'Let's not discuss these heavy topics. Tell me something about your life.'
Zhai Yanjun raised his brows at her inquisitively. Seeing her curious look and the way her eyes sparkled, he had a premonition.
'Do you have a girlfriend?'
Zhai Yanjun almost wanted to roll his eyes at that question. He should have paid attention to the premonition he felt. Where else could it possibly go? It had to come to his relationship status.
"Um... No," replied Zhai Yanjun.
Yue Yue's face fell. 'Why not? Even with this face, you can't get a girlfriend? Aren't you ashamed of being such a failure?'
Zhai Yanjun gaped at her while Yue Yue gave him a disappointed look.
"Fai also doesn't have a girlfriend," reminded Zhai Yanjun. He wanted to pull in Hyson so that he could escape from this topic but he didn't expect it to fail.
'My son is an utter disappointment when it comes to this stuff,' was Yue Yue's response. 'I don't even give a da...' she hurriedly erased this sentence and wrote again, 'I mean I don't even care if he brings a girl or a guy or even a block of wood! It'd already be a blessing if he managed to get attracted to someone. But he is quite hopeless for now.'
Zhai Yanjun was taken aback by her expectations of Hyson. "I can understand a girl or a guy but is it even possible to get attracted to a block of wood?" He just couldn't hold himself back from asking this.
'I don't care!'
Zhai Yanjun nodded his head, "I can see that now."
'What about you?' she questioned again. 'Even if you have a boyfriend, I don't mind. I really don't.'
Zhai Yanjun chuckled in amusement, "I'm happy to hear that but I am not interested in men."
'What about women then?' she raised her brows in anticipation.
He smiled at her, "I had a girlfriend but we broke up almost a year ago."
'Why?'
"Because our relationship was never based on love," he told her honestly. He didn't feel like lying to her and he was more comfortable in telling her everything honestly. It made him feel close to her. "We got together when we entered the military academy and it was only because we both needed something from the other. Although this relationship went on and off for a decade, at the end of the day, even I don't know if it was really love or not."
He used to tell himself that it was love. He desperately made himself believe that it was love. But it was Xiang Wai who reminded him why they first got into a relationship. Even when he had told her he loved her, she had said, 'You don't. Stop lying to yourself, Yanjun. It was never love.'
He would have loved to argue with her and insist that it was love but today, even he was uncertain whether it was really love or he had really been deceiving himself for all these years?
'Are you struggling to find the answer?' asked Yue Yue. 'Does it really matter whether it's love or not?'
"Doesn't that matter in a relationship?" he retorted.
'I used to think like you and then I met Mu Chenyan, Raelle, and even my own son, Fai. These three people made me realize that the relationship based solely on love is actually quite shallow. A man's heart is unpredictable. One can fall in love anywhere and anytime and with anyone. But then why can't the same man fall in love again?'
Zhai Yanjun pondered deeply about her words and nodded his head in agreement.
'Chenyan said relationships need trust, Raelle said relationships need loyalty, and to Fai, relationships need support. To these three people, love is unnecessary in life. It's not even the last thing they think about in their lives.' Yue Yue actually felt helpless about it as she wrote it down. But after spending years with such three people, she was influenced as well. She, who used to worship love wholeheartedly and started looking out of the box. 'You just said that you both spent ten years together. And in the end, you gave up on each other just because you felt like there was no love?'
"But isn't love still what strengthens a relationship?"
Yue Yue nodded her head, 'It does play its part. But tell me, in that decade were you happy with her?'
Zhai Yanjun thought back to his relationship journey with Xiang Wai. He had to say, it was quite an eventful and happy one. Yes, they had unpleasant moments as well. But they understood each other too deeply. Even if Xiang Wai was the most casual person he had ever come across, she still knew what he liked and what he disliked.
"I'd say we were happy," he told her. "We did break up a lot but it was over really random things. I can't even seem to recall why we acted that way."
Yue Yue offered him a smile. 'By telling you all this, I'm not asking you to get back together with her. I'm just telling you that a relationship has more to it than just love. So, don't close off your options. And who knows when you stop looking for love, you might actually find it.'
"How are you so optimistic about everything?"
'Did you forget? I'm surrounded by unique people.' Yue Yue had a loving smile on her lips as she wrote it.
Zhai Yanjun chuckled, "Indeed. You really have a variety of unique people around you." Zhai Yanjun thought about Fai's cheery and happy-go-lucky personality, Raelle's ever so calm and rational self, and then Mu Chenyan's wild yet strong self. He had to say having such people in one's life was truly a blessing. "Now, I can finally see how Fai's personality was shaped."
Yue Yue didn't deny his words either. Even she agreed that it was Hyson's encounter with Raelle that shaped him into the person he was today.. Or else, because of all the bullying, he might have turned into a gloomy person.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