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

"No, don't worry... It's still warm, I'll eat it."

"Why can't I return it, boss? I haven't touched it, it's still warm! It won't stop you from selling it to someone else, will it? Just give me a round number back, I don't need the odd amount."

"Mom! Can we—Auntie! Can we please stop embarrassing ourselves?"

"...Okay, okay, Xiao Yao, I'm your friend, I'll listen to you. If you say you won't refund it, then you won't. It's not like I'm short of twenty-odd yuan. Come on, let Auntie help you get it."

"No need, Auntie—okay, thank you, Auntie. Auntie, why did you suddenly decide to come over? You didn't even tell us you were coming."

"Oh dear, I was originally going to come with you guys. How could I leave you two minors alone? But I got held up by school matters. See, as soon as it was over, I rushed over. Xiao Yao, Yingying said your roof is leaking too?"

"Oh, yes, it was fixed last night, haha. Auntie, how can there be anything going on at school during the summer vacation?"

"Of course! The TCM academic seminar specifically requested that I... *clapping, clapping, clapping, clapping, clapping, clapping, clapping, clapping...*"

"Auntie, over here."

"Party School? You live inside the Party School?"

"hold head high."

"Your parents are both round-faced?"

"hold head high."

……

"Shuyi!"

"Brother Yao Yao! Sister Ying Ying—ah, I'm sorry."

"Wow, this little girl is quite pretty. Who is she?"

"Oh, my old neighbor's niece. When she first came here, she asked Luying for help with her studies."

Xiao Yao stood with Yu Lihua in front of his house, as if facing his death sentence.

He kept his head down, deliberately searching through a large bunch of keys, trying to prolong his life by half a second.

Is Yu Luying still inside this door?

If she's there, it would confirm that we've been staying together for the past two days, right? How can I explain this to Yu Lihua in a way that will appease her anger?

If she's not here, she must have run away because she's angry with me, right?

For some reason, Xiao Yao recalled the day Shen Hongsheng came to raid his house, when Shen Jie had just moved inside a mirror because of a quarrel, thus escaping the disaster.

Should I wish she were here, or should I wish she weren't?

Chapter 223 Do you want to eat fried dough sticks?

2023-06-04

If I open the door and see Yu Luying, how should I explain it?

The only method we can come up with right now is to pretend to be surprised when we see Yu Luying, and say, "Why didn't you say hello when you came? Why didn't you answer your mother's call?"—then bury our heads in the sand and see if Yu Luying will cooperate.

That’s weird!

What does this have to do with whether Yu Luying is willing to cooperate or not? Yu Lihua is a university professor and doesn't seem stupid. How do you explain that Yu Luying has a key to her own house?

……

Yu Lihua looked at Xiao Yao with a strange expression as he tried several different keys before finally opening the door to his house.

Upon entering, you are immediately greeted by the smell of rotting fruit.

"What does it smell like?" Yu Lihua asked, frowning.

"No, right?" Xiao Yao's attention wasn't on that at all. He put the box on the table, casually replied, and "casually" pushed open the door to the second bedroom, bracing himself for the "unexpected" discovery that Yu Luying had already arrived.

……

However, when the door was opened, the small room was empty, with only a neatly made single bed in sight.

They even made the bed sheets?

Xiao Yao's heart clenched, then he breathed a sigh of relief.

"The house is quite big, but it's a bit hot." Yu Lihua had already started looking around the living room.

Xiao Yao saw Yu Luying's duffel bag on the floor of the small room and casually—no, casually kicked it under the bed.

That's it.

His initial anxiety stemmed from the fact that Yu Luying had indeed run away.

He breathed a sigh of relief not only because he had managed to fool Yu Lihua, but also because he realized that Yu Luying hadn't run away.

Otherwise, she would definitely have brought her luggage.

Moreover, they wouldn't be in the mood to tidy up the secondary bedroom or put sheets on the single bed.

This means that she not only didn't plan to immediately drag herself back to Shanghai, but she didn't even plan to go back to the hotel—instead, she planned to settle down in the second bedroom.

This is similar to Shen Jie getting angry and moving to her daughter's room; it's a minor issue of sleeping in separate beds (relatively speaking), not a major issue of breaking up.

"Ah~ Auntie, please sit down first. I'll cut you a piece of watermelon to cool you down." Xiao Yao hurriedly pulled out a chair for Yu Lihua and asked her to sit down. Then, in a serious yet lively manner, he took out the half watermelon that had been chilled from the refrigerator, cut it, and placed it in front of her.

I hope the watermelon didn't freeze; I did put it in plastic wrap.

