The smile on Shen Cong’s face vanished instantly.
Could there already be signs this early?
Why had her past self been completely unaware of them?
She turned around instinctively.
At the same time, Gu Kai walked up to her side and tightly grasped her hand.
The sound was coming from inside the car dealership.
It was already past one in the afternoon, and there weren’t many customers in the showroom. Several salespeople had gathered in the break area, sitting together and eating boxed lunches.
One of the girls had already jumped up from her seat and retreated several steps away from the table. She was pointing at an opened takeout container on the table, her face full of disgust.
“Oh my god, there are ants in mine too!”
“This is disgusting! Xiao Wu, didn’t you notice when you bought the food?”
The other girls cried out as well.
Xiao Wu, who was being blamed by her coworkers, looked aggrieved. “There definitely weren’t any ants when I bought it! If there were, I wouldn’t have bought it. Could they have crawled in after we put it here? Hey, look, there are ants by the wall too!”
At her words, everyone turned to look at the wall beside the table. Only then did they notice a dense line of ants crawling along the base of the wall toward the window.
Perhaps the takeout boxes had been placed right by the window, so a small detachment of the “ant army,” drawn by the smell, had temporarily changed course and crawled through the takeout bags into the food containers.
“Where did all these ants come from?!”
The girls all hurriedly backed away several steps, wishing they could put as much distance as possible between themselves and the table.
By now, everyone’s attention had completely shifted from the boxed lunches to the dark, writhing mass of ants that made their skin crawl just looking at them.
After all, this wasn’t outdoors, and the dealership prided itself on being high-end, with good décor and cleanliness.
Seeing so many ants under these circumstances was indeed shocking.
“Could the weather be about to change? I’ve heard that small animals are the most sensitive. Such a large-scale migration, could it be some kind of omen?” Shen Cong interjected from the side.
Gu Kai glanced at his wife.
Although Shen Cong’s tone sounded perfectly natural when she spoke, Gu Kai could feel that her palm was slick with cold sweat, her body slightly stiff.
He realized that she was saying all this to give the girls in front of them a warning.
So Gu Kai, who usually wasn’t very talkative, echoed her words, “That’s true. Abnormal animal behavior is often a kind of warning. It’s very possible that a major natural disaster is about to happen.”
“Oh, yeah, that does sound right! I’ve heard that too.”
“Right, right, ants moving house… Does that mean it’s going to rain?”
“What rain? Look at the sky, there isn’t even a single cloud. This heat is abnormal. It’s only June and it’s already almost forty degrees!”
“You just said it yourself, it’s abnormal…”
“Gu Kai, should we go buy a few emergency supply kits to keep on hand? Better safe than sorry. Seeing this today really gave me the creeps. They’re not that expensive anyway, and they won’t go bad just sitting there. Having a few would give peace of mind.”
“Alright.” Gu Kai nodded. “Let’s buy several. Not just for our place, let’s prepare some for our parents too. They’re older and need it even more.”
The two of them stopped paying attention to the girls and walked toward the exit while talking.
They had already done what they could. As for whether others would take the advice or not, that really came down to each person’s fate.
Fortunately, even after they had walked quite a distance, they could still hear the girls chattering behind them.
“Hey, I’ll go buy a few too. If something really happens, having extra precautions for my parents would make me feel better.”
“Ugh, what use are those things? They just take up space, and the stuff inside has expiration dates, once it expires, it’s a total waste. But stocking up on some food at home might make sense. If nothing else, in this scorching heat, having food on hand means fewer trips outside.”
The young women went on talking, but Shen Cong and Gu Kai had already walked too far to hear them clearly.
After struggling to fit the bicycles into the electric car, the two of them drove away from the dealership.
When they reached a deserted side road, Shen Cong stored the car in her space. Only then did she and Gu Kai head to the parking lot.
This time, they didn’t linger outside and drove straight to the Gu family’s old house, where Gu Zhengchu was currently living.
It was a fairly old residential neighborhood, with most of the surrounding buildings being over thirty years old.
Compared to the newly built complexes nearby, it looked somewhat out of place.
But precisely because of its age, the area felt more lived-in.
Small eateries and little shops lined the streets in rows, making the place look lively and bustling.
The Gu family lived on the ground floor of a residential building that faced the street.
Like the neighboring households on either side, they had enclosed the balcony facing the road, added a door, and built a few steps, converting it into a street-front shop.
However, their place neither sold snacks nor stationery. Above the storefront hung a simple wooden sign with four characters carved on it: “Gu Family Medical Clinic.”
Although the shopfront looked rather unremarkable, its reputation was anything but small.
After all, it was a clinic opened by the former director of the Beining Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, a towering figure in the TCM world, after his retirement. How could there be a lack of patients?
Fortunately, it was the noon break, and there were no patients in the clinic.
The couple entered, and Gu Zhengchu, who had been reclining on the sofa with his eyes closed, resting, opened his eyes.
