Chapter 11

In the following days, the “straight-talking” Linghua started coming up with all sorts of ways to make things difficult for me.

Including but not limited to:

Deliberately making dishes that Tangtang once cooked for Gu Haochen, reminiscing at the dining table with Gu Haochen about life with Tangtang;

Intercepting Gu Haochen halfway when the old lady was lecturing him, using the kite he once flew with Tangtang;

Pretending to have nightmares at night and calling out Tangtang’s name, crying to trick Gu Haochen into comforting him;

Falsely accusing me of breaking the crystal ball Tangtang gave to Gu Haochen;

Taking Gu Haochen all over the city to look for the same crystal ball, waking up Gu Haochen’s sweet memories with Tangtang along the way.

Gu Haochen was already rotten to the core, and after Linghua’s maneuvers, he became even more deranged. He used to look at me with just a hint of disdain, but now his eyes were full of resentment, as if his White Moonlight Tangtang had died at my hands.

These tricks weren’t even clever. Most of the time, I just happily watched Linghua stir up trouble, never expecting Gu Haochen to actually fall for it.

One day, I wanted to go downstairs and saw Linghua crying with his head down in the corner of the stairs, while Gu Haochen, face full of pain, held Linghua in his arms.

“You said you’d never marry,” Linghua sobbed, “How could you forget you, me, and Tangtang’s past?”

Gu Haochen let out a long sigh, coaxing Linghua, and quietly told the truth: “You don’t know… the Gu Family’s situation now… is really bad. These past few years, we’ve lost money on almost everything, and the capital chain is about to break…”

“How could that be…”

“I have to get the money from the old lady… only then can I keep the Gu Family going as it is…”

I couldn’t be bothered to listen to the rest. I knocked on the stair railing, giving them time to separate, then walked downstairs.