The Vanishing Beauty - Chapter 3 - 10

Chapter 3 - 10

How to break the news of the divorce to their two sons was somewhat difficult for Yu Meng. She had originally wanted to punt this task to Luan Chengyun, but she was afraid of losing her say in the matter; in the event of her absence, no one could guarantee what kind of caricature that man would paint of her. She had communicated with him beforehand, and Luan Chengyun felt they could keep it under wraps for the time being.

"It's not that big of a deal anyway," he had judged.

Yu Meng instantly saw right through his sinister intentions.

By not making the divorce public, he was probably still holding out hope for a reconciliation. He didn't want to start over from scratch—young girls were nice and all, but could any of them compare to Yu Meng? She could handle social gatherings in the drawing room and culinary duties in the kitchen; she was experienced, charming, and a peach ripened to perfection—tempting and sweet. The young girls, on the other hand, were merely green plums hanging on the branch: good to look at, but forbidden to taste. Yet Yu Meng had made up her mind never to give Luan Chengyun another chance. Having stayed together for all these years, she had had more than enough. Therefore, she was all the more determined to announce the divorce to her sons.

Furthermore, she intended to start dating again. Without a legitimate title, one's words carried no weight. If the sons remained unaware that their mother was already divorced, the moment news of her dating leaked out, she would effectively be branded with the label of infidelity. She would be reviled by thousands. Even if it weren't true, her sons would leap to preconceived conclusions, placing her in a disastrous predicament.

Steel herself as she might, Yu Meng made up her mind to stage a civilized parting of ways.

The restaurant was chosen by Luan Chengyun. Excellent—she would let him foot the bill and bleed him for a bit.

A large round table, with the four of them seated along one side. Luan Chengyun and Yu Meng sat on opposite ends, with Haoyu and Zhengyu sandwiched in the middle. As usual, Yu Meng inquired about their studies and daily lives, before reminding Haoyu that if he ever started dating, he must tell his mother. She also reminded Zhengyu to listen to his older brother and try to be more outgoing.

Yu Meng had originally wanted to ask Haoyu who the girl sitting with him at the concert hall the other night was. But as she tossed the question back and forth in her mind while preoccupied with the divorce, she forgot all about it the moment she turned her head. When they were nearly finished eating, the four of them sat around, and Luan Chengyun pulled out a cigarette.

"Put that back!" Yu Meng reprimanded. Having inhaled secondhand smoke for so many years, she loathed it to her core. Now that they were divorced, she could tolerate it even less. Luan Chengyun chuckled good-naturedly and put it back where it came from.

Yu Meng warned her sons, "Don't you dare pick up that habit!"

Haoyu dragged out his tone lazily, "Got it, no smoking, no drinking, and definitely no touching that weed-stuff." An American school had recently been rocked by a marijuana scandal. Yu Meng had repeatedly issued strict orders, instructing her sons to keep themselves on the straight and narrow.

"Can we go now?" Haoyu stood up.

"Sit for a minute," Yu Meng said. She looked at Chengyun, signaling for him to speak up. Luan Chengyun crossed his legs and leisurely sipped his fragrant tea. Yu Meng stretched out her leg and kicked him from under the table. Chengyun nearly tumbled out of his seat.

Yu Meng glared at him.

Regaining his balance, Luan Chengyun pushed his teacup a bit further away, cleared his throat, and finally said, "Boys, there's something you need to know." Haoyu and Zhengyu sat quietly. Given such a solemn tone, it had to be a major matter.

"Your mother and I have parted ways on good terms."

Haoyu had long since guessed it was eight or nine parts true, so he wasn't particularly surprised. Zhengyu's face turned pale. He was still just a child.

Yu Meng hurriedly chimed in to comfort them, "Everyone has their own path to walk, and the paths your father and mother need to take are different now, so we can only walk our separate ways... But don't worry, Mom and Dad won't change; we still love you just as much as before... We'll love you even more."

Haoyu felt his mother's words sounded a bit too cheesy. Zhengyu looked on the verge of tears.

"Who dumped who?" Haoyu asked.

"Your mom dumped me," Chengyun replied without missing a beat.

"Luan Chengyun!" Yu Meng snapped.

How could he say something like that? Even if it were true, how could he paint her as a woman who abandoned her husband and children right in front of their sons? Yu Meng turned to her eldest son, Haoyu, "There's no such thing as who dumped who; it was an amicable split. If people fit, they stay together; if they don't, they part ways. This isn't anything extraordinary. Since you're studying abroad, you should understand your parents even better."

