Chapter 57 Does she know Zhang Henian?

Zhang Hening carrying a "huge sum of money" flew to the magic city with Song Xi.
During the trip, Song Xi tried to pay the bill several times, but was completely stopped by her.
"Don't you dare! All expenses today are paid by yours truly, Young Master Zhang!"
Song Xi asked: "Wasn't your allowance cut? Didn't they only give you fifty thousand a month?"
Zhang Hening took out her phone, opened the six-figure savings balance, and looked triumphant.
"You didn't expect this, did you? My big brother just sent it to me, telling me to have a good time with my friend and not to embarrass him."
"Hehehe, his brain hasn't been quite normal lately, and his mental state is a bit off too. While he's feeling generous, let's hurry up and fleece him for all he's worth, don't leave a single penny behind."
Song Xi had a vague feeling that something wasn't quite right.
For instance, yesterday, that phone call she made to the old family residence at noon came out of nowhere.
He had instructed Aunt Wang to cook light Cantonese cuisine and even treated her to the sweet locust flower dessert.
Today, he gave Zhang Hening hundreds of thousands to treat her to Disneyland.
Does she even know Zhang Hening's elder brother?
Were they really that close?
"Xi Bao, let's go, let's go ride the Pirates of the Caribbean!"
Song Xi snapped back to her senses, followed Zhang Hening's footsteps, and silently made up her mind in her heart.
Once she returned to the capital, she would find a time to properly meet Zhang Hening's elder brother.
She suddenly felt a great deal of curiosity about his appearance, because this person was simply too mysterious.
The two of them went wild at Disneyland, taking the fast lane for everything. Zhang Hening had no concept of spending money—she spent however much she had.
During the intermission, the two of them wore cute headbands, covered themselves from head to toe in doll merchandise, and happily took eight hundred selfies together.
In the conference room.
Jing Zhuo opened his phone and refreshed his WeChat Moments eight hundred times.
At dusk, he finally saw Zhang Hening's latest post, a colorful grid of nine photos that looked dazzling and bright at first glance, filled entirely with scenery and dolls.
It took him a bit of effort to pick out the only selfie with a person in it.
Jing Zhuo zoomed in on the photo, cropped out the silly, funny-faced Zhang Hening, and locked the frame onto the pretty, delicate face beside her.
He looked at it for a moment, cropped it a little more, and silently clicked save.
"Meeting adjourned."
The senior executives from various departments in the conference room let out a collective sigh of relief.
Some keenly sensed that President Jing might be in a bad mood, so they didn't dare to bring up any extra demands and quickly withdrew with their laptops.
Jing Zhuo returned to his office, and his phone rang.
He reflexively looked over; it wasn't a call from Song Xi, but from his maternal grandmother. He swiped the screen to answer.
"Xiao Zhuo, the locust flowers in the courtyard are blooming. Come over to Grandma's place tomorrow night to eat locust flower dumplings, don't forget."
Jing Zhuo glanced at his schedule: "I have a meeting tomorrow night."
"That won't do. Tomorrow is a traditional solar term. Eating dumplings sweeps away bad luck and brings smoothness for the entire year. No matter how late it is, you must come back to eat dumplings."
Sweep away bad luck, smooth sailing.
Hearing these words, Jing Zhuo changed his mind: "Alright, I'll be back later."
...
Song Xi and Zhang Hening stayed overnight at the Disneyland hotel and returned to the capital at noon the next day.
They had agreed on taking one day off.
As a result, Song Xi added another day, and Zhang Hening simply skipped work for the day.
Screw it, they would have their fun first.
Landing in the capital in the afternoon, Zhang Hening didn't go home and instead brought Song Xi directly to her grandmother's place.
Her grandparents lived in a traditional courtyard house in the suburbs of Beijing. There was a tall locust flower tree in the yard, with clusters of white locust blossoms hanging from the branches, filling the entire courtyard with their fragrance.
In the shady spot under the tree sat a small stone table paired with four stone stools.
The old lady had laid out a pile of ingredients, and several people were sitting under the tree wrapping dumplings.
Zhang Hening lacked patience and was all thumbs. The few dumplings she wrapped looked bizarre, and their seals even leaked.
Grandmother picked them up one by one to fix them.
"Xiao Xi wraps them the best, so exquisite and dainty, just one bite each."
"Ning Ning, look at what you've wrapped, it looks like a dog chewed on it."
Zhang Hening covered her head: "No way, do I even need to have aesthetic anxiety about wrapping dumplings? I'm done for."
Grandmother, whose fingers were stained with flour, tapped her nose: "What kind of strange words are you using? Speak properly, I don't understand a word."
