Qiu Wu slowly took a deep breath, slowly exhaled it, and tightened her grip on Luo Bai’s hand.
“I will send you back to your bedroom.”
She was no longer cautious and didn’t even wait for Luo Bai’s permission, semi-forcibly leaning the other woman against her own body.
Luo Bai did not refuse. She was probably truly exhausted; the woman lowered her head as soon as she spoke, letting herself be led into the bedroom.
Luo Bai’s bedroom was not much different from the one Qiu Wu lived in, only larger. In the corner, the housekeeper had already turned back into a square box.
Qiu Wu laid the woman down amidst the light gray bedding, tucked her in properly, and picked up the thermometer on the bedside table.
“38.1.”
Not a high fever.
Qiu Wu breathed a sigh of relief, touched Luo Bai’s forehead again, and said gently, “Wait a moment, I’ll go soak a towel for you.”
Luo Bai’s brow furrowed slightly, and she shook her head. “No need. The housekeeper already did that before, and I don’t feel…”
Before she finished speaking, Qiu Wu pulled the blanket up to cover her mouth.
The woman seemed to have grown brave once more. With her eyebrows slightly arched, she said with certainty, “Do you know what patients should do the most?”
Luo Bai: “()”
Being sick fell into her blind spot of knowledge, so she could only shake her head.
Qiu Wu patted the corner of her blanket and smiled, “Be a good girl and listen.”
Is that so?
The spirit of science was questioning and practicing. Luo Bai had no energy to question right now, but fortunately, she could passively practice.
Seeing that she no longer argued, Qiu Wu nodded with satisfaction and turned to leave.
Luo Bai was already exhausted by the fever, and shortly after coming into contact with the bed, she grew drowsy.
A faint sound of water echoed by her ear, and someone was calling her. “Luo Bai? Luo Bai? I’ll wipe you down. Sleeping like this isn’t comfortable.”
That voice was too low and gentle to summon much consciousness. Luo Bai murmured an “en” in response, not even clear herself whether this counted as agreement.
That voice gave a light laugh, the sound of water grew a bit louder, and shortly after, a touch of cool softness brushed against her forehead.
Last time, Luo Bai had been startled awake just like this. She struggled to open her swollen eyelids, but instead of seeing the housekeeper’s mechanical, cold face, she saw Qiu Wu’s face.
The woman lowered her brows and eyes, gazing at her with intense focus. Her eyes were filled with an emotion Luo Bai had never seen before and could not understand.
Yet she was truly pacified by this gaze, and an unfamiliar soreness welled up in her heart, while her body felt surrounded by warm sunlight, making even the dull pain caused by the fever lighten somewhat.
Unlike the housekeeper, the woman’s hands were warm and soft, with light calluses at the joints that brought a slight tickle upon contact. Luo Bai could not stop shivering, though she could no longer tell whether it was because of the fever or because of Qiu Wu’s touch.
The soft towel meticulously wiped across her cheeks, was soaked in water once more, and traced down her jaw toward her neck.
Luo Bai finally could not hold back, raising a hand to press against Qiu Wu’s hand that held the towel.
Through her blurry vision, the woman’s face was indistinct, and she only then noticed that she had shed tears at some point.
“What’s wrong? It tickles…” Qiu Wu’s voice abruptly halted, the tail end of her sentence even trembling slightly.
Qiu Wu swore that, at least before Luo Bai grabbed her hand, she had not harbored a single wandering thought.
Yet when she shifted her gaze away from the woman’s neck and saw Luo Bai’s face at that moment, she could no longer wipe with single-minded devotion.
Luo Bai’s originally fair face and neck were suffused with a gorgeous pink. Her brows were knitted into a ball, her lips pressed pale, and her detached eyes shimmered with watery light as she gazed at her anxiously.
No matter how she looked at it, she looked like she had been bullied by her.
Qiu Wu pinched her own thigh and turned her head, using the hand that had just touched cold water to fiercely pat her own burning face.
After a moment, she heard Luo Bai’s trembling voice. “No, it’s just that I feel a bit strange.”