It still sounded awfully scripted. As she spoke, Yu Meng felt her tongue twisting into knots. "You don't love my dad anymore," Haoyu dropped an English phrase. Yu Meng understood it well enough; simple listening and speaking were within her grasp. She hurriedly wagged her finger and said, "No, no, no..." Haoyu switched to Chinese, "That means you still love him."

"No!" Yu Meng found herself starved for vocabulary.

Haoyu turned his head to look at his dad.

Luan Chengyun met his gaze, "I haven't changed. I still love your mother."

Shameless to the core! What right do you have to still love anyone?! Yu Meng screamed internally in her heart. It seemed that a peaceful breakup was entirely out of reach. Zhengyu's tears began to fall. Haoyu told his younger brother, "What are you crying for? They're just getting a divorce, nobody died."

Such a brutal way of thinking.

Yu Meng had no choice but to shift her angle, "Who is right and who is wrong will be left to time to decide. Haoyu, Zhengyu, your father and mother have separated. Both sides share the fault; it's not the fault of just one person. A failed marriage is a tragedy, but I have never regretted giving birth to the two of you."

Genuine, heartfelt words. Haoyu stopped muttering under his breath. Luan Chengyun announced he needed to visit the restroom. Yu Meng gathered both boys into her arms, while Zhengyu sobbed openly.

"Who's going to send money from now on?" Haoyu asked with rational calculation.

"Ask your father," Yu Meng replied resolutely.

After sending her sons off, Yu Meng once again blocked Luan Chengyun's phone number. She was free once more. First, she met up with Weng Yue. Old Weng had just returned from out of town, and heaven only knew what matters she had been handling. However, Weng Yue claimed it was her niece's schooling that had forced her to rush back and lend a helping hand. "My older brother came too," Weng Yue added as a reminder. Yu Meng refused to bite. Although she was technically welcoming all suitors now that she had restored her single status—parentheses, with the sole exception of her ex-husband—a man like Weng Yang simply failed to arouse any interest in her.

He was fine for filling out a crowd. As a flower, she always needed green leaves to set her off. The existence of a fanboy like Weng Yang at least served to prove her enduring charm.

Weng Yue asked about the Xin family concert, and Yu Meng casually glossed over the details. Weng Yue patted her arm, saying, "Oh, come on, who doesn't know how capable you are?"

"Someone even tried to sabotage me," Yu Meng intentionally brought up the incident of the missing music sheets.

"As if, you probably just forgot them yourself."

"Definitely not."

"Didn't you handle it brilliantly anyway? As you climb higher, who doesn't have a few adversaries? Just take it lightly and brush it off," Weng Yue advised. That was true advice. Yu Meng hadn't taken it to heart anyway. After the concert, that harridan from the Women Entrepreneurs Association had undergone a stark attitude shift toward her. They seemed to no longer care at all that Yu Meng only owned a shell company.

"Nothing major happening on the romance front?" Weng Yue teased deliberately. Yu Meng replied that nothing of the sort could possibly happen to her. Weng Yue remarked, "With all this bustling activity, you didn't take a fancy to a single one?"

"My focus is on my career," Yu Meng chuckled. "When a man has a career, he has love; for a woman, it's the exact same."

A smile played across Weng Yue's lips in silence. She was intimately familiar with Yu Meng's so-called "career." Yet she genuinely enjoyed having a female companion like Yu Meng by her side. Weng Yue held a firm belief: women ought to support women, and the higher one climbed, the more crucial that became—the upper echelons of the playing table were entirely populated by male players, and if the occasional woman there refused to lend a helping hand to others, they might as well go extinct—even though she simultaneously believed women sometimes loved hurting one another the most.

Weng Yue produced a piece of coral and a piece of amber as gifts. Yu Meng asked, "What's this, for me?" Weng Yue smiled and said, "Yes, you're the popular figure of the hour, I've got to butter you up." Yu Meng took the amber in her hands. She genuinely loved it; it looked remarkably similar to the piece Liu Xiaoqing wore around her neck on a certain television program she'd seen recently. For all she knew, it was worth a king's ransom.

Yu Meng made to put it on, but Weng Yue stopped her. Unhappy, Yu Meng protested, "How much is it? I'll pay you." Only then did Weng Yue explain that both items were intended as birthday gifts for Mrs. Xin. Mrs. Xin's birthday fell early in the year, and this year marked a milestone round age. It wouldn't do not to make a proper gesture. She said the coral would count as her gift, and the amber would count as Yu Meng's. Taken aback, Yu Meng asked, "What's going on, do you need something from me?" Weng Yue replied, "Emotional investments have to be made in advance. Once you soar to success later on, not even the tip of your whip will be within my reach." Still skeptical, Yu Meng asked, "Then I'll return it." Weng Yue hurriedly stopped her, "No, no, keep it as a gift." With a mysterious air, Weng Yue added, "I heard your family's Old Luan just secured a massive project recently."

