In a luxurious castle, a man who was eating dinner in the dining hall immediately put his chopsticks aside when he heard his child cry.
Ye Hao rushed out of the dining hall.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked the nanny who was trying to calm the child down and he looked at the nanny reproachfully. Then, he bent down and pulled Xi Xi who was crying very loudly into his arms.
The nanny became very nervous when she noticed that Ye Hao seemed a little annoyed.
It hadn’t been easy for her to land this job at the castle and she didn’t want to lose it.
“Mr. Ye, I let your daughter stand by herself for a while and wanted her to learn how to walk on her own but she started to cry the moment I let go,” she said nervously. Then, she looked apologetically at Ye Hao, afraid that he would admonish her for her actions.
Ye Hao frowned and a look of displeasure flashed past his eyes. His arms tightened around Xi Xi and allowed the child to lie against his chest as he gently stroked her back and tried to calm her down.
“Don’t force her to walk if she doesn’t wish to in the future. She’s still a baby,” Ye Hao said sternly.
All he wanted was for his daughter to be happy, so he didn’t mind even if she took longer to walk, speak, and read as compared to her peers.
The nanny immediately nodded. “Yes, of course,” she said.
“Moreover…” Ye Hao continued. “I will hire an early childhood educator to look after Xi Xi together with yourself. Your main duties are to care for her and to ensure that she has a happy and healthy childhood. I don’t want you to force her to learn any skills or abilities.”
He believed that his daughter was innately intelligent, so he didn’t these highly-skilled early childhood educators to encourage her intellectual development.
The nanny immediately agreed to follow his instructions and she still seemed very nervous and afraid of him.
She was cash-strapped and thus needed to keep this job even if her employer was a bad-tempered man.
Ye Hao carefully put Xi Xi down and crouched down to look at his daughter, a small smile dancing on his lips.
His daughter was the only person who could make him smile these days. He constantly looked extremely stern as though the entire world was against him.
His temper had only gotten worse over the past few months and he would flare up both at home and at work. His face was always dark and stormy and would even scold his subordinates in the office and the maids at home. He had even flung things to the floor on several occasions.
“Pa pa…” Xi Xi who had been sobbing hard earlier suddenly calmed down when she saw her father. Her amber-colored eyes that were so much like his widened.
He gently stroked her soft cheeks.
His precious child had grown so big. She was even starting to learn how to walk and could also say some words. Obviously, her first words were ‘pa pa’; she had uttered these words when she was eight months old and now, she could say ‘grandfather, ‘grandmother’, ‘aunty’, ‘uncle’. She could say all these words but she had not said the words ‘ma ma’.
The maids at home and the nanny all avoided mentioning the word ‘ma ma’ in front of her, so there was no mother in Xi Xi’s world and she could not remember her mother.
Xi Xi flung herself back into her father’s arms after she stood by herself for a short while and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck.
“Pa pa, doll…” Xi Xi placed her head against her father’s shoulder and pointed at a doll, her newest toy.