Surrounded by the Billionaire's Deep Doting

Su Xiaomeng poured the tea, set it in front of Ma Xingchang, and gave him a little smile. "I’m not very good at making tea. My Dad’s the one who’s good at it."

"Thank you."

Su Xiaomeng folded her hands, leisurely watching the three kids squished side by side in the little wicker chairs next to them. The two boys were both expressionless like they had facial paralysis; Shuangshuang’s face at least had some expression on it, but it was stiff and awkward.

After sweeping her gaze over her own kids, Su Xiaomeng let her eyes land on Ma Siyuan.

"Little Ma? You don’t remember Auntie anymore?"

Ma Siyuan didn’t look at her. He just said lightly, "I remember."

His tone was very cold.

"Then... is it that you don’t remember Shuangshuang and Huang Huang?"

As soon as Su Xiaomeng asked this, Shuangshuang shifted her attention to Ma Siyuan over there, as if she was also waiting to hear how he’d answer.

The result...

"I don’t remember."

said Ma Siyuan.

That really was a bit beyond what Su Xiaomeng expected. The words sounded calm and cold, nothing wrong with the tone, but the content... felt kind of fake.

Plus Little Ma wouldn’t even look their way... like he was sulking or something.

Su Xiaomeng hurriedly looked at Ma Xingchang, only to see him holding the little teacup with one hand, sipping leisurely. When his eyes bumped into Su Xiaomeng’s puzzled gaze, he finally set the cup down and explained,

"Ma Siyuan hasn’t forgotten. He’s just angry."

"I have forgotten!"

As soon as Ma Xingchang finished, Ma Siyuan snapped at him angrily. Ma Xingchang’s expression stayed indifferent... faced with his son’s slightly furious retort, he simply stretched out his hand.

"A man should speak straight. Acting all coy like this, like you’re sulking at someone... that’s very childish, you know?"

Su Xiaomeng licked her lips; listening to Ma Xingchang’s dead-serious words, she found them pretty bizarre. At this age, aren’t kids supposed to be childish?

No wonder this Ma Siyuan looked so gloomy. With a poker-faced Dad like this raising him, things like being lively, cheerful and innocent probably had nothing to do with him anymore.

"I’m nothing like you, Dad! If I say I forgot, then I forgot! Besides, her head’s like a duck egg, ugly as hell. How could I possibly remember her?"

"..."

Su Xiaomeng’s neck stretched forward, completely shocked by what came out of Ma Siyuan’s mouth.

A head shaped like a duck egg...

A face ugly as hell...

Was he talking about her Shuangshuang?

She quickly looked at her daughter, only to see Shuangshuang’s eyes widened round, her dark pupils fixed on Ma Siyuan, practically shining! But that little mouth of hers was pressed tightly shut—she was actually... holding it in?

"Ma Siyuan, what kind of way is that to talk?"

Ma Xingchang’s voice dropped, and a hint of fear showed on Ma Siyuan’s face. He lowered his head; he probably knew himself that what he’d said was far too rude.

"Apologize."

Ma Siyuan pressed his lips together and stayed silent.

"You’re a big boy. Talking like that to a little girl—are you so much better looking?"

Su Xiaomeng thought that even if Ma Siyuan’s temperament was a bit different from before, he still wouldn’t openly defy the mighty Mayor. But then...

"...She really is ugly..."

"..."

The eyes behind Ma Xingchang’s lenses narrowed slightly; the air of authority around him didn’t suppress Ma Siyuan, but it did keep Su Xiaomeng from daring to make a sound.

"I’m going out to look at the flowers."

Ignoring his father’s stern questioning, Ma Siyuan stretched out his little legs, landed on the floor, and ran out of the glasshouse.

Su Xiaomeng stood up to follow. "I’ll go check on him. It’s the weekend, there are a lot of people—if he wanders around alone—"

"It’s fine, let him go."

"But the botanical garden... is pretty big..."

Su Xiaomeng spoke worriedly, but Ma Xingchang stayed unusually calm and waved his hand. "Relax. This garden... he knows it like the back of his hand."

"Huh? This isn’t your first time coming here?"

Ma Xingchang picked up the teapot and topped off both small cups.

"We come once a month. If there’s a month I don’t bring him, he quietly takes the subway here by himself. Luckily it’s close to the subway exit and easy to find."

"He... likes plants that much?"

Su Xiaomeng blinked, thinking that her old dad had finally found a kindred spirit.

Ma Xingchang just curled his lips a little; not sure if that counted as a smile, and he didn’t say anything more.

Su Xiaomeng let her gaze follow the now-outside figure of Ma Siyuan, strolling along the garden path outside the glasshouse. The little boy, still full of baby fat, was wearing overalls, a white short-sleeved T-shirt, a cartoon cap and low-top shoes, his calves thin and long. From this distance...

"By the way, what does Si Yuan eat usually? He’s the same age as Shuangshuang and Huang Huang, how’s he grown so tall? He looks at least half a head taller than my Huang Huang."

As soon as Su Xiaomeng asked this, a certain little shorty got thoroughly shot through the heart.

Prince Huang’s ears flushed red; he sulked in silence.

As for Shuangshuang... her eyes followed Si Yuan’s figure outside the glasshouse, staring after him pitifully. From Su Xiaomeng’s angle, that expression was exactly the same as when Shuangshuang came home yesterday.

Looks like Prince Huang hadn’t been wrong.

Yesterday, after Shuangshuang and Ma Siyuan ran into each other, that look Little Ma gave Shuangshuang probably really was disgust...

And Shuangshuang, this little girl, is absolutely not the type to take crap from people. Yet right now, after being told her head looks like a duck egg and her face is ugly... she’d actually held it in and not talked back.

Curling up lifelessly in that wicker chair, Shuangshuang pouted, counting her own fingers, unusually silent.

There’s no way Su Xiaomeng could bear to see her daughter so downcast. She drew a shallow breath and looked at Ma Xingchang.

"Mayor Ma, what did Shuangshuang do to make Si Yuan so mad? When they were little, they were so happy together. It shouldn’t be that seeing each other now, they act like enemies..."

Ma Xingchang glanced at the silently heartbroken Shuangshuang in the wicker chair and set down his little teacup...

"Things between children are best solved by the children themselves..."

"..."

Su Xiaomeng blinked. Looking at Shuangshuang and Ma Siyuan like this, nothing about it felt like they could solve it themselves...

"Mrs. Yin, you really don’t need to worry so much."

From the sound of it, Ma Xingchang seemed pretty confident about that...

"Are Shuangshuang and Huang Huang in the same class?"

Su Xiaomeng shook her head and said quietly, "Shuangshuang clings to her brother too much. If they were in the same class, this little girl would definitely act like ’queen of the hill’ again, relying on having her brother there. So I specifically asked the school to put them in separate classes."

"Which class is Shuangshuang in?"

School hadn’t started yet, so Su Xiaomeng really hadn’t gotten down to that level of detail. She asked Shuangshuang, "Shuang’er, when you went to school yesterday, did the teacher say which class you’re in?"

"..."

"Shuangshuang?"

"Class Three..."

It wasn’t that Shuangshuang hadn’t heard Su Xiaomeng’s question; she was just... immersed in her own little sadness. Even when she answered, her voice was muffled. She was probably tasting for the first time what it felt like to be hated by someone she actually cared about quite a bit... and it really hurt.

Ma Xingchang said softly, "Si Yuan’s in that one too. You’ll be seeing each other all the time, hard not to end up sorting it out."

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