Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
Advance chapters available for patrons on Patreon. And a chapter can be sponsored by buying me a ko-fi.
Gu Nian came out of the bathroom, quickly dried her hair with a hair dryer, and couldn’t wait to go downstairs. But when she got to the living room, she realized that she had failed to catch up to him.
The white gift box placed on the table was empty. The lid of the box was propped diagonally between the box body and the table. Only a piece of translucent white frosted dust-proof paper rested alone in the middle.
The things inside were gone.
Gu Nian turned her head blankly and looked around. Luo Xiu didn’t seem to be on the first floor either. She was about to turn around and go upstairs when she saw an open notebook lying next to the box. There seemed to be a casual message on it. The black pen used to write it was still rolling around next to it and the pen cap was not capped.
Gu Nian walked over curiously and bent down to pick up the notebook, muttering to herself: “We live in the same house. Why do you need to leave a message when you can communicate things by just knocking on the door and saying a few words?”
There was nothing special about the words in the notebook. It was in Luo Xiu’s handwriting, but it seemed a little sloppier than usual.
[I have gone back to the room to take a shower, you can wait for me in the attic first]
There was only such a simple sentence. Gu Nian flipped through several pages and read it several times, but she didn’t find any other mystery.
She felt even stranger.
After tilting her head and thinking for a long time, Gu Nian found nothing. She bent down and put the notebook back, preparing to follow Luo Xiu’s instructions and go to the attic to wait for Luo Xiu.
But just as she turned around and the pink rabbit on her feet jumped out, Gu Nian’s figure suddenly stopped again.
After being frozen on the spot for two seconds, Gu Nian turned her head with a strange expression, then she walked back and picked up the notebook again. Then she brought the notebook so close to her eyes that she seemed to be using a magnifying glass to look at it.
And the fact was as she perceived——
The handwriting ignored the original horizontal lines of the notebook and went up diagonally; a whole sentence was missing the final period; and after scribbling, the last hook of the last word “I” if you saw closely, even showed some traces of trembling.
Gu Nian’s face became serious.
She put down the notebook again and glanced at the rollerball pen that had been thrown aside without even capping.
None of these details matched Luo Xiu’s normal emotional state.
It should be said here that even when Luo Xiu was in an abnormal emotional state, he had never behaved so abnormally since Gu Nian had met him.
He was so abnormal that he was almost not like the Luo Xiu who was gentle to her no matter what happened. He seemed like another kind of extremely cold and careless Luo Xiu.
Gu Nian couldn’t think too much. After letting go of the notebook, she turned around and ran upstairs. After walking up the stairs to the second floor, Gu Nian went straight to Luo Xiu’s room.
The door was ajar. Gu Nian stood in front of the door and hesitated for two seconds before calling softly: “Luo Xiu?”
Then she opened the door and walked in.
The bathroom was inside the suite. Gu Nian made sure that there was no one in the bedroom, then she went straight through the door of the bathroom. From there, she heard the faint sound of water flowing from the direction of the bathroom and saw the suit jacket thrown on the floor at the door of the bathroom.
Only the jacket.
Gu Nian walked over uneasily and puzzled, picked up the jacket from the ground, and gently shook it by the shoulder line, trying to hang it on the coat rack next to it.
Then Gu Nian’s eyes stopped at the middle of the jacket – the bottom button of the suit jacket was only hooked by the last thread and was crumbling, as if it was accusing her of the torture it had suffered not long ago.
Gu Nian thought of something and hurriedly raised her eyes, looking at the bathroom door where there was still the sound of rustling water ringing out.
Luo Xiu only took off his coat before entering the bathroom.
Either he was in a hurry or in an irritable mood, so the coat was ripped off and thrown to the ground.
Gu Nian clenched his coat until it was slightly wrinkled. She finally couldn’t bear it anymore, took two steps forward and knocked on the translucent glass door of the bathroom.
“Luo Xiu? Are you in there? ….Are you okay?”
“…”
There was no response from inside the bathroom except the sound of splashing water. Gu Nian waited patiently for a few seconds and heard the shower being turned off and the sound of water stopping.
Then a low, slightly deep voice sounded: “I’m here.”
“——”
Gu Nian let out a sigh of relief.
But she didn’t completely let go of her worries. She hesitantly leaned in front of the door and said, “I saw that you threw your clothes outside. You seemed to be in a hurry. Is there something you forgot to take? Do you want me to help you get it?”
The bathroom was silent again.
Gu Nian was so entangled that her heart twisted together. She didn’t know what happened, but she didn’t dare to ask rashly for fear of making Luo Xiu’s emotional state worse.
While Gu Nian was struggling, the voice in the bathroom seemed to be getting closer: “Nian Nian, can you go to the attic and wait for me? I’ll be fine soon.”
Gu Nian hesitated: “If there’s something wrong…don’t you need me to accompany you?”
“I’m fine.”
