I Already Severed Ties With Them. Who Would Bother With Them Now? - Chapter 24:

Chapter 24: Su Yuebai’s Overwhelming Helplessness!

At this moment, Su Yuebai felt even more bitter than before. She was already an adult, well-educated, and understood everything clearly—yet why had she been so fixated on her parents’ words, unable to free herself? While it was true that children should listen to their parents, the repeated cold treatment she had shown him had deeply wounded his heart. A dam of a thousand kilometers could collapse because of an ant hole; the greatest sorrow was when the heart died. He had finally reached his limit and chose to leave.

Su Yuebai covered her face and cried softly.

…

A long time later, she raised her head and looked at her mother still engrossed in her game, and her father smoking silently in frustration. In the end, she chose her father, walked over to him, and said, “Dad, I can’t get through to Xiaofeng on the phone. Can you at least send him a message, just to apologize?”

Su Qianghai lit another cigarette and stayed silent for a long time before saying, “No.”

“Why not? Aren’t you even the least bit anxious?”

“What if I am? I think your mom is right. That guy Zhang is just using this situation to force us. But he’s mistaken—we’ll never lower our heads to him. Never!” Su Qianghai shouted angrily.

Before she could respond, he continued, “I’ve thought it through. Zhang Xiaofeng is definitely using this to pressure us. He knows the company will run into trouble without him and is just waiting for us to come begging. Ha! He miscalculated. Your mother saw through him long ago. We won’t give in. I want to see if he can really stand by and watch a huge amount of money paid out as breach-of-contract penalties!”

A wave of helplessness surged through Su Yuebai’s chest. Her mother was like this, and her father too. Was their pride really worth that much? Were they really going to watch their daughter become a single mother, the child grow up without a father, and the family go bankrupt—just to hold onto their arrogance and refuse to apologize to Zhang Xiaofeng?

Our money had nothing to do with Zhang Xiaofeng! Everything had been notarized. He wouldn’t get a single cent. So…

Su Yuebai felt completely powerless. Just as she was about to persuade him again, Su Qianghai waved his hand and said, “Say no more. Your mother is right. He would never let what should be his become compensation for others. He’ll come back.”

“But that money isn’t his! It’s been notarized. He knows it’s not his! My mom is unreasonable—Dad, are you too?”

“Doesn’t matter. He’ll come back anyway,” Su Qianghai said gloomily, taking another drag from his cigarette.

Su Yuebai was at her wit’s end. She turned to her mother and said, “Mom, please stop playing. Just send Xiaofeng a message and say sorry. It doesn’t have to be anything formal—just two words: ‘I’m sorry,’ okay?”

Wang Dajuan suddenly stood up. Just as Su Yuebai was unsure what she was going to do, she saw her mother take a pair of headphones from the wall cabinet, plug them into her phone, put them on, and fully immerse herself in the game again.

“I…!” Su Yuebai was nearly driven mad with anger!

Even so, Su Yuebai kept pleading with both of them. For her own sake, for the sake of the family, and even more for the company, she had to get Zhang Xiaofeng to come back. But reality left her completely helpless. She kept persuading them late into the night, past midnight, past 1 a.m.… until she lost her voice from talking, but Wang Dajuan and Su Qianghai still refused to apologize. They remained completely unmoved.

Su Yuebai felt devastated. Completely disheartened, she returned to her room and collapsed in tears.

Back then, he had been so obedient and gentle toward her, but in the end, she had driven him away. What kind of sin had she committed?

She took out the journal, her tears and snot covering the cover as she stared at it.

Now, the only thing left that held Zhang Xiaofeng’s presence was this journal. She held it to her chest like a treasure, trembling and crying uncontrollably.

“Hubby, I was wrong! I know I was wrong! Please come back! Come back!!…”

Her tears streamed down, soaking the hem of her dress.

