"Just one."
"Really, just one."
"This one's already clingy enough."
"Right, right, right. I'll bring him back for you to meet when I have time..."
As her parents bombarded her with questions from both sides, Li Wan wanted to escape, but she also knew that too much of a good thing could be bad. They had only just fallen out, and if she didn't go along with them a little now, the atmosphere they had barely managed to thaw would turn icy again. She gave them perfunctory answers, but her parents reacted in unison: "Since he's an outside mistress, his status is neither proper nor respectable. How can you just let him into the house?"
Li Wan's father waved a hand, making it clear he didn't want to meet him.
He wanted to see a proper son-in-law. He had no interest in an outside mistress.
Li Wan wanted to correct her father—some words simply weren't used that way—but swallowed them before they could leave her mouth. She couldn't help admiring her father's old-fashioned yet open-minded thinking. "Though he's an outside mistress, he comes from a respectable family and is both talented and handsome."
Li Wan's father snorted.
"Would someone from a respectable family, with both talent and good looks, be willing to be an outside mistress?"
Li Wan said, "He actually wants me to make him my proper spouse."
"He's that unruly?" Even her mother couldn't help objecting. "Wan'er, it's not that your mother wants to meddle in your private affairs. But look across all of Fengluo City: which respectable family has ever made an outside mistress their proper spouse? You may not like hearing some plain truths, but you're a woman, not a man. Even a man who marries into his wife's family will endure it for now, thinking