The landlord has multiple personalities and wants everyone to pay him.

Ye Shu carried the drinks home. The familiar "I'm home" echoed into the bedroom, where the door was tightly shut.

Da da da……

As the room door opened, a series of hurried footsteps came from the direction of the bedroom, getting closer and closer, and sounded like bare feet walking on the ground.

Ye Shu paused, then subconsciously looked up.

A pink rabbit came running over, carrying a large carrot.

She wasn't wearing slippers; her feet were directly on the ground, and as she ran, the two long ears on the hood of her bunny pajamas twitched.

She ran straight to the center of the living room, stood there, a few steps away, and stared motionlessly at Ye Shu who had just entered.

"Why did you run out without shoes? The ground is so cold."

Ye Shu changed into slippers, walked over, and frowned slightly.

However, the next second, An Suxue loosened her grip on the carrot pillow and bumped her head against his chest. Her entire weight seemed to lean on him, her fluffy bunny pajamas rubbing against his clothes, and she wrapped her arms around his waist with all her might.

The force was so great that Ye Shu, who was caught off guard, staggered backward.

Before Ye Shu could figure out what was going on, she felt the person in her arms twitching. And on her own chest, a warm, damp patch was slowly seeping through.

I cried...

Is she...crying?

An Suxue? Crying? And...and still hugging him like this?

This is so illogical; this is completely different from the An Suxue he knew. The girl who needed courage even to make eye contact, who dared not speak loudly, and who wished she could shrink into a ball and disappear.

But Ye Shu still instinctively raised his hand and placed it on the hood of An Suxue's fluffy rabbit pajamas, gently rubbing it.

He cleared his throat, speaking very softly:

"What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

The person in his arms didn't answer immediately, but buried their face even deeper, as if trying to hide themselves inside his body.

The sobs were muffled and intermittent, as if something was blocking their throat. After a long while, she finally spoke, her voice choked with emotion:

"I...I miss you..."

!!!

Ye Shu's body stiffened again, and he even stopped stroking her head.

Missing me?

An Suxue said...you missed me?

Ye Shu wouldn't have been so surprised if these words had come from any other personality, but it was An Suxue, a girl who almost never proactively expressed any positive needs...

The contrast is too great.

Ye Shu took a deep breath, suppressing her surprise, and deliberately tried to divert An Suxue's attention with a lighthearted topic:

"I'm back now, look, not a single hair is missing."

He then added mysteriously:

"And you'd never guess, Xiaonuan and the others have already taken you to my hometown for a trip. My hometown..."

His intention was to share his experience of going to his hometown, to tell her that even if she might not have been in control at the time, her body had already been there and met his family, which might ease her sadness a little, or at least be an interesting topic.

But to his utter surprise, a muffled sound from his arms interrupted him:

"I know."

"You know?"

Ye Shu subconsciously asked a question in return, and couldn't help but lower her head slightly, although all that could be seen were her fluffy rabbit ears:

"You are not..."

He was trying to say that you people don't usually share memories, especially someone like you who... doesn't participate much in external activities, right?

An Suxue seemed to have guessed what he wanted to ask, and her sobs subsided slightly, but her voice was still intermittent as she tried to explain:

"I...I know...a small part of it...not all of it...and it's written in the memo."

Memos...right, they have that shared memo, they exchange diaries.

So, An Suxue "saw" things she had never experienced through words?

"Ah...I see..."

Ye Shu looked at the little girl in her arms, crying as if she were on her first day of kindergarten, hugging her parents at the kindergarten gate and saying, "Come pick me up early tonight." Her snot and tears were probably smeared on her clothes.

The thought that she was also a girl who could feel longing, fear of loneliness, and feel wronged and yearning because she could not have what others had, gave me a feeling of heartache like that of an old father.

He sighed and stopped worrying about those complicated issues like "personality," "memory barriers," and "information filtering."

At this moment, none of that matters. What matters is that she's crying, she's saying she misses him, and she needs comfort.

He raised a hand and gently lifted An Suxue's head from his embrace. Sure enough, a silver thread connected An Suxue's nose to his clothes.

"Okay, okay, don't cry anymore. I'll go make you dinner. Are you hungry?"

He gently wiped away An Suxue's tears with his sleeve, then pointed to the drinks on the coffee table:

"Try what I made today, see if it's good. After I finish cooking, I'll tell you something really funny that happened on my way home from get off work today."

An Suxue didn't answer immediately, but nestled quietly in his arms for a while longer, as if greedily absorbing this moment of security and warmth to confirm that it wasn't an illusion. Her breathing gradually calmed down, but her body still trembled slightly.

Then, slowly, like in slow motion in a movie, she loosened her arms that were tightly wrapped around his waist.

She took a small step back.

The warm embrace suddenly ended, and a distance of air flow reappeared between the two.

In the warm yellow light of the living room, An Suxue kept her head down, almost burying her face in the high neckline of her rabbit pajamas, completely unable to look at Ye Shu.

Whether it was because she had cried so hard earlier or because of belated shame, her little face was now as red as a ripe persimmon.

Ye Shu bent down, picked up the innocent, abandoned carrot pillow from the ground, patted it twice, and handed it to An Suxue.

"Go on, go have fun, but put your shoes on first."

An Suxue took the pillow, hugged it tightly, and buried half of her face in the orange carrot.

Then, she nodded, still without looking up or making a sound, turned around, and rushed back to her bedroom just like she had come out earlier, without ever coming out again.

Ye Shu stood still for a long time without moving.

He looked at the tightly closed bedroom door, then at the translucent fabric covering his chest.

The damp area wasn't large, but its presence was extremely strong; it soaked through his clothes and clung to his skin, right where his heart was.