An 80s female translator was spoiled rotten by a rough and jealous man.

Chapter 364 "It's alright..."

The sound of running water filled the bathroom; Meng Youyou was taking a shower inside.

Huo Qingshan, who was waiting outside, noticed the brown tote bag on the sofa. The leather looked dirty, so he went over, picked it up, and prepared to take out the contents to clean it. She needed to use this bag tomorrow, and its current state was really unacceptable.

Cell phone, lipstick, powder compact, keys... until Huo Qingshan pulled out a small aluminum alloy bottle from his bag, looked at it for a few more seconds, and knew exactly what it was—it was the one he had put in her bag. At the time, she had said she definitely wouldn't need it, and even joked in a silly way, "My boyfriend is so powerful, who would dare to bully me?" Huo Qingshan said it was best if she didn't need it, and it wouldn't bother her, just in case.

The spray bottle in his hand was already opened and used. Huo Qingshan's pupils shrank in disbelief. A terrible suspicion was right in front of him, impossible to ignore. The man's knuckles tightened as he gripped the bottle, his knuckles turning white.

The question she had suddenly asked him on the way back to the hotel echoed in his ears: "Huo Qingshan, do I smell bad?"

"It doesn't smell." Huo Qingshan was a little confused at the time.

"It smells like smoke?" The girl lifted her collar, brought it to her nose, and sniffed, then wrinkled her nose in disgust.

After taking a shower, Meng Youyou walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a hotel bathrobe and saw this scene—a man sitting motionless on the sofa, head bowed, right hand holding a metal spray bottle. He looked like an ice sculpture frozen in the snow, cold and hard, even exuding a faint aura of murderous ruthlessness.

She stopped in her tracks, her fingers unconsciously twisting the hem of her bathrobe. After a few seconds of silence, she called out to him, "Huo Qingshan."

Hearing the voice, the man looked up, and Meng Youyou clearly saw the change in his eyes as he instantly suppressed all the sharp darkness.

She pursed her lips, then casually brushed aside her still-dripping wet hair and said, "The hairdryer in the bathroom seems to only blow cool air, not hot air. Could you go to the front desk and borrow a good one for me?"

He stood up from the sofa. "Call the front desk and have them deliver it." The man's voice was devoid of emotion.

"Oh, okay, that works too."

Huo Qingshan walked past her, headed to the desk with the landline phone, and made a call in less than a minute.

After the receptionist said, "Please wait a moment, we will send someone over right away," and the phone was hung up, the room fell silent.

He turned around and stared at her face. Meng Youyou looked back at him, and neither of them took the initiative to bring up the topic first. Although they both knew that they couldn't avoid this topic tonight, otherwise neither of them would be able to sleep.

Meng Youyou wasn't actually unwilling to talk about it, nor did she intend to deliberately avoid it. At the subway station entrance, she was just a little tired and her mind was a bit chaotic. She temporarily wanted to put aside all those messy things and enjoy a moment of peace and tranquility away from the world.

The original plan was for the two of them to sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk after taking a shower, but now, because she sensed the intense melancholy the other person was trying to hide, she was a little unsure and didn't know how to start the conversation.

As for Huo Qingshan, he was afraid that she didn't want to mention it, afraid that she didn't want him to know, and afraid that he might say something wrong and accidentally rub salt into her wounds, which he would regret to death.

The situation remained deadlocked until a regular knock came at the door; it was a hotel staff member bringing a hairdryer. Huo Qingshan took it from the door, unpacked the box, tidied the cord, and then walked to the end of the sofa to plug it into the wall socket.

He looked up at her, gently patted the spot beside him, and said in a soft voice, "Come here, let me dry your hair." He was back to normal now, both in tone and expression.

Meng Youyou obediently moved over and sat down.

A hot breeze blew from her scalp to her neck, and the man's fingers kept running through her hair. The two sat and stood, each lost in their own thoughts, without exchanging a word.

When his fingertips suddenly touched the skin below her collarbone, Meng Youyou was slightly startled. Her gaze followed the spot where his fingertips landed—there were several nail marks there, which were particularly conspicuous against her fair skin. They had been covered by the collar of her tightly pulled-up bathrobe, but now, due to her relaxed sitting posture, the collar was slightly open and exposed to the light.

Meng Youyou turned to face him, grabbed his fingers, squeezed them gently, and said earnestly, "No... I didn't suffer any real loss, so don't worry too much."

As Meng Youyou recounted the whole story, she kept her eyes fixed on the large hand she was holding, without looking up to meet his eyes or at the expression on his face.

