Chapter 1062: Meticulous Thoughts, Insidious Schemes

Qi Heng: "Telling you is the same as telling everyone. You are clear about what you love and hate; you cannot tolerate a grain of sand in your eyes, nor can you keep secrets in your heart."

Lady Qi knew what her son said made sense, but it was still wrong of them not to tell her; she was their kin, their closest kin. Did they know how many days she had spent crying in secret? These two were heartless.

"I don't care. I won't pursue what happened before, but you are to pack your luggage immediately and go to A Country. I have already cancelled your leave of absence, arranged your accommodation, and you are leaving today."

Qi Heng:...

"No, I still have work here; I can't get away." He refused flatly.

It wasn't that he couldn't get away; it was that he didn't know how to face Shi Ran in A Country.

"No work is as important as Ranran. If you don't go today, I will have you tied up and taken there." Lady Qi had a fiery personality; whatever she thought of, she had to do immediately.

"How about this? I will go home with you to see my sister and father, and then decide?"

Qi Heng used a roundabout policy to steady his mother first.

"Fine, then let's go home first, but don't think you can get your father to persuade me. You must go back and be with Ranran..."

"We'll talk on the way. Please wait for me a moment; I need to go ask for leave."

"Mm."

Perhaps because she trusted him too much, Lady Qi did not notice the loophole in her son's words.

He said "ask for leave," which meant he would still be coming back!

Lady Qi went to her son's dormitory to wait for him.

The conditions here were too crude; there wasn't even a decent office.

The conditions of the dormitory were also as poor as they could be: a tiny room, a hard wooden bed, and a square wooden table that served as both a dining table and a desk.

There wasn't even a wardrobe; three identical cardboard boxes were stacked up, with a hole cut in the middle of each.

One large cardboard box held clothes, another held miscellaneous items, and the bottom box held Spring Shoes.

Lady Qi almost shed tears.

When had her son ever suffered like this?

Even during the two years when the family was at its lowest and fleeing abroad, it had never been this arduous.

No, she was even more determined to get her son out; she could not let him continue to suffer here.

The furnishings in the room were too shabby—so shabby she couldn't bear to look at them. Simply out of sight, out of mind, she walked to the doorway to wait.

At this moment, a boy walked over from outside.

He was about the same age as Qi Heng.

He was dressed like a local poor person, yet he had delicate skin and tender flesh, and his temperament was completely different.

"Hello, are you looking for A Heng? I just saw him walk that way. Would you like me to help you call him over?" The boy was very polite and had handsome, delicate features; Lady Qi felt quite favorably toward him.

"Thank you, no need. A Heng has gone to ask for leave to prepare to go home with me. I am waiting for him here."

"Oh, so that's how it is."

The boy smiled, revealing a mouthful of white teeth as he did so.

He did not leave, but instead enthusiastically invited her: "Why don't you come to my room for a glass of iced watermelon juice? It's great for cooling off; the weather today is truly too hot."

Lady Qi hesitated slightly: "This, wouldn't that be inappropriate?"

"Are you looking down on our crude conditions?"

The boy's smile was kind: "Don't worry, although our conditions here are crude, it is clean and hygienic."

"I didn't mean that. Alright, thank you."

She followed the boy to the neighboring dormitory.

The furnishings in the room were similar, only the boy's room was cleaner and tidier. He took watermelon from the refrigerator to juice it, poured a glass, and handed it to Lady Qi: "Please."

"Thank you."

Just from one sip, she noticed something different!

It was too sweet.

L Country produced plenty of fruit, but not all fruit from every region was delicious; for example, watermelons were divided by north and south.

The watermelons in the south were not very sweet because of the heavy rainfall.

But the watermelons in the north were mostly grown in sandy soil, with abundant sunshine during the day, cool nights, and a large temperature difference between morning and evening, so they were very sweet.

However, because the yield was very low, they were particularly precious and not something just anyone could afford to eat.

And this watermelon juice had a very natural sweetness; it definitely could not be a melon from the south!

Lady Qi became alert.

She looked the boy up and down; he was dressed plainly but spoke with distinction, and was polite and refined... She knew it—he must be that brat of unknown origin from the Chen family!

"Clang!"

She placed the cup heavily on the table and let her face fall.

She stood up and left without saying a word.

"Take care, Auntie."

Chen Ran said from behind, as if she had just come to visit him.

Lady Qi walked out of the dormitory just as her son returned. Seeing his mother's unhappy expression, he asked with concern: "Mom, your complexion is bad; did you get heatstroke? I'll help you to the car."

There was air conditioning in the car, but his dormitory had none.

The weather was very hot today, so his first instinct was that his mother had heatstroke.

"No, it's that brat Chen Ran who invited me to his dormitory for fruit juice, and I actually went."

Lady Qi was incredibly annoyed: "Oh, I didn't turn the corner in my mind at first; I didn't expect him to live so close to you. If I had known earlier, I wouldn't have given him a pleasant look at all..."

Qi Heng: "Don't be angry anymore. Just ignore him when you see him in the future."

"Mm, I will definitely ignore him. If I weren't afraid of it having a bad influence on you, I would have retorted a few times to vent for your father!"

Lady Qi spoke quite readily herself, but she did not notice her son's unnatural expression.

Although Chen Ran had not been at the grassroots level for long, in just a few short days, he had made Qi Heng suffer quite a few secret losses.

On the surface, he was friendly to everyone, especially to Qi Heng, acting as affectionate as if they were brothers.

He even told Qi Heng that if their relationship was poor, people would speculate that the relationship between their elders was not very good.

If the relationship between the younger generation was poor, people would think the elders' relationship was disharmonious, which would be detrimental to the country's stability and unity.

His grand principles were logical and well-founded; although Qi Heng did not express agreement, he did not explicitly express disagreement either, so it was taken as tacit consent.

Thus, the two of them maintained a superficial "unity and harmony."

But Chen Ran would often talk to Qi Heng about things in A Country, saying that he and Shi Ran were exceptionally close.

He said the way Shi Ran looked at him was different from how she looked at others, and that when he didn't know how to solve a problem, Shi Ran would patiently explain it to him—if he didn't get it the first time, she would explain it a second time, and if he didn't get it the second time, she would explain it a third time... until he understood.

Qi Heng did not want to hear these things, but he kept chasing him to talk about them.

It was endless, and he never tired of it.

If it were only him saying these things, Qi Heng certainly wouldn't believe it, but the problem was—it wasn't just him saying it.

Li Wei, one of Shi Ran's best friends in A Country, would also frequently send messages to Qi Heng about Shi Ran, saying the same things as Chen Ran, which was an important reason why he didn't want to contact Shi Ran after returning.

It's not bad things that are feared, but bad people.

If it were his old temper, he would have disregarded everything and had a big fight with Chen Ran, tearing off the mask of civility once and for all.

But Chen Ran's craftiness lay in the fact that he had agreed beforehand that the two of them must maintain a superficial friendship!

So even if he didn't like it, he had to listen, and hearing it too much inevitably made him annoyed.

Now that his mother wanted him to go to A Country and start over with Shi Ran, he instinctively resisted!