Chapter 208
Chapter 208
Anning, Seventh Master, and I sat outside Liu Jing’s front door.
From inside, Fang Yongshan’s sobs would drift out from time to time.
When we’d been standing at the doorway earlier, we’d seen a table full of delicious dishes in the living room.
In truth, that entire spread had been an illusion. Liu Jing had no way to finish one last reunion dinner with Fang Yongshan, so she could only use this method to fulfill her final wish.
“I still don’t get it.”
I asked Seventh Master, “I can understand Liu Jing wanting to see her husband, but why did she want to see that Old Woman too?”
If that Old Woman hadn’t been so harsh and mean, Liu Jing’s depression might not have become so severe, and Wang Guofu wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of her vulnerability.
“Exactly. That Old Woman really is vicious.” Anning was holding a bowl of rice noodles, eating as she complained.
She was hungry.
Seventh Master said, “The human heart is more treacherous than mountains and rivers, and harder to understand than the heavens. At least the heavens have their fixed cycles of spring, summer, autumn, winter, dawn, and dusk. But a person’s true feelings are buried deep and rarely shown.”
“That girl was simply too starved for love. Perhaps deep down, she longed for her family to be harmonious and happy. She couldn’t understand why her mother-in-law treated her so cruelly, or why her husband was unkind to her too.”
“Even though she’d already ended up like this, she still wanted her husband and her mother-in-law to do one last thing for her: share this reunion dinner.”
For some reason, my heart ached. I still felt Liu Jing was far too pitiful.
Some people were born into hardship, only to suffer until the very end, never receiving the love they yearned for.
Some people weren’t born into hardship and had someone who loved them, yet they didn’t know how to cherish the people who treated them well.
Anning snorted. “The kind get bullied. If I ran into an old hag like that, I’d chop her to death with one swing.”
Seventh Master chuckled and shook his head without saying anything.
He knew Anning hadn’t been raised with much refinement, so her manners were a little rough.
But Seventh Master and I both believed her.
With her personality, if she got married in the future, it was hard to say who would end up bullying whom.
If her husband treated her badly, I suspected she’d even chop him down too.
Time passed quickly. In the blink of an eye, it was sunset.
The door opened again, and Fang Yongshan and the Old Woman walked out.
Clearly, Liu Jing had already gone where she was meant to go.
One look at Fang Yongshan, and I could tell he had cried so hard he could barely stand.
What surprised me was that the Old Woman seemed to have cried too.
Since ancient times, our tradition has always been to show respect for the dead. No matter how harsh this Old Woman had been before, seeing her daughter-in-law like this must have affected her deeply. More or less, she had probably repented for her past cruelty.
Our group came down from upstairs. Fang Yongshan settled the fee for handling the Stigmatized Property on the spot.
Originally, he and Meng Yifan had agreed on ten thousand, but Fang Yongshan paid an extra ten thousand.
He wasn’t short on money. Maybe it was his way of thanking us.
“Mr. Fang, please accept our condolences.”
I comforted him, saying, “Ms. Liu left with no regrets, in a way.”
Fang Yongshan choked out, “But I have regrets.”
I wanted to say he deserved it, but I held back.
“In this life, people inevitably leave regrets behind,” Seventh Master said. “If you marry again in the future, make sure you treat her well.”
Fang Yongshan nodded, then left with the Old Woman first.
After I received the twenty thousand from him, I didn’t need to hand it over to Meng Yifan. I first split off ten thousand for Anning and transferred it to her on the spot.
As for the remaining ten thousand, I planned to give five thousand to Seventh Master.
But to my surprise, Seventh Master refused to accept it.
“Seventh Master, no matter how noble and upright you are, you can’t be at odds with money.”
“Besides, this is what you deserve.”
He still wouldn’t take it. With a sigh, he said, “You think I don’t want to? The Ancestral Master won’t let me accept it.”
I was startled. “Hasn’t the Ancestral Master been gone for years? He still controls you that much?”
Seventh Master said, “Every Ancestral Master has his own rules. I can use my skills to make money, but I can’t turn those skills into a business. What you’re doing is business, so I can’t take this money. If I do, the Ancestral Master will take back my power, and it’ll be the same as being expelled from my school.”
I chuckled. “Then it’s all mine.”
Then I noticed Anning was still standing there, not moving an inch, like someone had frozen her in place.
When I looked closer, I realized she’d been staring at her phone screen the whole time, staring at the balance of ten thousand yuan.
She probably hadn’t expected to receive that much money after only a few days on the job.
…
After taking care of Liu Jing’s matter, we returned to the office right in time to clock out.
Everyone else was off work, but Meng Yifan and I weren’t.
The two of us got back in the car and went to meet a woman named Gu An’an.
Gu An’an was Ding Ruoning’s older cousin. Meng Yifan had already arranged to meet her at a restaurant.
It happened to be dinnertime.
The place was an upscale Western restaurant. After we arrived, we met Gu An’an.
Ding Ruoning was thirty-five this year, so naturally her older cousin was even older than her. But women from wealthy families always took good care of themselves, and she looked very young.
Ms. Gu was very polite to Meng Yifan and me, probably because Pan Xiaorou had introduced us.
After some pleasantries, Meng Yifan took out the contract. It was an authorization agreement, meaning she would authorize our agency to sell the property on her behalf.
However, an authorization agreement had to be signed by the homeowner or an immediate family member of the homeowner. If it was a collateral relative, they would need to have it notarized at a notary office first.
Clearly, Gu An’an hadn’t done that.
“Ms. Gu, you’ll need to have the homeowner go with you to get it notarized before you can authorize us on their behalf. It’s mainly to avoid unnecessary disputes later,” Meng Yifan explained.
Gu An’an said, “Actually, you don’t need to worry about any disputes. My family runs a company too. We wouldn’t stoop to taking my cousin’s proceeds from selling the house. Besides, selling the house has my cousin-in-law’s approval.”
“As you know, my cousin and my niece passed away one after another. Something like that was a huge blow to my cousin-in-law. He isn’t exactly mentally stable right now. We discussed selling this house mainly because we hope he can get out from under that shadow sooner.”
Meng Yifan and I exchanged a look. We didn’t keep pressing the issue of authorization.
Sometimes you had to be flexible. There was still a chance of a dispute in the future, but that chance was very small. Even if it really happened, with our connection to Pan Xiaorou, it most likely wouldn’t affect us.
After the authorization agreement was signed, Meng Yifan began asking about Ding Ruoning’s family situation in detail.
“Ms. Gu, how did your cousin commit suicide?”
“After all, it is a Stigmatized Property. We need to investigate properly. I hope you don’t mind.”
Gu An’an nodded. “It’s fine. My cousin hanged herself. By the time my cousin-in-law found her, she was already gone.”
Meng Yifan asked, “Did she have depression?”
Gu An’an sighed. “You could say that. Mainly because my niece passed away half a year ago. What mother could bear that? Maybe because of what happened, she became depressed.”
Meng Yifan said, “If you don’t mind me asking, your niece… how did she pass away?”
Gu An’an said, “She also hanged herself at home…”
Meng Yifan and I were both startled.
I remembered Pan Xiaorou saying that Ding Ruoning’s daughter was only thirteen. A child that young had actually taken her own life too?
Then that house had actually had two people die in it…