Chapter 369 - 324: Face the Consequences
Chapter 369: Chapter 324: Face the Consequences
After leaving the Wu Mansion, the mother and daughter walked to the intersection and got into a taxi. Tang Yaxuan said to Wu Xiaowen, "Mom, I wasn’t the one who leaked our phone numbers and addresses. That Liu Fengying said Sister Manman told her! I don’t know how Sister Manman found out Grandpa’s home number, your work number, and my school’s address. She always says she doesn’t want anything to do with us, yet she goes and digs up all this information. I really don’t know what she’s up to."
"What else could she be up to? She just doesn’t want me to have a moment’s peace! That girl, Manman... she treats us like enemies. Her attitude is all wrong. She’s going to go off the rails sooner or later!"
Wu Xiaowen pressed her lips together, her eyes narrowing slightly. "And that Liu Fengying is just despicable! It’s bad enough that she deceived us, but she’s also greedy and relentlessly pestering us. If it weren’t for the fact that she has several children to raise, your father would have definitely thrown her in jail for life! Just ignore her. She’s a world away, so what can she possibly do?"
"But she keeps calling like this. I’m afraid it will affect you, Mom, and Grandpa’s house..."
"It’s fine. I’ll figure out a way to get my office line disconnected and then get a new number after a while. Don’t worry about Grandpa’s house. He’s usually at school and rarely uses the home phone. Aren’t those girls who came back from the countryside always eager to answer the phone? Let them deal with it. If they can’t stand it, they can go change the number themselves!"
"Oh, okay." Tang Yaxuan breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t tell Wu Xiaowen about Liu Fengying sending letters and telegrams to her school.
It was nearly nine o’clock when the mother and daughter got home. After the arduous climb up several flights of stairs to their door, Wu Xiaowen took out her key to open it. She could faintly hear the sound of disco music coming from the crack of the door, and her expression immediately soured. She remembered it was Saturday. On weekend nights, if Wu Xiaorui wasn’t out fooling around at someone else’s place, she would bring a crowd back to their apartment to mess around, not stopping until the dead of night. ’Could it be that tonight...’
Just as she was wondering, the door to the opposite apartment opened. Sister He from her work unit came out, the smile on her face clearly forced. "Oh, Xiao Wu, you’re back! I was just thinking, you must not have been home. If you were here, it definitely wouldn’t be this noisy! It must be your sister bringing a group of friends over again. Young people will be young people, and we don’t object to them having their fun. But honestly, they’ve been at it for way too long! At five o’clock they were eating, drinking, and playing drinking games. The music started at six and it hasn’t stopped since, not for a single moment! Your balcony door and windows are wide open, and all that BOOM BOOM BOOM, CH-CH-CH, plus the girls shrieking and squealing... it’s all flooding right into our apartment. No matter how we shut our doors and windows, we can’t block it out! Goodness, my husband and I can put up with it, but my poor mother-in-law is nearly eighty. Her heart can’t take this! I’ve already knocked on your door a few times, but they just ignore me. Xiao Wu, we’re neighbors, we work at the same place... could you please do something?"
Wu Xiaowen nodded, raising a hand to stop Sister He from rambling on. She returned a smile and said, "Don’t worry, Sister He. Now that I’m back, I won’t let them make any more noise. You can go back and get some rest!"
With that, she quickly unlocked the door, pulled Tang Yaxuan inside, and shut it behind them.
The music inside was deafening, and the room was dim and hazy. The main lights were off, with only a few colored bulbs of unknown origin flashing faintly in the corners. In the twenty-square-meter living room, figures swayed like a host of demons dancing wildly. When the mother and daughter came in, no one even paid them any mind. The men and women were completely absorbed in twisting their waists and shaking their hips, lost in a drunken trance as if the end of the world had nothing to do with them.
Wu Xiaowen first flipped on the fluorescent lights with a CLICK, then strode over to the tape recorder and pushed the off button. The music stopped, and the dancers were finally jolted from their stupor.
In the brief silence, Wu Xiaorui emerged from a group of seven or eight flashily dressed young men and women. She was wearing heavy, gaudy makeup tonight, her permed, curly black hair draped over her shoulders. The makeup completely hid her natural delicate beauty. She wore a peach-colored batwing sleeve top, a black miniskirt, and a pair of high heels. Wu Xiaowen recalled the graceful figure in the center of the room just moments ago, spinning so her skirt flared out like a lotus leaf, and realized it must have been her.
"Sis, weren’t you with Mom? What are you doing back? It’s only nine o’clock. Coming back so early, what a buzzkill!" Wu Xiaorui pouted and shot her sister a sideways glance, her face full of resentment.
Wu Xiaowen was already furious seeing the living room looking like a garbage dump. Hearing Wu Xiaorui’s words, she nearly fell over backward. She glared fiercely at her sister. "Three minutes. All this stuff, and all these random, messy people—get them all out of my sight! Or else you’ll face the consequences!"
After saying this, Wu Xiaowen told Tang Yaxuan to hurry back to her room and review her schoolwork. She then walked into her own room and slammed the door shut with a SLAM, ignoring whatever was happening in the living room.
It was a three-bedroom, one-living-room apartment with a kitchen, a bathroom, and a storage room—over a hundred square meters. An apartment like this in Beijing was impossible for someone with Wu Xiaowen’s qualifications to be assigned. But she was Tang Renqian’s daughter-in-law, and he had tacitly approved the arrangement for her. The original idea was that when Tang Qingyun returned to Beijing to visit family, their little family could reunite here. If Hao Hao wanted to visit his mother, there would also be a place for him to stay with her for a few days. However, as soon as the apartment was handed over to Wu Xiaowen, she had generously turned around and given it to Wu Xiaorui.
The Tang Mansion had explicitly refused to let Wu Xiaowen move back in, and at the Wu Mansion, Yang Qianrong and her daughters made life difficult for her, making it impossible to live in peace. So, Wu Xiaowen had no choice but to try and take the apartment back from Wu Xiaorui. But was Wu Xiaorui so easily placated? She actually preferred the freedom of a company-assigned apartment over living in a siheyuan with a large family. How could she possibly be expected to spit out a juicy piece of meat she’d already swallowed? What’s more, Wu Xiaowen had explicitly said it was "compensation" for having wronged her in the past. How could something like that be taken back so easily? The two sisters nearly came to blows over the apartment. In the end, it was Wu Yu Xuan and Lin Aizhen who mediated: they would pay for the sisters’ furniture, they would both move in together, and they would co-own the property. No more fighting!
So now, Wu Xiaowen and Wu Xiaorui each had a half-share of the apartment, making them both masters of the house. With the little tag-along Tang Yaxuan also occupying a room, the place was completely full. If Tang Qingyun or Hao Hao wanted to come and stay, they would feel like they were just guests living under someone else’s roof.
One had to wonder what Tang Renqian would think if he knew about this situation.
Tang Yaxuan had just returned to her room, sat down, and picked up a book. Before she could read for more than a few minutes, her door was yanked open. Wu Xiaorui stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips, glaring at her. "Get out here, you little bitch! Go clean the living room, kitchen, and bathroom!"
Tang Yaxuan was left speechless.
She closed her book and slowly walked to the door. Wu Xiaorui jabbed a finger hard into her forehead, making Tang Yaxuan stumble sideways, almost falling over. Only then did she step aside, letting her pass with a cold snort. "You black-hearted little bitch! Let’s see how long you can keep up this act!"