Chapter 60 - Rejected calls

Chapter 60: Chapter 60 - Rejected calls

Jua turned just in time to see Mo Yuxin walking away from the back gate.

He recognised the handbag first. She had carried it around the house often enough, usually while telling someone to fetch her something she could easily have picked up herself. Now it was tucked beneath her arm as she hurried along the outside wall.

His hand stopped over the cards.

What was she doing here?

He glanced at Mao Mao, who was watching the same spot. The boy’s fingers had tightened around his cards, bending the corners.

Jua reached over and gently loosened his grip.

"Wait here."

He called to a servant passing near the house. She came over at once, drying her hands on a small towel.

"Was Mo Yuxin here just now?"

The woman nodded, looking a little uncomfortable.

"She came to the front gate asking for Mr Ying. When we told her he wasn’t here, she said she wanted to see Young Master Ying Di."

Jua looked toward the gate again. From where she had been standing, she would have been able to see their table perfectly well.

"Did she come inside?"

"No. Your father instructed us not to let her in without contacting him first," the servant explained, glancing at the two boys. "She was quite upset, but we couldn’t make an exception. The housekeeper has already informed him."

Jua’s shoulders relaxed.

Good. For a moment, he had thought she had managed to talk her way past the new staff. He could imagine coming back from the kitchen to find her standing over Mao Mao again, and the thought alone made his chest ache where she had shoved him.

"Thank you," he said. "I saw her at the back gate. She’s gone now, but please tell the housekeeper."

The servant agreed and headed inside.

Jua watched her go, feeling considerably better about Ying Rui’s choice of staff. The previous ones would probably have opened the gate before Mo Yuxin finished ringing the bell. Then, when she started shouting, they would suddenly have remembered some urgent chore in another room.

At least these people understood what a locked gate was for.

A small hand tugged at his shirt.

Mao Mao was looking up at him, his cards lowered into his lap.

"Won’t that make her angry, Brother Jua?"

Jua brushed the hair away from the boy’s forehead. He had been warm and happy a few minutes ago, leaning across the table to bully Ying Di into playing better. Jua didn’t want him spending the rest of the afternoon worrying about whether Mo Yuxin would come back.

"Yes, she’ll be pissed," he said, settling into his chair. "But what can she do? She has no power here now."

He glanced at the table, chose a card, and laid it down.

Mao Mao followed the movement.

His mouth fell open.

Jua placed his remaining cards beside it and smiled.

"No!"

The protest came out so miserably that Jua nearly laughed.

Mao Mao stared at the table, then at the cards still in his own hand, as though checking whether Jua’s victory might somehow be cancelled.

"How do you win every time?"

He dropped sideways against Jua, pressing his forehead into his arm.

Jua caught him around the waist before his chair could slide away.

"Because I’m smart."

"Not fair."

"You both played as a team."

That earned Ying Di an immediate glare.

"Di Ge is a pig teammate."

The corpse puppet tilted his head slightly, still holding his cards.

Jua looked at him, then back at the sulking child attached to his side. Mao Mao had chosen his own teammate, arranged both their hands, and spent most of the game whispering orders loudly enough for Jua to hear. Losing under those circumstances required a certain amount of talent.

He wisely kept that thought to himself.

Mao Mao reached across the table and pulled Ying Di’s cards down to inspect them. The puppet allowed it, his arm following the movement without resistance.

"You had this one?"

His voice rose with fresh outrage.

Jua leaned over to look and couldn’t hold back his laugh.

Mao Mao turned on him immediately.

"You knew?"

"I wondered why he wasn’t using it."

The boy looked back at Ying Di with such wounded disbelief that Jua had to press his lips together. It was rather unfair to blame a corpse puppet for being bad at cards, especially when Mao Mao had spent the entire game preventing him from putting anything down.

Still, Ying Di didn’t seem troubled by the accusation. He simply watched Mao Mao gather his cards and add them to the pile.

