Always By Your Side

Chapter 24: How Much Do You Know About the Past

The season quietly entered into winter.

That day, Fu Beichen took Yuanyuan to dinner. Entering the Chinese-style restaurant, Fu Beichen explained his intention: “This is a restaurant opened by a friend of mine, the taste is not bad.”

As soon as they entered, she really came across a friend.

“Yuanyuan?” Cheng Shenghua was somewhat flabbergasted as he looked at the two people before his eyes. His sight shifted from Yuanyuan to Fu Beichen, and finally settled on their interlocking hands.

“Uncle Shenghua…” Yuanyuan quickly wanted to let go, feeling bashful, yet Fu Beichen held on even tighter.

“Pfft.” A stifled laugh could be heard from across Cheng Shenghua.

Yuanyuan turned her head and found that the person who laughed was, surprisingly, a familiar-looking person. “You…”

He Pu politely stood up, smiled, and introduced himself to Yuanyuan: “Hello Miss Yuanyuan, my surname is He, He Pu.” Then he looked at Fu Beichen. “Are you guys…on a date?” Expert Fu’s investment had shown returns very quickly, ah.

Yuanyuan said with surprise, “You guys know each other?”

“Not just knowing!” He Pu said quickly, “Still close childhood friends…”

“Ah?” Yuanyuan quickly turned to Fu Beichen.

At this time, Cheng Shenghua spoke again with obvious astonishment. “Yuanyuan, Beichen, you, you two…”

“I’m in a relationship with Yuanyuan.” Without waiting for Yuanyuan to open her mouth, Fu Beichen got straight to the point. He was rather blunt. Cheng Shenghua was silenced for quite some time by the definitive answer. It was truly unexpected.

Watching from the side, He Pu still wished for the whole world to be in chaos as he deliberately asked, “Beichen, you know Boss Cheng?”

Fu Beichen replied calmly, “Eldest Brother Cheng is a distant relative.”

“Eldest Brother? Yuanyuan calls Boss Cheng uncle?” He Pu patted his thigh, “It’s a mess, it’s a mess, haha.”

Yuanyuan was so astonished by these words. Fu Beichen cast a quick glance beside him. “You guys enjoy yourselves, I’ll take Yuanyuan to sit over there.”

Yuanyuan hastily nodded at Cheng Shenghua, “Then I’m going over there, Uncle.”

“Okay.” Cheng Shenghua unexpectedly didn’t want to disturb the young people on their date, so he didn’t ask them to stay and eat with them.

Fu Beichen took Yuanyuan away. He Pu asked Cheng Shenghua, “Boss Cheng, is Yuanyuan your relative?”

“She’s the daughter of my comrade-in-arms.” Cheng Shenghua’s tone revealed that he found it somewhat unbelievable. “It turns out she’s together with my brother from the Fu family.”

As soon as Yuanyuan sat down, she suddenly recalled one matter—those medicines she had received last time. Since it wasn’t sent by Uncle Shenghua, it ought to be…Yuanyuan’s gaze was like a torch as she glanced at Fu Beichen. “It was you, right? The cold medicine.” Fu Beichen just smiled.

No denial. That was it. Yuanyuan said seriously, “Thank you.”

“You don’t blame me for not telling you?”

Yuanyuan let out a “yi” and said, “I received your favour, why would I want to blame you?”

Fu Beichen gazed at the person with straightforward and pure eyes sitting across from him. He thought that this was precisely the same as before.

Fu Beichen’s cell phone rang, and he took it out of his pocket to see that it was a text message from He Pu: I just asked about the age of that girl Yuanyuan, she’s only twenty-three, seven years younger than you. You are an old cow eating young grass, ah. You really have the nerve to speak.

Fu Beichen naturally didn’t reply to such text messages.

Moreover, in some sense, it was far more than just seven years, but thousands of years. 

That evening, when Cheng Shenghua returned home, he deliberately stopped when passing by Cheng Bai’s room. Seeing the beam of light passing under the slit of the door, he knew that Cheng Bai had come back. He hesitated before knocking on the door.

Cheng Bai opened the door. He looked at his father who was standing outside the door staring straight at him, puzzled.

“At noon I ran into Yuanyuan, we ate at the same place.”

“Oh.”

