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

"Good morning," the girl said after a brief silence. "Could you please leave first? I need to change my clothes."

Even the formal "you" is used?

“Okay,” Xiao Yao said patiently, “What do you want for breakfast? I’ll go buy it for you.”

Yu Luying shook her head like waves.

"Then I'll just buy whatever I want." Xiao Yao stood up and walked towards the bedroom door.

As he reached the door, he heard Yu Luying's timid voice behind him: "Shaobing (a type of flatbread)."

Despite his splitting headache from the hangover, Xiao Yao hastily threw on two pieces of clothing and went out. He hailed a rickshaw at the Party School gate and went to the same pancake shop from yesterday, ordering five deluxe processed pancakes and two bowls of savory tofu pudding.

"That little girl who ordered 100 sesame cakes yesterday, was she with you?" The lean man squatted down and picked up the cardboard box from the ground. "Here, take this."

"Have you paid yet?"

"Payment has been made."

Xiao Yao held up the heavy box of sesame cakes, thinking that he had really overpaid for this breakfast.

He hadn't gone far when he realized it wasn't worth carrying so many sesame cakes. As he looked around anxiously for a rickshaw, a memory suddenly struck him like lightning.

Xiao Yao placed the box containing the sesame cakes on the ground, then squatted down and pressed his hands against his temples.

Yesterday... last night...

It seems like... like this... like that...

Oh no, no wonder she looked so dead this morning!

She shouldn't have been left alone at home.

"Dude, are you alright?" a man asked him in Dongru dialect, and squatted down to shake his arm.

"It's nothing, it's nothing." Xiao Yao shook his head repeatedly, revealing a grateful smile.

If this happened on the streets of Shanghai, probably no one would ask him that, right?

Xiao Yao stood up, eager to get back, when his phone suddenly rang.

Is it Shen Jie?

One of the two heavy weights in Xiao Yao's heart was lifted.

The boy took out his phone and looked at the screen.

...WDNM, Yu Lihua!

Although Xiao Yao never saved her phone number with his name, he would never forget that string of numbers.

Why would she call me? Did Yu Luying tell her about what happened last night?

Even women shouldn't be so irrational!

"Don't answer it. Trust me, go back and coordinate your statements with Yu Luying first, or you'll be completely ruined if you're exposed!" The long-absent little red figure popped up from Xiao Yao's feet. He raised a sharp steel fork and poked Xiao Yao's right fingers repeatedly, causing him great pain.

"You have to accept it. Trust me, no matter what happens, playing dead at this point will only make things worse." The little white-clad figure appeared on Xiao Yao's shoulder as if by shadow. He used the pointer in his hand to dab a bead of sweat from Xiao Yao's forehead and flicked it teasingly into Xiao Yao's bewildered eyes.

Ouch! Xiao Yao got sweat stinging his eyes. He hurriedly raised his hand to rub them, but then he heard Yu Lihua's voice coming from the speakerphone of his phone.

"Hello? Xiao Yao? Can you hear me?"

Damn! Now I have no choice but to answer.

He picked up the phone, held it to his ear, and tried his best to sound enthusiastic: "Ah~ Auntie, it's me, good morning, what's up?"

"Is Yingying with you?" Yu Lihua asked abruptly.

"Ah~ Auntie, she's not with me." Xiao Yao hid in the shadows by the roadside, put down the box of biscuits that was hurting his hands, looked around, and thought that this wasn't exactly a lie.

"Where did she spend the night last night? Why didn't she answer my calls?" Yu Lihua asked.

The little figure in red crawled up to Xiao Yao's ear: "It seems that Yu Luying's mother doesn't know anything. Trust me, just keep it up for now and put her at ease. You hurry back and coordinate with Yu Luying. As long as Yu Luying doesn't expose you, everything will be fine. If she does expose you, she'll be in trouble too, so you won't lose out!"

The little figure in white jumped up, lashed Xiao Yao's calf with a pointer, and scolded, "How do you know she wasn't testing you? Believe me, your answer represents your attitude towards this relationship. Whether this kind of thing happened or not is unimportant; a positive and sincere attitude is the most important!"

"Hello? Xiao Yao? Are you still there? Can you hear me?" Yu Lihua's voice was somewhat anxious.

"Ah~ Auntie, well, Yu Luying stayed at a hotel yesterday. I'll go get her and have her call you back later?"

"Xiao Yao, you don't need to be so polite with me, calling me 'Auntie' all the time. I was at the hotel just now, and I knocked for ages but no one answered. I can't understand the way people talk around here."

