Chapter 47: Getting Closer
The reason why Su Le had started writing novels was not because it was a hobby, and neither was it because of money or fame. The reason was that she had gotten irritated at a novel she was reading. Since a few years had already passed, she no longer remembered the title of the novel, but she still remembered the majority of the plot.
In the entire story, the male lead only had two good characteristics: one was that he was rich , and the other was that he was handsome. Other than that, he had many negative characteristics, such as being ruthless. His actions were unfilial; he played around with women every day, had no compassion, and acted cocky because he was rich. Basically, he wasn’t a good influence, but the female lead had somehow miraculously fallen in love with such a man. She was also harmed by the male lead and suffered constantly but in the end, she still did everything for him.
Su Le thought that the story was extremely irritating. In a fit of anger, she wrote a novel about an independent female lead and a steady but ambitious male lead. Afterwards, writing novels became a habit for her so she persisted in it. Getting recognition and achievements for her work was not what she had expected.
On Wei Chu’s bookshelf, there was an entire collection of all her books that had been published. She noticed that some of her books had also been here on her last visit, but she didn’t look at them carefully previously. This time, she discovered that all these books were very clean and in good condition.
She randomly took a book and opened it. Her signature was on the first page. Su Le touched her chin as she carefully pondered over it. This book was published at the end of last year and, she only had one signing event then. There were males who came to buy her book, but they were all pretty much helping their girlfriend to buy it. Also, on that day, there were other authors as well; it was chaotic, so she didn’t notice who had bought her book. But Wei Chu hadn’t been there then, right?
Even though she didn’t put all of her attention on the opposite sex, she would give a man a few more glances if they were attractive. So she should have some recollection of it. There was a high possibility that he had gotten someone else to buy it for him, but did Wei Chu know that she was actually the author?
The small circle of her writing friends had told her that if a man who liked her had read her novels, they would definitely be scared off. There weren’t many men who liked strong women, as they liked having the image of a strong man in the woman’s eyes. They also liked women who were weak and beautiful since strong women would injure their frail self-esteem.
Su Le didn’t think that it would matter too much, but she had to agree that her friend’s words were reasonable. Also, Zhuang Wei who had originally said that he loved her, had ultimately gotten into an ambiguous relationship with another woman for the same reasons.
Then, what about Wei Chu?
After putting the book back into its original position on the shelf, Su Le sat on the chair at the computer desk. She pondered over their relationship thoughtfully. So far, it had always been Wei Chu who took the initiative to approach her, while she passively accepted his attempts. It was once said that when a man pursues a woman, the woman was treated as a treasure, but once she’s been caught, then her negative traits would reveal themselves. Did Su Le need to consider this aspect as well?
Just when her thoughts were going wild, Su Le’s phone started to ring. It was from Wei Chu.
“Have you gotten enough sleep?” Wei Chu’s voice was very melodious to her ears. When it was lowered, it sounded like his words were filled with tenderness.
“Yep,” Su Le coughed dryly. She felt like she had just contracted an illness that everyone frequently caught when they were in a relationship – the uneasy disease. She listened to the addictive voice coming from her phone. As expected, she was already one foot deep into the love pond.
“The meeting today lasted longer than expected. I can probably only pick you up at around 1pm. There are some fruits and snacks in the fridge; you can eat them if you’re hungry.” On the other end of the call, Wei Chu was signing a document with one hand while smiling lightly as he listened to Su Le’s voice on the phone.
“No problem, if you are busy, I can go out by myself to get something to eat for lunch.” Su Le turned 180° on the chair and faced the computer. She spoke as she switched the computer on, “Don’t delay your work.”
“It’s alright. I don’t have much to do in the late afternoon. Later, I’ll give you a call when I have arrived.”
“Okay.” Since the other party decided to ignore her suggestion, she did not insist on it any longer. “I’ll hang up now. Don’t be absent-minded while working.”
“Ok, I’ll listen to you.”
When Su Le heard his low laugh, she immediately hung up. That sound was just cheating her feelings and what was with ‘I’ll listen to you’? Wei Chu, that scoundrel, was actually trying to take liberties with her!
Listening to the dial tone from his phone, Wei Chu’s mood was great as he put the phone back into his drawer. He was thinking about how to bring Su Le to meet his parents this weekend. His parents seemed to have a good impression of Su Le and recently, whenever he called them, Su Le was always mentioned in their conversation, intentionally or not.
Meeting his parents was a good thing. But now ,he should focus on work to earn more money so that his future wife could live a better life. That was the most important thing at the moment.
While Wei Chu was filled with motivation, Su Le leisurely signed into a social network platform. She chatted happily with her friends about delicious food, makeup, publishing new books, and dragging out their deadlines and so on.
Since Su Le saw the old group chat from university had about 100+ notifications, she opened the chat and read through the messages. She was distracted for a while.
Zhuang Wei was getting engaged with another woman? That information was a bit hard for her to digest. She remembered the blind date Zhuang Wei had had at the tea shop previously. Su Lu thought about it for a while. Maybe that was how everything was meant to be. She and Zhuang Wei had gone through a lot together in the past few years but in the end, they still have ended up like this.
He Li 09:36:23
Right, do you think Su Le already knows about this matter?
Chen Qia 09:36:34
……
He Li 09:37:49
I think she doesn’t know about it yet.