“She and Beichen are together, did you know?”

Fu Beichen…it came as no surprise, but why was it so difficult to bear when he heard it at that moment?

“Really? Then congratulations to her…”

In the blink of an eye, it was the Laba Festival.1 Because it wasn’t a weekend, Yuanyuan couldn’t rush home to celebrate the festival with her mother. Instead she received a call from Auntie Zhu, telling her to come to the Cheng family’s house to eat Laba congee after she got off work. Yuanyuan thought that the last time she saw Uncle Shenghua, she hadn’t been able to report her state of affairs to him properly, so she agreed. Afterwards, she phoned Fu Beichen and told him. The latter expressed his understanding and instructed her to report to him that she was safe and sound when she got home in the evening.

This gentleman treated her more and more like a child. Yuanyuan thought it was hilarious. When she arrived at the Cheng’s, Yuanyuan didn’t see Uncle Shenghua or Cheng Bai, so she strolled into the kitchen.

“Yuanyuan, you’re here!”

“En, Auntie Zhu,” Yuanyuan sweetly called to Auntie Zhu who was picking the edible parts of vegetables. “I’ll help you.”

“Don’t, you go have Laba congee, it’s in the rice cooker.”

“Okay, then I’ll have the congee first,” Yuanyuan said. She went to ladle the congee. 

Just as she was taking the first sip, she heard Auntie Zhu say to her, “Yuanyuan, how is Cheng Bai’s ear treatment going?”

Yuanyuan let out a surprised “en” and asked, “What’s wrong with his ears?”

“You don’t know?” This time it was Auntie Zhu’s turn to be surprised. “Before, when Cheng Bai went to help the disaster victims, he was injured. In addition, his right ear already suffered an injury when he was in senior high school. The old injury and the new injury have combined to make his right ear lose some hearing now.”

“When did he get an ear injury in high school?”

“Aiya.” At this time, Auntie Zhu remembered that the boss once told her not to tell Yuanyuan about Cheng Bai’s injury in high school. But because it had been so long, she had forgotten about it and the words just came out.

“Auntie, tell me.”

Auntie Zhu thought that since this affair had happened so many years ago, at that time, she probably wasn’t allowed to tell Yuanyuan because they were afraid it would scare the child. Now that Cheng Bai might go deaf in one ear, she really felt distressed for that child. Therefore, she told Yuanyuan all about it in full detail.

Yuanyuan was at a loss as she listened to Auntie Zhu recount the entire blackmailing incident from that year—this period seemed to be a missing piece of her childhood memory, and now, it was finally complete.

Yuanyuan left the kitchen in a very complicated mood. As she was coming out, she nearly bumped into Cheng Bai who was just about to enter the kitchen. Two pairs of eyes suddenly met each other, both looking stunned.

Then, Yuanyuan grabbed Cheng Bai’s arm and dragged him to a corner of the living room. “Cheng Bai, I…you, the incident in high school, I heard about it from Auntie Zhu.”

“En?” Cheng Bai raised his brows.

“When you were kidnapped by a person from Uncle’s factory.”

Cheng Bai frowned, and after a long time, he said, “Okay, and?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve always misunderstood you.” Yuanyuan said depressedly, “Why didn’t you tell me?” That year, when he was injured, it just so happened to be summer vacation. She was in her hometown, and no one informed her. She hadn’t known anything at all, and now the matter had already come to this point and he still didn’t tell her.

The corners of Cheng Bai’s mouth twitched into a smile, “Why would I tell you? To gain sympathy and demand something in return? You wouldn’t, and I also disdain doing it.”

Yuanyuan still felt uncomfortable, as if something was blocking her nose, mouth, and even the pores of her body, making her unable to breathe.

“Cheng Yuanyuan.” Cheng Bai looked at her, and with an unhurried manner of speaking, he said, “We have known each other for fifteen years altogether. The first time I saw you at my house, I was ten, you were eight. If, right now, I had a terminal illness, would you be willing to spend another fifteen years of your time in exchange for my life?”

Yuanyuan didn’t hesitate, “En.”

“That’s enough.”

She didn’t like him anymore. He already understood this over and over.

After so many years, Cheng Bai couldn’t figure out why he was able to keep his original thoughts motionless.