Snow shrouded the windows.
Through the bright, expansive windows, the entire room’s palace-style décor could be seen.
Once the lights were turned on, its luxury was fully revealed.
This was Shen Lingxi’s new room at Lu Manor.
In the bathroom, the sound of running water started and stopped.
After washing, Shen Lingxi carefully wrapped a bath towel around herself.
Beneath the milky-white, warm fleece, her two long legs were snow-white and slender. Her knees, however, were an alarming red, hurting as though someone had sprinkled them with extra-spicy barbecue seasoning.
Shen Lingxi let out a listless sigh.
“Where am I supposed to get some medicine?”
The manor was enormous, but there was no one she could ask for help.
Just before this, Fu Jinglan had carried her all the way to the door of her room when Pangpang had come running over, crying and making a fuss.
Jiang Qingyan had suddenly developed a high fever, become dizzy, and fallen down the stairs.
Fu Jinglan should be over with Jiang Qingyan.
Mu Suizhou was forceful and cocky, but he seemed a little easier to talk to than Fu Jinglan. Unfortunately, he had left to deal with something.
There was also the kind Aunt Hui.
Ever since she had taken a car to look for Fu Jinglan, she had not returned. Shen Lingxi did not know whether the car had broken down or what had happened.
The bathroom was stifling with hot steam.
Shen Lingxi straightened both legs so she would not pull at her wounds, then forced herself to move a few steps. She reached out and pushed open the door, then picked up the hair dryer and began drying her hair.
Before a minute had passed,
a sexy male hand suddenly reached in from the side, and several medicine bottles landed on the vanity.
“Apply it yourself. I don’t like women with missing skin and flesh.”
“It affects the look when you’re waxing.”
Shen Lingxi was startled and instinctively turned toward the door.
The hot blast from the hair dryer was thus aimed straight at Fu Jinglan’s face.
The air froze for three seconds.
Shen Lingxi almost burst out laughing. “S-sorry.”
Fu Jinglan had also showered after getting soaked in the snow.
With one hand in his pocket, he leaned against the doorway.
His hair had naturally curled slightly after being washed, but the hair dryer had blown it into disarray. The man who had finally seemed somewhat obedient had returned to his cold and heartless self.
Fu Jinglan did not move an inch.
“Shen Lingxi, did you do that on purpose?”
Was she testing his limits?
Shen Lingxi hurriedly switched off the hair dryer.
“You weren’t in Miss Jiang’s room? I thought the person talking wasn’t human.”
Was Shen Lingxi insulting him?
And yet she kept calling her Miss Jiang, Miss Jiang, as though they were so close.
She had already forgotten that Jiang Qingyan had made her kneel as punishment.
Fu Jinglan raised his arm and ran his long fingers through his hair from front to back.
The disheveled strands lifted and then settled obediently again.
“Shen Lingxi, whether I’m in someone else’s room or in someone else’s bed, you have no right to ask.”
Fu Jinglan wore a black silk set of loungewear, faint vertical stripes gleaming beneath the sheen.
The bathroom was limited in space. With his long legs and tall stature, he radiated an oppressive force as he stood before her.
By comparison, Shen Lingxi looked so small and delicate.
Was Daddy angry again?
Shen Lingxi could not help retreating two steps, only to bump into the vanity and be forced to stop.
The sudden halt made her body tremble.
Shen Lingxi promptly covered her chest, alert.
Then she turned her face aside, blinking as she cautiously studied Fu Jinglan’s expression.
“Are you angry? I’m sorry. I’ll behave from now on. I won’t cry, make a fuss, or ask questions.”
Even if Fu Jinglan died in some woman’s bed, she would not ask.
Fu Jinglan frowned. “You—Shen Lingxi, do you think I’m very old?”
What was wrong with this mischievous monkey now?
She was picking at everything.
Shen Lingxi could only hurry to think of a solution.
Got it.
“No. I call you ‘you’ respectfully because ‘you’ are in my ‘heart.’”
The voice of a twenty-year-old girl was very sweet.
It was also soft with ingratiation and appeasement.
Fu Jinglan seemed to really stop being angry.
He lowered his cold eyes and looked at Shen Lingxi’s tightly covered hands.
He could not see the scenery beneath them, but beyond her hands, her skin was tender and white with a rosy tint, with a few sparkling drops of water occasionally clinging to it.
It matched the red cord and pink wax perfectly.
Fu Jinglan suddenly felt that his throat was uncomfortable.
Tight, hot, dry, and thirsty.
He wanted a glass of iced liquor.
Fu Jinglan’s Adam’s apple moved involuntarily. “Shen Lingxi, are you still not going to apply the medicine? Do you want me to do it?”
“Oh—yes, yes, yes.”
Shen Lingxi turned to look at the several bottles of medicine.
There was anti-inflammatory medicine, painkillers, scar-removing medicine, and medicine to promote healing.
She picked up the painkiller first, bent deeply at the waist, and gently sprinkled the powder over her knee.
But it still hurt so much that she sucked in a sharp breath.
Whenever she could no longer endure it, she would let out two soft whimpers.
Delicate and weak.
Her long hair was still dripping wet, falling over both shoulders.
Droplets slid along the ends of her hair—drip, drip-drip…
Looking at the curled-up figure before him, Fu Jinglan seemed to see the grown-up Xiaosi.
Once, Xiaosi had been presenting flowers when she stepped onto stairs wet with champagne spray. The tiny girl had fallen straight down, scraping both her knees and arms.
