When Li Na arrived at her house, the air blew a chilly wind on her face, causing her to shudder as the cold hit her. Her house, she recalls, was the epitome of a modern mansion, complete with manicured grass that exudes icy elegance, and the memories she has here are not of warmth, but of frigid and painful memories.
Her house was a complete contrast to Li Jun's, not that she was comparing the two.
As Li Na went through the unlocked door she was startled as she came face to face with her parents, Her mother's rigid face that was still the same, boast of a kind of freezing beauty, and her father that looked aged and kind of weary since the last time she saw him, was on a wheel.
" You are back, Li Na." Li Na's mother looked at Li Na coldly as she turned her back on her to push Li Na's father into the living room.
"Good afternoon, Mother, Father."
'Don't just stand there,' her mother said, frowning at her as she sat on the leather couch. "So, if I didn't contact you, you won't come visiting right?" Her mother started as she gave Li Na a sneer. Li Na obediently went to the farthest chair from her mother.
Despite her accomplishments as a professor at her age, her mother's gaze makes her look inadequate and small.
If her mother was furious, she would never want to be near her, but wanting to see her now, despite her clear displeasure, was a rare occurrence.
"I...I..." Li Na was unexpectedly terrified, and she wondered if she would be able to cope with her parents, particularly her mother, on top of everything.
"I don't want to talk with you now. Don't you think you should change first, Li Na? Stand up and go and change your outfit then come back and talk to me" Li Na despised the way her mother made her feel like a child by calling her name in such a manner. It clearly expressed her mother's contempt for her in just one sentence with such a sardonic sneer.
'I think I look, fine mother,' Li Na replied. 'It was a two-hour drive and I think anything you want to say I can hear it now."
"What exactly do you mean, young lady?" "Stand up and get change, right NOW." Li Na's mother snarled a haughty yet scornful snort, expressing exactly what she thought of Li Na's response and disobedience to her words, and Li Na felt compelled to flee to her room to change, but she mustered all her courage and took her stance with unwavering resolve.
"Now, now Meilin," Mr. Xu interjected, sounding unfazed by his wife's outburst and looked at Li Na with what appeared to be yearning and embarrassment.
Li Na was taken aback by her father's interruption and the manner in which he looked at her. Her father never seems to interrupt her mother or even remember that he has a daughter while her mother continues to rain on Li Na's parade.
"It's been a long time since we've seen our Li Na. Why don't you take a break from criticizing her for whatever she's wearing?" Despite being in a wheelchair, Mr. Xu maintained his dominant demeanor throughout the room.
Despite their age, her parents were a striking pair, with Mrs. Xu's brown hair and hard features contrasting with her husband's distinctive grey and wrinkled, but still handsome, face.
'What did you just say, Hàoyǔ, I'm correcting her so that she won't go about embarrassing us' Mrs. Sands snapped at her husband.
Li Na started standing up towards where her parents were sitting, as she wanted to intervene between them.
"Sit down, Li Na" Li Na's father ignored Mrs. Xu as he faced Li Na and smiled albeit grimly as he tried to turn around on his wheelchair.
"Father,' Li Na said, as she sat cautiously on the chair. "Are you okay?"
Mrs. Xu snarled, "Of course, your father isn't okay." "You didn't think it was appropriate to pay a visit to your father when he had an accident and was in the hospital; do you realize that several people have inquired as to where our daughter is, but what do we see, our own daughter has yet to show up, even after the housekeeper sneaked away to inform you that your father had an accident?"Mrs. Xu murmured, her gaze fixed on Li Na.
"And now look at you, inquiring for your father's well-being." Li Na gazed at her mother, thinking that all her mother cared about was what other people said, and she never seemed to care about her daughter's feelings or believe she was to blame.
"Mother, maybe you should allow fa– "
"Don't you dare tell me what to do, young lady!' Mrs. Xu's voice was barely suppressed, and her expression was stern with rage. " If not for your Chen Yinnan being around. I won't allow your father to convince me to call you,"
Mrs. Xu stopped her tirade as Li Na's father shot her a glare. "I haven't seen you in so long Li Na," her Dad's voice sounded thick and when she looked up into his face Li Na could have sworn that his eyes were wet. What on earth was going on?
After the initial shock of seeing her father being emotional, she looked up and asked her father, "Father? Is everything okay?" She could hear her mother clicking her tongue impatiently in the background and leaned back to flick her a nervous glance.
At a young age, Li Na had learned that her father never show any affection or emotion on his face. The only time she felt close to her father was when she graduated from high school and her father was the only one who came to her graduation party and gave her flower and told her to follow her dream. Then she was shocked and after getting home her mother fought with her father for a long time that her father had to get away on a business trip to avoid her mother's wrath.
Because of her mother's cleverness and ability to manipulate any scenario to her advantage, her wrath, although efficient, always made the victim of her attack be the one to be blamed.
It was rare that her father actually intervened in what was going on between them, to the extent of glaring at her so-called perfect mother.
'Yes, yes of course I'm okay. Can't I miss my daughter?" Li Na studied him with her head tipped to the side as he wheeled his chair towards her, and he had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. She could count on one hand the number of times he had watched her so closely since she was a child.
"Did your mother tell you Chen Yinnan is free?" Mr. Xu gave Li Na a sidelong glance. "I was one of the people who worked to have his sentence reduced, but as I lay in my hospital bed recently, I remembered the look you gave us as you begged us to help you put him in jail." As her father continued to speak, Li Na had a ruffled expression on her face.
Mr. Xu took a deep breath. "I instructed my secretary to learn more about him. For once, I want to do the right thing with you, and I was astonished to learn that what he did to you was not only his first crime, but that he also delights in selling naked images of his victims (his students) to an unknown source, and I am ashamed to call him my-"
"Hàoyǔ," her mother's sharp voice cut through Li Na's father's words of remorse, 'I am really shocked that you have to catch your daughter's delusions, now you're spouting nonsense. How can you say that about an outstanding man? When you required a contract to build the lecture hall in her previous university, who was the one that help? I think it's time your daughter told us about the affair she's having with a student."
She made a show of standing up and took out what look like an envelope from her purse which was placed near the shelf in the corner of the room, sneering at Li Na as if she was the cause of her father's predicament. " And you better explain what this is supposed to mean. Having an affair with your student. Are you not ashamed" Mrs. Xu said as she threw some pictures at Li Na.
Li Na went ahead and pick it up and saw that it was the pictures of Li Jun kissing her in her office, dropping her at the gate of the university which she thought was discreet enough, and several other incriminating pictures.
"Mother! Ho-how did you get this? Who gave it to you?" SHe exclaimed, feeling shocked and baffled as she look up at her mother's intimidating face and her father's weary one.
"How? It's Chen Yinnan who gave it to me and he told me that if you don't stop it will become a scandal that you can't control. Here you are, you and your father are now criticizing somebody that clearly cares for you and don't want you to be destroyed by your immoral actions" Mrs. Xu snort at Li Na and Li Na wondered how her mother did not see what Chen Yinnan did as creeping and stalkerish.
"Mother, what he did was invading my privacy. How can you allow that? How can you?" She screamed at her mother with shocking outrage.
"How dare you shout at me?" Mrs. Xu hiss at her daughter, and then Li Na flinched at the surprisingly loud slap that landed on her cheek. Li Na was frozen in place as she felt the sting from the slap.