Golden Scale [EN]: Chapter 156

The Great Fun (2)

“Hua, what should we do next?” Although Long had rested for a night, he was still jet-lagged and looked listless. 《9+Z+Book+City Mobile*Read#Take m.9zsc.com》

“There’s nothing to do except stay put,” Tian Donghua said, looking casually at the *New York Times* in his hand.

“What do you mean?” Long put down his coffee, looking a little surprised.

Tian Donghua raised his eyelids. “You have to keep a calm mind now. To be honest, we probably won’t have another chance like this in the next five years.”

“Then why did you call me here? I flew halfway around the world to this godforsaken place, thinking you had some new plan.”

“I called you here because I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to help yourself and would make a move, stirring up trouble.”

“Damn, amazing,” Long praised silently in his heart.

“By the way, how did the negotiations with the GM [General Motors] delegation go?”

“Not great, the negotiations were boring as hell,” Long said, lighting a cigarette. “Hou Longtao has already agreed to sell a quarter of the shares to GM, and now he’s haggling every day like he’s buying vegetables at a free market.”

“Hmm, what are you planning to do today?”

“No plans.”

“Let Tina take you out for a spin. America is a paradise for the rich; spending money is definitely a pleasure.”

“Okay,” Long said, getting up and straightening his clothes. “I’ll go fuck her first.” Although Yuqian was the only one in his heart, it would be too fake if he really abstained from sex…

After two more days of tedious back-and-forth, GM’s offer still hadn’t exceeded ten million. Hou Longtao felt a little confused. After calculating all the factors, a price of fifteen million was very reasonable, even a bit low, but the other party wouldn’t budge. He began to wonder if he had overlooked some important aspect.

After the meeting adjourned on Wednesday at noon, Hou Longtao returned to his office, sat down in his large swivel chair, took off his glasses, closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and took two deep breaths.

Ru Yan followed him in, went behind the man, and started massaging his shoulders and neck. “Was the negotiation difficult?”

Hou Longtao held his beloved wife’s right hand with his left hand. “It’s nothing, baby, kiss me.”

Ru Yan supported the man’s chin, tilted his head up, lowered her head, and kissed his lips.

The intercom on the desk rang. Hou Longtao pressed the button. “What is it?”

“Mr. Hou,” the other side was Hou Longtao’s other secretary, “Mr. Su from GM wants to see you.”

“Please let him in.” Hou Longtao frowned. They had just finished the meeting, and there would be another one in the afternoon. He really didn’t know why it was necessary to see him privately now.

Ru Yan went over to open the door and invited the person in.

Hou Longtao pointed to the swivel chair opposite him. “Mr. Su, please sit down. What can I do for you?”

“Private matter.”

“Please proceed.”

“This…” Su Zhan glanced at the long-legged beauty next to him, suddenly looking a little uneasy.

“I’m going out to work,” Ru Yan said, leaving very sensibly.

“Tell me what’s on your mind, Zhan.”

“I… this… um…” Su Zhan looked restless, stammering, and the sharp-tongued energy he had during the negotiation disappeared without a trace.

“Hum hum, Zhan, if you have any difficulties, just tell me. I will definitely help if I can.”

“Okay,” Su Zhan nodded vigorously, as if he had made a decision. “I saw you talking to a pair of twins in the corridor yesterday. Do you know them?”

“Yes.” Hou Longtao nodded, with a smile on his face, but he was already cursing in his heart, “Old bastard, don’t tell me you’ve taken a fancy to my wife? You motherfucker, speak up, speak up, if you dare to say it, I’ll cripple your bastard ass right here.”

“Well, they have a friend who wears a very strange braid. Do you know that girl too?”

“I know her.” As soon as Hou Longtao heard this, he knew that the other party was talking about his beloved White Tiger [Qingying’s nickname]. “How do you know they are friends?”

“I saw them together downstairs when I first came here. Can you bring her here and let me see her?”

“What for?” Hou Longtao’s tone already carried hostility. “She’s my girlfriend.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I just want to see her, I don’t mean anything else.”

“Why do you want to see her?”

Su Zhan didn’t answer, a longing expression appeared on his face.

“If you don’t tell me, I won’t agree.”

“Sigh…” Su Zhan sighed. He turned his head, just about to speak, when he suddenly noticed several photo frames on the desk. He grabbed one of them, which contained a beautiful photo of Situ Qingying in a leather outfit, riding that big Harley-Davidson.

Hou Longtao didn’t realize what the other party was going to do.

“This… she… this… this…” Su Zhan clenched the photo frame tightly, his hands trembling, his face pale. He hadn’t seen it very clearly that day, but today he finally understood. “Ah… she…”

“What’s wrong?” Hou Longtao came out from behind the desk. “Mr. Su? Zhan?”

“She… she… what’s her name?”

“Situ Qingying.”

