After My Rebirth, My Husband Pampers Me Everyday!

Chapter 175: MY OLDEST COULD USE SOMEONE LIKE THAT

He picked up his bag, tucked the box under his arm, and said his goodbyes one by one.

And when the elevator opened and he stepped in and turned around, Bai Zichen was already raising both hands in a heart shape, Lin Yansu was pressing her lips together very hard, her cute little muse was done with his first shoot.

He has beaten all her expectations.

In the end, he didn’t need his partner’s wealth to prosper. If given the right resources, he was bound to anyways.

The doors closed.

Guiying looked at his reflection in the elevator mirror and smiled, small and private, to himself.

Then the doors opened into the lobby and he walked out into the Friday afternoon and let TongShu close behind him.

Minghua Plaza on a Friday afternoon held that particular restless energy, the kind where the weekend bled in through the glass doors long before the clock allowed it. Perfume and chatter thickened the air.

Footsteps skimmed over polished floors, fast and impatient.

Guiying didn’t hurry.

The TongShu box sat in his bag now, weight settled against his side, and the whole afternoon still lay open in front of him. He knew what he wanted.

Nothing loud.

Nothing that had to announce itself.

Tomorrow night his words would do the work.

Tonight the clothes only needed to make sure no one underestimated him before he got there.

Third store.

He decided quickly and handed the pieces to the assistant to hold while he moved to the accessory wall.

That was when he heard her.

"Excuse me." Sharp. The tone of someone who considered themselves to be doing you a favour by addressing you at all. "I’ve been standing here for ten minutes. Are you going to help me or not?"

The store assistant, a young woman no older than twenty-two, turned with a smile that had been trained into her. "Of course, ma’am. What are you looking for today?"

"If I knew what I was looking for I wouldn’t need your help, would I?"

The assistant’s smile held. Just barely.

"I need something for my children," the woman said, already turning away to look at the rack herself. "But everything in here looks the same. Your store has no range."

"We have quite a wide selection, ma’am. If you could tell me a little about—"

"I can see what you have," the woman said flatly. "I have eyes."

She pulled a blouse off the rack, looked at it, put it back. Pulled another. Each movement carried the impatience of a woman who had entered the store already convinced it would fail her, the air around her brittle with suppressed outrage.

The assistant stood behind her with her hands clasped and her smile still in place and said nothing more.

Guiying watched this for a moment.

Late fifties, maybe early sixties. Back straight, chin lifted, dressed well. The bearing of a woman who had spent a lifetime being the most important person in whatever room she was standing in and had stopped noticing she expected it. There was something familiar in the set of her shoulders.

He walked over.

"Can I help?"

She turned and looked at him. Up, then down, the full assessment, two seconds, several conclusions drawn.

"I’m not talking to you," she said. "I’m talking to her." She gestured at the assistant. "Or trying to."

"I know," Guiying said pleasantly. "But she’s been trying to help you for the last few minutes and you haven’t let her. So maybe try letting her."

The woman stared at him.

The assistant stared at him.

"I don’t need a stranger telling me how to shop," the woman said.

"You don’t," Guiying agreed. "But you’ve been standing here for ten minutes and you still don’t have what you came for, so." He tilted his head slightly. "What are you actually looking for?"

A long pause.

She looked at him the way people looked at someone who had said something irritating that they couldn’t immediately argue with.

"It’s for my children," she said finally, clipped. "Those ungrateful things. Now that they’re all grown up they refuse to come home or pick up the phone. My oldest keeps openly defying me, my youngest won’t even walk through the front door, only my daughter has any sense and even she has a few screws loose." She held up two blouses. "I thought if I sent them something they might at least remember they have a mother."

-_-

That was genuinely a lot going on.

"They never call us anymore, it’s quite saddening to hear about their lives from other people." she added, quieter. Just for a second. The words slipped out before pride could catch them, raw and too honest for the room.

Guiying looked at her. At the blouses. At the ache sitting just beneath the anger that she was keeping covered.

"If they won’t come to you," he said, "then you have to be smarter about bringing them back. A cat can’t resist the smell of fish or a mouse the smell of cheese." He nodded toward the assistant. "She handles these clothes every single day. Nobody knows the stock better. Show her pictures of your children or describe them to her and she’ll find exactly the right thing for each of them." He paused. "That’s what she’s been trying to do since you walked in."

The woman looked at the assistant.

The assistant smiled again. Warm, no trace of the last ten minutes in it.

"Photos or descriptions are both fine," she said. "We can put something together for all of them."

A long moment.

The woman lowered the blouses.

"My oldest," she said, to the assistant, "is very particular about everything."

"Of course," the assistant said, and led her gently toward the racks.

The conversation built between them from there, the woman’s voice losing its edge gradually as she talked about her children, describing them with the particular mixture of exasperation and longing that only ever came from someone who loved people too much to say it simply.

Guiying watched for a moment.

Then he collected his things from the counter and left.

He was already in the corridor when the woman turned to say something to him.

The space where he had been standing was empty.

She stood there a moment, gaze catching on the place he’d been like she expected it to still hold him. Then she said to the assistant, voice quieter now, edged with something she wouldn’t name, "That young man was very pretty, and very patient. My oldest could use someone like that."