Chapter 8

One sentence almost made his little neighbor feel a lifetime of guilt.

Mu Nanqiao looked at the various snacks piled on the small coffee table and began to reflect on whether he had gone too far in pretending to be pitiful. He raised his eyes and saw Lu Qi walking out of the bedroom, carrying a medicine box in his left hand and a glowing “little cabbage” in his right hand.

Yes, “little cabbage,” a rubber cartoon cabbage night light.

Lu Qi placed the small vegetable on the coffee table. The not-so-bright light enveloped the two people in a warm yellow halo. The coffee table was full, so he dragged a chair over and placed the medical kit on it. He leaned over and inspected Mu Nanqiao’s hands, then asked him:

“I often get abrasions when I rescue stray cats and dogs, and I’m pretty good at dealing with them. Let me help you deal with the injury on your fingers first, and then take you to the hospital?”

Mu Nanqiao glanced at the scratches on his knuckles.

Huh, if the little neighbor moved any slower, the wounds would be healed.

He raised his hand in amusement to show Lu Qi: “If I want to buy a bandaid, I don’t have to go to the hospital. It can be bought at the drug store downstairs.”

Lu Qi also realized that he was making a fuss, and pursed his lips in an embarrassed smile. The small pear dimple on his left cheek appeared faintly. Under the night light’s warm glow, his whole body had a soft, gentle harmlessness.

It made a person want to touch it.

“Then let me disinfect it for you.” Lu Qi sat on the small stool for changing shoes and carefully held Mu Nanqiao’s wrist.

When his fingertips pressed against the outside of the other’s wrist, Mu Nanqiao’s arm tensed imperceptibly, but the other party only moved his wrist gently and asked with an upturned face: “There really aren’t any other injuries?”

Mu Nanqiao felt a little strange when he felt the warm touch on his wrist. For a long time, he couldn’t be in a small space with others, not even his parents.

Although the situation had improved a lot after the intervention of therapy, Lu Qi was still a stranger whom he had only met a few times.

But now, in the small living room, the clean and gentle young man was so close that he could even feel the gentle airflow of the other person’s breath on the back of his hand.

He didn’t resist, and even relaxed his arm, responding softly, “There aren’t.”

Lu Qi turned and patted the “little cabbage” to brighten it, then lowered his head to apply iodine to the scratches.

“I wasn’t mad at you just now…..” Lu Qi explained with a low voice and a lowered head: “I…..I dated Lin Yuan……”

Mu Nanqiao raised an eyebrow.

Then he figured something out. He narrowed his beautiful fox eyes, stretched out his hand, and tugged the short rubber leg of the little cabbage. “He treated you as me…..”

Lu Qi huffed angrily.

Mu Nanqiao was not surprised. This was what trash like Lin Yuan would do.

“So the things you’ve encountered recently are his doing? His purpose is…..to force you to go back?” Mu Nanqiao understood, and revealed a sarcastic smile. “It really is, ah. He hasn’t changed his methods.”

Lu Qi felt a little sad when he heard this.

He was an adult now, and faced with all this, it was inevitable that he would feel helpless. Then wouldn’t it be even more pitiable for Mu Nanqiao, who was living under someone else’s roof back then?

What a poor little thing, and he was still engaged in such a profession.

Facing Lu Qi’s tender gaze, a certain pitiful little thing of 1.9 meters: ? ? ?

“You need to be careful, ah.” Lu Qi said particularly earnestly: “You see, he is so obsessed with me as a substitute. If he finds out you’re back, will it be okay? There’s no telling what kind of harmful tricks he’ll use to get you by any means necessary!”

Mu Nanqiao: ……

In Lu Qi’s eyes, was he the same as the little cabbage on the table?

“So you should change your job,” Lu Qi tentatively advised. “Your job…..it’s too easy for him to get a handle on you..…”

This serious and worried look amused Mu Nanqiao. He feigned embarrassment and said: “But I just returned to China. I’m unfamiliar with the place, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Hm…..” Lu Qi thought for a while, and then his eyes lit up. “You can become a photoshoot model. I have friends who are engaged in this industry, and I can help you ask.”

He noticed that Mu Nanqiao had turned his face sideways, his cheeks hidden in shadow and his face covered with slender hands. His shoulders shook slightly.

“Hey…..” Lu Qi stood up and turned around in a circle helplessly. “You…..why are you crying…..”

Then he heard deep, muffled laughter leaking out from between Mu Nanqiao’s fingers.

This person was actually laughing!

Lu Qi didn’t understand what was so funny. He held the cotton swab in confusion and stared blankly at Mu Nanqiao, who was laughing more and more wildly. “W…..what is it…..”

Mu Nanqiao looked up at him with sparkling eyes— clearly tears of laughter. “It was actually a misunderstanding that day.”

Lu Qi was confused: “That day? What day?”

Mu Nanqiao suppressed his laughter: “The day you were looking for a little duck, I had actually made an appointment with someone to, uh, talk about finding a job. Because the other party gave the wrong address, No. 201 Minghu Street was written as 102. I happened to have never met the other party, so I mistakenly regarded you as that person…..”

He thought again about when Lu Qi touched his hand that day and pretended to be experienced. The one he touched was the one that was scratched today. That beautiful and slender hand was held forward: “Here, this is the hand you touched. You received the interest and didn’t feel bad at all, and even pinched my fingers in the door.”

Lu Qi: ……

Certain toe-clenching images were playing on loop in his head!

He defended himself weakly: “But you said to go…..to a hotel, and you said it was expensive…..”

“What I meant was to find a quiet place to talk.” Mu Nanqiao held his chin and smiled meaningfully. “What were you thinking at the time?”