“Si… Situ… Situ… ah!” Su Zhan shouted, and fell backward.

“Zhan!” Hou Longtao hurried forward, supported Su Zhan, pinched his philtrum [the vertical groove between the base of the nose and the upper lip] hard, and helped him sit on the large sofa. “Are you okay? Should I call an ambulance for you?”

“Ah… no… no,” Su Zhan covered his forehead. “Impossible… impossible… impossible…”

“What’s impossible?”

“Her mother… her mother…” Su Zhan already had tears in his eyes. “Is her mother’s name Chuan Yuzi?”

Hou Longtao jumped up from the sofa, looking at Su Zhan in disbelief. Combining all the existing information, he came to an incredible conclusion, “Situ Zhiyuan?”

Hearing the other party say these four words, Su Zhan, a man in his forties, burst into tears. He knew that his twenty years of longing, confusion, expectation, waiting, and searching were about to come to an end.

“Her real name is Sakura Tamako.” Hou Longtao guessed that Yuzi hadn’t used her real surname back then.

“Huh?” Situ Zhiyuan raised his head. “I… I don’t care what her name is…”

Hou Longtao took out a cigarette and handed it to the other party.

Situ Zhiyuan took the cigarette and lit it with the young man’s lighter. As soon as he took a puff, he coughed violently. It turned out that he didn’t know how to smoke at all.

Hou Longtao sat back in his large swivel chair and lit one for himself. He pressed the intercom. “Ru Yan, inform everyone that the afternoon meeting is canceled because I’m not feeling well. We’ll continue tomorrow morning.”

“Qingying… Qingying… how old is she?”

“She’s your daughter, if that’s what you want to ask.”

Situ Zhiyuan stood up abruptly, his breathing uneven. “You… please take me to see them.” He probably felt that his tone was too stiff, so he added, “Please…”

Hou Longtao didn’t move, squinting at Situ Zhiyuan. The more he looked at him now, the more he felt that there was some resemblance between his eyebrows and his White Tiger. “When you first saw Qingying, you felt that she looked a lot like Yuzi, which is why you were absent-minded during the first day of negotiations?”

Situ Zhiyuan rushed to the desk, propped his hands on the table, his expression urgent. “Please, I want to see them, I’ve been waiting for twenty-two years.”

Hou Longtao pointed his finger down, signaling the other party to sit down. “Tell me your story.”

Situ Zhiyuan is a very responsible man. He understands Hou Longtao’s current position. Obviously, it is his responsibility to protect Yuzi and her daughter now. If his story cannot satisfy him, he will never let himself enter Qingying’s life. “Tell me first, are they doing well?”

“I love Qingying very much.”

“Okay,” Situ Zhiyuan slowly sat down in the swivel chair. “My parents used to work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The year I graduated from high school, they secured a government-sponsored study abroad opportunity in Japan for me, so I went to college in Tokyo. I lived a very ordinary life for more than three years. One day, I went out to dinner with a Japanese classmate and ran into some of his high school classmates, so we chatted together.”

“Were they right-wingers?”

“How do you know?” The hairs on Situ Zhiyuan’s body stood on end, and he felt a chill.

“It’s not a guess.”

“It’s not?”

“No, someone told me.”

If there was still a trace of doubt before, Situ Zhiyuan is now completely convinced that the young man behind the desk has an extremely close connection with the person he is looking for, otherwise he would not know these details. “After a few sentences, those guys started talking about the glorious achievements of the Imperial Army in Nanjing, and I got angry all of a sudden. It turned out that we didn’t just happen to run into each other that day. They and my classmate were all members of a right-wing youth group. Because I had published an article in a Chinese newspaper condemning the resurgence of Japanese militarism, they came to teach me a lesson.”

“A beauty saved a hero; for you, I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse.”

“You…” Situ Zhiyuan understood the meaning of Hou Longtao’s words too well. “Yuzi… Yuzi is the most beautiful and lovely girl I have ever met in my life; I love her.”

“Then why did you leave her?”

“I was a government-sponsored student; I had no choice. In fact, it’s not a question of choice at all. How could I stay in Japan and not return to the motherland and my parents who gave birth to me and raised me?”

“Yes, people of that era. Alas, our country has changed too much in just twenty years.”

Situ Zhiyuan didn’t know why Hou Longtao had such a big sigh, and this was not his main concern now. “I told Yuzi that I was going back to China, and I begged her to come with me, although I knew it was almost impossible, but I really… I really hoped that she could come with me.”

“Didn’t you realize how much you loved her at that time?”

“How do you seem to know everything?” Situ Zhiyuan looked at Hou Longtao slightly surprised. It was hard to imagine that he was so clear about emotional matters at such a young age, but he didn’t know that it was because he had had the same experience.

“Limited, continue.”

