He Zhilan chuckled, shaking her head, "Don’t you get angry about the ugly rumors spreading around the unit? Haven’t you ever thought about explaining?"
"No need." He Teng answered with these three words to He Zhilan’s question, adding later, "My sister-in-law and Ya’nan usually take a nap at noon. If you want to visit my sister-in-law, go after two-thirty. Also, if you can’t handle the other families, just say hello when you run into them. There’s no need to go out of your way to hang out with them. You should go back to the guesthouse and rest too."
He Zhilan replied with an ’Okay’, guessing that He Teng probably knew she didn’t like those families that gossiped, and was worried she’d get upset.
After showing He Zhilan to her guesthouse room, He Teng didn’t enter. Instead, he turned and left, seemingly without any intention of going back to his dormitory, he went towards the office instead.
At this moment, in the battalion office, Lan Li received a phone call from his mother.
His mother had been hesitant about making this call ever since she picked Gu En up from the police station. It wasn’t specifically to tell Lan Li about Gu En’s bullying incident, but when she was at the police station, she seemed to have heard He Teng’s wife’s classmate call her Zhilan.
Lan’s mother wasn’t sure if this Zhilan was the one she was thinking of or just a coincidence of pronunciation.
"Lan Li, do you know the full name of your comrade’s, He Teng’s wife?"
"You mean He Zhilan?" Lan Li was somewhat surprised, "If I remember correctly, her name is the same as Miss Zhilan’s, what’s up?"
"Nothing, just asking out of curiosity. I only found out her name when I heard her classmate call her," Lan’s mother said.
"Mom, you’re thinking of Miss Zhilan, aren’t you? He Zhilan couldn’t possibly be her. It’s just a coincidence of names. How could it happen that Miss Zhilan, who has been missing for over a decade, suddenly appears as He Teng’s wife right beside us?" Lan Li shook his head, "Besides, she looks nothing like Miss Zhilan when she was a child."
"I suppose." Lan’s mother replied quietly, then sighed, "I don’t know why Gu En has such a bad relationship with this He Zhilan. And do you know? This time at the police station, I felt that He Zhilan changed a lot. It seemed that Gu En’s case hit her very hard. She gives off a completely different vibe. I heard from Gu En that she and He Teng are divorced, is it true? Do you know why? For a girl at this age, it’s rare enough to get married, and yet she got divorced so quickly, it is not good for her. If she and He Teng have reached the end of their marriage because of Gu En, the Gu Family owes her a lot."
"Mom, although I don’t know why they suddenly divorced, but this weekend, He Zhilan still came to the unit. Looking at the way they interacted, it didn’t seem like they had had a fight or argument.
A lot of people in the unit are speculating why they divorced, but no one really knows why.
After He Teng submitted the divorce papers, the political commissar and his wife personally went to the capital to talk to He Zhilan. They should know the reason. However, they didn’t seem too worried when they came back, so He Teng and He Zhilan’s divorce probably wasn’t because of Gu En."
Lan Li knew that his mother felt a bit guilty. From a human perspective, both the Gu and Lan families had wronged He Zhilan.