After a long, long time, Su Yuebai opened the journal again and turned to the fifth page, one she hadn’t seen before. It read:

“November 24th. It rained heavily this morning. I had a fight with Yueyue. It all started last month when she wanted to invest in a cryptocurrency app. I could tell at a glance it was a scam. They might give some interest at first, but would eventually swallow the principal. She wouldn’t listen and insisted on investing 1 million yuan. Now the app can’t even connect to the server anymore. She only withdrew a little over 2,000 yuan in interest—she lost 998,000! Early this morning, she came to me and scolded me harshly, called me a jinx, said horrible things. I felt terrible. Not just because of the money she lost, but because she couldn’t tell right from wrong and cursed me like I was worthless…”

There were more words after that, but Su Yuebai stopped reading. She painfully closed the journal, her heart feeling like it had been split open by a scalpel, blood spilling everywhere across an operating table. The pain was unbearable—like being pierced by ten thousand arrows.

Because of that investment loss, which was almost no different from losing 1 million yuan, her father had scolded her harshly too. She remembered it clearly. That month, she had discovered the investment app and wanted to try it. She had gone to her father for advice, but he just rolled his eyes and called it a scam. “You want interest, he wants your principal.” She had refused to believe it and figured Zhang Xiaofeng loved her enough to support her. But when she told him, he had also gotten angry and said the same thing as her father! Enraged, she lashed out at him, saying he had no foresight, didn’t know how to make money. “This app offers high interest—it’s like free money falling from the sky. Why not take it? Are you brainless?”

But a month later, on the 24th, she logged into the app like usual to collect the interest, only to find it endlessly loading, never opening.

She thought it was just the Wi-Fi acting up—it did lag occasionally—so she switched to 5G. Still loading.

After struggling for a while, a terrible feeling crept into her heart. Had the platform run away with the money?

Her hands started shaking. In a panic, she asked in the group chat, and quickly saw others reporting they couldn’t log in either, and that they should call the police.

That’s when she realized—the platform had vanished with the money!

It turned out her father and Zhang Xiaofeng had been right. She had been blind and got scammed.

But she couldn’t swallow her pride. Ashamed and angry, she wanted to vent at someone, but didn’t dare scold her father. So she found Zhang Xiaofeng and poured all her rage onto him.

“You really are a jinx! Now your words came true! I must’ve been blind to ever fall for you! Are you happy now, huh??”

But she had clearly been the one in the wrong! She knew it, but still vented her shame and anger at him, saying such horrible things. What had she been doing?

He had been shocked when he heard her words. His eyes stared at her in disbelief, his shoulders trembling. But she continued to scold him, “What are you looking at? Happy now? Satisfied?”

He lowered his head, said nothing, clearly feeling wronged and humiliated. A long time later, he finally looked up at her, his eyes full of pain and injustice, so defeated—but she didn’t care and just stormed off after one last insult.

What made it worse was that it had happened in the company. Several subordinates had been reporting to him at the time, and she hadn’t spared him any dignity. He was left humiliated and embarrassed.

Later, those colleagues must have gossiped behind his back, saying things like, “Being with a rich woman isn’t easy. Look, she loses her temper and doesn’t care about him at all. What a joke!”

Su Yuebai felt like her heart was being pierced by countless arrows, every wound cut to the bone.

“Oh God! What was I thinking back then? How could I have done that? How could I?!”

Tears streamed down her face as she broke down, overwhelmed by pain.

She opened the fifth page again. At the end, it read:

“But what could I do? Yueyue used to treat me so well. I could only choose to forgive her. I’m a man. How could I not endure a bit of grievance? Besides, I love her so much—I should accept everything about her.”

“Ah!” Su Yuebai collapsed, holding her head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

Then came the next line: “But then again, she lost her own money, not mine. Maybe she was spoiled since childhood and doesn’t understand the world. I should be the one who understands things… I can only comfort myself that way.”

That day, he had smoked through three full packs of cigarettes. (They were gifted by a colleague.)