Father usually only buried himself in historical books and rarely cared about my emotional life. This special heart-to-heart talk obviously meant he had heard something.
I sat upright, looking puzzled: “My relationship with Zhuo Yi is very good. Why do you ask this, Father?”
Father hesitated and pulled out a scroll from the documents on the table: “During the Zhao Ping era of our Da Qi Kingdom, there was such a beautiful story…”
I felt a sense of impending doom. From childhood, my siblings and I feared nothing except Father’s historical tales. Father deeply believed in the wisdom gained from reading history and loved to persuade others using historical references. Whenever he wanted to explain something, he would always quote classics and start with a historical anecdote. The problem was he often drifted from one historical segment to another, ultimately forgetting his original point, leading to long discussions that left listeners confused.
I was speechless. “Even if Father’s assessment wasn’t tampered with, what about the other things? Mother was robbed, and there’s my elder brother and younger sister…”
“Your mother would get cocky whenever she won some money, and she’d been targeted for not just a day or two. Your son-in-law, being a Shilang of the Ministry of Personnel, wouldn’t resort to such low tactics. As for your elder brother’s marriage, that young lady has already attached herself to the son of Minister Song from the Ministry of Works. Those who despise poverty and love wealth, clinging to the powerful – it’s better to have nothing to do with them. As for Diao’er, she should learn a lesson to become sensible.” Father consoled me: “Now you should understand that these matters were not done by your son-in-law, so don’t hold a grudge.”
My heart was filled with mixed emotions. Whether these things were done by An Jin or not, they didn’t directly affect our relationship, yet they made me feel deeply unbalanced. It was like borrowing and repaying debt – I owed him a hundred taels, he owed me eighty taels, and I felt balanced. But now I discovered those eighty taels weren’t borrowed by him. The original balance was broken, and he became a unilateral creditor, making me feel deflated.
After chatting with Father for a while, I went out for a walk with Yuan Qing to aid digestion.
