When the door opened, Luo Qi was eating yogurt; she didn’t raise her head.

“Oh, it’s really Qiqi.” The eldest aunt thought about the last time, when she was hung up on by a junior, and felt much angered, unable to let go.

When Jiang Yifang saw how her daughter had lost so much weight, she almost burst into tears. Fortunately, her daughter didn’t know what kind of life this month had been like at home.

The eldest aunt sat down on the sofa and said, “I heard from Luo Yu that you rented a house in Beijing and now it takes more than two hours to commute to work. You ah, this child, why should you make it difficult for yourself? You could live a good life, but you refuse to.

“Are you really stupid? Shixiao’s conditions are so good. In the future, the Pei family would belong to him. You should seize it. Why are you letting that mistress have the advantage?”

Luo Qi covered the yogurt with its lid, put it in her bag, and glanced at the eldest aunt, “If you really have the time to spare, you could just clean our house.”

With a Bang! the door slammed shut, and the wall panels shook.

The eldest aunt almost had a heart attack! She patted her heart and said, “Look at the good daughter you raised. It’s incredible. I’ve never seen such a poorly…” educated girl!

She endured the last few words and didn’t need to say them. 

“She doesn’t know who’s being good to her!”

Jiang Yifang thought to herself that her daughter had done a good job of slamming the door.

She and her husband would never be able to be rude to the person they owed money to. Since their company went bankrupt, they would have to be grateful a hundred times to anyone who has ever helped them.

Had she and her husband told their daughter the truth, had they been considerate of their daughter and supported her breakup with Pei Shixiao, their daughter—for their sake—would never have had the strength to block their relatives, let alone slam the door on her eldest aunt.

… … translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com

Luo Qi walked down the stone bridge, feeling calm in her heart. She opened the yogurt and ate it while walking.

She walked aimlessly along the path, and before she knew it, she arrived at the gates of her old high school. It was still the same as before, and nothing seemed to have changed.

The car repair shop was in an alley, and Luo Qi turned there.

The person sitting in the car thought they were seeing a mirage and asked the driver, “Is that Luo Qi?”

Madam Pei was still looking outside the car window, and the slender figure was getting farther and farther away.

The driver had seen Luo Qi and was very sure, “Yes.”

Madam Pei thought for a moment and called her son.

… …

Pei Shixiao was abroad. It was early morning there, and he had just gotten up.

“Mom, what’s the matter?”

“I just saw Luo Qi. She was alone at the entrance of the alley where your high school is. She lost a lot of weight.”

Pei Shixiao was bending down to take the water glass, but his hand paused at this news. Memories came flooding back. The first time he met Luo Qi was after his college entrance examination. He had invited his classmates to play ball at school. Luo Qi was in her second year of high school at the time and had not yet gone on summer vacation.

It was in that same alley that he saw her for the first time, and with that one glance, she had taken root in his heart.

Madam Pei asked, “Has Cui Peng resigned?”

“I don’t know. I left it to the secretary to handle, and I didn’t ask.” Cui Peng deleted him from WeChat and he didn’t add her any more.

Wasn’t she going on a blind date?

Then that’s fine, no need to contact each other again.

“It’s best if you don’t ask. You don’t have to ask anymore about her in the future. Otherwise, I’ll take care of you too.” A mistress was something she would never tolerate. This was her bottom line.

Even for her son, she would not break this bottom line.

“Mom, why are you calling me?” It was definitely not just to tell him that Luo Qi was in Suzhou. His mother was never so free.

“If you still want to get back together with Luo Qi, mom can help you, on the premise that you consider her self-esteem and her mood.”

Pei Shixiao couldn’t believe it. “Mom… don’t you dislike Luo Qi?”

He thought that his breakup with Luo Qi was just what his mother wanted.

“Even if I am dissatisfied with her, I can’t stop you from going to her and asking for forgiveness.” Ever since he was a child, her son has never compromised with her or her husband except only on the matter of Luo Qi.

“I will take care of all the troubles of Luo Yuli’s company, Luo Yu’s job, Luo Xin’s small company, and the other seven aunts and eight uncles of the Luo family. I can still put my dignity down and talk to Luo Qi’s mother.”

Madam Pei said frankly, “Of course, it’s not without conditions. You are my son, the only person I care about in this world. Mom doesn’t want to use you under the guise of helping you. So this time, how about we put aside the relationship between mother and son, and we talk about business?”

Pei Shixiao finally picked up the glass of water and took a few sips, “What are the conditions?”

“The Board of Directors will change next year, and I want to be the Chairman. You have the highest voting rights aside from me and your dad. If you vote for me, I will definitely win against your dad.”

“…”

“When you were ten years old, your dad had someone else. I wanted to get divorced but couldn’t. Although I had shares in the company, I didn’t have a firm foothold. If we divorced, even if your dad allowed me to be in the company, his mistress wouldn’t be able to tolerate my presence. If he remarried and had other children, how much would he leave for you?”

So she was unwilling to give in.

She had endured her anger for twenty years, and everyone in the company was no longer on guard against her—including her husband.

“I want control of the group. I will step on your dad and rub his face under my feet. After I get my revenge on him, I will work for a few more years, then I will hand over the company to you.

“You are better than your father, after all. You are not to the point where even nine cows can’t hold you back. When your dad insisted on divorcing me because of his mistress, he didn’t even fight for your custody rights. He wanted to save face and didn’t want it to drag on. 

“Treat Luo Qi well from now on. No matter how good the relationship is, it will fade away. You have to have commitment and responsibility.”

Pei Shixiao remembered what happened when he was ten years old. At that time, there was a lot of noise at home, and there were sounds of things being thrown in his parents’ bedroom, but he hadn’t known the reason.

He only remembered that his mother brought him to school the next day with red eyes, and he sometimes did not see his father for several months.

He never knew that his mother had suffered so many grievances for him. Even if his parents quarreled, his mother had never used him to vent her anger. She would bring him to school when she should and take him out to play as usual. He was never left to the nanny and driver.

“Mom, I’m sorry.”

“Except for Cui Peng, you have never done anything to wrong me. Those things in the past happened because I was willing to wrong myself. You didn’t stop me from firing Cui Peng, so you already made up for it. Telling you about the past is not to make you feel guilty, but to let you understand. This is only for the sake of fairness. In fact, even if I don’t tell you, you still wouldn’t hesitate at all if I ask you to give me your voting rights.”

But she didn’t want to lie to her son.

“You want to divorce my dad?”

“I have to leave him. I want to leave him when I am most proud of myself, I want to see him beg me not to leave. That will relieve my anger. Just pretend you don’t know about my plans and entrust me with your voting rights. At worst, your father will be so angry that he would be hospitalized, but he will not do anything to you anyway. Who let him owe you before? Even if he is angry to death, he can only endure it. Then you go to the hospital to stay with him for a few days, and do your best to be a filial son, and it will be over.”

“…”

Seventh Year of My Secret Love for You translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com

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T/N: I’m having issues editing previously posted pages, so I can’t update the ‘next chapter’ links or the ‘advance chapters’ and ‘title’ pages, and I can only post new chapters with a lot of patience (≖︿≖✿) So apologies if you encounter website issues. Don’t be like me and ragequit.

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