Page 54 of He Is My Bride
Li Ying took the bag from her and put it on the counter. “And please gift-wrap this one for me.”
Hanjun didn’t question this, but Li Ying promised him to pay it back. Once he received the bag, nicely wrapped, he handed it to Anne.
“Merry Christmas! Only open it tomorrow morning, okay, so it’s a proper Christmas present.”
“Li Ying, you shouldn’t have…” Still, Anne received it.
“I’m not hearing any of that, just accept it.”
Anne seemed like she could have cried, but she got herself together and simply said:
“Thank you. I got something for you two as well. I’ll give it once we sit down.”
“Alright. Are there many more shops to go?”
“We’ve covered most of the relevant ones. Your restaurant reservation is coming up soon, should we go now and have cocktails together?”
“Yes!” Li Ying was for it. But wait… “Hey, where are the interns?”
“They went to look around,” Hanjun said.
“Let’s go find them.”
They left the boutique, and Hanjun asked Li Ying:
“Have you been taken care of today?”
“By your cousins, you mean? Yes. They’re both great kids. They might have developed a crush on me though, haha!”
Hanjun looked at him, bemused.
“Careful, Hanjun, you’ve got competition!” Li Ying teased on, and got the reaction he’d wanted when Hanjun gave him a frown.
“Come on, you can’t be jealous ofthem!You should know I like older men.”
While Li Ying hooted in laughter, Hanjun muttered: “I’m only six years older than you.”
“Grandpa Wu, hahaha! …Uh, too much?”
Hanjun had just glared at him sharply.
“Yeah, that was lame, sorry. Anyway, about A-Yu: I know he’s from the side of the family who are not exactly your uncle’s favorite people, and for a good reason, I think.”
Now Hanjun looked concerned.
“I had the displeasure of brushing with Wang Guosheng in the office, and he was such a pompous prick,” Li Ying explained. “As I was saying, A-Yu is a good kid, but I got the impression he’s deliberately kept from doing a proper internship, being given meaningless tasks to the point where he rather tagged along with us than stayed in the office today. I may be the nice Big Sister Li, but I can’t bethatnice. Anyway, you said your uncle has been working to keep the Wangs out from key positions within the company, but I don’t think it’s fair to sabotage a young man’s future just because he happens to be born to the ‘wrong’ parents.”
Hanjun looked thoughtful.
“I feel for the kid,” Li Ying went on. “I don’t know what his parents are like, but between your uncle and his grandpa Wang’s power struggle, he seems to be set up for failure, and that sucks. Could you do something about that? A-Yu is still your cousin too, Wang or not.”
Hanjun looked ahead and thought about Li Ying’s words.
The interns had indeed wandered off, trying to pass the time by browsing other than women’s wear shops, each carrying their share of Li Ying’s shopping bags.
Xinyu was standing outside a luxury watch shop, looking at the men’s watches through the display window. He thought of his grandfather’s Rolex. Wang Guosheng had bought Xinyu’s father, Wang Jian, a similar watch when he had turned eighteen. Xinyu was turning eighteen next month. He couldn’t imagine, should he receive the same gift, how his father would give it to him and what it meant. They weren’t close. Any scenario Xinyu could imagine seemed odd, even uncomfortable. He didn’t even want a watch, he wanted a single kind word. Just one approving gaze.
Xinyu looked up and realized a pair of unreadable, distant eyes were looking at him from the dazzling reflection of the shop window.
