Re-engraving the Spring - Chapter 49

Lin Yuming spoke calmly, “Chi Qiu is back.”

As soon as Chi Qiu heard Lin Yuming’s voice, his happy tone was lowered for a moment as he politely called out, “Uncle Lin.”

He turned around and asked Xiao Yan to bring something over, and said in a rush, “I heard from Aunt Su that you always have back pain, so I bought a small massager for you. It’s not heavy and easy to carry, so you can also take it to your workplace.”

His behavior was more or less ‘if the family lived in harmony all affairs would prosper’.1the literal meaning for the idiom 家和万事兴. This idiom means a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Lin Yuming and Chi Qiu had been living together for many years and so he understood Chi Qiu’s temperament. He took a look at the massager that Xiao Yan had brought over, and after a moment of hesitation, he still stepped forward to take it: “Thank you for your trouble.”

Chi Qiu shook his head: “It should be.”

Lin Yuming put the massager casually in the corner, and poured himself a glass of water before saying without looking back, “I still have work to do, so I’ll go to the study first. You sit down, it’s your home.”

It could be felt that Lin Yuming simply did not want to, and was not used to interacting with Chi Qiu.

Chi Qiu nodded his head understandingly, and when Lin Yuming entered the study and closed the door, he breathed a little sigh of relief.

Aunt Su knew that the relationship between him and Lin Yuming was tense, so she whispered a few words of comfort, and said rather eccentrically: “Mr. Lin’s temper is a little cold, let’s take care of ourselves and ignore him.”

“En.” Chi Qiu told Xiao Yan to put down his things so he could leave, then he asked Aunt Su, “Do my mother and Uncle Lin still quarrel a lot now?”

Speaking of this, Aunt Su groaned and sighed: “Ever since Miss Chi2Referring to Chi Xia left home, Mr. Lin and Mrs. Chi have always had a small quarrel every three days, and a big quarrel every seven days. The two of them couldn’t sit down and have a good conversation, except quarreling. It’s just cold words. Fortunately, Miss Chi will use someone else’s cell phone to call back every now and then to report her safety to Mr. Lin, so that the family can calm down.”

Aunt Su was extremely helpless. She stared at the closed door of the study with a headache and sighed silently.

At the same time, she held Chi Qiu’s hand in distress and patted the back of his hand: “Mrs. Chi is in the kitchen, I’ll go call her. What would you like to drink?”

Chi Qiu touched the sofa and sat down: “Tea is good.”

“What a coincidence, there is a new jasmine tea at home, it smells good.”

Aunt Su had just finished speaking with a smile when Chi Lanyan came over from the kitchen. She was dressed in home clothes with an apron on her body, which was rare and plain.

When she was at home, Chi Lanyan’s face was no longer cold. Instead there was the tenderness of being a mother. Seeing a lot of gift bags lying next to the coffee table, she said speechlessly: “You know how to come to see me? I thought you had forgotten about me after getting married. How long has it been?”

“Mom,” Chi Qiu laughed, “I won’t forget you even if I forget anyone else.”

Chi Lanyan raised the corner of her mouth and fondly stroked Chi Qiu’s hair: “Bringing so many things back to your own home, are you not tired?”

“Xiao Yan helped me carry it.” Chi Qiu tilted his head, facing Chi Lanyan, “You don’t sleep well, I bought some aromatherapy.”

Chi Lanyan’s mouth did not say anything, but her heart was happy.

She took off her apron and handed it to Aunt Su: “Sister Su, you go prepare the kitchen first. I’ll stay here with Xiao Qiu and talk before going back.”

She looked around and with sharp eyes, she noticed the faint scar on Chi Qiu’s arm. She then grabbed Chi Qiu’s wrist and asked anxiously, “What’s wrong with this?”

“It’s nothing, I fell.” Chi Qiu lied.

“Why are you so careless? You kid, you fell and didn’t even tell me.” Chi Lanyan was distressed and couldn’t help but express her anger, “How did the Lu family take care of you…”

“I’m not a child, it doesn’t matter if I fall.” Chi Qiu told her not to care and shook his arm easily, “And it’s almost better, it doesn’t hurt at all.”

Chi Lanyan frowned, wanting to examine his scars carefully.

Seeing this, Chi Qiu immediately withdrew his hand and went to take the jasmine tea brought by Aunt Su. He lowered his head and sniffed, then changed the subject: “Mom, the jasmine tea at home smells so good, I want to take some with me later.”

Ji Lanyan looked at her ‘silly’ son and didn’t ask any more questions. After all, what his silly son didn’t want her to know, he kept it a secret and wouldn’t breathe a word.

She looked around, and only then remembered that Lu Ming too, should be coming for dinner tonight.

Without waiting for Chi Qiu to explain, she changed her face in a second: “Is he busy with his little broken company? He can’t even come for a dinner.”

“…Mom, Lu Ming’s company is not broken.”

Chi Lanyan snorted coldly: “How is it not broken? His uncle managed the company in a complete mess before, it really looked worrying.”

Speaking of which, Chi Lanyan had to admire Lu Ming. He actually managed to reorganize the company that was messed up by his uncle in a short period of time, so that the company gradually got back on the right track.

The ability was there, but the person was not good enough.

All day long showing a cold face to Chi Qiu, and even when Chi Qiu rarely came home, he didn’t know how to accompany him. Compared with the Lu family, the Chi family was better, and it had never been a poor and humble family.