“Yuzi didn’t give me a clear answer at the time; she needed to consider it. At that time, I don’t know why, I left her my address in Beijing; I really don’t know why, maybe it was a bad feeling. From that day on, I never saw Yuzi again; she never came to me again.”

“Why didn’t you go to her?”

“She never told me how to contact her; I asked, I wanted her to leave me an address; she said she couldn’t, she said it was best if I didn’t know, so I didn’t ask any more questions. From her words and deeds, I could see that she didn’t come from an ordinary family, maybe she was from some wealthy family; it’s normal to have difficulties.”

“That period must have been very depressing, right?” Hou Longtao remembered his anxious mood when Lian Chu Xiangnai disappeared.

“Not really,” Situ Zhiyuan frowned, as if trying to recall his mood at the time. “At that time, it was already close to the day of returning to China, and I was busy packing my luggage every day, very busy, I couldn’t be idle, and I always thought that she would probably come tomorrow, and the next day, I thought she would probably come back tomorrow. Maybe it was when I arrived at the airport that I really realized that I might never see her again.”

“Do you regret it very much?”

“I spend every day regretting it. If I had tried hard to find her at the beginning, even if I just went to the places we used to go to see, maybe I would have run into her.”

“Don’t blame yourself too much; Yuzi deliberately didn’t want to see you; how could she go to the places you used to go to? Besides, even if you saw her, what would happen? You still have to go back to China, and she still can’t go with you.”

“Why did she deliberately not want to see me?” Situ Zhiyuan suddenly raised his head, staring at Hou Longtao, as if he wanted to find the answer on his face. “You must know, tell me.”

Hou Longtao shook his finger. “Your story is not finished yet; I will start after you finish.”

“To put it simply, my life became boring, I missed her every day, and I went to sleep every night thinking about her every move and smile, hehehe,” Situ Zhiyuan shook his head with a wry smile. “The ridiculous thing is that I don’t even know if she is alive or dead; you can’t imagine how bitter I was in my heart at that time.”

Hou Longtao certainly understood.

“It wasn’t like it is now; I didn’t have the opportunity to go to Japan to find her. At the beginning of 1987, I joined GM’s Beijing office, and I poured all my experience into my work; only then could I temporarily forget her. Hmph,” Situ Zhiyuan smiled mockingly, “As a result, my performance became the best in the entire office. The foreign manager was particularly appreciative of me. In 1989, he helped me with the procedures and prepared to send me to the United States for training in August.”

“I think your name change has something to do with June 4th [Tiananmen Square Incident], right?”

“You can really associate things.” Situ Zhiyuan looked at Hou Longtao in surprise. “At that time, my spiritual life was so empty, I had no spiritual life at all. I followed the trend and posted big-character posters on the Xidan Democracy Wall [a gathering place for political dissent], and actively participated in student gatherings. Because I had studied in Japan, I was hailed as a pioneer who had been influenced by national culture, and naturally gained some fame in the turmoil, and naturally received the attention of the public security organs. The foreign manager felt that it might be dangerous for me to stay in Beijing, so he advanced my training date and let me go to the United States in early May.”

“Then you are no different from those college students; spiritual emptiness led to the comprehensive absorption of dross.”

“You can say that, but sometimes, if you make a mistake, you don’t have the opportunity to correct it. I had to change my name and also joined American citizenship; only then could I have the opportunity to come back.”

“Su Zhan, Su Zhan,” Hou Longtao muttered twice, “Su is SiTu with I and T removed, Zhan is ZhiYuan with I and Yu removed.”

“Yes, do you know what the most ironic thing about the whole thing is?” Situ Zhiyuan took off his glasses and covered his eyes with his right hand. “My parents… my parents are loyal Communist Party members; they persuaded others on Chang’an Avenue [a major thoroughfare in Beijing] not to smash and loot military vehicles, and were trampled to death by those rioters holding the banner of democracy, hahaha.”

Hou Longtao didn’t speak; the other party’s smile was more ugly than crying; he didn’t know how to comfort him.

“I have nothing to worry about in China; I have been working in GM Investment Group in the United States, from the lowest position to the current VP [Vice President].”

“So you have never come back?”

“In the first few years, I couldn’t leave the United States. After my identity was settled, all my holidays were spent in Tokyo. Thirteen Christmas holidays, thirteen annual leave, I don’t know how many private detective agencies I changed, and how many missing person advertisements I posted in the newspaper, but there was never any result.”

“You posted missing person advertisements? What was the content?”

“I was afraid that Yuzi really had difficulties, and I didn’t know what her life had become. What if she already had a happy family? So I never used her name in the advertisement; I just simply posted the time, place and situation of our first meeting. If she saw it, she would know it was me.” Situ Zhiyuan certainly didn’t know that the existence of the Meiren [Yakuza assassin group] was a great secret, and very few people knew about it. No matter how powerful a private detective was, they couldn’t find it, and Yuzi didn’t care about current affairs most of the time and didn’t read the newspaper much.

