Chapter 974 — Gritting Her Teeth

Wei Zhao could only chalk all this up to coincidence. Looking at Feng Xiaoxiao, who sat across from him wearing a radiant smile, he gave a faint wave toward the waiter. "Waiter, another bowl, if you please."

"Right away, sir..." The waiter had only just finished sweeping up the broken bowl from the floor, and at Wei Zhao's words he nodded hastily.

"What do you want an empty bowl for?" Feng Xiaoxiao blinked in confusion.

"To split the beef noodles with you." Wei Zhao took the empty bowl the waiter handed him and began using his chopsticks to lift noodles from his own bowl into it...

"..." Feng Xiaoxiao stared at Wei Zhao, her eyes swimming with moisture—she was on the verge of tears! A moment ago she had finally found a chance to share a bowl of noodles with Wei Zhao, and she had nearly died of happiness; now he had to go and ask for an empty bowl!

Wei Zhao paid her no mind. He divided half the beef noodles in his bowl over to hers, then lowered his head and started eating first.

Feng Xiaoxiao stabbed her chopsticks into the bowl as though the beef noodles had wronged her beyond forgiveness, eating with her teeth clenched, shoving the noodles into her mouth bite after bite like a ravenous wolf tearing at meat...

"That hungry, are you? Want me to order you another bowl?" Wei Zhao watched her expression and could not help asking with a laugh.

"No!" Feng Xiaoxiao shook her head, then glared at Wei Zhao with a resentful, deeply aggrieved look. "I'm never eating with you again—you bully!"

"Uh..." Wei Zhao studied her face, and a sudden discomfort stirred in his chest. When Feng Xiaoxiao threatened and schemed against him, that he took as perfectly normal; but now she looked as though she had truly suffered some monstrous injustice, and it sent a pang through his heart. He wanted to say something, but in the end only gave a faint sigh.

Seeing that Wei Zhao said nothing, Feng Xiaoxiao pouted and went back to her noodles, chewing with gritted teeth as though every strand were a tendon of Wei Zhao's and every chunk of beef a piece of his flesh.

Wei Zhao quickly finished the half bowl before him, and by then Feng Xiaoxiao was nearly done as well.

"Full? Shall we head back to school, then?" Wei Zhao asked as he saw her set down her chopsticks.

"Let's go back!" Feng Xiaoxiao said coldly, plainly still not appeased.

"Heh..." Wei Zhao smiled and did not trouble himself over it. This was simply Feng Xiaoxiao's nature—she would be fine in a little while.

The two of them were just rising to leave when a frantic cry suddenly came from behind them!

"Mama, what's wrong? Why did you faint all of a sudden..."

Chen Xi and her mother had been eating their noodles. Their mood was no longer as light as before—rather, it had grown heavy—but out of gratitude to Feng Xiaoxiao, they could hardly walk off and leave the kindness she had shown them, for that would have been rather disrespectful. Feng Xiaoxiao had meant well, after all!

So the mother and daughter had planned, once they finished their noodles, to slip Feng Xiaoxiao fifteen yuan on the sly! Neither of them was the sort to take another's things for nothing; poor as they were, every day Chen Xi earned her living by her own labor, picking through garbage on the beach and in the streets and alleys. The pay was meager, but it was what her own hands had earned!

But before the two of them could finish the beef noodles before them, Mother Chen collapsed onto the table, leaving Chen Xi utterly at a loss! Her mother had been ill, true, but she had never fainted before—even the trips to the hospital had always been made together, mother and daughter both!

"Call an ambulance!" the waiter, a man of wide experience, urged at once.

"Right!" Chen Xi nodded hurriedly. "Could someone lend me a phone for a moment..."

She had no cell phone of her own. They were not expensive, but the service fees were more than she could afford.

"Use mine!" Feng Xiaoxiao forgot all about being angry with Wei Zhao and held out her phone to Chen Xi.

Seeing the anxiety in Chen Xi's eyes, Feng Xiaoxiao seemed to recall her own rather lonely and sorrowful childhood—how desolate it was, with no mother at one's side.

"There's no need to call for help. It's no use sending her to the hospital. Don't waste your money." Wei Zhao glanced at Chen Xi's mother and spoke flatly.

The vitality in Chen Xi's mother was fading fast—for all intents and purposes, she was beyond saving.

"Ah!" Hearing Wei Zhao's words, Chen Xi's expression froze for an instant, and then the tears spilled over. She threw her arms around her mother and burst into loud sobs. True, she had passed her sixteenth birthday that very day, but she was still a fragile girl. She had long known her mother would soon leave her, yet she had never imagined it would be this soon!

And when her mother had collapsed, a shred of hope had lingered in her heart, a prayer that her mother would wake once she reached the hospital. But Wei Zhao's single sentence had come down on her like a bucket of cold water poured over her head, plunging Chen Xi into despair in an instant...

For a moment she felt utterly helpless, not knowing what she should do. All she could do was hold her mother and weep, and only that could release the grief inside her.

"What kind of person are you? Is that any way to talk?" Wei Zhao's words drew the waiter's indignation. "Who do you think you are? You can decide life and death with one sentence?"

Wei Zhao turned and gave the waiter a mild look. The man had a good heart; from first to last he had never shown the slightest contempt for Chen Xi and her mother, and so Wei Zhao would not take his anger out on him. His words now were merely the righteous fury of a man who did not know the truth—why would Wei Zhao hold it against him?

Seeing Wei Zhao turn toward him, the waiter gave a start. He remembered that Wei Zhao had already driven off the man who had made all the trouble, and a flicker of fear rose in him. But Wei Zhao's words really had been harsh, so the waiter only took one step back and stubbornly pressed on: "Don't listen to his nonsense—get her to the hospital, quick! I'll call the ambulance!"

"Wei Zhao, is she really beyond saving?" Feng Xiaoxiao had learned, from the time Wei Zhao saved her own life, that he knew medicine, and she could not help believing what he said, so she asked.

By then Wei Zhao had already laid his hand on Chen Ma's wrist. Without bothering to explain further to the waiter, he said only to Feng Xiaoxiao, "Advanced liver cancer. What do you think sending her to the hospital would accomplish?"

"That..." Feng Xiaoxiao's expression froze at once. Cancer—one of the terminal diseases of the century! Even someone with no knowledge of medicine, upon hearing the word cancer, would essentially conclude that the person had already been sentenced to death!

"Ah!" Wei Zhao's words left Chen Xi stunned, her eyes wide and fixed on Wei Zhao without a blink!

"Don't listen to his nonsense. The moment he opens his mouth he says someone has cancer—how could that be?" Seeing that Wei Zhao not only refused to help make the call but stood there recklessly delivering verdicts about people, the waiter grew furious. "You helped them just now, so why are you acting like this now?"