Tang Qian Yu 09:38:13
Su Le and Zhuang Wei have already split up. Does it matter whether she knows about it or not?
Su Le looked at the last few messages and sighed. Her relationship with He Li might not be very good, but they were not roommates in university. Neither did they interact much with each other. Why did He Li seemed to wish misfortune for her? Su Le’s fingers rested on the keyboard as she thought about the best way to construct her response. Although her avatar was darkened, it didn’t really mean that she was offline. This classmate of hers was disregarding her too much; she was making it difficult for her.
He Li 09:38:20
I was just asking. It’s not like she is some influential figure whom we can’t talk about.
Su Le 09:39:07
…..I’m really thankful for your concern. I didn’t know of it earlier but I’m aware of it now.
Because Su Le hadn’t posted anything for a long period of time, everyone in the group had never even considered the possibility that Su Le would be online. In that instant, everyone was extremely embarrassed and the chat became silent.
The chat had remained silent for about 30 seconds before He Li posted something again.
He Li 09:39:53
Then, will you be attending Zhuang Wei’s engagement party in three days? All of us who are present in the city are going.
Hey, classmate, would it kill you if you stopped mentioning that subject? But Su Le did not want to bicker with someone who was unrelated to the matter. She quickly typed a response.
Su Le 09:40:49
Thank you for your concern, but this matter is between me and Zhuang Wei.
Tang Qian Yu 09:41:28
He Li, if you have nothing to do then go and drink some more water.
After closing the group chat, Su Le’s lips twitched in annoyance. She really shouldn’t have opened that chat at all.
Heading downstairs, Su Le washed an apple and grabbed 2 bags of snacks before she went upstairs again.
She tucked herself into the chair before she leisurely played a game on the computer while eating the apple. She felt very contented
As for the matter about Zhuang Wei’s engagement, what did that have anything to do with her?
—————-
Soon after Wei Chu just entered his office from the meeting, he saw Chen Xu smiling like a thief as he knocked the door to enter. He shot a quick glance at the invitation in Chen Xu’s hands but he did not question him about it.
“Lao Da, guess what this invitation says?” Chen Xu swayed the invitation in his hands as he smiled brightly.
“If you are feeling too idle, then go and clean the toilets.” Wei Chu couldn’t be bothered to deal with Chen Xu when he was fooling around. Wei Chu’s eyes flicked towards the screen.
“It’s currently hard to look for employment so I’ll be generous and snatch someone else’s job. Otherwise, the cleaning lady will curse me tomorrow,” Chen Xu placed the invitation in front of Wei Chu. “This invitation was sent by Zhuang Shi. I accidentally dropped it so I saw the contents of the invitation.”
“Zhuang Shi?” Wei Chu twitched his brows as the looked at the invitation. He did not have a good feeling about this.
As expected, even people with great poise would disappear like fleeting clouds when it was something related to a love rivalry. Chen Xu felt rueful as he asked, “Aren’t you going to read it, boss?”
Wei Chu reached for the invitation and opened it. He was rather surprised, “Zhuang Wei is getting engaged with someone from the Song family?”
“It can’t be helped. The Zhuang family was originally financially unstable. Also, they have suffered a lot from the economic crisis, and now that the economy is becoming stable again, there are many changes in the market. With Zhuang Wei’s current condition, if he doesn’t marry someone to help him stabilise the business, it’s possible that his family may become bankrupt.” Chen Xu did not have a positive opinion of Zhuang Wei.
“Looking down on others is not good,” Wei Chu replied steadily, but his tone wasn’t criticising. He was sneering as he played with the invitation with his fingers.
“Ah, my most respected opponent.” Chen Xu shrugged, “Does Su Le know about this?”
Wei Chu shook his head, “I haven’t heard her mention this before.”
Chen Xu tactfully retreated when he saw that Wei Chu didn’t appear very happy, “Then I shall leave first.”
Wei Chu nodded in response. He couldn’t help but worry if Su Le would be saddened once she received the news.
Since he noticed that the time was already past 11 am, Wei Chu was no longer in the mood to handle the business affairs so he told Chen Xu, who was already by the door, “Push the meeting back to 3 pm. I’m going to leave first. You can go and arrange it now.” Then, he grabbed his jacket and left the office.
Chen Xu watched Wei Chu rush off, “I knew that you wouldn’t be able to sit still.”
—————-
Wei Chu slowed down as he saw the red light. There were quite a few cars stopped in front of him. He sat in his car as he started to guess what Su Le’s mood would be like when she found out about Zhuang Wei’s engagement. He was clear that Su Le had liked Zhuang Wei, but Wei Chu didn’t know if she actually had fallen for himself.
He had used all methods possible to get closer to Su Le but he didn’t dare to guess if she had gotten together with him out of gratefulness or because of some other reason. Even though he was considered a successful person, he didn’t dare to use this when measuring love.
If Su Le found out about the engagement, would she be sad, angry or have a different emotion altogether? He didn’t feel secure. After all, Su Le and Zhuang Wei had been together a little more than two years, while he and Su Le had only been together for a few months.
So it turned out there were times when he didn’t feel very confident.
As the cars in front of him started to move, Wei Chu also followed from behind. No matter what, he would not miss this chance.