“Then let’s just compress your forehead and skip your neck.” Qiu Wu hurriedly pulled the blanket over her and diligently continued applying the towel.
The little person inside her heart was laughing crazily, mocking her for hiding ten thousand ghosts in her brain, dancing disco all night long.
Qiu Wu changed the towel for Luo Bai every few minutes. When the woman’s temperature dropped to 37.5, it was already four in the morning. She endured for another hour, and after confirming that Luo Bai’s temperature was completely normal, she finally couldn’t help but collapse beside the bed and fall into a deep sleep.
“Ding-a-ling! Ding-a-ling!”
A crisp ring pierced the silence of her brain. Qiu Wu forced open her heavy eyelids and watched Luo Bai sit up from the bed, turn off the alarm, and, wearing a face that looked like she was about to pass out, prepare to roll out of bed.
Qiu Wu shoved the other person right back under the covers.
“What are you doing?”
Luo Bai was in a slightly better state, but her gaze was still somewhat dazed from just waking up, slowly drifting to her face. “I should send you to school and then go to work.”
Qiu Wu: “()”
She glanced at her phone and took a deep breath. “Big sister, your fever only broke an hour and a half ago. Do you go to prison if you ask for a day off from work at your company?”
Luo Bai: “There is indeed no such rule.”
Qiu Wu smiled with difficulty, her tone carrying a faint hint of impending collapse. “Then ask for leave! Who goes to work when they’re sick like this?!”
Luo Bai blinked slowly, staring at the ceiling for two minutes. “How do you ask for leave?”
Qiu Wu: “…Does your research institute not have rules?”
“No.” Luo Bai shook her head. “I have never asked for leave before.”
In the Seventh Research Institute, she was the only human; the rest were intelligent robots assisting with research, so there was fundamentally no need to request leave.
Operating on the principle of not arguing with a patient, Qiu Wu demonstrated the full process of how she requested leave from her counselor. As the head of the Seventh Research Institute, Luo Bai formulated the research institute’s leave regulations on the spot and personally approved her own leave application.
After finishing all this, half an hour had passed.
Having finished playing this large-scale game of house, Qiu Wu leaned her head limply against the edge of the bed and gently bumped it. “It’s seven o’clock. We might as well eat breakfast before sleeping.”
“Okay.” Luo Bai ordered food. Once again, it was the Eternity restaurant’s “light food,” insipidly tasteless to just the right degree. Qiu Wu was anxious to go sleep and stopped being picky, devouring it in a rush. When she looked up, however, she saw Luo Bai had only eaten a small fraction of her sandwich, her expression looking somewhat strained.
“What? Are you uncomfortable again?” She raised a hand to stroke the woman’s forehead, then touched her own. “You’re not warm?”
“It’s nothing. I just feel like it has no taste.” Luo Bai frowned as she looked at the sandwich in her hand. She had eaten this almost every day since she could remember, yet she had never found it as difficult to swallow as she did today.
Her tongue, tormented and soured by illness, was still lingering on the exciting flavor she had tasted last night, and her unrecovered brain also found it difficult to force her body into executing the command to swallow.
Qiu Wu looked at Luo Bai. The woman’s corners of her mouth drooped, looking genuinely aggrieved.
It was hard not to soften her heart.
“If you don’t want to eat it, don’t. Let me see if I can make you something else.”
Luo Bai’s eyes lit up, her brow unfurrowed, and she said without hesitation, “Okay.”
Then she looked hesitantly at the breakfast she had mostly left behind. “Then what should we do with these?”
She was probably just not used to leftover food. Qiu Wu originally wanted to say throw it away, but remembering that this stuff could buy ten jin of beef, she immediately said righteously,
“I’ll handle it.”
The breakfast portion was small to begin with, so she polished off what Luo Bai had left in a flash and pushed Luo Bai back to sleep. She herself dialed the number Qiu Rong had left behind last night.
“Hello, who is this?” Qiu Rong’s voice was hoarse, as if she hadn’t woken up yet, though her attitude was quite pleasant.
