CHAPTER 457: CHAPTER 457: WHAT DO YOU KNOW

In fact, when Mrs. Xu had her incident, the young Doudou was right beside Xu Fangfang, witnessing his mother asking Mrs. Xu for money, and even when Mrs. Xu refused, Xu Fangfang said some harsh words that angered Mrs. Xu into fainting. Though he was young at the time, he also knew—if it weren’t for his mother—his grandmother might not have left this world in that way.

It was only later on that he gradually became aware that once a person is gone, they truly leave nothing behind. The kind-hearted elderly who used to be so affectionate towards him disappeared from this world because of his mother, and that’s when he began to understand the differences between good and bad, right and wrong.

However, he could only suppress these things in his heart and didn’t even dare to mention them to others. If Xu Fangfang hadn’t forced him before coming today to ingratiate himself with his grandfather with the intention of getting his hands on his grandfather’s savings, he wouldn’t have wanted to curry favor following Xu Fangfang’s wishes. And after being angrily pulled aside and lectured by Xu Fangfang, he didn’t even plan to bring up the past incident with his grandmother, because Xu Fangfang was his mother, and he had also started to understand the meaning of "shame." These things, he could only swallow down, pretending to know nothing.

"Shut up, what nonsense are you spouting! What does your grandmother’s affair have to do with me?" Upon hearing this, Xu Fangfang’s face darkened as she quickly interrupted Doudou, her words filled with panic and frustration: "What do you know at your tender age? Just bragging without knowing anything. And could the incident with your grandmother be entirely blamed on your mother? At that time, the debt collectors were hounding me so much that I wished I could have hidden away in a burrow, yet your grandmother had money, and when I asked her to lend us some to pay off our family’s debts, she hoarded it and was too stingy to give it to me. What kind of mother is so heartless? And then she had the nerve to say she wanted to save the money for your aunt, talking about how she had wronged her. Pah! To me, she was clearly playing favorites to the extreme! Treating only her darling daughter as her own, as if I, her eldest daughter, was picked up from the streets. How could she be so cruel!" Xu Fangfang growled indignantly as if trying to justify her actions.

Even though Xu Fangfang knew that these words were futile against Doudou, she still felt a sense of guilt for the past incident, which had been oppressing her for several years. Even when she sensed that Mr. Xu vaguely knew what happened and always treated her with cold disdain, she clenched her teeth and endured it. But after giving it some more thought later on, she would sometimes reflect and still feel that she was being quite unfairly treated. She genuinely hadn’t anticipated that her actions would lead to such grave consequences for Mrs. Xu and had never expected Mrs. Xu to suddenly have a stroke. But even so, this caused her a great deal of guilt for many years.

But now, thinking back, the fact that Mrs. Xu stubbornly refused to lend her money despite having it, this point, she still could not help but hold a grudge. After all, wouldn’t there have been no subsequent incidents if Mrs. Xu had simply lent her the money? She wouldn’t have needed to be hounded by debt collectors, and Mrs. Xu wouldn’t have ended up in bad shape due to a stroke from the stress! So, she wasn’t entirely to blame for Mrs. Xu’s incident!

"Mom! Don’t you know why grandmother felt she had wronged my aunt? If it hadn’t been for you, perhaps grandmother would still be well today!" Doudou’s voice was full of disappointment as he spoke. He was already fifteen or sixteen, not a little child anymore. Over the years, he had come to understand a lot of things, so he couldn’t just flatter the elderly according to Xu Fangfang’s wishes. He could be respectful, but he didn’t want to carry out his actions with ulterior motives: "It seems what dad said is indeed correct. He said you are heartless, and I didn’t believe him." There was a tone of confirmed mockery in Doudou’s voice as he spoke, placing his hand over his chest where his heart was.

"What did you say to me! I’m heartless?" Upon hearing this, angered Xu Fangfang stepped forward and slapped the back of Doudou’s head, calling out his full name in exasperation: "Song Zhengtian, you ungrateful brat, is this how you talk to an adult? I am your mother! Do you think it was easy for me to raise you to this age, to bear you for ten months? And this is how you repay me? I told you not to listen to your father’s nonsense; he’s a fool, can you believe what he says? I told you not to heed your father’s ramblings, and you never listen. Now look, you’re even siding with him? You dare to loudly criticize your own mother. Why do you have to overthink everything? At the end of the day, you look down on your own mother, thinking I’m heartless. Fine! You’re so compassionate, is this how you treat your own mother? Ah! What sin have I committed?" Xu Fangfang, she’s accused of being selfish, and she really is selfish. But her affection for Doudou and her thoughtfulness towards him were real, it’s just that her methods were misguided.

"Mom! I know you want what’s best for me." Doudou replied helplessly, "But I don’t want it at all. I want to earn money through my own abilities. I’ll study hard and make sure I achieve something in the future. Isn’t that enough?" His tone was full of promises.

"..." Xu Fangfang was initially stunned into silence, then glared at him with annoyance: "Shut up, what do you know? It’s only right for you to be successful in the future, but right now, you just need to do as I say. Go back to the room and bring your grandfather two oranges, the kind with thin skins and lots of juice, and peel them for him to eat." She pushed Doudou, her expression showing sheer exasperation.

Clearly, Xu Fangfang didn’t take any of Doudou’s earlier words to heart and started giving him commands again.

"Mom, do you really plan on not reconciling with my aunts until death?" Doudou yelled in frustration. As he grew older, he gradually realized just how mischievous he had been as a child, and although he was young and unaware then and could excuse himself, now he was grown up and couldn’t stand the guilt hidden in his heart every time he saw his aunts— it was too painful and torturous.

"Why are you talking about dying without reconciling? Aren’t we all fine now? I have been trying to please them for the past few years. What more do you want me to do?" Xu Fangfang saw Doudou raise his voice, even becoming red-eyed, and moderated her tone slightly, but her spoken words were still tinged with annoyance: "Everyone says that I harmed your aunt, but I was really looking out for her at the time. How could I have known that so many things would go wrong? Besides, isn’t she living well now?" The taste of sour grapes was quite strong.

Xu Fangfang was, in fact, always looking for excuses for her wrongdoings, rationalizing her mistakes with "how could I have known it would turn out like this." She knew right from wrong, yet she always sought to justify herself with sound reasoning, as if deceiving herself and others, but in reality, she was just being a hypocrite.