Liang Xiulin had said to him word for word.

“Grandma said our status is now different, which means that we will be walking down different paths in the future. Our experiences in life will be different too and we will slowly run out of things to say to each other. When I grow up, I will be just like Grandpa and Uncle, but s.h.i.+ Tou and Tian Tian will just be regular people,” Mo Jinxi cried even more after repeating what Liang Xiulin had said to him. He was really sad about it and wondered why his grandmother would say such mean things about his friends.

He may be young, but he understood what she had really meant.

“Grandma said… Grandma said that if I really felt bad about the orphanage, then we'll just donate more money to them, but I can't play with them anymore. Grandma wants me to spend more time with Ningbai and my other cla.s.smates at school since they are the ones who are of the same status as me. When I grow up, these friends will be the social circle I will frequent, and they will be my main friends, so I won't be able to spend time with a circle of common friends like s.h.i.+ Tou and Tian Tian. But… But Ningbai is my good friend, and so are s.h.i.+ Tou and Tian Tian. I don't understand what's the big difference. They're my good friends and to me, that's their status. Do I… Do I need to place my friends at different levels? When I was a child with no home and stayed in the orphanage, Ningbai never turned away from me, and Ningbai's family never stopped us from being friends. He always looked for me at the orphanage too.”

Mo Jinxi cried and croacked while he said all this. Tears and saliva dripped out of the edge of his mouth, mixed with some snot. His words have been jumbled up because of he was emotional, but Lin Chu still understood what he meant.

“If Ningbai's family were like Grandma and they did not like my background nor allow Ningbai to play with me, then I wouldn't have Ningbai as a friend. If that happened, then I wouldn't have had someone to play with at Jixia Academy. This was what I told Grandma, but Grandma still wouldn't let me visit. I know now that Grandma had never planned on letting me keep in contact with the old princ.i.p.al and the others when she took me home. She never wanted me to return to visit the orphanage ever again,” Mo Jinxi continued blubbering out his words as he sobbed non-stop.

“But it's not right! The orphanage was where I was brought up. If it wasn't for the old princ.i.p.al, how would Grandma have even found me? I told Grandma that too, but she said no is no,” Mo Jinxi said.

Liang Xiulin had actually been annoyed by Mo Jinxi's continuous request. She really did not want Mo Jinxi to keep in touch with anyone in the orphanage and she did want there to even be the slightest connection between the two parties.

Police Chief Mo and Mo Jingsheng were constantly busy with work and did not have the time to pay much attention to what happened at home. Moreover, since they were constantly not around, it was difficult for Mo Jinxi to even see them. This was why it was difficult for Police Chief Mo to keep his promise, as he could only get updated about Mo Jinxi's progress from Liang Xiulin.

If this had gone on, Mo Jinxi might never have been able to visit the orphanage, so he took the initiative to mention it to Liang Xiulin.

In the beginning, Liang Xiulin gave excuses such as she was busy today, there was something to do tomorrow, that she needed to visit someone's house the day after, or that she needed to bring Jinxi to visit this person or take him to do something.

She had filled his schedule up completely such that there was really not much time left to visit the orphanage.

Nevertheless, Mo Jinxi was an obedient boy and knew that it would not do if he forced it when there are so many other things to attend to. So, like a good little boy, he waited for when Liang Xiulin would be free to take him to visit the orphanage.

When he missed the old princ.i.p.al too much, he would use the phone given to him by Police Chief Mo to give her a call.

Liang Xiulin did not like the idea of Mo Jinxi contacting the orphanage at all. She knew about Mo Jinxi calling them in secret, but since the phone was a gift from Police Chief Mo, she could not just confiscate it. Besides, he would need the phone to keep in contact with his family while at school. Every student at Jixia Academy had a phone, and it was not really something unusual for them to always have on their person; Some of the high school students would even use phones to keep themselves updated on the stock market. In fact, it would be unusual for the students to not have a phone on them.

Mo Jinxi had joined the school halfway through the school year, and it was no secret that he grew up in an orphanage. Liang Xiulin was worried that his cla.s.smates would look down on him because of this, so she took the effort to make sure that Mo Jinxi's daily necessities like clothes, food, and stationary would be on par with what the other's were using. This was also why she could never confiscate his handphone.

Instead, Liang Xiulin resorted to appearing every time she knew Mo Jinxi was calling the orphanage. Then, she would hurry Mo Jinxi to do something. Sometimes, she ask him to have some fruits, while at other times, she hurried him off to take a bath or even head to bed. The point was, she would try anything to get him off the phone.

Liang Xiulin would take the effort to hurry him just loud enough for the old princ.i.p.al to hear her from the other end of the phone. Since the old princ.i.p.al did not want to disturb Mo Jinxi, she would quickly tell him to hang up instead.

Mo Jinxi would not have thought much of it if it had just happened once or twice, but it had already happened so often. Every time he made the call, the same scenario would play out again, and soon, he started to realize that Liang Xiulin was doing it on purpose.

This was why later, Mo Jinxi started to make the calls in secret.

As he snuck around to find time to make the calls, Mo Jinxi started thinking about his situation. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Liang Xiulin's constant claims that she had things to do and that she did not have the time to bring him to the orphanage were just excuses. Thus, Mo Jinxi tested her a few more times and came to the conclusion that his hypothesis was correct.