Zhang Hening tilted her head: "It means, Grandma, you should praise me too."
"I'll praise you for having a big appetite, for being able to eat and grow into a plump, chubby, cute granddaughter."
Zhang Hening: "Grandma, you'd better not praise me..."
She didn't want to be a pig.
Even less did she want to be plump and chubby!
Above their heads, the tree leaves rustled in the breeze. The locust flower fillings were sealed inside the dough, and Song Xi pinched the small ingot shape in her hands, smiling involuntarily.
Her melancholy heart seemed to be smoothed out by this warm atmosphere.
No matter when it was, she always envied Hening's family environment.
It was harmonious, secure, and blissful.
Song Xi had spent years carrying cameras, so her arm strength was good and her hands were fast. She worked efficiently, and in less than an hour, she had taken on the vast majority of the dumplings on the table.
Even Grandmother couldn't stop praising her.
"Xiao Xi's hands are truly neat and quick, she makes people feel at ease with everything she does. I wish she were my granddaughter."
Zhang Hening chimed in: "Grandma, family affection doesn't depend on blood ties. Xi Bao can be your granddaughter right now."
Grandmother: "If only she could marry into our family and get onto our household registration book."
Zhang Hening: "..."
So you had this idea in mind all along.
We truly are grandmother and granddaughter.
Grandmother continued: "Look at Xiao Xi, she's so pretty, so smart, and has such a good personality. How suitable she is for your eldest brother."
"Huh?" Zhang Hening alertly raised her antennas: "Isn't Xi Bao much more suitable for the second brother?"
"Your second brother has that lazy temperament, never takes anything seriously, hangs around in that entertainment circle all day, and can never be pinned down. Marrying your second brother would bring too much cold treatment and grievance."
Zhang Hening's mouth twitched.
"...And as if marrying my eldest brother wouldn't?"
The second brother at least had a good temper.
If she married the eldest brother, not only would she face cold treatment and grievances, but he would also scold people from time to time, handing out corporal punishment and freezing bank cards.
How terrifying and emotionally draining that would be.
Whose marriage could possibly survive like that?
Without waiting for Song Xi to speak, Zhang Hening terrifiedly and frantically rejected the idea on behalf of her good best friend.
"Grandma, please stop playing matchmaker blindly, you're scaring me!"
"You can't let my eldest brother marry Xi Bao, it's too terrifying!"
"Besides, Xi Bao already has a husband, so you don't need to worry about this."
"And my eldest brother is an ascetic person whose eyes only see work; he doesn't want to get married at all!"
She blurted all this out in one breath, afraid that Grandmother would continue trying to force this hellish marriage, and dragged Song Xi up from her seat to run inside the house.
"Let's go, let's go, it's hot outside, let's go play indoors."
Just in time, the dumplings were boiled in a few minutes, and Grandmother, Grandfather, along with Song Xi and Zhang Hening, four people sat around the table for dinner.
After the meal, Song Xi insisted on washing the dishes.
Before dark, the two of them lay on the sofa for a while. Song Xi noticed several photos hanging on the living room wall, most of which featured the same little boy.
The child was either riding a bike or climbing up a locust tree to play.
His features were delicate and handsome, and he looked very familiar.
She always felt like she had seen him somewhere before.
"You've never seen these, right? This is my eldest brother when he was a kid." Zhang Hening walked over to introduce them to her. "He was raised by my grandparents until he was five years old, so most of his photos are kept here."
"Doesn't your eldest brother live with your parents?" Song Xi asked.
"Oh, when my mother was pregnant, she had a huge falling out with my father over a divorce, took the baby and fled, and only returned with her son five years ago."
"..." Mr. and Mrs. Zhang had such an overbearing CEO plotline in their past?
Zhang Hening pointed to the little boy wearing camouflage in the picture: "My grandfather used to be a soldier, so he raised him to military training standards."
"And as a result, after he grew up, he trained me to those exact military training standards too!"
"Originally, Grandpa wanted him to pursue a military career, but the other kids in the family were all useless, completely unformable."
"So our family's conglomerate had to fall on my eldest brother's shoulders. Who told him to be smarter than the two of us? There's nothing we can do, I suppose this is just the factory buff of a genius child born from a mother who fled with the heir in a romance novel."
So that was how it was.
It was the first time Song Xi had heard Zhang Hening praise her eldest brother. It turned out that besides being fierce, he had so many different facets.
For some reason, just by looking at a photograph,
Jing Zhuo's face kept floating into her mind.
She must have gone completely crazy missing him.
Outside, the faint sound of a car engine could be heard, and the moment Zhang Hening heard it, she knew whose it was.
"Oh no, my eldest brother is back!"