Little Wang’s behavior brought back Ruan Xia’s childhood memories. She had been like that too as a child. Every time her parents came to see her at her grandparents’ home, she liked to lead her mom by the hand everywhere. At that time, her mom didn’t ask her why she was doing this and unlike Little Wang, she didn’t share her reason. When she carefully thought about it now, she realized it had been a missed opportunity. If she could have been like Little Wang when she was a child, her mom might have been able to understand her thoughts and feelings.

  Did parents and children miss the right timing? Probably.

  When children wanted to express themselves, their parents couldn’t understand them. Or perhaps, they would say they were too busy and didn’t have time to listen. By the time the parents wanted to listen attentively, their children had already learned to hide their thoughts and no longer wanted to share.

  Ruan Xia crouched down and hugged the soft, chubby kid. She warmly said, “En, Little Wang is mom’s good child.”


  Little Wang hugged his mom back. He even stroked her hair with his chubby hands.

  After the mother and son had their sweet intimate moment, they returned to Song Tingshen’s office. They curled up on the couch and whispered to each other. After repeated reminders from Ruan Xia, Little Wang’s voice got quieter and quieter. He seemed to have realized that his dad was working and that speaking loudly would disturb him.

  By the time Song Tingshen was done with his work, it was about 5:40 PM. He tidied up his desk, turned off his computer, picked up his car key, and walked to the couch. “I’m done. Let’s go before rush hour starts.”


  Little Wang held his mom’s hand with one hand and held his dad’s hand with his other hand. Sandwiched between his parents, he skipped out of the office. Song Corporation was the same as other companies. Their employees ended their workday at 6PM. When the staff saw Song Tingshen coming out of his office, they hastily pretended to be busy. They were either picking up the phone or calling someone or seemingly focused on typing. In front of their boss, they did their best to act as if they were always busy at work.

  Song Tingshen saw that Ruan Xia kept looking over in the cubicle area and asked, “What are you looking at?”


  Ruan Xia expressed her happy feelings. “It feels like a lifetime ago when I last worked.”


  When Song Tingshen heard her mention going to work, the corners of his lips twitched. Her last job was working at the front desk of Song Corporation.

  Ruan Xia thought of her life before she had transmigrated. She would trudge to and from her arduous job each day. What was her mood back then? It was like those storytellers on Weibo. Seeing a Lamborghini, Porsche, and other luxury cars on the road and wanting to heedlessly rush forward, knock on their car window, and shout; – hey idiot, support and raise me!

  “Didn’t you say you wanted to go back to working? How is that going?” Song Tingshen asked.

  Ruan Xia shook her head. “I still want to keep practising speaking in English with my teacher and improve my baking skills…… When I’m done learning those two things, I’ll think about what I want to do. It would be boring to stay at home all day.”


  Song Tingshen wanted to say; haven’t you happily stayed at home for the past four years?

  “I would suggest that you shouldn’t go work at another company.” Song Tingshen tried his best to not be too blunt. “There’s a four-year gap in your work history and you don’t have an excellent prior work experience to compensate for that. From the perspective of an employer, you’ve deviated from society’s regular working path in the past four years. When deciding if they should hire you, they’ll consider if you can adapt to the fast pace of the workplace. If you try to find a job, you might have to start at the lowest level. That might be a hard adjustment for you.”


  Ruan Xia: “.……”


  Fine, he was just stating the truth.

  “Go on.”