“You still don’t use her name; you have been searching for so long, and you still haven’t reached the point where you have nothing to lose?”

“I have to consider her situation.”

“Okay, okay,” Hou Longtao confirmed that Situ Zhiyuan really still loved Yuzi deeply. “Are you married?”

Situ Zhiyuan shook his head. “I have only loved one woman; I have only had one woman; that is enough for me.”

Hou Longtao almost fell off his chair. He thought he was infatuated enough, but he didn’t expect to meet a great immortal with deeper Taoism today, and his tone was so calm, as if everything he did was justified. “Don’t you think you are stupid?”

“How is it stupid?”

“Just like you said yourself, you don’t even know if she is alive or dead; you may never see her again in your life; are you going to be a widower for her?”

“Haven’t you seen people who lost their spouses in their youth and remained single until they were old? They know that they are separated from their loved ones, but I have not completely lost the opportunity, have I?”

“What if she has already fallen in love with someone else? What if she already has a happy family? Wouldn’t your efforts be in vain?”

“Is it?” Situ Zhiyuan’s expression was a little dim. He thought that Hou Longtao was using a euphemistic way to persuade himself not to disturb Yuzi’s life. Although he was not completely unprepared, it was still difficult to accept.

“I’m just saying if, if.”

“If?” Situ Zhiyuan’s eyes regained their brilliance.

“If.” Hou Longtao nodded solemnly.

“Emotions are inherently unfair; not every effort will be rewarded; I still understand this principle.”

“OK, if Yuzi is single now, but her past is not as clean as yours, what do you think?”

“I have lost her once; I can’t make the same mistake again.”

“What if she doesn’t want you?”

“…”

“Hehehe,” Hou Longtao left his seat, walked behind Situ Zhiyuan, and patted him on the shoulder. “Are you scared?”

“You… please stop torturing me. She… she raised our daughter alone?”

“Your daughter grew up by herself.”

“What do you mean?”

Hou Longtao had heard enough of other people’s stories; it was time for him to use his mouth. The first thing he explained was why Yuzi didn’t show up again, but he didn’t explain what Yuzi’s most powerful skill was.

Situ Zhiyuan didn’t speak for a long time. It really takes some time for an ordinary person to digest the concept of “Meiren.”

“Yuzi didn’t see you in order to let you live, to let herself live, and to let your daughter live.”

“I… I understand…”

Hou Longtao then explained how he was sent to Beijing.

Situ Zhiyuan covered his face and cried. “I… I moved, but… but… but I moved to a place three kilometers away, my daughter ah… Qingying…”

“Don’t be too sad,” Hou Longtao turned back to behind the desk and lit a cigarette. “Fortunately, she didn’t suffer much.”

“Yes… yes, Qingying…”

“Let’s talk about something happy.” Hou Longtao told him how he got together with Qingying, just like he told Yuzi.

That experience was quite legendary, with a bit of a comedic rivalry, and Situ Zhiyuan had a smile on his face. “But in that case, how did you know Yuzi? And how did you know she was Qingying’s mother?”

“Hehehe,” Hou Longtao talked about his grievances with Honda and Toyota. “Yuzi and the others were hired to kill me, but by mistake, I became their new leader. The details have nothing to do with you. Yuzi and Qingying look so alike, and they have the same birthmarks on their feet, so I asked and found out. I brought all the Meiren to Beijing, which can be considered as reuniting Yuzi and her daughter.”

“It’s really like fate.”

“Yes, by the way, besides Qingying, Yuzi has two other daughters, Sakura Qingying and Sakura Feixue, can you accept it?”

“Their father…”

“I don’t even know who their father is; it’s completely irrelevant. Yuzi is just following the traditions of their family; it has nothing to do with feelings. I bet, if she had a choice, she would only have children for you.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Situ Zhiyuan wiped his face. “I won’t mind; I can accept it.”

“That’s good, let’s call it a day; you go back to the hotel to rest.”

“You… I… aren’t you taking me to see them?”

“Don’t just think about yourself; I have to ask them for their opinion first. If I just put you in front of them like this, what kind of reaction do you want them to have?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Situ Zhiyuan also knew that he was too anxious. “Then… then I’ll go back and wait for your news.”

“Do you have any tokens or something like that?”

Situ Zhiyuan took out a white silk sachet from the inner pocket of his suit, embroidered with a blooming cherry blossom. “This was made for me by Yuzi; I have been carrying it with me every day for twenty-two years.”

“Father-in-law, I don’t think you are suitable to be my negotiating opponent anymore.” Hou Longtao took the cloth bag from the other party’s hand.

Situ Zhiyuan was very happy that Hou Longtao said this, proving that he has the confidence to reunite his family…(Golden Scale is not a thing in the pool)