Chapter 085: The Atmosphere Suddenly Turned Strange

Chapter 085: The Atmosphere Suddenly Turned Strange

Madness. It had to be madness. Every one of them had gone mad.

The world had turned deeply unreal, as though Li Ruobing were watching some bizarre film, lifted clean out of her own life and set down outside it as a bystander.

She watched Su Qingying come out of the bathroom with a basin in her arms, the basin heaped with the clothes and the bedsheet fresh from the wash and spin.

She watched Su Qingying walk out onto the balcony, slide each garment onto a hanger, lift her arms to hook it up, then pat the hanging clothes flat with her palm.

“Honey, there’s no room for the bedsheet.”

“Coming, coming. I’ll get the rack.”

Their voices had already taken on a distant, floating quality.

She watched Wu Chen come out of the kitchen, go into another room, and reappear a moment later carrying a portable folding drying rack.

Wu Chen set the rack up in the living room.

Su Qingying carried the basin over to him. The two of them pulled the washed bedsheet open between them, each holding one end, shook it out, and draped it over the rack.

“Honey, did you check the pot?” Su Qingying cried out suddenly and trotted toward the kitchen.

“It’s done. I turned off the heat. Don’t panic,” Wu Chen said, looking back.

The two of them went into the kitchen one after the other, and were soon out again with plates in hand. The food went on the table. Li Ruobing, still fogged and drifting, heard the invitation as if through water, and accepted it.

Clack.

“Miss Li, your rice. Is that enough?” Only when Su Qingying had filled a bowl and set it down in front of her—she was already seated at the table across from the pair of them—did Li Ruobing surface from that sleepwalking state.

“Uh… it’s enough. Thank you.” The answer came out slow and dazed, and with it she finally came fully back to herself. She looked at the two people across the table, then turned and looked around the room.

The balcony window stood open. The hanging clothes swayed gently in the breeze.

In the gap between the coffee table and the TV cabinet, the folding rack had been opened out, the bedsheet spread across it. The scent of lavender laundry detergent filled the whole apartment.

It was real. All of it was real.

Li Ruobing looked across the table again.

Su Qingying’s posture was flawless, exceedingly ladylike. She would never bend her waist, round her back, or let herself slouch. It was a habit built over years, not something she put on.

She had taken the apron off. She wore only the blue men’s pajama top and trousers, and her hair was down again, the waves lending her back a little maturity. But the expression on her face just then was full of that little-woman softness.

Li Ruobing’s pupils shrank.

Because she noticed that under the front of the pajama top there were points showing… She had nothing on underneath. When she’d gone to change, she had simply left everything off and put on Wu Chen’s pajamas and nothing else.

Had it already… gone that far?

“Honey, try this. It’s been so long since I cooked. Tell me if it’s too salty…” Su Qingying was putting food into Wu Chen’s bowl, laying a piece of lean meat there.

Wu Chen tasted it and smiled. “Just right.”

“Miss Li, please, eat. Hurry, try it.” Su Qingying turned to her with a polite smile.

“Oh… mm…” Li Ruobing made a vague sound, drew a deep breath, and forced herself calm.

She looked over the dishes on the table.

Four dishes and a soup.

Moo shu pork, scrambled eggs with yellow chives, white-cut chicken, salted boiled shrimp. The soup was winter melon soup.

All very simple home-style dishes. By the look of it the white-cut chicken had been bought ready-made at the market rather than cooked here, and the rest were easy enough to manage.

It could fairly be called plain fare.

Li Ruobing had nothing against plain fare. It was only that… Su Qingying had made these dishes.

She picked up her chopsticks, took some of the scrambled eggs with yellow chives, and tasted it. It was actually rather good. Nowhere near a chef’s level, certainly, but easily up to the standard of a housewife.

“Is it good?” Su Qingying asked, with great anticipation.

“It’s good.” Li Ruobing nodded and produced a smile.

“Too salty?”

“No. Just right.”

“Then have plenty.” Su Qingying was genuinely happy, and the delight showed on her face.