Xiao Yao was stunned upon hearing Yu Lihua's words.

"Ah~ Auntie, are you in Dong~ Dongru~?"

A rickshaw driver saw a large pile of things at Xiao Yao's feet and saw him sweating profusely while making a phone call, and kindly stopped in front of him.

"I told you the day before yesterday that I was coming to see your hometown. Hey, I see you still have rickshaws here. Where do you live? I'll take a rickshaw there."

rickshaw?

"Ah~ Auntie, where are you now? Are you still at Yingying's hotel?"

"I'm not at the hotel anymore. Yingying said the sesame seed cakes here are delicious, so I found a sesame seed cake shop and will bring you some later."

Looking back in the direction the rickshaw had gone, you could see the pancake stall in the distance, where a crowd had already gathered.

At the edge of the crowd, a woman in a cheongsam, holding a parasol, was making a phone call.

Xiao Yao narrowed his eyes, his heart as still as water.

"Ah~ Auntie, please stay here and don't move. I'll be right there." Xiao Yao hung up the phone quickly after speaking, and then immediately dialed Yu Luying's number.

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Grandma, my goodness, you're really not answering the phone?!"

Unable to get through to Yu Luying on the phone, Xiao Yao picked up the box of sesame cakes and rushed home.

Along the way, his talent as a long-time loyal reader of "Science Fiction Emperor" began to shine again.

He realized that Yu Luying was probably no longer at the Party School.

What happened last night must have made her very angry, so she took out her own money to buy breakfast, then ran away from home with her valuables.

Wait a minute, if you were going to run, why didn't you run last night? Why did you wait until this morning to run?

Ah, that's it, it must be because the Party School's gates are closed at night.

No, there's a symbiotic distance; she can't run very far.

Will they call the police? And say I did something unsuccessful?

Even disregarding the emotional impact, from a purely symbiotic perspective, calling the police is a highly irrational act.

But expecting a woman to remain rational forever...?

Xiao Yao really didn't have that much confidence.

Just then, he heard a mournful siren sound in the distance.

The siren sounded quite far away at first, but it quickly approached in my direction.

Xiao Yao nervously looked around, his heart pounding with anxiety.

No way… ?

The boy's ideas became increasingly outrageous, and he began to laugh at his own overly vivid dramatic imagination.

As the sirens drew closer, Xiao Yao's tension involuntarily increased.

He instinctively tried to find a way to escape, but his legs were firmly planted on the ground, and he couldn't move an inch.

His heart was racing, and every siren made his nerves tense.

Finally, a police car sped over from a distance, its siren growing louder and louder.

However, as the police car finally sped past, he felt a wave of powerless mockery wash over him.

Xiao Yao inwardly chuckled at his overly dramatic thoughts, realizing he was being a bit neurotic. He breathed a sigh of relief, shook his head, and told himself not to let his emotions control him again—he had to calm down and focus on solving the current problem.

Just as he made up his mind, he was so frightened by Yu Lihua's relentless phone calls that he almost dropped his phone.

"Xiao Yao, is there only one pancake shop in Dongru? How did you know where I was? What are you making me wait for? I feel like you're acting strangely today, and Yingying isn't answering her phone. Are you hiding something from me?! I'm telling you, if anything happens to Yingying, I'll fight you to the death, you know that?"

The rapid-fire, shrill sound made Xiao Yao's head, which was still not fully recovered from his hangover, throb with pain.

"Ah~ Auntie, it's alright, really alright, I'll be there soon. Can you see me? I'm waving at you—look in the distance, isn't there a bridge? Tonghai Bridge, on the top of the bridge, yes, I'm carrying a big cardboard box." Helpless, Xiao Yao had no choice but to turn around again, holding the heavy box of sesame cakes in one hand, and waving enthusiastically to Yu Lihua in the distance.

……

Yu Lihua was quite surprised to see Xiao Yao.

"So your house is right here. What a lucky coincidence."

"That's right, this is the most famous pancake stall in Dongru. I knew where you were as soon as you mentioned it."

"Oh my, Xiao Yao, why did you buy so many sesame cakes?"

“I didn’t buy it. Yingying ordered it yesterday, and I just happened to pick it up for her today. She said it’s really delicious and wanted to buy it for you.”

"Yingying bought these for me? There are so many, how can we possibly finish them all? We can't even give them all away. This girl didn't even tell me before buying them. I bought them, and I even bought a few extra, twenty of them. I'll go return them."