Then the voice was none other than our little world. Yes, our little world, the world we finally made together, and now our world was calling us.
"Let's go, our world is calling us," I said to him.
He smiled and looked at me and said, "She is just like you, always clinging to me."
I looked at him and said, "You are really something, Yuan. Now you are saying that she is just like me, clinging to you all the time, but that's not really the reality," I said to him.
He looked at me and said, "You tell me then."
"The truth is that you are the one who is clinging to both of us," I said.
He laughed a little and said, "I know, I know, but I am just so helpless. I can't do anything. I can't stay away from both of you," he said.
Then Yuan said, "Let's go, our daughter is calling her childish parents," he said.
I smiled and looked at him and then I said, "Fine, otherwise she'll go insane if we don't go to her immediately, and you know very well that she is so stubborn, and you are the one who made her this stubborn," I said.
Then he looked at me and raised one of his eyebrows in his usual expression and said, "Oh really? Didn't she inherit that quality from her Ma?" he asked me.
Then I looked away somewhere else for a while because I knew, I really knew, that she was just as stubborn as me. I knew it. It's just that I was not ready to accept it in front of him. I said this to myself.
Then the voice came again from the room and then I said, "Yuan, please let's go, otherwise we'll both be doomed."
Then he said, "Let's go."
Then we both went to her room where we found that our little one had gotten herself messed up with drawing sheets and colours. Then we both went to her, kneeled down at her level, and she had coloured her whole clothes with the colours she had been using.
Then I asked her, "Chen Shiyuan, what are you up to? This is really not a good way of dealing with colours," I said to her.
She looked at me so cutely that I couldn't help it and burst into laughter because her whole face was covered with colours and she looked like a little cute munchkin.
Then I placed one hand on Yuan's shoulder while looking somewhere else and said, "Yuan, please, you handle this matter. It's really not in my control. Go ahead. After all, she'll only get handled by her Pa," I said.
Then I went out of the room after saying this to Yuan, and then he got back to his best-Pa duty and started wiping her face with tissues to remove the colours from her face.
I was just looking at them, seeing how my world and time had changed so fast that I still hadn't believed it. The life I had always dreamed of since I was seventeen with my Yuan Yuan had finally come true in my life.
I still couldn't believe that Chen Shiyuan was our daughter, I said to myself.
Then I remembered that Yuan himself had named her this because her name combined both mine and his name. He said that he wanted that wherever she went, she would carry her Ma and Pa's love forever in her, and that through her name, it would always remain with her.
And I know there was one more hidden motive behind it, and that was that through her name, Zhao Shiza and Xu Yuan would always remain one and together.
But indeed, I didn't accept it in front of him, though it was my hidden motive too.
I don't know why Yuan Yuan gave her the surname Chen and not Xu.
When I asked him, he said that this surname suited her more and suited her well. Then he said that it was the surname of a wise person he had met in his life. He was truly and so deeply touched by that person's personality that at that very moment he had decided to give his child that surname.
I didn't even know about that person, but I could surely say that if Yuan Yuan really found that person so admirable, then that person must have been really good.
Giving our daughter a surname because of some person he had met at some point in his life—I found that logic a bit strange.
But then slowly I realised that this was how my Yuan Yuan really was. He was so kind, and he thought about everything from his heart. Small things really mattered to him a lot, and maybe something about that person had touched my Yuan Yuan deeply. That's why he gave her that surname.
He said that it was his tribute to that person. Maybe that person must have been really special.
I didn't ask him anything more than that.
But I must say that whoever that wise person was, he must have been some teacher from his university or some godfather-type person. I don't know.
But why, after so many years, am I thinking about this? It's really not necessary at this time, I said to myself.
Then I headed to the kitchen to make breakfast.
But the moment Yuan heard the sound of utensils in the kitchen, he immediately came out of the room all of a sudden and said, "You silly girl, how many times have I told you not to come into my kitchen? Whenever you come, you just mess up my things here. Then I need to search for an hour just to find a ladle to cook food," he said while pushing me out of the kitchen with both of his hands.
I looked at him like he had personally offended me, and he really did.
Then he took the pan and started cooking breakfast by pouring eggs onto the pan and chopping fruits.
Then he asked me because he noticed that I was still standing there staring at him.
He said, "What? Don't you know yourself?"
"Of course I know, but that doesn't mean that only you should cook each and every meal every day. I also want to help you," I said to him while my voice became a little smaller while saying it.
Then while making breakfast he said, "The kitchen is really not your place, silly girl. You know that too well."
"I know, but you are so busy, and even then, every time and every day, you are the only one who cooks," I said while sitting on the couch.
"You are also busy like me, even more than me. You work from nine to five," he said.
"Okay, fine. We both are busy in our own fields, not less than or more than either of us," I said.
Then Yuan said, "I am thinking of something."
"What?" I asked.
And then he said...