Mo Jinxi was a little frustrated about this as he did not understand why his grandmother would stop him from visiting the orphanage. After all, it was not like he was going to stay on there and refuse to home, it would be just like visiting the home of a relative. Even if he could not make the visit every week, if he had the time and could visit often, what was so wrong about that?

The old princ.i.p.al had always taken good care of him and treated him like her own grandson. However, children staying in other orphanages were not as lucky. They had simply been lucky enough to meet a person as kind as the old princ.i.p.al.

He had always held on to the hope that the old princ.i.p.al would be able to hang in there. He knew that she was very old by now, but he still continued to hope for the old princ.i.p.al to have a long life. He wanted her to watch him grow up, and to see him start working and earning his own keep. Then, he wanted to take care of the old princ.i.p.al and be filial to her, so that she would never have to worry about anything else.

Mo Jinxi may have been young, but he knew very well that time waits for no man. By the time he would be capable of taking care of the old princ.i.p.al, she would no longer be around anymore. He read a lot of books during his spare time and had learned the concept of how time waited for n.o.body, and once he understood the meaning behind the phrase, he took the effort to remember those words.

Thus, he did not want to wait until he was grown up and capable of taking care of himself before being filial to the old princ.i.p.al. When that time finally comes, she might well be long gone.

Therefore, even though he was living with the Mo family and was filial to his grandparents, he had never forgotten the old princ.i.p.al. He still wanted to visit her often.

He knew the old princ.i.p.al did not ask much from them. All she wanted was for all the children to have a good life, and as long as she saw that they were happy, then she would be happy.

Not to mention, he also did not want the old princ.i.p.al to think that he had forgotten the orphanage just because he had found his rich family. He was not a heartless person.

That was why Mo Jingxi started making serious requests to Liang Xiulin to take him to the orphanage.

Liang Xiulin started getting annoyed after the requests became frequent, so she told Mo Jinxi the truth.

“Grandma won't let me visit them. The old princ.i.p.al might think that I've forgotten about everyone, and she's going to think that I don't want to acknowledge the old princ.i.p.al, and my brothers and sisters because I now have my grandparents. The old princ.i.p.al is going to be heartbroken,” Mo Jinxi sobbed as his head dropped. His arms were still glued to his eyes as he continuously wiped the tears off.

“I don't want the old princ.i.p.al to misunderstand me. I'm not a heartless person who would forget them just because I've found my family. I want to be filial to the old princ.i.p.al. Sob sob sob sob. Grandma… Grandma just won't take me there. No one can take me there. I miss the old princ.i.p.al, I miss Teacher Yuan and Teacher w.a.n.g, I miss s.h.i.+ Tou and Tian Tian. I've come home so long ago, yet I haven't even visited them once since them. They must be so sad and must miss me a lot. So… so, I came to look for you. I don't know the way back to the orphanage and I don't know the name of your company, but I remember this place. The driver… The driver knew too, which was why I came here. I… I just miss the old princ.i.p.al and I want to go back to the orphanage to visit, sob sob sob sob…” Mo Jinxi's shoulders shuddered while he stood there and wailed.

Lin Chu watched as Mo Jinxi's body began to tremble all over as he cried and sighed to herself. There was no way of telling who was right and who was wrong in this situation.

Mo Jinxi and his grandmother had acted unacceptably, but they both had their reasons.

Lin Chu ruffled Mo Jinxi's hair and pulled up his hand. “Okay. You can stop crying. Come here and sit with me.”

Lin Chu lifted Mo Jinxi onto the sofa, where his legs hung in mid-air as they could not touch the ground. They dangled around as Mo Jinxi cried even more, making his little body shudder.

Lin Chu took a box of tissue and placed it on Mo Jinxi's lap. Then, she pulled one out and used it to wipe away his tears.

Mo Jinxi had unleashed all the sadness that had been previously locked up in his heart as he told Lin Chu everything. This was why he was not able to stop his tears and kept crying profusely.

Despite this, it did not bother Lin Chu at all. She pulled out another tissue and wiped away Mo Jinxi's tears again. “Jinxi, it's okay for you to cry, but will you listen to me when you're done, please?”

Mo Jinxi choked while he nodded, the tears dripping down from his face.

Lin Chu stopped talking and allowed him to release his sadness and frustration. She saw the McDonald's on the table and turned to Yan Beicheng to ask, “Have you eaten?”

Yan Beicheng nodded as he explained, “I saw him waiting in the lobby after returning from lunch with Zuo Qiu. When he arrived, he told the front desk that he was looking for me, but when they saw that he was just a child, they did not dare let him run about. His Jixia Academy uniform was pretty helpful though, since the front desk realized that he was not a child from just any family and was afraid that something might happen to him. Thus, they got their colleagues in the lobby to accompany him on the sofa. Since he hurried here without eating anything, when I asked him what he wanted, he said he wanted McDonald's.”

Mo Jinxi's broken voice turned softer. McDonald's was his favorite food, but he did not have many opportunities to have it and could only have it on certain occasions. When he moved in with the Mo family, he never had the chance to eat it because Liang Xiulin said that it had no nutritional value. She claimed it was not good for his health and would make him obese.

He had read an article about it before too. An overseas reporter had conducted an experiment on himself by having McDonald's for the whole month. In the end, he turned from a handsome young man into a big fat man until you could not even tell what he originally looked like.