Chapter 13: Godfather, Your Child Was Wrong

"No, your translation is terrible — you didn't translate so many technical terms, and the whole thing reads like a mess. There's no way I'm paying you the rest of the fee!"

Back home, Zhou Waner sat on the sofa scrolling through her phone for a while before picking it up to call someone, her tone dripping with dissatisfaction.

"Don't give me excuses. Yes, you worked hard, but I'm not happy with what you delivered. I told you from the start — these are professional academic documents, and you needed to look up the relevant technical terminology. You beat your chest and told me it was no problem. So what is this you've handed me?"

"Impossible. There's absolutely no way I'm paying you the rest of the money for this. Honestly, I even feel like the money I already paid you was a waste!"

"Fine, if you've got the nerve, come find me. Let me tell you something — Zhou Waner didn't grow up being scared of anyone!"

It was clear that a serious conflict had erupted with the person on the other end of the line the previous night — the other party had even threatened to confront Zhou Waner in person.

But Zhou Waner, who had been a tough girl since childhood, wasn't afraid in the slightest.

After delivering that fierce parting shot, she slammed her phone down and sat on the sofa in a huff, not saying a word.

"What happened?" Ye Qinghe turned his head and asked.

"You don't know — I hired a translator to help me with a pretty difficult English academic paper. He agreed to do it, sounded totally confident, but what he gave me is complete gibberish..."

The moment Ye Qinghe asked, Zhou Waner found her outlet and launched into a full account of how unreliable the translator had been.

Ye Qinghe had a clear picture of the whole situation within the first minute, but five more minutes passed and Zhou Waner showed no sign of stopping. He had no choice but to cut her off.

"It's just translating an article — how hard can it be? Let me do it for you."

As it happened, the skill he had just obtained was English Mastery. Ye Qinghe figured he could do Zhou Waner this favour.

"You? ...Alright then!"

Zhou Waner didn't actually believe Ye Qinghe could pull it off, but since he had offered, she couldn't very well tell him outright that he wasn't up to it.

Ye Qinghe had dropped out after an incident in his second year of high school and never went back. While his grades had been decent at the time, he was never at the very top — his English was somewhere in the upper-middle range of the class, occasionally cracking the top ten but never the top five.

With that level of English, and no opportunity to study for the past three years, how could he possibly make sense of her academic paper?

Even she, a university student, struggled with it and had to hire a professional translator. Ye Qinghe had even less chance.

But since Ye Qinghe had gone out of his way to offer, she didn't want to discourage him.

She transferred the document to Ye Qinghe's computer and projected it onto the ceiling. Zhou Waner settled in, ready to offer a few comforting words when he inevitably admitted he couldn't do it.

"Serverless containers and functions are widely used in the deployment and management of cloud-based software. The reason these technologies are so popular is that, compared to traditional deployment methods, they reduce operational costs, improve hardware utilisation, and enable faster elastic scaling to meet the economic and scalability demands of redstone weapon applications..."

Listening to Ye Qinghe read out the translation without a moment's hesitation, Zhou Waner was completely stunned.

"How do you actually know this? Aren't you..."

She stopped herself before finishing the sentence.

"I'm paralysed, not stupid.

These past few years I couldn't move, but I could still study and read all kinds of things. I've spent time learning English when I had the chance. No need to make such a fuss!"

Seeing her shocked expression, Ye Qinghe paused the translation, turned his head, and said with mild irritation.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! I was being shallow — Godfather, please, you have to help me! You have no idea how ruthless these language people are. For just one article, they had the nerve to charge me four hundred yuan! If I hadn't been smart enough to only pay two hundred upfront, saying I'd pay the rest after confirming the final draft, I'd have been out four hundred for nothing!"

Zhou Waner immediately dropped to her knees.

Literally dropped to her knees.

Right there beside Ye Qinghe's bed.

"Alright, it's not that big a deal. I'll translate it for you — get up, no need to kneel. Dad will help you!"

Ye Qinghe smiled. It had been a long time since he'd heard that title — Godfather!

He actually kind of missed it.

"Do you want some water? Or should I order delivery — get you some bubble tea? Or I could massage your legs?"

Zhou Waner didn't mind at all. As long as Ye Qinghe could really help her translate the paper, she'd do anything he asked.

"Skip the bubble tea — drink too much of that stuff and you end up needing to pee all the time. Help me with the leg massage instead."

As someone who had been paralysed for years, drinking bubble tea wouldn't cause any real harm, but Ye Qinghe generally kept his fluid intake low. Drinking too much meant needing to use the bathroom frequently, and his adult diapers couldn't handle that much.

"Don't worry about it — drink as much as you want. I'm here today, so worst case I just help you change a couple extra times!"

Zhou Waner said it with complete nonchalance, but hearing those words, Ye Qinghe felt just a little bit uncomfortable.

"I'll pass, thanks."

Ye Qinghe shifted his gaze away from Zhou Waner and looked up at the ceiling.

"Wait — are you actually embarrassed? I genuinely think of you as a brother. You can't go getting ideas about me!"

Zhou Waner caught Ye Qinghe's odd reaction and immediately figured out why he'd said that. She stared at him in disbelief.

"Do you want me to translate for you or not? If you do, then close your mouth!"

Ye Qinghe's face had gone just a tiny bit red.

After all, he wasn't the original person — having thoughts that were slightly different was perfectly natural.

"Oh, so that's how it is, Ye Qinghe. I treat you like a brother, and you're actually thinking about..."

"I'm tired. I can't translate anymore."

"No no no no — Godfather! Godfather! Your child was wrong! Your child will shut up right now and massage your legs — a great person like you doesn't hold grudges against someone small like me!"

Seeing Ye Qinghe close his eyes and refuse to translate, Zhou Waner immediately caved. She put on an apologetic smile, clasped her hands together, and apologised repeatedly before rushing over to start massaging his legs.

Ha! Think I can't handle you?!

Ye Qinghe shot Zhou Waner a smug look.

He directed her to open the document on his computer, then set up both the original and the translation side by side and got to work.

Voice input, of course, had its limitations — not every word would be recognised accurately, and corrections were needed along the way, which meant Zhou Waner had to stay beside him to handle the editing.

It took a full hour. Zhou Waner was genuinely in awe of Ye Qinghe's vocabulary — the technical terms that she herself had to look up, he translated without a moment's hesitation.

Then, while massaging his legs, she suddenly caught a whiff of something. She reached over and pulled back the hem of his trousers.

No need to look further — it was coming from right there.

Ye Qinghe: (❍ᴥ❍ʋ)