Chu Li kept an eye on the cat: “Is it going to be okay?”
Pei Mo snapped back to attention: “It’s fine.”
“Just indigestion, ate a bit too much. I’ll hook it up to an IV drip for a bit, about two hours.”
“Li Li sis, why don’t you go rest in the waiting room?”
Chu Li wanted to stay with the little tabby, so she sat on the bench nearby while it got its drip.
The air conditioning inside was running strong, and she felt a little cold. At some point, without her noticing, Pei Mo had draped a coat over her, still keeping up his serious, professional demeanor while treating the cat.
“Careful, don’t catch a chill.”
The little tabby meowed, sprawled lazily, oblivious to the strange atmosphere in the room.
【If we’re going by the original text’s plot, Pei Mo already made a move on Li Li alone last time they met. This time, they’d go straight into a scene right here in the exam room.】
Chu Li: ?
Wait, did the original text even consider how the little tabby would feel about that?
This counted as abusing a patient, surely.
Good cat, bad person.
【Sure, he’s got ulterior motives, but that white coat’s really something. Inverted-triangle build, younger than the other guys too, they say eighteen is the prime age for that……】
Pei Mo noticed her staring, the corner of his eye lifting with a smile as he asked, “Li Li sis, what’s wrong?”
“You think I’m too young, that my medical skills aren’t reliable?”
That wasn’t it at all.
She was actually thinking about when, if ever, these outrageous bullet comments would stop being something only she had to endure.
【What Li Li’s really thinking about isn’t your age, though… speaking of age, actually……】
Good grief.
Chu Li really wanted to cover her eyes, lately she’d been forced to learn all sorts of strange, unnecessary knowledge.
These days, she often read too quickly. By the time her eyes caught up and registered what she’d just seen—
it was already too late. ovo
“What’s wrong, are your eyes bothering you?”
Seeing her gesture, Pei Mo leaned in seriously to check on her.
“Are you allergic to the cat fur?”
She lowered her hand. “No, I’ve just been staring at the computer all day, my eyes are a bit dry.”
Pei Mo grabbed a medical ice pack and crouched down in front of her. He wrapped it in a towel and pressed it against her eyes first: “Try this.”
“Should feel better once you use it.”
The ice pack was cold, and so were his fingertips.
Deliberately, he brushed against her wrist while her eyes were closed and she couldn’t see anything. His fingers slipped between hers, holding the ice pack in place.
Chu Li felt the dryness in her eyes ease a little.
But the atmosphere in the room turned even stranger.
【Tsk tsk, even holding an ice pack together feels weirdly charged.】
【Ice packs melt, you know, so in the original text, Pei Mo bites down on a corner of it, leans in close to Li Li, and asks in a low, husky voice if she could help him hold it in place with her mouth……】
Chu Li: “.”
So he really did know his science.
Pei Mo finished setting up the drip for the cat, who seemed quite cooperative.
It looked a bit better, and after a while, regained some of its energy, wagging its tail and starting to doze off.
“Li Li sis, pet it for me.”
Pet what?
Chu Li, eyes still closed with the cool ice pack over them, resting.
Hearing his low, unhurried voice, she assumed without thinking that he meant for her to pet the little tabby, who happened to let out a soft meow toward her at the same time.
She reached out her hand, and did indeed touch something like a tail.
But it didn’t feel like cat fur. Holding it, there was a faint prickly sensation, and Pei Mo let out a soft, pleased hum.
His voice dropped low, with a faint breathy catch at the end.
Chu Li: “!”
【Guessed it, Li Li? What you accidentally grabbed is the wolf tail Pei Mo’s wearing.】
Did he wear that thing to work too?
Chu Li took the ice pack off, the melted water dripping down her cheek as she pulled her hand back.
Pei Mo, in front of her, seemed to move a beat too slowly on purpose, pulling his white coat closed, letting her catch just enough of a glimpse of the now-hidden wolf tail before it disappeared.
“Sorry, Li Li sis.”
He tilted his head, blinking innocently: “I just pulled the needle out of the little cat. I wanted you to pet it, to comfort it.”
Chu Li: “……”
Yeah, sure, tell that to someone who’d believe it.
She pulled her hand back, the tips of her ears faintly red.
She kept her composure on the surface: “It’s fine, I respect everyone’s different preferences. I have plenty of anime friends who love cosplaying.”
Whatever Pei Mo wanted to wear wasn’t illegal.
She’d just ignore his flirting either way.
【Little tabby: Hello, is anyone still paying attention to me? Doctor, are you so lost in some illicit fantasy plotline that you’ve forgotten where you even are?】
Chu Li guiltily covered the cat’s eyes, acting like nothing had just happened, and stood up to leave from beside Pei Mo: “Since it’s all set, we’ll head out then.”
“Thank you for today, Dr. Pei.”
She made up her mind.
From now on, she’d be strict about monitoring the cats’ diets and would avoid coming back to this particular pet hospital, to avoid running into Pei Mo again.
Thinking about how Pei Mo had first approached her because of Shen Zhe—
Chu Li pinched her fingers and sent Shen Zhe a string of angry-punch emoji stickers to vent.
Shen Zhe sent back a question mark: “?”
Chu Li: “Sorry, I was busy talking to your cousin, sent it to the wrong person.”
Let the two of them go bite each other, redirecting the trouble elsewhere.
Shen Zhe looked at her message, a flicker of confusion crossing his brow. He pressed his fingers to his temple, thinking it over, feeling like something about it was off.
