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…