Lu Qi: “……”

He silently squatted down, pointed the hair on his head at Mu Nanqiao, and reached out to lift up the plush carpet on the ground.

Mu Nanqiao leaned forward curiously and asked: “What are you looking for?”

Lu Qi put on a straight face and said seriously: “I remember there is a crack in the floor.”

Mu Nanqiao couldn’t help it anymore. He leaned on the soft sofa and laughed without any care for his image.

Buzz—

The lights came on as the electricity returned.

Lu Qi jumped up in embarrassment: “Okay! It’s not dark anymore, you should go home quickly!”

He reached out his hand to grab Mu Nanqiao’s hoodie, pulled him up, and pushed him out the door.

Of course, he couldn’t actually pull such a big person. Mu Nanqiao cooperated as he was pushed out the door. When the door was about to close, he turned around and asked:

“By the way, do you still want to draw the human body?” Mu Nanqiao winked, his eyes full of cunning. “If it’s you, I’ll let you draw it for free.”

Bang—

The door closed in front of Mu Nanqiao.

A muffled sentence came from the door: “I’m sorry I thought you were…..”

Mu Nanqiao knocked twice on the door: “It doesn’t matter. After all, this is an industry that relies on looks, so I’m honored to have received your recognition.”

There was a clanging sound inside the door, which probably meant that the Holy Sword of Physics placed by the door had been knocked over.

Mu Nanqiao turned around, took the keys from his pocket, and unlocked his door.

He changed into his slippers at the door, inadvertently turned his head, and saw the smile on his face in the reflective decorative pattern of the shoe cabinet.

Half-squatting was uncomfortable, but Mu Nanqiao maintained this posture for a long time. He stared at his face with that unfamiliar smile, and a well-known quote came to his mind in an untimely manner:

The young master hasn’t smiled like this in a long time.

The layout of apartment 502 was actually similar to that of Lu Qi’s apartment 501, but due to the orientation problem, the lighting was darker and more cramped. Even though it had been renovated, there was still a faint smell of moisture.

There were lights everywhere in the apartment, and artificial light filled the entire space without any blind spots.

Mu Nanqiao moved into this forged light, his smile fading little by little.

There were obviously so many lights.

So why didn’t it seem better than that “little cabbage?”

. . . . . . .

Early the next morning, Lu Qi went out to the police station.

The soundproofing in the old apartments was not very good. He didn’t know whether Mu Nanqiao was awake or not, so he closed the door as quietly as possible when he went out, and also walked down the stairs quietly.

There was a small road that went north of the community. Not far from it was the police station, and diagonally opposite was Hengjin Secondary School. There were usually many luxury cars coming and going to pick up the young ladies and young masters of various families. It was unknown who parked their car at the entrance of the alley today. The car’s logo was Maybach.

Speaking of which, Lu Qi was different from most boys and was not particularly interested in cars. The reason he recognized these two M’s stacked on top of each other was because one time, a financial sponsor asked him to do a commission where the boss and the driver were doing some oral stuff on the hood of the car.

The reference model he was given at that time happened to be the one in front of him.

He coughed and drifted past without a sideways look, fearing that his impure eyes would contaminate this pure and expensive luxury car.

As he passed by, the back door of the Maybach opened, and a thin man wearing rimless glasses with a folder got out of the car and asked with a cellphone in his hand: “Boss? Boss, are you awake? I beg you to wake up!”

Lu Qi: ……

This anxious tone was really pitiful. Sure enough, there was no such thing as an easy job, and capital would not let you enjoy a penny for free.

After receiving a sympathetic look from the handsome passerby, the assistant wiped his face sadly and listened to his boss’s instructions on the phone.

“I didn’t sleep well.” The boss’s voice was harsh and low, with a lazy tone. “Tell that group of elders from the Mu family that I was busy receiving a guest last night and I’m too tired to go today.”

The assistant had begun following Mu Nanqiao after graduation and knew the boss somewhat. He asked anxiously at once: “Mr. Mu, did you encounter any trouble last night?”

“En,” Mu Nanqiao said, “But I called the police.”

The assistant: ……

That was a good idea.

He heard the boss sigh quietly: “Thanks be to a society ruled by law.”

The assistant didn’t dare to speak, and only dared to point out flaws internally. He really felt that the boss’s tone was full of regret. If it weren’t for a society ruled by law, the boss would have bricked the family’s seniors into a wall.@@novelbin@@

He was thinking about work, and had to interrupt his boss’s sighing. “If you don’t go to the meeting, are you sure they won’t flip the table?”

“The table in the conference room on the top floor is made out of mahogany and weighs several hundred pounds. Can the table be flipped?” The person on the other side of the phone chuckled lightly. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow. I haven’t mentioned my car yet. Have them pick me up in a Cullinan. I’ve never sat in it, only admired the trunk.”

The assistant didn’t know how someone admired a trunk. Then he heard his unpredictable boss say: “By the way, help me contact Haicheng Law Firm.”

The assistant opened his memo: “What do you need consulted?”

“It’s not me.” Mu Nanqiao on the other side paused. “It’s just to help my…..”

The assistant waited for a while: And? Your what?

Mu Nanqiao thought about it for half a minute, but still didn’t say the word ‘friend.’ “My neighbor.”

The assistant: ? ? ? You’re hiring one of the best law firms in the country for your neighbor? You are truly a good neighbor of China.

As if knowing his question, Mu Nanqiao let out a long sigh. “It can’t be helped. I owe him a painting, and I can only wear underwear.”

The assistant: Boss, you’re so naughty, ah.

But your neighbor is also not a standard neighbor.

“Achoo!”

Lu Qi, who had just walked out of the police station, gave a heavy sneeze.

Rubbing his nose, he whispered softly: “Doesn’t this mean someone is gossiping behind my back…..”