You're my wife, don't doubt it!

"What's wrong?"

"Why do we feel like you're my...male buddy? Female best friend?"

“I always have been,” Yu Luying said quietly. “I’m your friend. We promised to be best friends for life.”

"A lifelong, special, good friend," Xiao Yao reminded her.

"Pah, you wish," Yu Luying said. "After you and my sister get married, do you expect me to never marry and be your mistress for life? Keep dreaming."

"That's not what I meant..." Xiao Yao muttered, even though he knew in his heart that that was probably what he meant.

“However,” Xiao Yao thought for a moment and then said, “I really can’t bear to see you get married…”

“Then marry me,” Yu Luying blurted out.

"what?"

"Nothing was said, you misheard."

Xiao Yao suddenly remembered what Yu Luying had said to him on his bed at home before dinner: "Don't always think about later, pay more attention to the warmth of the present."

“By the way, Little Apple,” Xiao Yao said, “I just heard some new information. Apparently, Joan’s gang in Nottington is still causing trouble everywhere.”

"Hmm?" Yu Luying tilted her head up slightly: "What did my sister tell you? What exactly did she say?"

That night, they didn't pursue passion; they simply nestled together, and even though they were separated by a pillow, they were still able to convey their feelings and warmth to each other through physical contact.

As they were chatting, Yu Luying was the first to fall silent.

Xiao Yao felt Yu Luying's breath, and their bodies gradually synchronized, as if they had become one. In this quiet and cool night (caused by the air conditioning), Xiao Yao was immersed in Yu Luying's embrace, enjoying her company.

He couldn't remember when he fell asleep, only that he slept soundly that night and had sweet dreams.

However, the next morning—or rather, when he woke up during the day—he only remembered having a very sweet dream, but couldn't recall any of the details.

My first instinct upon waking up is to check my phone.

Holy crap, what's going on? It's already 13 PM.

He didn't reply to the good morning message Shen Jie sent him, and later Shen Jie sent him a few more QQ messages.

There was even a missed call from my "wife" in the middle of the night, around 11 o'clock.

Oh no! Xiao Yao quickly replied to Shen Jie's message, telling her that he had just woken up and that he did not mean to ignore the phone or reply to messages.

Shen Jie did not reply immediately—which is quite normal.

Xiao Yao got out of bed and ripped open the hotel curtains. Bright sunlight immediately flooded in, illuminating the dark little room.

"Little Apple! Wake up!" Xiao Yao shook Yu Luying's arm.

"Hehe...I still want to sleep..." Yu Luying murmured in a dreamlike voice.

"What time is it? Screw your sleeping... Sis, get up and party!" Xiao Yao continued to shake Yu Luying wildly: "It's one o'clock in the afternoon, big sister!"

"My sister?" Yu Luying suddenly woke up with a start, sitting up abruptly: "What are you after Yu Xiaoyang?"

Xiao Yao: "?"

Before leaving the house, Yu Luying spent a long time fixing her light green dress, which had been wrinkled from sleeping in it, in front of the mirror.

“Hey, Xiao Yao,” Yu Luying said, carefully adjusting the headband Xiao Yao had given her in front of the bathroom mirror, “I suddenly remembered that Shen Jie said that when she lived with you, you washed her underwear and socks every day?”

“…That’s true,” Xiao Yao admitted. “After all, the young lady is lazy and doesn’t know anything about farming, so she had to force me to complete the task of being a live-in son-in-law ahead of schedule. Do you think I like that?”

"You dare say you don't like it?" Yu Luying said.

Xiao Yao thought for a moment and said, "Actually, it's not bad."

"Give me a bath tonight," Yu Luying said. "I want equal rights, to be treated the same as everyone else."

“Okay.” Xiao Yao readily agreed: “I’ll put glass slippers on you if you want.”

"Why should I be Cinderella just because she's a rich girl?" Yu Luying complained. "Actually, our Yu family is no less than the Shen family..."

“Cinderella is of a higher class than a young lady; she’s destined to marry a prince.” Xiao Yao laughed. “Look at you, Cinderella, calling Shen Jie ‘sister’ every day. You’re up to no good; you want her to end up like Cinderella’s wicked sister.”

Xiao Yao kept talking nonsense with her until she laughed so hard she was shaking and collapsed into his arms: "You call yourself a prince?"

"Never mind, I don't want you to wash me," Yu Luying said.

"Why don't you want me to wash you again?" Xiao Yao said.

“I suddenly realized, this is a reward for you,” Yu Luying said. “Why don’t you help me wash my dress? I’ll wait until you get 80 points, no, 90 points…”

“Thank you so much,” Xiao Yao said, his face darkening. “I don’t want the 90-point reward. Besides, I always send my coats to the dry cleaners…”

The weather today is not as good as yesterday. The bright, scorching sun is engulfing the earth. It is around 2 pm, which is the time when the sun is at its strongest.

Xiao Yao and Yu Luying ate at the same train station restaurant where they had vomited all over the place yesterday—the owner frowned every time he saw them.

They didn't order any more clams, and naturally, nothing else went wrong. After the meal, Yu Luying suggested going back to the Party School to change clothes, but Xiao Yao said there was no rush and suggested taking her to visit his primary and secondary schools first.

Yu Luying wasn't very willing, but she didn't argue with Xiao Yao and silently obeyed.

