Jiang Tinglan was stunned.
She had originally thought today would bring a fierce argument. She had even prepared to reason with her mother using the new vocabulary she had learned from Breaking Free.
She never could have imagined that things would go this smoothly!
Just then, Jiang’s father came over carrying a plate of fruit.
Chen Yuru immediately smiled and said to her daughter, “It’s all right. You don’t need to put any pressure on yourself. You’ve got a long life ahead of you.”
“Back then, your father was reported by a colleague for secretly running tutoring classes and was fired from the school. Our family was so poor we could barely get by.”
“Your father and I had countless arguments behind your back. In the end, we braved enormous pressure and came to the big city to find work. Little by little, we built the life we have today.”
“So, in the grand scheme of such a long life, a few minor setbacks don’t amount to much.”
Jiang’s father was dumbfounded.
Jiang Tinglan also whipped her head around to look at him, her eyes filled with shock. “Dad? Didn’t you say that you gave up your teaching position voluntarily so you could support Mom’s career? How come you were fired?”
Jiang’s father’s face instantly turned extremely ugly.
Chen Yuru looked at him with a smile.
So this was how satisfying it was to be a sweetly manipulative parent. If only she had started doing it sooner.
Jiang Tinglan stared at her father in disbelief. She couldn’t understand why he had lied to her, and waited for him to explain.
Chen Yuru continued smiling at him without saying a word.
Jiang’s father genuinely had no idea what to say.
More than ten years ago, when his daughter had asked why he no longer worked as a teacher, he had felt that he needed to preserve his dignity as a father in front of his child. So he had boasted that he had given up his permanent teaching position in order to accompany her mother to the big city.
After that, no one in the family had ever brought it up again.
How had it resurfaced after all these years?
Now both mother and daughter were looking at him, waiting for an answer.
Facing the two of them, Jiang’s father was at a loss for words.
If it had only been his daughter, he could have come up with something to save face.
But Chen Yuru was right there watching him. He was afraid that if he tried to argue, she might go looking for people back in their hometown to prove what had really happened. Then he would be humiliated all over again.
In the end, he gave up defending himself. “It happened so many years ago. It’s all in the past now…”
For a moment, Jiang Tinglan had no idea how to react. She simply stood there in a daze.
It was true that the matter had only ever been mentioned once in all these years. But that one sentence had planted the seed in her heart that “Dad was the victim.”
So whenever her parents came into conflict, she always felt that her mother was heartless. She would think, Dad gave up his teaching position for you—how can you not remember his sacrifice at all?
Now that the truth had been revealed, guilt came crashing over her.
But Chen Yuru did not pursue the matter. From now on, she would no longer argue with her family.
She had promised Board Director Yu that she would become a green-tea mom.
She would provide emotional manipulation, but no practical help.
She brushed the matter aside casually. “It was so long ago, after all. I was only mentioning it in passing. Why are you getting so nervous?”
Chen Yuru looked at her daughter again. “Mom will be away on a business trip for a week. If that Teacher Breaking Cocoon says anything to you, forward it all to me.”
“Mom needs to study these new ideas too, and learn how to get along with children.”
With that, she smiled at her daughter and turned to leave.
Jiang Tinglan watched her mother walk out with the withdrawal papers in hand. She really wanted to chase after her and apologize.
But when the words reached her lips, she swallowed them back down.
She had always thought that her mother never apologized and never treated her as an equal.
Now that it was her turn, she suddenly realized that she could apologize casually to strangers, but with the people closest to her…
It was truly difficult to say the words.
—
Jiang Tinglan spent the entire night in confusion and couldn’t sleep.
Her father even came to explain himself. “What happened back then was Dad’s mistake, but it was only one wrong sentence, wasn’t it? I didn’t do anything heinous…”
It had indeed been only one sentence back then. But that sentence had established him as the victim and caused her to think he was pitiful every time the subject came up.
She had no idea how to deal with it.
It wasn’t until dawn, when she was completely exhausted, that she finally fell asleep.
When she woke again, it was noon.
She sat there blankly for a while before getting up to eat.
She saw her father sitting on the living-room sofa, a laptop balanced on his knees as he typed furiously.
Unable to hold back, she asked, “Dad, what are you doing?”
Seeing that she was finally willing to speak to him, Jiang’s father immediately replied, “I’m writing a novel. This is my career.”
He angled the laptop toward her. “Dad’s been sticking with this for several years now.”
Jiang Tinglan glanced at the title of her father’s novel: The Fickle Age, A Steadfast Father’s Love.
She skimmed through the contents:
“...At the dinner table, the angry daughter ate only rice and not the dishes. She thought that no one in this family loved her.
“But when she entered her room, she heard her father demanding of her mother, ‘Why didn’t you put any food in her bowl?’
“The daughter understood. Her father was simply not good with words.
“But in the places where she couldn’t see him, he was still a father who loved her!”
Seeing that his daughter was reading attentively, Jiang’s father sounded rather pleased with himself. “I’ve been writing novels for many years. In fact, when I was still a Chinese teacher, I had tremendous literary talent. Once my novel is published and adapted into a television series, I’ll take you traveling.”
Jiang Tinglan looked as though she wanted to laugh. “Don’t only particularly popular novels get published these days? How much money has this novel made so far?”
She took another careful look. “You haven’t even signed with a website yet? Then you haven’t made a single cent.”
The smile on Jiang’s father’s face stiffened. He quickly turned the screen back toward himself and objected, “The literary world is too impatient these days. The kind of traditional literature your father writes can only be appreciated by people who are willing to slow down and read it.”
Jiang Tinglan said nothing more and walked away.
Jiang’s father frowned and called after her, “You really have been influenced by your mother. All you can see is money!”
Jiang Tinglan turned around. “If Mom really stopped supporting the two of us, how would we survive? I looked it up online last night. I can’t even find a job without finishing high school.”
“Then Dad will take you back to our hometown,” Jiang’s father said. “We’ll return to the old family house in the countryside, plant beans beneath the southern mountain, and live a poetic rural life among the weeds and sparse bean seedlings…”
Jiang Tinglan was not a particularly materialistic child. After all, she had grown up living an ordinary life.
Back when she had believed that her father loved her, she had even considered returning to their hometown with him to live a poor but peaceful life rather than staying in the big city under her mother’s strict control.
But after learning the previous night that her father had lied to her for all these years by saying, “I gave up my teaching position for your mother,” she felt an oppressive resentment in her chest.
She felt as though she had been helping the wrongdoer all along and hurting her mother.
Her father still hadn’t addressed the matter or offered any way to make amends.
His attitude was simply to stop talking about it and turn the page.
Was she supposed to be the one to resolve the conflict?
She had spent all sixteen years of her life dealing only with school. She had never entered society or encountered the complexities of human nature.
With the experience she had, she couldn’t think of any way to solve the conflict in her family.
She took a piece of bread and went back to her room to eat.
As she was eating, she saw that Breaking Free had started a livestream.
There was still no real person on the screen. Instead, a small butterfly flapped its wings.
After finishing the lecture, the other party began the call-in segment, offering guidance to those who connected.
Jiang Tinglan was truly at a loss. She desperately wanted to know what she should do next.
So she took the initiative to connect.
Before long, the connection went through.
Jiang Tinglan said, “Hello, Sister Breaking Cocoon…”
