Chapter 60: Head Pat

After I go home tomorrow, can I still come find you?

Accompanying her, in the front passenger seat, was Bu Changqin, wearing casual pajamas.

The night was late and the dew heavy. He wasn’t comfortable letting his wife go out alone. Seeing this scene, he could only give a wry smile—they’d been played by Xing Yue. Still, it was harmless in the grand scheme of things. His temper had always been tolerant and easygoing.

“Yaoyao, really, at her age, to change her mind so suddenly. The last call said she’d be right down. Not even five minutes later, she says she’s not coming back.” Although his words carried a hint of helplessness, his tone held no reproach whatsoever.

Ji Wenyan was not so good-tempered. After being played by Xing Yue like this, her eyes were full of cold fury. “Xiao Yue’s career suddenly took a blow, and you were worried she wouldn’t be able to get through it? Looks to me like she has plenty of energy to stir up trouble.”

Bu Changqin placed a hand on Ji Wenyan’s shoulder and let out a long sigh. “My dear, we will still have to get along with Xiao Yue in the future. The relationship between you two is too tense. If not for Xiao Yue’s sake, then at least for Yaoyao’s. As the saying goes, ‘love the house, love even the crows on its roof.’ If your relationship with Xiao Yue is good, our daughter can be happier. Look at her these past two days—no appetite for anything, hasn’t stepped foot outside, even her birthday was joyless. Just don’t meddle in the affairs of those two anymore.”

Ji Wenyan looked down on Xing Yue. Apart from family background, the other main reason was that Xing Yue’s snake species wasn’t exclusively monogamous. And because of her current leg ailment, she couldn’t reveal her snake tail. Once her tail was healed, it meant Xing Yue would follow her nature and enter mating seasons—and those mating seasons would become a major catalyst for infidelity.

If Xing Yue didn’t treat her leg condition, she’d be in a wheelchair by forty or fifty at the latest. Ask any parent in the world: who would let their daughter be with someone disabled?

If fire snakes were also a promiscuous species, she wouldn’t have to worry at all about Bu Yao getting hurt. But fire snakes, for centuries, had not been ruled by their mating seasons. They were, in the entire world, the snake species that practiced true monogamy the most.

While other snakes treated infidelity as the norm, only fire snakes condemned it. After all, the current marriage law was also monogamous. Having few snakes capable of self-restraint didn’t mean there were none. Mating season wasn’t an excuse for cheating.

And now, many people had unconsciously normalized infidelity. To truly confront physical and emotional fidelity would take a very long time—maybe fifty years, maybe a hundred, maybe two hundred…

So how could she be expected to ‘love the house and its crows’?

That was why she hoped even more that Bu Yao could be with someone of matching family status, a snake that was monogamous by nature—less of this frivolous, colorful playing around with someone like Xing Yue.

The Bu family didn’t lack money, but they needed capable people to assist Bu Yao in taking over the family business.

Inside the room, Xing Yue had finished her shower and was washing clothes on the side.

Bu Yao was wearing her shirt, standing at the small kitchen counter, wiping dishes. The sink was full of bubbles from dish soap. She had probably squeezed out too much—she couldn’t even see the bowls, just blindly groping through the foam.

But Bu Yao was truly not someone meant for these tasks. She hadn’t been soaking her hands in the water for long before they felt numb and itchy. She didn’t dare scratch or pull her hands out, afraid that Xing Yue would dislike her for not knowing how to wash dishes, for not knowing how to take care of someone. She just randomly rubbed and wiped at the bowls and chopsticks.

Her hands were so unbearably itchy she couldn’t even hold a bowl steady. The piercing sound of shattering porcelain rang out in the room. The bowl Xing Yue had just bought not long ago smashed into pieces on the floor.

Bu Yao panicked. In her fluster, she knocked over the entire basin of water. Several plates, soup bowls—none were spared. The balcony floor was covered in dish soap bubbles and shattered, broken dishes…

Hearing the noise, Xing Yue came out of the bathroom, clothes she was about to hang to dry still in her hands. At a single glance, she saw Bu Yao standing frozen like a child who’d done something wrong, looking at her with helpless anxiety, those hands full of foam, red and swollen.

She set down the clothes and walked over.

Bu Yao opened her mouth to mutter, “Xing Yue, the bowls you bought are too slippery…”

Xing Yue nodded in agreement. “Mhm, mhm, and gravity is too strong too.”

She took Bu Yao’s hands and held them under the running tap, rinsing off the foam. The red rash on the wrists and the backs of her hands was clearly visible, as well as on her palms and fingers.

Bu Yao was not only allergic to latex but also to chemical detergents. This was likely the first time in twenty-eight years she had touched dish soap.

After rinsing her hands clean, Xing Yue lifted Bu Yao horizontally into her arms and set her on the bed. She fetched a clean towel, dried Bu Yao’s hands and feet, and then rummaged through the medical kit for calamine lotion.

“Did your hands not feel anything? They’re swollen like this, and you were still soaking them in dish soap?” As she spoke, she shook the anti-itch calamine lotion well, then used a cotton swab to apply it to Bu Yao’s hands.

Xing Yue admitted it. Bu Yao was born for the life of a pampered young lady. You couldn’t argue with fate.

“I was afraid you’d say I can’t even wash dishes.” The woman sounded wronged, her hands uncomfortable, her heart aching, her nose stinging.

Xing Yue lightly flicked the rash-covered hand. “Was I wrong about you, then?”

In the past, Bu Yao had never cared about this kind of thing. So she couldn’t do something—so what? Her family had plenty of people to wash dishes for her. Why should she know how? But ever since last night, when Xing Yue had voiced her disdain that she couldn’t do anything, she’d started to care.

There was no one else here—just her and Xing Yue. There weren’t a lot of people to wash the dishes. If she didn’t wash them, then Xing Yue would have to. And that meant Xing Yue would become the servant who washed dishes for her in the household.

Only if she washed dishes together with Xing Yue would Xing Yue not become a servant.

Seeing Bu Yao suddenly fall mute and not argue back, Xing Yue’s gaze shifted from the allergic hands and looked up. “What? Sulking?”

Bu Yao shook her head, not speaking. She crawled into the covers. “After I go home tomorrow, can I still come find you?”

Xing Yue asked back, “Does my answer matter?”

Not important. Whether Xing Yue allowed it or not, Bu Yao was going to come anyway.

Although Xing Yue really didn’t want to admit it, her attitude had softened somewhat after being intimate with Eldest Miss Bu. No matter how cruel her words were, she still went soft when Bu Yao cried and crawled into her arms.

Xing Yue was, at heart, a very delicate, tender person. Even though Bu Yao hadn’t boiled the water successfully, hadn’t finished washing the dishes, in her eyes, Bu Yao had started boiling water, had tried washing dishes.

She would think: had those words been too hurtful, making Bu Yao suffer with her hands like this, too afraid to even tell her?

After Xing Yue cleaned up the balcony and hung the laundry, she had just climbed into bed when the little furnace snuggled in, the snake tail also winding its way into her palm, seeking comfort.

Soft, cloud-like peaks blotted out her vision, full of warmth and fragrance, everything before her eyes plunged into darkness.

Bu Yao patted her head and said, “Just let me chase after you, okay… Jiejie…”