“However, aren’t we going to your friend’s house tonight, that Xu, Xu, Xu thing’s house? Then I definitely need to go back to the Party School to change clothes first.” Yu Luying said this at the end.

"Alright," Xiao Yao said.

“Besides, your friend saw me yesterday,” Yu Luying added, “If I don’t change my clothes today, people will laugh at me.”

"What's so funny?" Xiao Yao asked, puzzled.

“Not changing clothes means you didn’t go home last night,” Yu Luying said. “It means you spent the night at a man’s house. Didn’t you think of that?”

“No,” Xiao Yao scratched his head in confusion, “You don’t have a home here anyway. Didn’t people see you coming to the hotel with me?”

Xiao Yao and Yu Luying hailed a rickshaw and went to Dongru County Experimental Primary School first. During the summer vacation, the school was locked up, and there wasn't even an old gatekeeper.

The two strolled around the area around the primary school under the blazing sun, then wandered around the Xinhua Bookstore, before taking a rickshaw to "Xinmiao Kindergarten".

“I’m telling you, our kindergarten teacher is horrible,” Xiao Yao said to Yu Luying in the car. “At nap time, if any child doesn’t sleep and starts talking secretly, she’ll smear some Tiger Balm in their eyes!”

"Huh?" Yu Luying said in disbelief, "If this were in Shanghai, they would have been sued into bankruptcy long ago."

“They would also punish disobedient and misbehaving children by making them stand in the hallway wearing socks, and when they came back, their feet would be covered in black socks.”

"..."

Xinmiao Kindergarten was also locked up tight. The two glanced at it from the outside and decided not to call a rickshaw again. Instead, they walked to Dongru County Experimental Middle School—it wasn't far anyway.

While walking on the road, the two happened to witness a small motorcycle and an electric tricycle collide head-on.

Xiao Yao couldn't say whether the car was damaged or not, but the people were definitely fine—because two people got out from each side, and the four of them started arguing loudly.

Xiao Yao and Yu Luying had only walked about 300 meters when they turned around and saw that the four people had started fighting. Men were fighting men, and women were fighting women, engaging in fierce one-on-one combat.

Now, not only Yu Luying's mouth turned into an "O" shape, but even Xiao Yao's mouth was turned into an "O" shape.

Xiao Yao tried to rush in to break up the fight, but Yu Luying grabbed him. She took out her phone and dialed 110, but couldn't clearly explain her location to the police, so she handed the phone to Xiao Yao.

After describing the exact location of the fight to the police, Xiao Yao hung up the phone and craned his neck to continue watching the two-on-one combat.

“We’ve already called the police, so let’s stop looking and go,” Yu Luying tugged at Xiao Yao’s arm. “You’re such a busybody.”

“No,” Xiao Yao said, “What if they get hurt? With my current fighting skills, I can just forcibly separate them.”

"And then you went to the police station with me?" Yu Luying said.

Xiao Yao followed Yu Luying toward the junior high school. When they were out of sight of the four people, Xiao Yao couldn't help but look back.

“I really don’t like the people from your place!” Yu Luying suddenly said, sounding a bit agitated.

“Sigh,” Xiao Yao said, “If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. I don’t like it either.”

“Rude, barbaric, and irritable,” Yu Luying said.

Xiao Yao looked up and saw a plastic bottle in the middle of the road. He deliberately took a long detour to pick it up, carried it in his hand, and continued walking, looking left and right for a trash can.

"I didn't know you were an environmental protection enthusiast?" Yu Luying said with some curiosity.

“To hell with environmental protection,” Xiao Yao said. “If these bottles are left across the road, bicycles or motorcycles can easily lose their balance and fall over if they run over them. If they’re unlucky, someone could die.”

Since he couldn't find a trash can, he casually tossed the empty bottle into the bushes by the roadside.

“…” Yu Luying turned her head to look at the bushes, then at Xiao Yao: “I suddenly realized that you are quite kind and warm-hearted.”

“Damn it,” Xiao Yao said, “you’ve known me for a year and only now you realize my chivalrous heart? My heart is breaking—oh right, Little Apple, I just thought of that.”

"What?" Yu Luying asked.

"If we encounter this kind of situation in the future, we will focus our fire on the woman first, take her down quickly, and then attack the man in a two-on-one fight."

"Are you kidding me?" Yu Luying said, both amused and annoyed. "Why would we fight with them?"

"What if they force us to defend ourselves?" Xiao Yao said with a smile.

“If you do that, the guy on the other side will grab me and beat me up too,” Yu Luying told Xiao Yao.

“It doesn’t matter,” Xiao Yao pointed out. “We share a health bar, so it doesn’t really matter to us who the opponent attacks first—we can take note of this when we fight in the Hall of Fame in the future and make full use of it.”

"So you're making full use of girls as human shields to draw fire, right?" Yu Luying rationally felt that what Xiao Yao said made sense, but she was still a little annoyed.

"Hey, I was thinking, maybe when you level up in the future, you could allocate more points to defense..."

As they spoke, the two finally arrived at the entrance of Dongru County Experimental Middle School.

The school's main gate features a simple and modern design, with two spacious white metal doors that are tightly closed. Next to the gate is a marble side wall with the seven large characters "Dongru County Experimental Middle School" in gold lettering.