Chapter 2066: Chapter 1899: White Hair
Two people meeting is destiny, but to be able to hold on tight to each other for a lifetime, never letting go of each other’s hand, that is what a lifetime really is!
How could Grandfather Zhang not understand what his grandson meant by these words? He was scared too, scared that in the end things would turn out just as bad as he feared. He was already afraid. Even though he had gone through too many ups and downs in his life, there were still some things he knew he would never be able to understand.
"Yichen, the doctors already told us to be prepared for the worst. Do you think your dad and mom might really never wake up again? Grandpa is so worried. All these years Grandpa has always owed them. Even though Grandpa has complained about them a lot, deep down Grandpa still hoped they could stay by my side. They are both Grandpa’s children!
There isn’t a parent under heaven who doesn’t want their children to stay by their side, keeping them company until the day they die.
But they never really stayed with me, so I held a deep resentment toward them. I resented how disrespectful they were to me as their father, how in their hearts there was never really a place for me as their father.
But today, when I saw the two of them lying in there, struggling even to breathe, when I saw them lying there motionless, with not a trace of color on their faces, I was so heartbroken. I wished I could take on just a little bit of their pain for them. Even if it meant they could suffer a little less, that would be a kind of comfort to me!
Back then I went too far in what I did. For the sake of my own interests, I ignored my son’s lifelong happiness, only thinking about how he could marry a wife who was a good match for us. But I overlooked his truest feelings. It was because of this that in the end he had no choice but to leave home, to protest against me in that way. But that protest lasted decades. For decades he never came home, he could only watch from afar as our family lived here together, while he himself had a home he could not return to!
Child, do you think Grandpa is terrifying? Why did Grandpa have to do such things? Now Grandpa regrets it, but what use is regret? Things can never go back to how they once were. You would never have imagined it, right? At the very beginning, Grandpa wanted your father and your aunt to be joined in marriage. I felt they were well-matched, because at that time my company was facing a financial crisis, and that huge funding gap was something I had no way of filling with my own personal assets.
Later, your father firmly refused the arranged marriage, and precisely because of that, there was no way to fix my company’s capital shortfall. In the end it was your mom who chose to put up all her assets to help me turn the situation around. She helped me cover that funding gap. And it was for this reason that I agreed to let her be with your father.
Do you now feel that Grandpa is just a petty, profit-driven man who never cares about his own family’s feelings, who only cares about gains and losses, that as long as he can get the benefits he wants, it doesn’t matter if his own family suffers all kinds of grievances? Do you look down on Grandpa more and more now?"
Although from the very beginning Zhang Yichen knew that the love and hate between his parents was not so simple, he had never imagined that all of this, in the end, would still be tied to his grandfather, that his grandfather had taken part in everything.
But no matter what, as a father he wasn’t wrong; all he wanted was for his child to be happy, to live without worry about food and clothing, to find a wife who was a good match. That in itself wasn’t selfish.
"Grandpa, if you look at what you did from different angles, you’ll get different answers. From the angle of a father wielding authority, what you did wasn’t selfish. All you wanted was for your son to live a happy life, to find a good wife and a good marriage.
But under this premise, you ignored what kind of girl your son actually liked, ignored his truest feelings. Step by step you forced him to walk in your footsteps. In the end you drove him away from you, made him run from all of this reality, because he was afraid that every time he saw you he would think of those decisions you forced on him again and again. All he could do was leave to protest against you.
But from a business perspective, in order to fill the funding gap in your company, you were willing to sacrifice your own son’s lifelong happiness, to have him spend his life with a woman he didn’t love. That was indeed a bit too selfish, but that still doesn’t mean what you did was entirely wrong.
All parents in this world hope their children can be happy. None of the things you did were wrong in themselves; you just used the wrong way. The way you chose was something no one could accept, and that’s why everything ended up in such a passive situation.
If, when you were doing all this, you had chosen to discuss it with your family, things wouldn’t have turned out like this. Your family needs to be cherished and cared for, not treated as tools of exchange.
If you treat your family as bargaining chips, as things for you to profit from, then you truly will have no chance of ever gaining your family’s understanding!"
...
In the following days, there were no more sudden incidents like last time with Zhang Zhentian and Xia Jing. Their vital signs still hadn’t changed at all; their condition had not worsened. It was as if the whole world had gone quiet. They had already cut off all connection with the outside world.
Old Master Zhang’s body grew more haggard with each passing day. He really couldn’t take much more. He had been waiting all this time for his son to wake up. He wanted to say "I’m sorry" to his son in person. He wanted to tell his son that as a father he truly knew he was wrong, that from the beginning he should never have treated his son’s marriage like a joke.
Standing on the side, watching his grandfather grow thinner and weaker day by day, Zhang Yichen couldn’t bear it either. But he couldn’t think of any way to comfort his grandfather. His own heart was already aching beyond words; how could he have the strength to comfort someone else?
I really don’t understand either, why my son still refuses to wake up. He has been asleep for a whole week already.
Is it really because, as a father, I went too far, and he doesn’t want to see me at all? That he’d rather lie on the hospital bed asleep than wake up and see me, his father, even once?
Old Master Zhang truly couldn’t make sense of it. All he could do was silently wait there, waiting for a miracle to happen again, waiting for his child to wake up. If that day really came, he would be willing to give up everything he had now; he would be willing to trade his own life, as long as his son and daughter-in-law could be safe and sound. That would be the greatest reward for him...
It’s not so easy to go from black hair to white.
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