Lu Xiaoqiao searched the hospital room for the divorce agreement.
Xie Xun remained calm. “I tore it up.”
Lu Xiaoqiao paused. “Fine. I’ll give you another copy.”
“I told you,” Xie Xun said with a faint smile. “I want the child.”
“I told you, I’m not giving him to you.”
Xie Xun leaned against the headboard. “Then let’s drag this out.”
“Are you an animal?”
“Mm.” Xie Xun smiled. “I have plenty of bad names already. Be a little gentler with me.”
Lu Xiaoqiao was anxious.
He had never wanted the child before. Now that he had lost his memory, he was actually fighting her for him.
Lu Xiaoqiao walked to the window and took two minutes to calm herself. Then she turned around.
“He has the surname Lu.”
Xie Xun did not seem to care. “It’s just a surname.”
“You don’t even remember him…”
“I remember him now.” Xie Xun was still smiling. “I like him.”
“…”
Neither of them was willing to give an inch, and the tension between them was growing.
Lu Xiaoqiao could not bear to be separated from Lu Tu, and neither could her elderly parents. The child was their whole world. If Lu Tu had grown up in the Xie family from the beginning, there would not have been a problem. But he had been raised by her parents since the day he was born.
“We agreed on this before,” Lu Xiaoqiao said patiently. “You told me not to fight with your sister-in-law. That was the condition for me to keep giving in to her. I did as you asked. And now you’re going back on your word?”
Xie Xun blinked. “Fight over what?”
“…”
He was asking her about this?
Lu Xiaoqiao said, “Everything.”
Xie Xun frowned slightly. “What?”
“Everything! Don’t you understand?”
“It’s not that I don’t understand.” Xie Xun gave her a faint, mocking smile. “I just suspect that you’re taking advantage of my amnesia, making up some imaginary accusations against me so you can use this chance to take the child away.”
Lu Xiaoqiao reminded herself not to argue with an animal.
“First, his surname is Lu. Second, he grew up in my family. Isn’t that enough to prove something?”
Xie Xun said, “That only proves that the Lu family is a suitable environment for raising a child.”
“…”
Lu Xiaoqiao felt like her lungs were about to burst with anger.
“Why do you get to say that?”
“I don’t know you, this liar,” Xie Xun said with a cold laugh. “But I know myself. I would only put my child in an environment that suits him.”
Lu Xiaoqiao caught the flaw in his words. “Then don’t take him.”
Xie Xun replied, “In your dreams.”
Lu Xiaoqiao asked, “So now you don’t care about his living environment anymore?”
“Of course I do.” Xie Xun sounded completely relaxed. “But everything depends on one thing: he is my son.”
“Even after the divorce, he’ll still be your son.”
Xie Xun looked at her. “Not necessarily.”
A woman who could watch him die without lifting a finger—he could not be sure what else she was capable of.
Lu Xiaoqiao nearly bit her lower lip until it bled.
This was her dilemma.
The dilemma she had been facing for a whole year.
Nothing had changed. Even after he lost his memory, he could still create a new problem for her.
Lu Xiaoqiao had always looked down on the melodramatic plots in the TV dramas her mother watched, but now she seemed to have no other choice.
When she used to study dance, she had also taken acting classes for two semesters. She had never had a chance to use what she learned.
She was quite rusty now.
Lu Xiaoqiao remained silent for a long while.
Then, suddenly, the corners of her mouth drooped, and her eyes turned red.
“Can’t you comfort me?”
Xie Xun was clearly stunned.
“When you risked your life to save your sister-in-law, did you ever think about me? Did you ever think about our son?” Lu Xiaoqiao looked as though she was about to cry. “Since you were willing to risk your life for someone else, you can’t serve two masters at once… You can’t protect two families at the same time. So just set us free.”
“…”
Lu Xiaoqiao covered her face and cried softly, making her voice as delicate as possible, like the sound of a singing bird.
Her weak and miserable sobs filled the hospital room.