Jua rubbed the boy’s back, feeling the little huff he let out.

"Come on. Give them here."

Mao Mao handed over the cards, then stayed tucked against him while he shuffled. His cheek rested against Jua’s upper arm, warm through the thin fabric of his shirt.

Jua glanced down.

The boy was peering at his hands, already trying to follow where the good cards went.

He shifted the deck away from those curious eyes.

Mao Mao made a small dissatisfied noise and wrapped an arm around his waist instead.

That, apparently, was Jua’s punishment.

He let him stay there.

After everything that had happened, a slightly numb arm was a small price to pay for having Mao Mao sitting beside him, occupied with something as unimportant as losing a card game.

He dealt another round, placing Ying Di’s cards carefully in front of him. The puppet picked them up a moment later.

Mao Mao studied his own hand, then leaned over to examine his brother’s.

Jua watched him rearrange two cards with the solemn concentration of someone correcting a serious mistake. The sight made his mouth twitch again.

This time, Mao Mao caught it.

He immediately pulled Ying Di’s hand closer to his chest, shielding both sets of cards from view.

Jua looked away before he started laughing and made the child genuinely angry.

Beyond the gate, Mo Yuxin had stopped walking.

She could still hear them.

Not every word reached her, but enough did. Jua’s easy answer about her being angry. Mao Mao’s complaint when he lost. The laughter that followed while she stood outside a house she had lived in for years.

She has no power here now.

Mo Yuxin stared at the wall.

He had said it so casually. There hadn’t even been a need to lower his voice.

Her carefully chosen dress clung uncomfortably beneath her arms. She had spent the morning making herself look pitiful enough for Ying Rui to soften, rehearsing apologies she could barely bear to say. Now she hadn’t even made it through the gate, and Jua was sitting inside telling her stepson that she couldn’t do anything to them.

Her grip tightened around her handbag.

Then she heard Ying Di’s name.

She turned her head, listening as Mao Mao complained about him again. There was no reply from her son, only Jua’s laughter and the soft murmur of conversation afterward.

Didi was still sitting with them.

He hadn’t looked for her. He hadn’t called to ask whether she was all right. While she was alone in that unfamiliar house, staring at divorce papers, he was here enjoying himself.

She knew she should be glad he was being fed and looked after. She had begged Ying Rui to let him stay.

But she hadn’t expected him to be happy.

That was the part she couldn’t swallow.

Mo Yuxin wiped beneath one eye, furious when her fingertip came away damp. She had saved those tears for Rui. Instead, she was wasting them outside a garden wall while the people who had driven her out played cards.

A guard’s voice sounded somewhere near the back entrance.

She hurried away before he could find her there.

By the time she reached the car, her feet hurt and the loose strand of hair against her cheek had stuck to her skin. She got in, shut the door, and took out her phone.

Ying Rui still hadn’t answered.

She stared at his name for a moment, then opened her contacts and called Ying Di.

She needed to hear him ask for her. Even if it was only once.

The call rang only twice before it was rejected.

Mo Yuxin lowered the phone and stared at the screen. Perhaps he had pressed the wrong button. Didi could be careless when he was distracted, and they were still playing cards.

She called again.

This time, he rejected it immediately.

Her fingers went cold around the phone. She had watched him sitting there, perfectly well, with nothing more important to do than amuse himself with those two. He wasn’t asleep or busy with lessons. He knew she was calling and didn’t want to speak to her.

"Didi..."

She opened their messages, but couldn’t decide what to write. Asking why he had rejected her felt unbearable. She was his mother. Why should she have to beg her own son to answer?

It had to be Jua.

Didi had never treated her like this before that boy started interfering. Now he had Mao Mao clinging to him, Rui protecting him, and her own son refusing her calls.

She pressed the phone against her mouth, trying to steady her breathing.

They had taken enough from her.

By the time the driver asked whether she wanted to go home, she could barely make herself answer him.