Chu Li……had just been with Pei Mo?
He’d just finished a racing practice session.
He tossed his helmet aside carelessly, and in the sweltering heat, the thought only made him more irritable.
He tipped his head back and drank some water.
One of his racer friends came over, leaning in without much sense of boundaries, grinning: “What are you looking so serious about?”
“Miss Xia was cheering hard for you out there just now, aren’t you gonna throw her a wink back?”
Shen Zhe looked over, and sure enough, Xia Zhi was waving at him not far away. To celebrate his win just now, she’d even had her assistant send over a huge bouquet of roses.
Shen Zhe frowned: “Didn’t you tell her I have a girlfriend?”
His friend threw an arm around his shoulder, laughing without a care: “I told her Chu Li’s just your childhood friend who’s been chasing after you since you were kids.”
Shen Zhe hesitated: “That doesn’t seem quite right, does it.”
The other guy gave him a playful punch on the shoulder: “What are you playing dumb for, aren’t these the exact things you’ve said yourself before?”
“You’ve never even brought Chu Li back to the Shen family home, and you don’t often bring her around to meet us either.”
Shen Zhe paused for a moment. Normally, hearing this wouldn’t have struck him as odd at all.
Today, holding a huge bouquet of roses, he didn’t feel that free, easy happiness he usually did, his mind was still stuck on that earlier text.
—Chu Li: “Busy talking with your cousin.”
He took a deep, irritated breath, and was about to call Pei Mo to demand what exactly was going on.
His friend, standing close by, had caught a glimpse of the message thread between him and Chu Li too.
He laughed, sounding like someone who’d been through it all before: “You’re really going to go interrogate your own cousin over this? Man, you really don’t get women.”
“The way Chu Li sent that.”
“She’s clearly trying to make you jealous on purpose.”
He patted Shen Zhe’s shoulder: “If you still want to keep living your free, easy playboy life like before, don’t fall for her trap.”
Shen Zhe thought it over for a moment.
Figured his friend had a point.
【Li Li: I already told you your cousin’s been trying to steal me from you. Whatever happens next, don’t blame me for it.】
【The original male lead sure is something else, with that level of obliviousness, no matter what business you start, you’re doomed to fail, hahaha.】
Shen Zhe still couldn’t see any of these comments.
He put the whole Chu Li matter out of his mind.
He tipped his head back, drank the rest of the water bottle, got himself back in the zone, and returned to the track to race again.
Every turn, every burst of speed pushed to its limit, was exactly the way he liked to live. The wind rushed past him as he cut through it, the crowd cheering around him.
But inside that crowd, there was never any Chu Li.
She only liked fooling around with him in bed. Or, in one way or another, quietly treating him as nothing more than a walking ATM.
She’d never cared about him, the actual person. What he liked, what he didn’t like.
Shen Zhe gripped the steering wheel, and in the middle of that high-speed racing environment, for the first time, a thought like this crossed his mind.
It left him feeling faintly uneasy.
As if, all around him, many things were quietly shifting, without his even realizing it.
Chu Li got a call saying Shen Zhe had crashed and hurt his ankle at the racetrack that afternoon.
It was a minor injury, but for someone who loved extreme sports as much as he did, it was a bit of a humiliation.
She couldn’t help laughing. “Really?”
Oh, that was a little mean of her.
Still, no matter how you looked at it, Shen Zhe was her sugar daddy, the source of her food and clothing.
Chu Li reined in her laughter, sniffling in a way meant to sound like she was choked up. “So how’s his injury, is he okay?”
The one calling her was Shen Jichu’s secretary.
In a soothing tone, he said, “Miss Chu, please don’t worry. The young master’s injury is minor, nothing serious.”
“President Shen has had him brought back to the family estate.”
The secretary paused, then, following Shen Jichu’s instructions, relayed his words: “Oh, and President Shen also said.”
“If you’re worried about him, you’re welcome to come by.”
When he’d first heard that instruction, he’d thought he’d misheard: “President Shen, is that really appropriate?”
Not long ago, Shen Jichu had offered Chu Li a breakup fee, wanting the two of them to split up.
If, in the end, Chu Li and Shen Zhe hadn’t actually gotten back together properly, inviting her over now would seem rather presumptuous.
Hearing this, Shen Jichu took off his silver-rimmed glasses.
He pinched the bridge of his nose lightly, his gaze deep, as if lost in thought: “Ask her if she’d like to.”
“If she wants to come.”
“Don’t stop her.”
In that instant, the secretary realized he genuinely had no idea whether Chu Li would want to come or not. But somehow, he could sense that Shen Jichu was hoping she would.
Even amid all these unspoken undercurrents, he showed almost nothing on the surface.
“President Shen?”
“Do you want her to come?”
The secretary, priding himself on being an attentive subordinate, felt it was his job to read between the lines, to help his boss achieve what he couldn’t easily say outright.
But as those words left his mouth, Shen Jichu’s expression froze for a moment.
He was holding a pen between his fingers, it stopped abruptly, then tightened in his grip. His eyes closed briefly, as if remembering that dream.
His expression made his intent unmistakable.
The secretary pressed on: “Should I go pick her up, then?”
Shen Jichu gave a dignified nod.
So the secretary made that call.
He thought to himself, of course, Miss Chu was such a gentle, lovely girl, she shouldn’t be subject to such prejudice. Sooner or later, President Shen was bound to accept her as his future sister-in-law.
【Dying laughing, is this what they call getting the wrong process but somehow landing on the right answer?】