"You're so kind, no need to be so polite with me." Yu Lihua was polite in words, but her expression clearly showed that she was very pleased with Xiao Yao's attentiveness.

Then she asked, "What's wrong? Do you need my help?"

"What? The watermelon is spoiled?" Xiao Yao blurted out, "Ah~ Auntie, no, no. It's just that the water pipe was leaking, but I've already fixed it. Oh right, and the roof, that's fixed too."

Yu Lihua took a bite of watermelon and said, "Is this floor made of mahogany? Luckily we came back in time to deal with it, otherwise it would have been ruined by water."

"That's true," Xiao Yao said dismissively, then "casually" checked the bathroom again, but no one was there.

Hopefully she's not in the master bedroom? That would solve the problem.

"Your parents really know how to live well," Yu Lihua remarked, tapping the ground with the tip of her shoe. "Such fine material would be a beautiful addition anywhere, but it's being used in an empty house..."

Yu Lihua seemed to have a hidden meaning in her words, but Xiao Yao had no time to ponder them. He quietly took a deep breath, pretended to walk around casually, and pushed open the door to the master bedroom.

What hit you from inside the door wasn't Yu Luying, but the stench of alcohol.

Xiao Yao spotted the poor pair of pantyhose in the wastebasket at a glance.

His blood rushed to his head, and he strode forward, grabbed the tattered pantyhose, and shoved it under the bed.

"Is something broken in your room?" Yu Lihua stood at the door of the master bedroom, leaning against the door. "There's a smell of alcohol. Has it fermented?"

The voice came from behind, startling Xiao Yao so much that he almost screamed.

He pretended to be calm and slowly got up from the bedside.

As a result, Yu Lihua did not come over, but went back to the living room.

Xiao Yao's heart pounded wildly, and he patted his chest repeatedly.

Yu Luying, Yu Luying, Little Apple, can you hear me? He shouted in vain in his heart.

Then, Xiao Yao heard Yu Lihua calling him over from the balcony doorway.

"Xiao Yao, come and see what's going on?" Yu Lihua pinched her nose, looking very unhappy.

Xiao Yao ran to the balcony and saw that it was the half watermelon that was left over from the night before last. After absorbing the essence of the sun and moon for two days, it had become extremely smelly.

The boy hurriedly grabbed a plastic bag to clean up, while Yu Lihua shook her head and scolded, "Xiao Xiao, you live alone, you can't be so messy. You can't leave all the housework to your wife. It's fine if Yingying helps you clean up when things break or the house gets dirty, but you still need to have some order in your daily life... How many days has this watermelon been in the refrigerator? Eating it after so long will make you sick. You can't be so careless when you're out and about. If you get sick, do you expect our Yingying to take care of you in the countryside for a long time?..."

Xiao Yao inexplicably thought of "A Chinese Odyssey," but upon hearing the word "wife," he was even a little moved.

Just as Yu Lihua was rambling on and Xiao Yao was nodding like a chicken pecking at rice, there was a knock on the door—the front door.

Xiao Yao wanted to answer the door, but Yu Lihua was closer to the door. She turned around and ran over to open the door, as if she were the lady of the house.

"Mom? What brings you here?" A girl dressed in a simple Hanfu-style long dress with a floral pattern, carrying a light blue floral patterned cloth bag, wearing gray short cotton socks and white clover shell-toe shoes, stood at the door.

Upon seeing this figure, Yu Lihua was overjoyed.

"Yingying, why didn't you answer the phone? Mom was so worried about you. If Xiaoxiao hadn't been here, I would have called the police." Yu Lihua went up and hugged Yu Luying tightly.

Xiao Yao suddenly felt breathless.

"I put the phone on silent mode when I slept in the hotel and forgot to change it back—besides, what's there to worry about? Xiao Yao is here, isn't he? How did you find this place?"

"Mom couldn't get through to you on the phone, so she called Xiao Xiao. Why did you buy so many biscuits?"

"It's delicious! Look, you bought some too."

“I know what I’m buying, but the way you’re buying clearly shows you don’t. You’re all grown up now, you should know your limits. By the way, that young lady on the first floor, are you close to her?”

The Yu mother and daughter started chattering away, seemingly forgetting about Xiao Yao standing nearby.

Xiao Yao himself also enjoys this feeling of being forgotten and thinks it's quite nice.

Of course, he didn't think that last night's memory was just an illusion or a dream; perhaps, this was just the calm before the storm.

Yu Lihua received a phone call, but after trying to get a signal for a long time without success, she went downstairs to answer it.

In the old house with its mahogany floors, only Xiao Yao and Yu Luying remained.

And with Yu Lihua's departure, it seems that Yu Luying's lively and relaxed state also came with her departure.