In Chi Lanyan’s eyes, Lu Ming’s care for Chi Qiu was never in place.

She did not look good, but did not say anything serious: “You just know how to help Lu Ming speak every day, I can’t help you.”

Chi Qiu was embarrassed and said the truth: “I am not ah. He really has something to do today, he usually accompanies me.”

“…” Chi Lanyan misunderstood badly; she took Chi Qiu’s words as an excuse to cover up for Lu Ming.

Today, the mother and son rarely sat down to eat together, so Chi Lanyan didn’t want to let unhappy things affect each other.

She looked at Chi Qiu’s face and saw that he looked good and was in a better mood. “Seeing that you have gained weight recently, don’t bother with him. This meal, it doesn’t matter if he likes to eat or not. Anyway, I am cooking for you.”

Of course, Chi Lanyan did not forget to talk about Aunt Zhang. “That nanny of yours, I really want to change her before. The dishes are all biased towards Lu Ming’s taste, you are getting thinner and thinner. I can’t wait to let Sister Su go over there.”

Chi Qiu put down the teacup, and immediately felt sorry for Aunt Zhang: “Aunt Zhang’s cooking is delicious, you’ll know when you try it next time.”

Chi Lanyan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she heard it: “Okay, now you’re protecting everything I say against?”

“Mom, you have misunderstandings about both Lu Ming and Aunt Zhang.” Chi Qiu argued desperately, not wanting the misunderstanding to continue to become deeper. He grabbed Chi Lanyan’s hand and went over all of Lu Ming’s recent changes and how Aunt Zhang cooked with care.

This was how Chi Qiu was. When he was serious, he would hold on to people.

Chi Lanyan couldn’t wring him so she could only say: “I know, I know, you kid…don’t talk about that. Come, don’t move, let mom take a good look at you.”

Chi Qiu sat down obediently, but still asked worriedly: “Mom, did you listen to what I just said?”

“Listen.”

Chi Lanyan looked at her son, and the more she looked at him, the more she liked it. She was sorry for Chi Qiu’s eyes, and there was a thousand helplessness in her heart. Otherwise, with her temperament, she would never have allowed Chi Qiu and Lu Ming to marry and live in the Lu family house.

Right now, the relationship between Chi Qiu and Chi Xia was stiff. As an elder, Chi Lanyan couldn’t accompany Chi Qiu until he grew old. She had to let Chi Qiu have a companion who could stay with him, so that she could feel more at ease.

But it happened that the person he met was emotionally abnormal…

Chi Lanyan couldn’t think about it, she would easily have a headache just thinking about it.

She chatted with Chi Qiu for a while, then claimed that there was still soup boiling in the kitchen so she went over. As a result, shortly after she left, Lin Yuming came out of the study, holding a briefcase in his hand, looking in a hurry.

Chi Qiu ‘looked’ at the sound.

“It’s me.” Lin Yuming had changed into a white shirt and was the first to say, “There’s something going on at school, I’m going over there.”

Chi Qiu stood up and said in the direction of the voice, “Uncle Lin, dinner will be ready in a few minutes. If you’re not in a hurry, why don’t you have dinner before you go?”

“You guys eat, no need to wait for me.” Lin Yuming did not know that Lu Ming was not coming over for dinner. He was not good at handling these interpersonal relationships, and even worse, he was not good at having any interactions with Chi Qiu.

He went out of the house without looking back, and not long after, a black car drove away from the villa’s front yard.

Chi Qiu was accustomed to his indifference and drank tea quietly on the sofa for a while. He was bored and went to his bedroom. The furnishings inside were the same as always, exactly the same as when he left home.

In the bookcase against the wall, there were many Braille books. Chi Qiu looked at them with some nostalgia. During the years when he was completely blind, he spent countless lonely nights relying on these books.

Naturally, as Chi Qiu ‘read’ more stories, his own ‘pen’ jumped into action.

With the support of Chi Lanyan, he wrote and submitted many short stories in Braille.

Some of them were submitted to inspirational weekly magazines for people with disabilities, while others were submitted to general magazines.

Many times, in order to facilitate the submission, Chi Lanyan would stay up late after work to translate Chi Qiu’s stories from Braille into normal manuscripts and help to submit them.

Submitted again and again, but faced with failures again and again.

And every time he failed, Chi Lanyan would encourage Chi Qiu, asking Chi Qiu to try again and not to give up quickly.

In fact, Chi Qiu knew that Chi Lanyan would do this just so that he could find something happy to do. He appreciated his mother’s good intentions and began to devote himself to writing until his stories appeared in physical publications again and again.

Later, with the advancement of technology, blind people were able to use cell phones and computers comfortably. Many electronic products had gradually improved accessibility features for the visually impaired, and Chi Qiu began to write stories on the computer.

However, one by one, the literary weeklies that he was able to contribute to stopped their publishing, and Chi Qiu lost the pleasure.

At first, he was using the accessibility of electronic devices to write short stories while completely blind. Later, when his right eye returned to normal, he would secretly hide in the room and use the computer freely during the day when everyone went to work and school.

The lonelier he was, the more stories he wrote.

Unconsciously, Chi Qiu even serialized a long fairy tale alone on his computer.

In reality, he was a ‘blind man’. But in the text, as the main character, he was free, his eyes could encompass all things. This was not a story that a blind man should be able to write, he had seen too many colors to return to the darkness.

In order not to make his family suspicious, he claimed that he had stopped writing stories.