“No, not that.” Regaining her composure, Qiu Wu tried to take back what she had just said.
“What does sugar daddy mean?” Luo Bai turned her head, looking completely sincere and eager to learn.
“Watch the road.” Suddenly feeling the guilt of corrupting an innocent child, Qiu Wu stammered out an explanation. “It means, well, they probably misunderstood and thought you were keeping me as your kept mistress.”
“What does being a kept mistress mean?” Nodding to show she understood, Luo Bai immediately lobbed an even more explosive question.
“How, how am I supposed to explain this to you?” Qiu Wu raised a hand to cover her burning face, wishing she could travel back one minute in time to cover her own loose-lipped mouth.
Luo Bai did not press her further. She turned on the vehicle’s voice assistant and said, “Butler, help me search for the definition of being a kept mistress.”
“Wait…” Before Qiu Wu could stop it, the emotionless, mechanical female voice rang out. “Being a kept mistress refers to a benefactor providing financial support to a kept person while maintaining a long-term sexual relationship with them. This is generally applied between an unfaithful person and an interloper in a marriage.”
Qiu Wu.
Luo Bai earnestly synthesized and concluded, “I have not given you money, we have not engaged in a sexual relationship, and neither of us is married. This is a normal romantic relationship, so I am not keeping you, nor am I your sugar daddy.”
Resting her forehead against the passenger-side car window, Qiu Wu was so embarrassed she wanted to shatter the glass and escape. “That is flawless logic, which is why I said they misunderstood.”
Her entire face was red, yet she still looked remarkably pleasing to the eye.
Luo Bai glanced at Qiu Wu and continued, “Why would they misunderstand?”
Today, Luo Bai was exceptionally fond of asking questions. Qiu Wu lowered her hand and gazed into the woman’s calm face.
Could it be that she also feels awkward just sitting here in silence with me?
Impossible to tell.
Qiu Wu temporarily gave up and answered the question, “Because you look very elite, and your car is very expensive, while I look like I have nothing to offer except my face.”
Luo Bai pondered for three seconds. “No, you are one hundred seventy-eight centimeters tall, which puts you above eighty-two percent of the people in Luocheng.”
“Thank you so much. What a novel form of comfort.”
“I am stating a fact. Besides, I do not quite understand what causal relationship exists between the price of my car and you being kept by me.”
“It is like this. Because when people look for romantic partners, they usually find someone who matches them across the board in property, family background, age, appearance, and so on,” Qiu Wu explained. “If one aspect is overly mismatched, others will assume that the weaker party is clinging to the stronger party, using emotional value to make up for the deficiency in objective conditions.”
As she spoke, Qiu Wu wanted to laugh again. She felt like she was currently scolding herself.
Luo Bai was very earnest. “Isn’t the most important thing in a relationship that you like each other?”
Such a standard answer, Miss Robot.
Qiu Wu smiled helplessly. “That is how it is written in stories, but in real life, people generally do not think that way.”
Luo Bai grew even more perplexed. “Since no one thinks that way, why write it into stories?”
“As for that,” Qiu Wu thought for a moment. “Perhaps it is because people are hypocritical. They do not want to suffer losses in their interests, so they choose the objective conditions that match best, yet deep down they still yearn for a soul mate unbound by reality. In the end, they can only pin that yearning onto stories.”
“Is that so?” Luo Bai mused for a moment. “I cannot understand it.”
Why would someone want something yet refuse to strive for it, choosing one path while feeling resentful about it?
“Heh, that is a good thing,” Qiu Wu laughed. “It shows you dare to follow your inner heart and also have the strength to achieve it. Since you have no such experience, naturally you cannot understand.”
“What you say makes sense. Without conducting experiments, one cannot obtain exact data,” Luo Bai agreed. “So, have you experienced it?”
Qiu Wu did not conceal the truth. “Of course, I am an ordinary person, after all. I have experienced it many times.”
A long silence fell inside the car. Luo Bai looked at the display screen, noting that it would still take another half hour to reach their destination.
After talking about so much, only fifteen minutes had passed?
