Joann was lying in bed reading a book when she heard the door open. She turned towards it and saw her husband, Xu Jing's head poke through the opening.
Xu Jing flashed a placating smile at her, adding, "How is my precious, gorgeous and most importantly, kind and understanding wife doing tonight?"
Joann rolled her eyes at the childish man and turned back to focus on her book.
"Still mad, is she? But do not worry, Xu Jing because you have the perfect cure for this situation," The man said out loud even though there were only two of them in the room, well, one and a half of them were at least.
"Joann, being mad takes a lot of energy and you would not want to do that on an empty stomach now do you? See what have I brought you."
Joann then could hear the sound of plastic rustling. She turned towards the door and saw Xu Jing had extended one of his hand inside the door and was holding her bag of take-out she had left downstairs earlier.
Joann smiled in spite of herself and Xu Jing took this as the cue to say, "I know you are still angry but you have to eat something, skipping meal is not good for your health."
"Fine, come in then. I have no beef with you after all," Joann finally said.
Xu Jing pushed the door open and walked into the room with a bright and relieved smile. The man was wearing a white shirt with the top two buttons open and a black slack pants. He was of average height and build, lean and fit but not muscular.
Based on how he was dressed, Joann assumed he had just came back from work. Like Lin family, the Xu's were also in business but on a much smaller scale. They could be considered well to do but definitely not insanely rich like the Lin family.
On a side note, this had always been the modus operandi within the Xu household, the two strong-opinionated women would get into a quarrel and it would be Xu Jing who always act as the mediator. If not for the man, there would definitely be a fourth world war in the Xu household already.
This was thanks to Xu Jing's personality who was a complete opposite of how Mrs. Xu was. The man was an easy-going and happy-go-lucky kind of guy.
He was a man who had no sharp angle to his personality as if the personal mission in his life was to be as inoffensive and as accommodating as possible.
Viewed from another perspective, one could criticize him as childish and often does not take things as seriously as he should. This was a source of headache for Joann because sometimes she felt she was looking after two children instead of one.
Xu Jing walked to the side of the bed and knelt down on one knee to present the take-out to Joann, "Your dinner, your highness."
Joann laughed and said, "Stop joking around. Get up from the floor."
"Not until your highness forgives me," replied the man.
"I am not even mad at you," said Joann. When Xu Jing remained kneeling on the floor, Joann sighed and said, "Fine, I am not even mad at mother anymore."
"Of course, of course, that is because my wife is the most understanding and forgiving person in the world, on top of that, extremely beautiful too," Xu Jing said with a grin as he stood up.
"Here, I've heated them in the oven for you," He opened the take-out back and Joann saw the steamed buns she had bought for dinner had been taken out of their paper bag and were placed inside an oven-use plastic box.
She accepted the box and after taking one out from it, she passed it back to Xu Jing, asking, "Would you like to have one as well?"
Xu Jing shook his head as he sat down on the bedside, "Thanks but I already had dinner."
After taking a bite out of the steamed bun, Joann sighed and addressed the elephant in the room, "To be fair, I honestly did not intend to start a row with mother, she asked for it… and for apparently no reason at all, from how I see it, it must be her menopause or something."
Joann could see from the awkward twitch on Xu Jing's face that her last comment had stung. 'Good,' she thought.
Joann did not feel at all sorry because the woman had to have the last word.
Xu Jing brushed the insult off and tried his best to explain, "Mother is just very stressed lately with everything that is happening. As you know, father just passed away 2 months ago and I believe she is still finding a way to cope with it.
"Furthermore, there is this rumor of a hostile business take-over at work. Everyone is working with the feeling like the sky is going to fall anytime soon, so I am sure you will understand how it is.
"The company is everything father has left for mother and us. She does not want to see it fall and I believe you do not want that too, right?
"So she brought a bit of emotions back with her from work, you can understand that, right?"
Joann reared her head to look at Xu Jing and the latter knew then he had accidentally said something wrong. "Actually, you know what, I do not think I can understand that. I am are working woman too but you do not see me bring my emotions back from work, do you?"
"No, of course not, you know I don't mean it that way," Xu Jing tried to backpedal.
"Then, what exactly do you mean? Are you trying to say the work of an actor is less demanding and less stressful than a businesswoman? So she is entitled to bring her emotions home but I am not?" Joann pressed.