Chapter 084: Li Ruobing Completely Loses It

Chapter 084: Li Ruobing Completely Loses It

Li Ruobing had well and truly lost it.

The whole drive over, she had wrung her brain dry running through every possibility, and she still couldn’t land on a single reasonable explanation. How had they ended up together? Why had Su Qingying called him honey? Su Qingying was not that kind of woman!

She understood where the problem lay. Not with Su Qingying. With Wu Chen. This man was truly, truly unfathomable, as if he belonged among gods and ghosts.

“You made it. Why are you looking at me like that? Have flowers bloomed on my face?” Wu Chen smiled, waved her in, and fetched her a pair of slippers.

Li Ruobing came in with her bag, kicked off her heels, stepped into the slippers, and looked around as she went. She knew the exact address of Wu Chen’s old family apartment, but she had never come upstairs. In an unfamiliar place you naturally looked twice. And she was looking for someone.

Wu Chen’s home was still thick with the texture of daily life.

He had moved out the day before yesterday, taking only clothes and toiletries. Everything else remained, and nothing had been especially tidied or cleaned.

Li Ruobing caught the smell of cooking. It wasn’t a mealtime, so she assumed it had drifted in from some neighbor’s window.

She also heard a low humming. Walking further into the living room, looking around, she noticed the bathroom door standing open. The washing machine inside was running.

Why Wu Chen was in the mood to do laundry at a moment like this, she had no idea.

“Where is she?” Li Ruobing reached the coffee table before she turned and asked.

Wu Chen raised a hand and gestured toward the kitchen.

Just then—

“Honey, is Miss Li here?” In the kitchen, Su Qingying stepped back a few paces and turned sideways to look out. The angle happened to give her a view of Li Ruobing, and Li Ruobing a view of her.

“Miss Li, it’s been a while.” Su Qingying smiled and greeted her, her voice soft and sweet, perfectly polite.

“Miss… Su. Yes… it’s been a while.” Li Ruobing stopped dead. Even her words came out stumbling.

Because Su Qingying had her hair tied up, sleeve protectors on, an apron at her waist, and a soup ladle in her hand. She looked exactly like a little wife at home, cooking.

She was cooking.

The dissonance was explosive.

Su Qingying had always been so bright, so glossy. A ten-billion-yuan heiress. A beauty out of this world. Someone to be admired from a distance, not profaned up close.

Cooking?

Cooking for Wu Chen?

She even knew how to cook?!

She did. Su Qingying genuinely knew how to cook.

At home she was never allowed to cook, or to learn—it would ruin her hands, they said. She had picked it up during her years studying abroad, from the nanny who looked after her.

Wu Chen hadn’t intended to have her cook for him.

She had raised it herself.

First she said she was hungry. Wu Chen said they’d wait for Li Ruobing and all go out to eat. Then she said she’d cook, that she knew how, that she wanted to host Li Ruobing. It was a kind of… state in which she had installed herself directly in the role of the lady of the house.

Wu Chen didn’t mind, so he’d agreed.

The water and power hadn’t been cut off, and there were still a few edible ingredients in the refrigerator, though not many. So before Li Ruobing arrived, Wu Chen had gone downstairs once for groceries. The market was close; he was back in a dozen minutes or so.

And Su Qingying wasn’t only cooking. She had taken the laundry on herself as well, washing the dirty clothes Wu Chen had left lying around, along with the bedsheet.

Wu Chen understood the impulse. She simply wanted to try out the ordinary life of ordinary people.

“Honey, you two talk. The soup’s nearly done. I’ll fry an egg and then we can eat…” Su Qingying withdrew again and went on bustling around the kitchen, thoroughly delighted with herself.

Li Ruobing’s face stayed blank. Slowly she turned her head toward Wu Chen, stiff as a woman with a…