Her brows knitted slightly. In the past, when she drove alone, her perception of time was never this drawn out.
“Let us play some music,” Qiu Wu suggested just as Luo Bai was about to search for what couples should talk about while driving.
“Alright. Butler, play a song.”
A lazy, husky female voice rang out, and the silent air began to flow. A slight lightness stirred within Luo Bai’s heart, feeling much like a problem that had just been resolved.
The lecture was being held in the lecture hall on the first floor of the scientific research building. Rows of red cloth-upholstered chairs were arranged in ascending order, surrounding the central podium. Qiu Wu followed Luo Bai inside without encountering any obstacles. The lecture hall was already sparsely populated with quite a few seated people, and the two of them walked over to sit in the second row. Many gazes swept over, primarily concentrating on Qiu Wu, likely because she looked nothing like someone engaged in scientific research.
The way they looked at Qiu Wu was just like the way Qiu Wu looked at them.
Everyone felt the other party was uniquely out of place.
Glancing past those gazes that mixed detachment with confusion, gazes that bore a faint resemblance to Luo Bai’s, Qiu Wu muttered inwardly.
Do people in scientific research all possess a sort of adorable cluelessness? The more formidable they are, the more adorably clueless they seem.
Her gaze fell upon Luo Bai, who was sitting upright beside her and staring straight ahead, and she struggled to suppress the corners of her mouth.
She was soon unable to laugh.
Professor Li Man was an elderly woman with white hair yet full of vigor. Her speech was rich in inflection, and judging from the occasional collective knowing smiles from the audience, her lecture was exceptionally edifying and entertaining.
There was only one problem: Qiu Wu could not understand a single word.
Her professional focus was on design rather than industry, making her essentially an art student whose understanding of machinery stopped at middle school compulsory courses. Even if Professor Li Man spoke on the most basic mechanical knowledge, it sounded like heavenly scripture to her.
Qiu Wu recalled the period shortly after she first arrived in East Luocheng, when she listened to an East Luocheng teacher lecture on a simple mechatronics collection class that did not exist at all in West Luocheng. She had felt the exact same way back then.
After all these years, she really had not made much progress.
The moment she listened, she grew sleepy; the moment she grew sleepy, she fell asleep.
After jolting herself awake with a sudden nod, Qiu Wu looked at Luo Bai.
The woman was entirely absorbed in watching Professor Li Man on the podium and had not noticed her abnormality.
Don’t sleep, don’t sleep, don’t sleep!
Qiu Wu pinched her own thigh secretly.
Falling asleep in the middle of a date was far too impolite!
Yet, just like when she was a child, pinching her thigh failed to keep her awake for even five more minutes.
Luo Bai was pondering Professor Li Man’s statement when her shoulder sank heavily, jolting her out of her own world.
Startled, she turned her head, her cheek brushing against a cluster of fluffy, soft hair carrying a faint, subtle pomelo scent.
Luo Bai.
She spent half a minute thinking before extending her hand beneath Qiu Wu’s nose, feeling her warm, steady breath.
She had fallen asleep, presumably.
Why?
During such a substantive lecture, she could fall asleep?
Should she wake her up? Professor Li Man was reaching a critical point in her speech.
Seemingly disturbed by her movement, Qiu Wu gently rubbed against her shoulder.
Through their clothing, Luo Bai could still feel her soft, warm cheek.
Better not. Since she could fall asleep, it meant this was unimportant to her.
Luo Bai turned her gaze back to the podium, yet she could no longer immerse herself in it as before.
She clearly felt a warm creature leaning against her.
In her limited life, she had never been leaned upon like this by anyone.
An hour and a half later, the lecture concluded and the question-and-answer session began. People continuously raised questions, which Professor Li Man answered patiently one by one.
Luo Bai had prepared her question long ago, but now she found herself uncharacteristically tangled in hesitation.
If she raised her hand to ask a question, she would inevitably wake Qiu Wu.
Luo Bai did not know what to do; she could decide everything about herself, but she had not yet learned how to decide whether someone else should wake up.
During the time she hesitated, the Q&A session ended.
