Chapter Nineteen

"Yingyue, come on, it's time to eat." Yuwen Xi interrupted Yingyue's confusion. Yingyue responded with a smile, setting her doubts aside.

The gentle morning sunlight, soft as a mother's hand, caressed Yingyue's faintly blushing cheeks. Her lips unconsciously curved into a blissful smile, as if her dreams had been filled with happiness. Her lashes fluttered lightly, her delicate hands lazily rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and her gaze, meeting the sunlight, brimmed with joy. Turning her head, she looked at the photo she had taken with her stuffed toy the day before, and her heart smiled as well. She rose, slipped into her robe, and went to the bathroom.

Outside, the sunlight grew stronger, falling on the photo at the head of her bed. In the picture, Yingyue was laughing wholeheartedly, gently embraced by her stuffed toy. It was the most ordinary Mickey Mouse doll, with clumsy yet endearing limbs, its large grinning face mask concealing, by chance, a few wisps of hair shimmering with a metallic sheen, catching the morning light and gleaming fiercely.

The phone rang. Yingyue hurried out of the bathroom. "Hello?" She was a little breathless. Silence responded from the other end. "Hello?" she asked again, tilting her head in mild confusion. "May I ask who this is?"

"Heh, little mommy, have you already forgotten me?" After a moment's bewilderment, that familiar, long-missed wicked chuckle came through the line. Yingyue stiffened, excitement briefly flickering across her face before she answered coldly, "What do you want?" Her indifferent tone brought a brief silence from the other end.

"Of course I missed you, dear," came the teasing reply. Yingyue could almost picture his expression—surely that careless, mocking grin, ridiculing her from afar.

But Yingyue was wrong. Despite the bantering tone, his expression in that moment was one of sorrow—no, perhaps even sorrow was too pale a word for it. What an utterly heart-wrenching look it was, his eyes brimming with a thousand tangled emotions, his chest heavy with words unsaid, all of it fiercely suppressed, finally surfacing only as a wicked smile at the corner of his lips, and a single cruel sentence.

"Dear, you've been living quite comfortably lately, and it's left me rather unsettled." He paused, the laughter fading. "Little mommy, shouldn't you spare a bit of concern for your 'son' too?"

That word—"son"—shattered the last defenses of Yingyue's heart. The receiver slipped from her hand to the floor. Strength drained from her, she sank to her knees, eyes vacant, her lips trembling. "Son." A sharp pain flashed in her eyes, but a cold laugh escaped her throat, tinged with despair.

"So it's really just 'son'?"

On the other end, regardless of whether anyone was listening, the voice continued: "I'll wait for you at the hotel." The line went dead, the dial tone droning in her ears. And in Yingyue's mind, only that one word remained—"son"—the word that in an instant had smashed her heart to pieces.

Bule Hotel, Presidential Suite, Top Floor

Beneath the dim wall lamp, the tall figure by the window seemed to blur before Yingyue's eyes, as if he were an illusion, a familiar silhouette from another lifetime.

The room was silent, so quiet that they could hear each other's breathing. They stood for a long time, neither uttering a word.

Night had fully fallen. Outside, neon lights bloomed one after another, their mottled glow filtering through the misty curtain and further obscuring the figure by the window. Yingyue couldn't help but reach out, wanting to grasp it, but realizing what she was doing, she froze midair, not knowing what to do. Gazing at the figure still standing ramrod straight, she let a self-deprecating smile tug at her lips before pressing them into a thin line.

At last, he spoke. "Did you have fun at the amusement park?" His tone was icy, devoid of warmth, yet carried a trace of unmistakable contempt.