“Is it my room, or our room?”
As she asked this, Lan Su felt like she was being a little deliberately foolish.
They were already legal spouses, yet she was still fantasizing about having a bedroom all to herself.
Clack.
The wheelchair, which had been moving forward, stopped, leaving a mark on the carpet.
Lan Su stopped in tow, her gaze shifting to the back of the woman’s head.
Huo Yan’s hair was tied up at the back, leaving a semi-long tail. The curly ends were fluffy, yet lacked the usual soft feeling, instead resembling a binding rope, loop after loop, restraining anyone near.
She tilted her head, but didn’t look back. She merely shifted slightly, gazing at the wall base of the corridor, and asked:
“Which one do you want to see?”
Answering a question with another question was indeed the typical style of someone in power.
Lan Su’s breathing hitched. Unsure of the meaning behind Huo Yan’s words, she pulled out her get-out-of-jail-free card:
“Either is fine. Whatever you arrange.”
The corridor light cast its glow, falling upon Huo Yan’s half-lowered eyelashes, creating a crow-feather-like shadow that concealed the emotion in her eyes.
“I don’t sleep with outsiders.”
She said.
Lan Su subconsciously wanted to say, I’m not an outsider, I’m an insider—your wife.
But then she realized that being able to sleep in a separate room from Huo Yan suited her just fine. So, she nodded briskly:
“Me neither.”
Under the corridor light, the half-lowered eyelashes moved slightly, seemingly displeased by Lan Su’s briskness. But in the end, this dissatisfaction was covered up, and she said nothing more than:
“That’s good then.”
On her first night at the Huo house, Lan Su couldn’t sleep.
Huo Yan had arranged for her room to be opposite the master bedroom, door-to-door. It was smaller than the master bedroom but much larger than the rooms in the Lan house.
The furnishings were complete: the closet was filled with her own clothes, as well as the ‘mistress’ clothing that Ai Li and others had recently bought for her. The dressing table was neatly covered with a large assortment of jars and bottles—all skincare products whose names she couldn’t recall but whose high price was immediately obvious.
The bed was a little too soft, like lying on a cloud with no sense of support.
The pajamas were hand-made ice silk, very slippery, feeling like she wasn’t wearing anything at all. Furthermore, they were a dress style she disliked, not pants. Even wrapped in the blanket, she still felt uncomfortable.
At two in the morning, she still had no trace of sleepiness.
Lan Su simply got up, drew the curtains, put on a coat, and went out onto the balcony to bathe in the moonlight.
The moon was exceptionally bright that night, casting a pure white glow that softly sprinkled onto her body. Her soft black long hair draped in front, outlining the curves of her chest. Her smooth, fair arms rested on the balcony railing. The scar on her right forearm, injured at age 12, had been removed by surgery; now it was smooth and delicate, like an egg.
She wasn’t used to such skin—too smooth, like a fake person. She preferred the rough feeling from her previous life of fighting, where she’d get small cuts every few days; that was what made her feel secure.
Now, only one scar remained on her entire body—the one she got saving Huo Yan that day, on the outer side of her left forearm.
This was the scar she hated the most, because it wasn’t the result of an honorable fight. Instead, it was an intentional injury, sustained to hide her identity and pretend she had no combat skills.
It proved that Huo Yan was the most dangerous creature in the world. On the very first day of getting close to her, Lan Su got hurt.
“But it doesn’t hurt.”
Under the moonlight, Lan Su slowly raised her head, looking up at the star closest to the moon. A gentle expression appeared on her bright face as she gazed into the distance at the star, just like when she was a child, snuggling in her mother’s arms, with a touch of childish yearning.
“Mom, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
She murmured, her voice scattering into the night wind.
The next morning, the maid Xiao Lan found the person curled up on the balcony sofa.
“Oh my goodness! Miss Lan, why are you sleeping out here!”
Lan Su was curled up on the single sofa, her head against her knees, hands hugging her ankles, completely shrunk into the shape of a baby in the womb, a tiny heap.
“It’s so cold out here!”
Xiao Lan lamented how alarmingly thin Lan Su was, managing to fit into a single sofa, while simultaneously wrapping a blanket around her for warmth. “Did you sleep like this all night?”
Lan Su sat up alertly, her gaze falling on the small figure in front of her, a young maid she had seen last night.
“Mhm.” She nodded. Her habitually humble nature made her instinctively explain, “The bed was a little too soft, I’m not used to it.”
Xiao Lan quickly said, “Then you should have called us! There are landlines with internal lines in the bedrooms. You could have called, and I’d have come up and changed it for you! Are you cold? Do you have a headache? Are you uncomfortable anywhere?”
Lan Su listened while studying her. This Xiao Lan seemed much livelier than the housekeeper Ai Li. Her baby fat hadn’t quite faded, and her eyes, especially, were bright and round. When she spoke, her pupils darted around, making her seem lively and spirited.