The professor left, and the audience filed out successively. In the massive lecture hall, only the two of them remained.
The world quieted down. Listening to Qiu Wu’s even breathing, Luo Bai’s eyelids also slowly grew heavy.
What is wrong with me? Wanting to sleep before it is even rest time, Luo Bai tightly knitted her brows, forced herself to wake up, and began sorting out the takeaways from the lecture in her mind.
Mm.
Qiu Wu slowly opened her eyes and stretched comfortably. This nap had been so deep it felt as though separated by a lifetime.
Yet before her eyes was not the familiar dormitory ceiling, but a dim lecture hall with most of its lights turned off.
Wait, she seemed to have come out on a date with Luo Bai.
Her brain rebooting step-by-step, Qiu Wu turned slowly and met Luo Bai’s quiet gaze.
“You are awake. We should leave,” the woman said, flashing the time on her phone screen. “It is eight o’clock in the evening. In another half hour, the research building will close.”
“R-right, I’m sorry!” Qiu Wu sprang up instantly, her cheeks burning hot.
She had gone too far, not only falling asleep, but sleeping for so long and making Luo Bai sit with her for hours in an empty research building.
Even among normal couples, this was a grave offense worthy of a massive argument.
“It is fine. I had no other plans this afternoon.” Luo Bai stood up, her movements pausing for a fraction of a second as she raised a hand to rub her right shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I pressed too hard on it, didn’t I? I, I will massage it for you.” The more forgiving Luo Bai was, the more uneasy Qiu Wu felt. She rarely offended others to this extent, and in her panic, wanting to help Luo Bai massage her shoulder, she happened to grab Luo Bai’s hand, which was still resting on her own shoulder.
Luo Bai.
Her hand was abruptly seized, and she instinctively tried to shake it off. The moment she flicked it away, Qiu Wu’s hand, which was a size larger than hers and quite powerful, flew back like a startled rabbit.
Taking her owner along with her as she stumbled back several steps.
Followed immediately by a string of overlapping apologies. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry!”
The woman slightly taller than her kept her head down, her eyelashes trembling and her hands tightly clenched, not daring to meet her gaze.
Qiu Wu.
Qiu Wu was extremely nervous right now. If Luo Bai wanted to shake her off, she must truly be angry.
Past experience told her that she rarely had any margin for error.
Just as she wondered whether she should tactfully take the initiative to propose breaking up, soft footsteps sounded. Someone walked right up to her and grasped her hand.
The movement was very light, the touch cool.
Qiu Wu shuddered.
The woman’s fingers rested against her pulse, pressing down with a slight force. “You have been trembling the whole time. Are you alright?”
Qiu Wu looked up and caught sight of Luo Bai’s calm face.
She did not look angry at all; rather, she seemed genuinely perplexed as to why Qiu Wu was reacting so intensely.
This is Luo Bai, not someone who would vent her anger on her.
Qiu Wu’s heart slowly settled. Once the excessive tension faded, a trace of grievance even welled up, and she murmured, “Why did you shake my hand off?”
Luo Bai was somewhat unclear on how Qiu Wu had transitioned from apologizing to interrogating her, but she felt Qiu Wu’s question made sense. “This is my problem; I am not quite used to it. May I apologize to you?”
“It is me who should be saying sorry.” Finally relaxing, Qiu Wu teased, “But you should get used to it quickly. We are a couple, after all, and holding hands is completely normal.”
“Alright.”
When the two of them walked out of the research building, the sky had already darkened, but the surroundings were brightly lit. Quite a few people were strolling in the small plaza in front of the building, making it livelier than during the day.
As the cool autumn night breeze blew, Qiu Wu rubbed her exposed arms, pulled out her phone, and began searching for the nearest express ride home. “It’s too late now. You go back and rest, I’ll take a ride back my… Ah!”
Before she could finish speaking, she saw a message sent by Lin Ya.
Lin Ya: Big sister, did you forget there’s a curfew on Sunday?
Lin Ya: My goodness, you’re actually staying out overnight?
Lin Ya: Don’t forget to buy finger cots.
Qiu Wu.