"...I was just scared, and I also felt a little nauseous. I wanted to see you as soon as possible and I wanted you to hug me."

A few seconds later, a low, husky male voice came from above: "Oh, I'm sorry."

Meng Youyou looked up in confusion: "Why are you suddenly apologizing to me?"

“If I cancel my dinner appointment tomorrow and go back tonight as we agreed, you will pick me up at the high-speed rail station, and I won’t be in danger. At least I can be there to protect you.”

"Why do you think that way?" Meng Youyou felt his thinking was simply "unreasonable." "This isn't your fault at all, okay?"

Hearing him say that, Meng Youyou seemed to understand a little bit about the root of the resentment that had gathered on him—she originally thought that his strong emotions stemmed from his deep hatred for the bad guys and his heartache for her plight, but now she vaguely felt that there was also an element of anger towards herself involved.

But what right does he have to be angry with himself?
“That’s not how things work,” Meng Youyou emphasized.

“Our daily work and life are full of variables. For example, if you are on a business trip and expect to return on the same day, but something else comes up and you need to stay an extra day, that’s perfectly normal. For example, on my way home at night, I might encounter bad people, which is not too rare.”

"How can you force a causal link between these two things?" Meng Youyou wondered what was going on in his head that made him think like that.

“You might think that a meal is no big deal and you can skip it, but what if you have an important task today? Would you just quit?”

"If a typhoon or earthquake happens someday, are you going to take all the blame on yourself? Blame yourself for not being able to foresee when the disaster will happen and for not being able to stay by my side to protect me?"

Huo Qingshan was speechless for a moment: "..."

"You should think that it's a good thing I thoughtfully put pepper spray in her bag, which came in handy at a critical moment; it's a good thing I've been forcing her to exercise every day, so she can kick that guy over with one kick."

"Thankfully, she came to find me. Thankfully, I ran out to see her immediately. Thankfully, I hugged her for a long time. Thankfully, she doesn't seem so unhappy anymore."

Every time Meng Youyou said "It's okay," she would straighten one of his fingers. In the end, Huo Qingshan's fingers were spread wide open.

She grabbed his wrists, adjusting them so that one was above the other, palms facing each other, and then, with a burst of strength, brought his hands together, making a crisp "smack." She looked up at him and smiled brightly: "Okay, that's it! Let bygones be bygones. It would be such a waste if we kept getting stuck in this, wasting so much time and energy."

Her words had a great impact on Huo Qingshan. Even in the dead of night, when the person in his arms was sleeping soundly, he was still pondering her words.

Is it possible to think about it this way?

Is it really possible to think like that?
For so many years, no one had ever told him that some things could actually be thought of this way. Suddenly, the person in his arms stirred. Huo Qingshan opened his eyes and saw that she had simply shifted her neck, finding a more comfortable position in his arms, and then stopped moving.

Huo Qingshan pulled the blanket up a little, thinking about the breakfast shop near the school he had recently discovered that had some really good local snacks, but they were sold out if he went too late. He would have to get up early tomorrow to buy some for her to try; he thought she would like it.

So he told himself to go to sleep quickly.

The moon passed its zenith and slowly sank westward.

On this turbulent night, Huo Qingshan dreamed of his mother for the first time in a long time—sitting on a rock by the lake in early winter, just as he remembered her, still very young, wearing a simple green cloth dress, green was her favorite color when she was alive, her lips slightly curved, smiling gently at him.

He didn't know what he looked like. When he looked down, he saw the black cloth cotton shoes he was wearing, which didn't look very big, and a toy wooden gun he was holding in his hand.

Looking up again, he saw his mother gently part her lips and say something to him. Huo Qingshan tried his best to listen, but he couldn't hear a single sound. He could only see her, but couldn't hear her speak. Huo Qingshan was extremely distressed. He shouted loudly at his mother, "Mom, speak louder, I can't hear you!"

As if his mother could hear him, she opened and closed her mouth wider, but Huo Qingshan still couldn't hear her. He cried anxiously.

Seeing this, the woman by the lake could no longer sit still. With heartache in her eyes, she stood up and opened her arms to him. Huo Qingshan immediately ran towards the lake. In his haste, he didn't notice the stone under his feet, tripped, and fell to the ground, hurting himself badly. He couldn't stand up, but he still looked up at his mother first, only to find her figure gradually disappearing into the thin mist on the lake.

He disregarded the pain and scrambled to his feet, chasing after the direction his mother had disappeared in.