She resembled her younger sister, the Lan Xiao Yu who hadn’t yet been corrupted by the stench of the Lan family’s money.
“I’m not cold, it’s okay,” she said.
“Even if you’re not cold, it’s not okay… That, well, I just heard.” Xiao Lan pursed her lips, slowing her speech and lowering her voice. “The previous Madam was painting on the balcony one day and was shot with a nail. She almost died! Because our place is near the river, and there’s a forest across from us, it can be quite dangerous sometimes.”
Almost died.
Lan Su precisely caught this phrase, glanced at the door to see if anyone was around, and asked:
“Then, do you know how the three previous Madams died?”
Xiao Lan shook her head. “I don’t know that. When I arrived, the third Madam’s funeral had already been held. I only started working here this year.”
Only started this year.
Lan Su re-examined the small person in front of her, who was less than 1.5 meters tall, and tentatively asked:
“Are you an adult?”
Xiao Lan looked up, blinked, and blinked again, a look of sadness creeping onto her face as she explained:
“I’m just short.”
Lan Su pursed her lips: “I’m sorry.”
Xiao Lan, apologized to by her employer for the first time, quickly waved her hands: “It’s fine, fine, fine! People often doubt my age, hehehe, Miss Lan, you don’t have to be so polite!”
In reality, Xiao Lan was the same age as Lan Su, both 19. Xiao Lan was even older by a couple of months, but the nominal second Miss of the Lan family was already 20.
Xiao Lan sensed she had something on her mind, so she offered comfort:
“Miss Lan, actually, you don’t need to be so restrained. Honestly, if you need anything, or just want to chat, you can always find me. Although there aren’t many people in the house, everyone is very nice. Especially CEO Huo, even though she looks very fierce on the surface, she’s very thoughtful. Yesterday, we all initially agreed to call you ‘Madam,’ but CEO Huo said you had just arrived and weren’t used to it, so she told us to switch to calling you ‘Miss Lan.'”
Lan Su recalled that when she got out of the car last night, the housekeeper had indeed called her “Madam.” It seemed Huo Yan was indeed a thoughtful person, but she wouldn’t easily expose this thoughtfulness in front of outsiders.
After washing up, Xiao Lan led her downstairs for breakfast.
“CEO Huo wakes up very early every day. She plays with Mini for a while and feeds her breakfast before eating herself.”
“Mini?” This was the first time Lan Su had heard the name.
“Yes,” Xiao Lan’s eyes curved with a smile, making the name Mini sound bright. “Mini is CEO Huo’s pet. She has another pet too, named Bella.”
A pet.
Lan Su secretly conjured an image in her mind. Thinking of Huo Yan’s gloomy and ruthless appearance, the pet would likely be a terrifying large dog or a patterned snake from the tropical rainforest.
“Mini is a cat, and she’s so attached to CEO Huo!”
Disappointed. It was a cat.
If it was a cat, it was probably a fierce breed, like a Bengal cat, with brown fur and black stripes, narrow pupils, and an expression of arrogance and displeasure.
As she descended the stairs, Lan Su imagined this and superimposed the image of the Bengal cat onto Huo Yan, flashing back to the Lan family one month ago, where Huo Yan stood condescendingly, demanding to pull out everyone’s teeth:
“One person, I only need one.”
On the ground floor, Huo Yan was sitting on the sofa playing with the cat. Today she wore a dark blue shirt, the collar open, and the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, revealing her toned forearms. The black trousers were loose on the inside and tight on the outside, outlining the simple sketch of her long legs. Because her legs were bent, the trousers had ridden up a few inches, revealing a section of her ankle—slender and beautiful.
And Mini was languidly lying across her thigh.
Lan Su had guessed wrong again. Mini wasn’t a Bengal cat, or even a Persian cat, but a snow-white Thai Khao Manee, small like a snow-white ball, playfully waving its tiny paws in Huo Yan’s arms.
“Open up.”
Huo Yan squeezed a pea-sized amount of the cat treat tube and brought it to Mini’s mouth. The porcelain-white paw immediately cradled her hand, eagerly licking up its favorite snack.
Tap, tap…
Lan Su stepped onto the last stair. Just then, Huo Yan finished the first bite and looked up at her:
“You’re up?”
Mini followed its owner’s gaze, turning its head curiously. Its heterochromatic eyes, one brown and one blue, were exceptionally beautiful.
“Meow?”
For a moment, it felt fractured.
The decisive Huo Yan, the Huo Yan who carried a murderous aura in her every gesture, the Huo Yan whose single glance made Lan Su prepare for the worst, was holding a soft, affectionately playful ball of snow in her arms. It was like a savage wolf holding a basket of flowers.
What was even more fractured was that, although Lan Su found the sight strange one moment, the next moment she looked at it and felt a touch of harmony.
She even felt that the morning sunlight covering Huo Yan had brightened, and her entire being carried the scent of golden sunshine.
Not sleeping well definitely causes hallucinations.
Lan Su reflected.