Love Affairs in Melbourne-Chapter 306 - 301: Seeking Solutions in the Unsolvability (2)
Qi Yi had made this call to his father, but after he uttered "Dad," he didn’t know where to start.
Should he exchange pleasantries, dive straight into the main topic, or begin with something else entirely?
In contrast to Qi Yi’s cluelessness, Mr. Qi didn’t seem surprised to receive a call from his son.
His first question was whether Qi Yi was in the country and if he wanted to visit him in Yiwu.
It felt as natural as an old friend who hadn’t been in touch for a while.
Yiwu is actually very close to Wenzhou, but Qi Yi had never been there before.
Qi Yi hadn’t expected his father to ask him right away if he wanted to go to Yiwu.
The tone of his father’s voice on the phone sounded like he had been waiting for him for a long time.
The last meeting four years ago was the first time Qi Yi had returned to Wenzhou since attending university.
So over a span of seven years, father and son had only seen each other once.
And during that one encounter, due to the divorce, his dad and mom had an unprecedented argument in front of him, one that was beyond reconciling.
Until the moment he walked away with the divorce agreement, Qi Yi’s father had not had a proper conversation with him.
After that quarrel, the marriage between Qi Yi’s parents was also completely dissolved.
Qi Yi felt that the divorce had been a kind of relief for all three family members.
Both his father and mother should have the freedom to live the life they wanted.
Having never gone for so many years, and now suddenly deciding to visit his father in Yiwu after such a long time, he would undoubtedly be faced with many realistic and challenging issues.
Qi Yi had no idea what his father’s life was like now.
Had his father found him a stepmother?
What was his father’s life like now?
Was he doing well?
He had no concept of the answers to these questions.
But even so, Qi Yi didn’t hesitate to accept his father’s suggestion.
Since his father had asked without a second thought if he wanted to come see Yiwu, and since his father felt that his son’s appearance would not cause much inconvenience to his current life,
Qi Yi could find no reason not to go see where his father was living now.
If it hadn’t been for his mother in between, the relationship between Qi Yi and his dad might have been much better than it is now.
Qi Yi took with him the bank card that his father had arranged for him when he left Wenzhou.
He didn’t know how much money was in it.
Qi Yi had never touched the money inside, so he had never checked it.
He didn’t use this money when he was a student, and now that he was working and earning his own money, he was even less likely to use it.
Qi Yi had thought of many possibilities and had prepared how he would handle each scenario.
If his father was living well now, Qi Yi wouldn’t mention the card.
If his father’s living situation was not so good, Qi Yi wanted to return the card to his father.
When Qi Yi’s father first went to Yiwu to do business, he told him that he aimed to make money to buy him a house for future marriage.
Looking back now, that was probably just an excuse.
If the reason his father had never returned to live in Wenzhou after the divorce was because he couldn’t fulfill the promise he made when he left,
Qi Yi felt it was necessary to let his father know that he now had enough capability to solve the "marriage house" issue.
Qi Yi’s problem had never been about the marriage house; it had been about the parents.
Qi Yi was not only his mother’s child.
Although he knew such a move would cause his mother to collapse again, he still hoped his father could step forward and help him deal with matters related to the parents.
Yan Yan had been waiting for him for so long, and he had to at least let the parents visit Yan Yan’s family to propose marriage.
The unsolvable equation that was his mother, even with his superb problem-solving abilities, had become completely impossible to untangle.
...
But once he actually met with him, Qi Yi wasn’t sure how to explain his purpose to his father.
The last time the two of them had sat down for a chat, Qi Yi could no longer recall.
"Qi Yi, Dad is preparing to remarry. I met her three years ago at work; she’s the accountant at Dad’s company. Dad wants you to meet your auntie. She’s also divorced and has her own child, and Dad doesn’t plan to have more children," Qi Yi’s father began before Qi Yi could even speak about marriage.
The amount of information in Dad’s statement was overwhelming, and Qi Yi didn’t know how to react in the moment.
Dad emphasized that they met three years ago, which meant it was after he and his mother had divorced.
And then he said he wouldn’t have more children.
Was he trying to be considerate of Qi Yi’s feelings?
In his father’s heart, Qi Yi was probably still a child.
But when had he ever opposed his father remarrying?
Shouldn’t his father have already started a new family by now?
If not, then why insist on divorcing his mother on New Year’s Eve?
Caught off guard, Qi Yi didn’t respond, so his father, thinking Qi Yi was reluctant to meet the auntie he had just mentioned, said, "If you don’t want to meet her, Dad can take you to a hotel."
"It’s okay, it would be nice to meet her. Does Auntie’s child live with you?" After Qi Yi recovered, what he was more concerned about was whether his presence would upset her child.
After all, he just wanted to ask his father for a favor and had no intention of interfering with his father’s life, nor did he plan to stay by his father’s side.
"No, her child got married at the beginning of this year and doesn’t live around here," Qi Yi learned, somewhat surprised.
He was even more surprised after meeting this ’auntie’ in his father’s home.
When Mr. Qi had gone to pick Qi Yi up from the high-speed rail station, he had arrived in an ALPHARD business van, accompanied by a driver and a secretary.
Clearly, his father had been doing well in business over the years.
A successful, middle-aged man, divorced, without young children.
For someone like that, remarrying a woman in her teens or twenties was nothing out of the ordinary.
But this ’auntie,’ let alone her age and her children being married, didn’t even compare to his mother in appearance.
Next to his mother, she had no advantage in age nor in looks.
During this visit, father and son talked a lot.
Due to his mother, Qi Yi had too many misunderstandings about his father.
Initially, his mother always said that his father couldn’t come back because he hadn’t earned enough money for his house.
Later, during their divorce, after his parents had a showdown in front of him, his mother told him that his father definitely wanted the divorce on New Year’s Eve because the vixen’s child was about to be born.
The reality of his father’s life now was a far cry from what Qi Yi had imagined.