“Dr. Qiu, hello, it’s me, Qiu Wu. Miss Luo’s girlfriend.” Qiu Wu only then remembered that she didn’t seem to have introduced herself last night, and she didn’t know if Qiu Rong remembered her voice.
“I’m not that forgetful, Little White Flower.” Qiu Rong chuckled, the last few words vague and muttered like a murmur.
Qiu Wu: “What?”
“I’m asking what you need? Miss Luo’s fever should have broken, right?”
“Yes, it broke at five o’clock this morning. Thank you. I’m calling to ask, can Miss Luo really only eat light food, and absolutely no other food at all?”
The other end of the phone fell silent for a moment, and Qiu Wu’s heart inevitably grew apprehensive, terrified that Qiu Rong would say Luo Bai had to eat light food for the rest of her life. Remembering Luo Bai’s expression just now, she couldn’t bear to be cruel.
It would have been better if she had never eaten that bowl of spicy hot pot and never tasted any other flavors.
“I thought that after last night, you wouldn’t want to cook for her anymore.” Qiu Rong didn’t deny it, a teasing smile coloring her tone.
“I originally thought so too,” Qiu Wu paused, her grip on the phone tightening gradually, “but… I want to try.”
After coming to East Luocheng, she had passively learned many things.
Swallowing her anger, staying out of affairs, to protect herself from being hurt.
After doing this for so long, she had almost forgotten how she lived before she was twelve.
Back then, her two mothers, her grandmother, and she operated the small family farm together.
When her mother went out to sell goods, she helped her grandmother manage those crops.
West Luocheng wasn’t as advanced as East Luocheng; among the rural neighbors, there were frictions as well as times when they needed to help each other out.
She would help the aunt next door look after her children, and she would step in to stop things when someone came looking for trouble.
It wasn’t always pleasant, but being able to master her own life was fulfilling and carefree.
At least not like now, timid, overthinking, and overly cautious.
Luo Bai was different from all the people from East Luocheng she had encountered. The woman had an enviable background, yet her situation seemed even worse than her own, with the people around her not even allowing her to eat a normal meal.
Such a situation, coupled with the other person’s almost naive sincerity, made Qiu Wu long-lost to a sense of inescapable responsibility.
That was precisely what she used to do back in West Luocheng.
Qiu Wu wanted to take care of Luo Bai, and she also wanted to use taking care of Luo Bai to find her past self.
Fate had sent her to this place, and she did not want to silently vanish into a foreign land.
“Alright,” Qiu Rong didn’t ask any further. “I told you yesterday, Miss Luo’s digestive tract is very fragile. If you want to get her used to ordinary food, you must adjust slowly. Start with easily digestible, light ingredients, use less seasoning, reduce it to one-third of ordinary meals, then eat small, frequent meals, and eat slowly…”
Qiu Wu noted them down one by one. “Thank you, Dr. Qiu.”
“You’re welcome. I quite appreciate you,” Qiu Rong smiled. “Just call me again if you have questions.”
Hanging up the phone, Qiu Wu decided what to make, only to discover she didn’t have the delivery app for this place. She had no choice but to go find Luo Bai again, fortunately the person was still awake.
The woman sat up in bed, her eyes hazy as she listened to her talk about what vegetables she needed to buy. Hearing halfway through, she reached out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
Without understanding why, Qiu Wu handed her phone over. Luo Bai tapped a few times and handed it back. “I’ve recorded your fingerprint. Just buy whatever you want.”
Taking the phone back, Qiu Wu discovered that Luo Bai had downloaded the local delivery app for her, logged into her own payment account, and even entered her fingerprint.
In other words, she could swipe Luo Bai’s account however she pleased.
This could be considered starting her life as a kept mistress ahead of schedule.
Qiu Wu: “…Aren’t you afraid I’ll spend recklessly.”
Luo Bai looked at her with mild incomprehension. “If you want to buy something, buy it?”
Spending was spending; what did spending recklessly mean?
Qiu Wu: “()”
Unable to help whether to laugh or cry, she pressed her hand against the woman’s forehead and pushed her back into the mattress. “Thank you. I suppose I really have met a generous sugar daddy.”