If Xie Xun had not seen her standing by the bridge with her hands in her pockets, calmly watching him go to his death, he might have actually believed her.
This cold-blooded, pretentious woman.
Xie Xun remained expressionless. “It was you I saved.”
Lu Xiaoqiao lowered her hands, revealing her slightly red eyes and nose. “That was your sister-in-law’s car. You thought it was her, so you risked your life to save her…”
Xie Xun repeated, “It was you I saved.”
“If you had known it was me,” Lu Xiaoqiao said, “you wouldn’t have…”
“Don’t talk about ‘if.’ The fact is, the person I saved was you.”
The corner of his mouth lifted, his eyes cold.
“Trying to get out of this?”
Lu Xiaoqiao’s mouth fell slightly open.
A tear hung on her eyelashes, ready to fall.
She really did have the looks to bring disaster to the world.
Xie Xun calmly withdrew his gaze, his smile unchanged.
Lu Xiaoqiao’s voice became nasal from crying. “What exactly do you want?”
“You should know that someone who has lost their memory doesn’t feel very secure,” Xie Xun said casually. “Since I didn’t get divorced before losing my memory, I assume I had my reasons. If I sign the papers now, wouldn’t that mean betraying the person I was before I lost my memory?”
Lu Xiaoqiao was stunned.
What kind of ridiculous excuse was that? Yet somehow, it actually sounded reasonable.
Xie Xun lowered his eyes, his tone playful. “So if you want a divorce, wait until I remember everything. Then we can talk about it.”
“…”
Lu Xiaoqiao felt as though she had been struck by lightning.
Despair and helplessness surged through her nerves like an electric current, setting off sparks of anger.
Just a few days ago, while they were preparing for her brother-in-law’s death anniversary, Wan Bao’er had changed the usual chrysanthemums for lilies.
Unfortunately, Lu Tu was allergic to lilies.
Lu Xiaoqiao could do nothing about it. She could not change Wan Bao’er’s decision, nor did she have the right to interfere with the funeral arrangements.
On her brother-in-law’s death anniversary, as Xie Xun’s only child, Lu Tu was supposed to attend according to tradition and family rules.
But in order to keep him from attending, Lu Xiaoqiao had no choice but to go to Wan Bao’er first.
Wan Bao’er did not make things difficult for her. Instead, she called Xie Xun right in front of her and said gently, “Tu Tu is allergic to lilies. Since it’s Minghe’s death anniversary, maybe we shouldn’t let him attend?”
Although Xie Xun was not there and Wan Bao’er was only speaking to him on the phone, Lu Xiaoqiao could almost see two opposing sides standing before her.
Wan Bao’er had a powerful family behind her, while Lu Xiaoqiao was completely alone. The safety of her own child had to be decided by Wan Bao’er and the child’s father.
Lu Xiaoqiao felt as though she were being slowly tortured.
After Wan Bao’er ended the call, Lu Xiaoqiao became much more firm.
“Whether he agrees or not, I’m not letting my son come.”
“He agreed.” Wan Bao’er smiled and even comforted her. “We’re Tu Tu’s family too. We love him just as much as you do.”
She would have been better off not saying that.
Was she really trying to draw a line between their two sides?
That very day, Lu Xiaoqiao sent Xie Xun a divorce agreement.
Xie Xun burned the agreement into a pile of ashes and sent it back.
Coincidentally, Lu Xiaoqiao’s mother was the one who received the package.
Lu Xiaoqiao was startled. She hurriedly made up some nonsense and told her mother that Xie Xun had burned mugwort into ashes for Lu Tu, supposedly to help relieve his skin irritation and dampness.
Somehow, she managed to fool her mother.
Only a few days had passed.
Lu Xiaoqiao had once thought that their divorce would remain at a deadlock. After all, they had been going back and forth over it for an entire year.
Then Xie Xun lost his memory.
Lu Xiaoqiao had happily thought that this might finally be her chance.
But what had he said so firmly?
Wait until he remembered everything, and then talk about it?