When he saw Shen Cong, he was clearly taken aback.
“Dad,” Shen Cong called out.
Looking at Gu Zhengchu, so completely different from the gaunt, withered old man in her memories, her heart surged with mixed emotions.
After calling him “Dad,” her throat tightened, and for a moment she couldn’t say another word.
Gu Zhengchu straightened up.
Seeing his youngest daughter-in-law, whom he had watched grow up, with reddened eyes, the bit of displeasure in his heart suddenly dissipated.
Everyone has their own aspirations.
The child merely wanted to pursue her ideals, what was wrong with that?
He sighed, stood up from the sofa, walked back to his consultation desk, and sat down. Pointing toward the sofa, he said to Shen Cong, “Sit down. Don’t cry.”
Hearing that familiar voice from her memories, Shen Cong could no longer hold it in and burst into tears.
She remembered the hardships she had endured returning from Nan’an, only to hear, the moment she stepped through the door, the devastating news that Gu Kai had been crushed to death by falling rocks while searching for her, and how she had cried uncontrollably.
Her father-in-law had sighed just like this back then and said, “Sit down. Don’t cry.”
For a moment, Shen Cong couldn’t tell which was the dream and which was reality.
Gu Kai hung the sign reading “Closed Today” outside, then locked the door from the inside.
In just that brief span of time, when he turned back, he saw his wife crying so hard she could barely catch her breath.
He looked at his father, puzzled, sending a questioning glance: “What’s going on?”
Gu Zhengchu shot him a sharp glare, then stood up and went into the back room to grab a hot towel. He came back and tossed it to him: “Go wipe Congcong’s face.”
Gu Kai took the towel, still completely confused, and walked over to gently touch his wife’s head, trying to comfort her: “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
At that moment, Shen Cong was overwhelmed by the memory of hearing that Gu Kai had died, the heartache cutting her like a knife. When she met his concerned gaze, she suddenly broke down completely.
She opened her arms and clung tightly to her husband, burying her face in his chest, murmuring over and over: “Gu Kai… Gu Kai…”
She was so terrified that she didn’t dare open her eyes.
Gu Zhengchu was somewhat at a loss, watching his youngest daughter-in-law cry like this.
He knew the couple had intended to handle some procedures in the past two days.
When they first came in, he had thought they were just coming to inform him after getting their documents sorted.
But seeing Shen Cong cry so desperately while holding her husband, he began to wonder if he had been wrong.
Could it be… there was still a chance to turn things around?
But how was that possible?
The job had already been resigned, the visas had been obtained, how could Shen Cong possibly go back?
It must be… she just couldn’t let go.
After all, the two had grown up together and shared a deep bond.
Gu Zhengchu sighed again inwardly and spoke aloud: “Congcong, don’t cry. Transportation is so convenient now, you can always come back, can’t you? It’s just going to school. Take a plane ticket during a break and come back. No need to feel so upset.”
He paused for a moment, then continued: “Even if you and Xiao Kai… can’t be husband and wife, you can still be friends. You can’t just go to school and then never see each other for the rest of your lives.”
‘If it’s really hard to let go, then maybe after the gamble, you could reconcile and remarry, right?’
He added that thought silently to himself.
By now, Shen Cong had realized her own loss of composure.
She let go of her husband, took the towel, wiped her face, and then hiccuped as she retorted, “Who said we can’t be husband and wife? We’re fine! Dad, don’t talk nonsense. Gu Kai and I aren’t getting divorced, we’re going to be husband and wife for life!”
Gu Zhengchu: “……”
Gu Kai rubbed his forehead, masking the smile that had crept across his face, and habitually took the blame for his wife: “Dad, we’re fine. We just came to tell you that our marriage isn’t ending.”
Gu Zhengchu was left stunned by the twists and turns of the young couple.
He couldn’t ask Shen Cong directly, so he glared at Gu Kai, silently signaling him to explain immediately.
Shen Cong finally calmed herself. She stood up from the sofa and positioned herself beside her husband.
Looking at Gu Zhengchu, she said, “Dad, don’t glare at Gu Kai. This has nothing to do with him, I’ll explain it to you.
It’s a bit of a long story, and my parents are waiting for me to go back and tell them too.
Dad, why don’t you come home with us? I’ve asked my mom to cook, and I told my dad not to go anywhere, so he’ll be home waiting for you.
Once we’re home, I’ll explain everything to you, so we won’t have to repeat it several times.”
Hearing that they were going to his in-laws’ house, Gu Zhengchu hesitated for a moment.
But he was genuinely shocked by Shen Cong’s crying earlier, and he worried that the young couple might be hiding something from the elders.
Otherwise, why would she cry so pitifully?
So he didn’t, as Gu Kai had feared, flatly refuse.
Instead, he nodded decisively and said, “Alright, I’ll go with you. You must explain everything clearly to the family!”