Chapter 974 — Gnashing Teeth!

Wei Zhao could only put it all down to coincidence. Looking at Feng Xiaoxiao, who sat across from him wreathed in smiles, he gave the waiter a slight wave of his hand. "Waiter, would you bring me another bowl, please?"

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

"What do you want an empty bowl for?" Feng Xiaoxiao blinked, caught off guard.

"To give you half of my beef noodles." Wei Zhao took the empty bowl the waiter handed him and began lifting noodles from his own bowl into it with his chopsticks...

"..." Feng Xiaoxiao stared at Wei Zhao, her eyes brimming, on the verge of tears! Just now she had finally, after no small effort, found a chance to share a meal with Wei Zhao—she had nearly died of happiness—and now Wei Zhao had gone and asked for an empty bowl!

Wei Zhao paid her no mind. He divided half the beef noodles from his bowl into hers, then bent his head and started eating first.

Feng Xiaoxiao stabbed her chopsticks into the bowl as though the beef noodles had done her some grievous wrong, chewing with gnashing teeth, shoving the noodles into her mouth bite after bite like a starving wolf tearing at meat...

"Are you that hungry? Shall we order another bowl?" Watching her, Wei Zhao could not help asking with a laugh.

"No!" Feng Xiaoxiao shook her head, fixing Wei Zhao with a resentful, deeply aggrieved look. "I'm never eating with you again. You bully people!"

"Uh..." Watching her, Wei Zhao felt a sudden unease in his heart. When Feng Xiaoxiao threatened him and played her pranks, that he took as perfectly normal; but now she looked as though she had suffered some monstrous injustice, and it wrung something tight in his chest. He wanted to say something, yet only let out a faint sigh.

Seeing that Wei Zhao said nothing, Feng Xiaoxiao pouted and dropped her head to go on eating, as if the noodles were Wei Zhao's sinews and the beef his flesh; she chewed with gnashing teeth.

Wei Zhao quickly finished the half bowl of noodles before him, and by then Feng Xiaoxiao had nearly finished hers as well.

"Full? Then shall we head back to school?" Wei Zhao asked when he saw Feng Xiaoxiao set down her chopsticks.

"Let's go back," Feng Xiaoxiao said coldly, plainly not yet mollified.

"Heh heh..." Wei Zhao smiled and did not bother with her. That was simply Feng Xiaoxiao's nature—she would get over it in a moment.

The two were about to rise and leave when suddenly an anxious cry came from behind them!

"Mom, what's wrong? Why did you suddenly faint..."

Chen Xi and her mother were eating their noodles. Their mood was no longer light but rather heavy; even so, out of gratitude to Feng Xiaoxiao, neither of them could bring herself to turn away from the other's kindness and simply walk off—that would have been disrespectful, for Feng Xiaoxiao had meant well.

And so mother and daughter had resolved that once they finished their noodles they would quietly slip Feng Xiaoxiao fifteen yuan. Neither Chen Xi nor her mother was the sort to take another's things for nothing. Poor as they were, every day Chen Xi earned her keep by her own labor, scavenging refuse along the beach and through the alleys; the pay was meager, but it was the fruit of her own hands.

Yet before the two of them could finish the beef noodles before them, Mother Chen collapsed over the table, and Chen Xi was thrown into utter bewilderment! Her mother was ill, true, but she had never fainted before; even her trips to the hospital had always been made by the two of them together.

"Call for an ambulance, quickly!" The waiter, a man of some experience, urged at once.

"All right!" Chen Xi nodded hurriedly. "Could someone lend me a phone..."

She had no mobile phone of her own. The handset itself was not dear, but the service fees were more than she could afford.

"Use mine!" Feng Xiaoxiao, forgetting her anger at Wei Zhao, pulled out her phone and handed it to Chen Xi.

Seeing the desperation in Chen Xi's eyes, Feng Xiaoxiao seemed to recall her own lonely, sorrowful childhood—how desolate it was to have no mother at your side.

"No need to call. Taking her to the hospital is useless—don't waste the money." Wei Zhao glanced at Mother Chen and spoke flatly.

The life force in Mother Chen was fading swiftly; one could say she was, in essence, beyond saving.

"Ah!" At Wei Zhao's words Chen Xi's expression froze, and then the tears came, streaming down. She threw her arms around her mother and wept aloud! Though she had passed her sixteenth birthday today, she was still a fragile girl. She had long known her mother would soon leave her, but never had she imagined it would be so soon!

And when her mother collapsed, a sliver of hope had still lingered in her heart, a wish that her mother would wake once she reached the hospital. But Wei Zhao's single sentence was like a basin of cold water poured over her head, plunging Chen Xi into despair...

In that instant she felt utterly helpless, not knowing what she should do; only by holding her mother and weeping her fill could she 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, to decide another person's life or death with one sentence?"

Wei Zhao turned and gave the waiter a mild look. The man was kind at heart; from first to last he had shown not the slightest contempt for Chen Xi and her mother, 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—how could Wei Zhao hold it against him?

At the sight of Wei Zhao turning toward him, the waiter's heart lurched. Remembering how Wei Zhao had driven off the man who had made trouble earlier, he grew a little afraid—yet Wei Zhao's words had indeed been harsh, so the waiter merely stepped back and persisted: "Don't listen to his nonsense. Get her to the hospital now! I'll call the ambulance."

"Wei Zhao, is she really beyond saving?" Feng Xiaoxiao, recalling how Wei Zhao had treated her own injuries the last time, knew that he understood medicine, and could not help believing him. So she spoke up and asked.

By now Wei Zhao's hand was already resting on Mother Chen's wrist. He did not trouble to explain further to the waiter, only said to Feng Xiaoxiao, "Late-stage liver cancer. What use do you think the hospital would be?"

"That..." Feng Xiaoxiao's expression froze. Cancer—one of the incurable diseases of this century! Even a person with no knowledge of medicine, upon hearing the word, would almost certainly conclude that this person had been handed a death sentence.

"Ah!" Wei Zhao's words left Chen Xi stunned, her eyes wide and fixed unblinkingly upon him.

"Don't listen to his nonsense. The moment he opens his mouth he says someone has cancer—how is that possible?" Seeing that Wei Zhao not only refused to help make the call but stood there reeling off verdicts about people's lives, the waiter grew furious. "You helped them a moment ago—how can you turn around and talk like this?"

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