But... he couldn't catch up. His mother was gone.

Then, then... he felt someone hug him tightly and gently pat his back with their palm. Huo Qingshan suddenly opened his eyes and was faced with a dark room.

He heard the person holding him say, "Huo Qingshan, are you having a nightmare?"

"Hmm." The sound he made seemed a little strange, which Huo Qingshan found unfamiliar and surprising.

Upon hearing his voice, the other person immediately reached out and touched his face, then gently wiped something away with the pad of their thumb.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid." Meng Youyou was unusually tongue-tied, unable to think of anything useful to say.

She had just heard him call out in her dream, "Mom, don't go!" She was awakened by this voice and then felt the person holding her trembling.

Her hands were still cupped around his face, not taken away. The man rubbed his chin against her hair and said, "Go to sleep, I'm fine."

"Are you really alright?"

"Really." He kissed her forehead.

Huo Qingshan closed his eyes again, trying hard to recall the coherent scenes in his dream. He seemed to know what his mother had said to him: "Child, Mom doesn't blame you. How could Mom blame you?"

After a long while, he heard a soft whisper in his ear: "Huo Qingshan, no matter what happens, I will always be by your side."

...

The following morning, Huo Qingshan received a phone call from the principal.

After chatting about other things for a while, before hanging up, the principal asked, "I heard that Battalion Commander Huo didn't stay at the school's guesthouse last night?" It was probably the person in charge who was in contact with him who informed his superiors.

"Yes, my girlfriend is here," Huo Qingshan said truthfully.

"That's great! Let's bring her along for lunch. I'd love to meet her and see which family she's from."

Huo Qingshan was making the call right next to Meng Youyou, so her words naturally reached her ears. Huo Qingshan turned his head to look at her, his eyes asking for her opinion. After thinking for a moment, Meng Youyou nodded at him.

Huo Qingshan then replied, "Okay."

The banquet was booked at the same hotel where they were staying, which wasn't exactly a coincidence, as this hotel was one of the more presentable ones in the area near the school.

The two of them came downstairs a full fifteen minutes earlier than the scheduled time. When they entered the private room, they found that almost all the guests had arrived.

Several school leaders took turns praising Meng Youyou's beautiful appearance and cleverness, to which Meng Youyou responded with a polite smile.

They continued praising Huo Qingshan, saying he had good taste and was lucky, and that the two were a perfect match.

Actually, I could imagine how formulaic and boring this dinner party, filled with strangers, would be before I even arrived. The only reason I came was because the high-ranking official had mentioned her; it wouldn't be good not to go, otherwise it would put someone in an awkward position. As for why they invited her along, it was just to be polite.

Neither side knew each other well, but they had to go through the motions, forcing themselves to chat for a few minutes, saying some random, repetitive things.

After the initial pleasantries, the host called the waiter to serve the dishes. Meng Youyou kept her head down and ate, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone and having to start an awkward conversation, which annoyed both sides.

At the dinner table, a group of colleagues were discussing topics that were too professional and quite boring. Meng Youyou couldn't understand them and wasn't interested at all. After filling her stomach, she had nothing to do and gradually began to feel bored.

However, this setting didn't seem suitable for passing the time on a phone, since the meal wasn't just about eating; it also had a business-like social aspect. She noticed that none of the other people at the table were using their phones, so she patiently waited.

The wait for the dinner to end seemed to drag on indefinitely. Bored, Meng Youyou started picking the seeds out of a segment of red dragon fruit with a toothpick, perfectly embodying the saying "eaten until she was stuffed and had nothing to do," she was bored out of her mind.

Meng Youyou was focused on choosing her things when she noticed that her hand, which was under the table, was suddenly grasped by the person next to her, and then a finger was writing in her palm.
Meng Youyou's eyes widened in surprise. She turned her head to her left and saw someone talking seriously with the principal, who was sitting in the main seat. He spoke eloquently and his face was solemn and serious.

The man wrote in English letters on her palm, forming a clearly legible sentence: "I love u." As he wrote, he looked towards the opposite side of the round table, seemingly listening attentively, occasionally nodding slightly to acknowledge others' opinions. He appeared completely absorbed.

"Tsk tsk, what a show-off." Meng Youyou glanced at him sideways.

Secretly delighted and sweet inside, she grabbed his wrist, pried open his palm, and wrote with her fingertips, "Back at you!"
As the pen fell, Meng Youyou caught a glimpse of the man's lips subtly curving upwards, as if he were in a good mood.