After finishing the night’s fighting match, Fu Jinglan had immediately gone to bring Xiaosi some medicine.
At the time, she had just washed her hair too.
The way she applied the medicine was exactly the same as Shen Lingxi’s.
She had not even looked for somewhere to sit, simply bending over and applying it directly.
She must have been in too much pain to wait.
Afterward, she had busied herself making a bowl of hot noodles for her Little Brother. “Brother, have some.”
They had been awful.
Every time Xiaosi cooked noodles, Fu Jinglan had forced himself to eat them all.
Then he had even praised her, saying, “Xiaosi is so amazing”…
Shen Lingxi finally endured her way through applying the medicine to her left knee. The pain made her flesh tremble.
Just then, her head suddenly grew heavy. She was dizzy and in pain.
Shen Lingxi endured it again and again.
Finally, she raised her face and looked at the tall man standing before her.
Her eyes were brimming with tears. They shimmered again and again, on the verge of overflowing.
“It hurts so much, Fu Jinglan.”
“My head hurts, and my knees hurt too.”
“I miss Mom and Dad so much, and Grandpa.”
Her voice was filled with the grievances of someone who had suffered countless injustices.
After saying that, Shen Lingxi lowered her head deeply again and continued applying the medicine to her right knee.
Tears and water droplets fell together onto the floor tiles with sharp, scattered sounds.
Only after she had said those words to Fu Jinglan—and even called him by his full name—did Shen Lingxi realize that she should not have done so.
Fu Jinglan had said that he did not like unfamiliar people calling him by his name.
But Shen Lingxi had no one else to complain about her pain to. Everyone had left her.
Everyone.
At that moment—
“Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh~”
The sound of a hair dryer suddenly rang above Shen Lingxi’s head.
A warm current followed, repeatedly sweeping over her hair, accompanied by a long, clean male hand.
Fu Jinglan used one hand to smooth Shen Lingxi’s long hair and the other to control the hair dryer.
His face cold, he said, “Little Bunny, you’re very annoying.”
“You’ve splashed water all over my slippers.”
Bathed in the gentle breeze and warmth of the hair dryer, Shen Lingxi could not control herself. She cried until her back shook.
All the emotions she had carefully buried surged into her heart at once.
Her family had been destroyed and her loved ones killed. Her Little Uncle had left. She was living under someone else’s roof. Then Jiang Qingyan had appeared as well. She would not be able to leave Lu Manor until the snow fell again the following winter.
Shen Lingxi was the sort of clever little thing who would rather emotionally exhaust other people than herself.
For example, if she failed at learning to cook, she would punish every pot, bowl, utensil, and seasoning bottle by turning them upside down to reflect on their mistakes.
She would never blame herself for being bad at cooking.
But now, she had to coax Fu Jinglan, afraid that he would get angry and afraid that he would hit her.
Not only would he hit her, he would also make her count the strikes herself.
Besides, Shen Lingxi hated arguing and trading insults with Jiang Qingyan.
After finally finishing the application on her right knee, Shen Lingxi sniffed and straightened up with reddened eyes.
She did not forget to apologize. “I’m sorry, Governor. I shouldn’t have called you by your name.”
Looking at those watery red eyes, half the coldness faded from Fu Jinglan’s gaze.
“You already called me. At least you didn’t go outside and call me that in front of outsiders.”
She had even called him the Big Bad Wolf. What was his name supposed to matter?
A name existed to be called.
She only had to remember to call him Governor when she went outside.
Fu Jinglan reconsidered it, then suddenly realized something was wrong. Was he being a little too indulgent toward this newcomer?
Did crying give her the right to do anything?
He was most annoyed by women who cried and fussed.
Thus, Fu Jinglan changed tack. “Otherwise, should I make it up to you with another shot?”
Shen Lingxi’s shoulders shook with her sobs. “That won’t be necessary.”
Fu Jinglan could not be bothered to pay her any more attention.
The hair dryer did not stop.
The water in Shen Lingxi’s long hair sprayed out, splattering all over Fu Jinglan’s loungewear.
He absolutely hated the feeling of wet clothes clinging to his body.
It reminded him too much of fighting a match, when his clothes would be covered in wet sweat and sticky blood.
Fu Jinglan still remembered that smell.
It was awful.
With one hand, he pulled off his shirt and casually tossed it onto the vanity.
His upper body was naturally left bare.
The standard broad shoulders and narrow waist.
His skin was coldly pale. His pectoral and abdominal muscles were sharply defined, while the V-line cut deep before mysteriously disappearing into his low-slung black lounge pants.
The twin-snake tattoos at his waist remained vivid.
The black snake was imposing, the red snake vibrant.
The two were entwined together, as though they could neither finish circling one another nor ever break free—a fate that could neither be escaped nor unraveled.
Shen Lingxi secretly glanced at Fu Jinglan, continuing to sniffle as her shoulders trembled.
Fu Jinglan lowered his eyes and frowned down at the person before him.
“Stop crying, Shen Lingxi. You’re making me very irritated.”
Shen Lingxi immediately pouted. “I won’t cry anymore, Governor.”
She reached out again for the hair dryer in Fu Jinglan’s hand.
The person in front of him was sobbing softly. “I can do it myself.”
But with that single tugging motion, the pain in Shen Lingxi’s knee began to throb violently.
Her leg went weak, and she staggered straight into Fu Jinglan’s bare body.