She had done a thing her family forbade her, and she had done it well. How could she not be happy?

The three of them began to eat in earnest.

Li Ruobing truly had no appetite, and she wasn’t sitting through this out of politeness either. She was here to find out exactly what had happened.

“Miss Su, how long have you and Wu Chen… been together?” She opened the conversation herself, in a tone that was neither warm nor cold.

“Not long.” Su Qingying turned her head and looked at Wu Chen, her eyes brimming with fondness.

“We… I suppose you’d call it love at first sight. Love doesn’t listen to reason. From the moment I saw him, I knew he was the one fate had chosen for me.” Su Qingying said it sweetly enough to set teeth on edge.

Li Ruobing did not believe one word of it.

She knew a woman like Su Qingying falling in love with a man would be nothing strange. But love at first sight? Absolutely impossible. With her family, what had she not already seen?

Something was going on. Definitely.

“I see…” Li Ruobing said.

“Oh, Miss Li—about you and my husband. He told me…” Su Qingying volunteered it herself, then lowered her voice. “The two of you aren’t a real couple, are you?”

Li Ruobing’s chopsticks stopped. Then her head snapped around and she stared straight at Wu Chen.

He had actually told another woman the secret the two of them shared.

Reading Li Ruobing’s reaction as nothing more than worry about a leak, Su Qingying said quickly, “Don’t worry, Miss Li. I won’t say a word. But please keep our secret too. Our relationship still can’t be known outside.”

Wu Chen went on eating, perfectly composed. Catching Li Ruobing’s look, he smiled faintly. “Eat. What are you looking at me for?”

Li Ruobing kept staring at him.

“Miss Li, don’t be angry.” Su Qingying reached over and pressed the back of her hand. “Truly, I won’t tell anyone. The two of you can keep the play running. Even if you’re affectionate in public, I won’t mind…”

“And you ought to understand my husband, too. Your couple relationship is fake, and he’s playing along for you, but he can hardly give up dating for your sake, can he? And once he’s dating, of course he had to tell me, to avoid misunderstandings… don’t you think?”

Su Qingying’s logic was crystal clear. And correct.

Hearing it, Li Ruobing felt distinctly uncomfortable.

It wasn’t that she thought Su Qingying was flaunting anything. It was that repeated “my husband,” one after another, that grated on the ear for reasons she couldn’t name.

“I’m fine. It’s all right.” Li Ruobing smiled at her, and the smile looked entirely natural.

The moment Su Qingying’s attention shifted back to Wu Chen, she dropped it.

“Honey, eat this…”

“Honey, try this…”

“Miss Li, has work kept you busy lately?”

“Miss Li, your skin is lovely. What skincare do you use?”

Su Qingying carried the conversation at the table. In the past she had never been permitted to talk this much over a meal. She had been stifled too long, so today she was especially talkative.

She was no sweet little fool. Her command of language was formidable and her logic exact—so much so that even Li Ruobing found it extremely hard to draw anything out of her.

She got nothing at all.

Su Qingying ate a little more than usual at this meal. Without noticing she finished a bowl of rice, then went and filled another half bowl, and finished that too.

And she was the first one full.

Her upbringing forbade eating quickly. Everything she did today was the rebound after long repression.

Though she was finished, she was still “feeding” Wu Chen.

“Honey, have the shrimp. Have more, hm?” She peeled them and put them into his bowl, again and again. It was cloying past bearing, and watching it, Li Ruobing grew steadily more irritated.

She set her chopsticks down abruptly and raised a hand to her forehead.

There was an impulse in her chest.

She didn’t understand why she was like this either.

A few seconds later she suddenly reached out, took a bright red salted boiled shrimp from the plate, snapped off the head, and stripped the shell.

“Honey, here.” Su Qingying laid another peeled shrimp in Wu Chen’s bowl.

“Here. Have some shrimp.” A second hand came over immediately after and laid a peeled shrimp in Wu Chen’s bowl as well.

Li Ruobing’s, of course.

Su Qingying froze, then whipped her head around to look at her.

The atmosphere in the room suddenly turned strange.