Yu Meng scoffed dismissively, "A toad trying to weigh itself on a scale." She added for good measure, "He and I are no longer a family."

Weng Yue continued, "They're saying it's worth billions."

Yu Meng nearly spat out the mouthful of water she had just swallowed.

Seeing an enemy strike it rich was one of the greatest torments in the world.

"What kind of project is worth billions, is he printing banknotes?"

Weng Yue admitted she wasn't entirely clear on the details.

With all her business wrapped up, Yu Meng still wanted to gather her girlfriends together before the New Year. In particular, she felt deeply apologetic toward Yu Jia. After the chaos of that day, followed by a long rest and then a series of small, nagging chores, she had tried repeatedly to schedule a dinner get-together, but their schedules never aligned.

With her company pulling back several departments, Yu Shuang had her hands full, suddenly buried in work, and only had Sundays free. Meanwhile, Liren was engaged in a cold war with Yu Jia, leaving her in a rather sour mood; Liren hadn't even bothered to inform Yu Jia about the pre-New Year gathering of fellow provincials.

It was Yu Yi who returned to report it to his older sister. Yu Jia asked, "Did everyone bring their spouses?" Yu Yi said some did, while others came alone. "But sis, you count as a fellow provincial too."

She wasn't entirely just a spouse; she also held a dual identity and ought to have been present.

She could only conclude that Liren simply didn't want to bring her, and hadn't even bothered to give her notice. Yu Jia couldn't help but wonder if she had currently grown too unsightly to be seen in public.

Crow's feet, marionette lines, glabellar lines, neck wrinkles... She looked haggard. Whenever she checked the mirror, she merely glanced at herself in passing. For venue outings, she would slap on some Lancôme BB cream, covering a hundred flaws with a single layer of white.

She didn't bother putting in effort. She just made do.

Thinking back, the period when she had put the most effort into her appearance was back when she served as the head of the Kunqu Opera Society in school. Everyone always said she captured the spirit of Du Liniang the best when in costume. After getting together with Liren, she had let down her guard, and after giving birth to their child, she completely lost all self-awareness of whether she looked good or bad.

Sisi pushed the door open, mumbling English vocabulary under her breath; she was dead set on studying abroad. Yu Jia asked, "Is your mom old?"

Sisi pulled off one earphone, failing to process the question for a second, "Who's your mom?"

"Me."

"Oh—"

"Am I old?" Yu Jia stroked her face.

"Depends on which angle you look at it, and who you're comparing me to," her daughter answered objectively.

"Direct visual impression, is it passable?"

"Looking at it—it's passable." Sisi stood on tiptoe, leaning her upper body forward to inspect her mother's face like a field commander studying a military map, "It's just that you can't... examine it closely."

Yu Jia felt a wave of worry.

"Go get some injections down at the Seventh Hospital," her daughter suggested.

"Your mother isn't sick."

"Mom, can you not be so backward? This is basic skincare, what's the big deal? You hang out with Auntie Xiao Rui every day, not to mention Dream Big Aunt—even if you haven't eaten pork, surely you've seen a pig run." Sisi poked her mother's cheek, "With chubby cheeks like yours, and this skin condition, tsk tsk. I'm your daughter, so I won't mock my own mother's looks. Look at Faye Wong, Na Ying, Carina Lau—they just get younger the older they get." Suddenly sounding heartbroken and indignant, she added, "You think youth is handed to you for free? It all costs money and serious investment!"

"Your mother isn't at that age yet." They were from completely different eras. Yu Jia refused to accept such a comparison.

"You've got to spend money where it's needed." Sisi never held back on spending.

"Fine, fine," Yu Jia grew impatient. Her worldview clashed with her daughter's; kids these days understood too much and had overly restless minds. "Talk to me after you can actually earn your own money."

Someone knocked on the door. It was a courier delivery. Sisi went to open it. She retrieved the package, opened it, and pulled out three plunger-style toilet unblockers.

Red, yellow, and blue.

In despair, Sisi cried out, "Mom, you even bought three and returned two of these? I give up!" Yu Jia lost her footing in the argument and scrambled for an excuse, "What do you know, these are high-end goods, you can't buy them at the supermarket. Auntie Shuang and Auntie Rui each need one. It's not just for our house." This time around, Yu Jia had no intention of returning them.