“…Okay, then come up quickly?”
“Um.”
“…”
It was quiet outside the door.
The girl’s footsteps gradually faded away until they disappeared. Luo Xiu closed his eyes and leaned back against the cold porcelain wall.
The soaked white shirt and black trousers clung to his body. The shirt was almost transparent with water, revealing his coldly white skin, sunken collarbones and undulating chest muscles.
Black broken hair hung wetly in front of his forehead, covering his eyebrows and eyes. The bridge of his nose was sharp and thin, and his thin lips were tightly pursed with his pale skin as red as bleeding.
He just stood there with his head bowed, his closed eyelashes trembling, his hands pressed against the wall beside him clenched silently, such that his veins were slightly exposed.
The coldness that enveloped him was a fear that Luo Xiu had never felt before, greater than life and death.
She lay on the lazy sofa alone in the attic. It was a double bean bag that she bought specially from a furniture store. She threw it in the attic and opened the ceiling to the glass skylight mode, which was perfect for lying in the sun during the day or looking up at the stars at night.
Unfortunately, the first time she officially tried it after buying it, she didn’t seem to be in the mood to enjoy it at all.
Gu Nian lifted her eyelids and raised her arms above her eyes, using the light from the light next to the attic to tell the time on her watch.
Another five minutes had passed, why hadn’t he come yet…
Gu Nian’s thought had not completely drifted away, when with a soft click, her eyes suddenly darkened, and the display on the watch dial disappeared into the darkness.
Gu Nian didn’t have time to react and was stunned for a moment before she quickly lifted her upper body from the beanie bag and turned to lie on her side to look behind her.
With the faint light cast from below the stairs, she could still make out the slender figure standing at the top of the stairs.
“…Luo Xiu?” Gu Nian asked uneasily.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Why did you want to turn off the lights suddenly?”
“It’s too bright for stargazing.”
“Oh…” Gu Nian responded doubtfully. She patted the free space on the bean bag next to her, “Come here quickly?”
“Good.”
Following Gu Nian’s words, the figure walked over. Then parked himself next to her on the bean bag.
The moonlight lined his figure.
Gu Nian’s eyes had already adjusted to the darkness. She sat up and waited for Luo Xiu to sit next to her. Then she stretched out her arms and held Luo Xiu: “We…”
Her words suddenly stopped.
Gu Nian lowered her head and looked blankly at the arms of the person she was hugging. Through the thin black pajamas, all Gu Nian could feel was an almost icy chill.
After regaining consciousness, Gu Nian suddenly shuddered, and without thinking, she raised her hand and stretched it towards Luo Xiu’s naked and slender neck.
Before she had even touched it, Luo Xiu raised his hand and held her hand.
And the temperature of his hand was the same. If she hadn’t seen it with her eyes, she would have almost thought that she was being held by something made of ice cubes.
Gu Nian’s face tightened little by little. She didn’t say anything, but instead held Luo Xiu’s wrist.
“Did you just take a cold shower?”
“…”
The girl’s expression was almost stern, and her tone of voice was cold and stiff. Her originally soft face now had a tightened jawline, as if she was clenching her teeth to hold back some emotion.
Luo Xiu slowly released his knuckles from the girl’s slender wrist. Then he lowered his eyes and said in a low and hoarse voice, “I’m sorry.”
Different from usual, it was a weak and almost sick voice.
Gu Nian felt distressed and angry after hearing this. She clutched his arms and wanted to tighten her hold on it, but she still couldn’t bear it.
So, she took a breath and raised her eyes: “Didn’t we agree that you can do whatever you want and use whatever method you want, but only the self-torture method won’t work – you can’t treat your own body like this.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Luo Xiu sighed. He leaned forward slightly as if he wanted to hug her, but stopped, “I just needed to calm down.”
“…”
Gu Nuan couldn’t help but open her arms and hug him.
Luo Xiu noticed that her half-lidded eyelashes trembled, and he wanted to stand up and hide away: “Nian Nian, my body is too cold, you…”
Before he could finish his words, Gu Nian, who was holding him, suddenly became strong enough and did not give him a chance to dodge. She even seemed to have calculated the angle at which he would stand up and directly pressed him onto the bean bag.
This time, there was no way to avoid it, so he threw himself into it.
Luo Xiu instinctively raised his hand to protect the person in his arms.
The air in the attic went quiet.
The girl who held him firmly and didn’t allow him to struggle at all turned her face into his chest. She felt a trace of warmth slowly return to his cold body. So, Gu Nian tightened her arms and spoke calmly.
“You sleep with the bean bag tonight, and I will sleep with you.”
“…”
The air then fell silent.
Gu Nian came back to her senses from the extremely annoyed mood, and her face suddenly became hot when she remembered the words she had just spoken carelessly. But at the critical stage of preparation, she could not show a trace of weakness or regression.
So, Gu Nian tried her best to stay calm and changed her words as if nothing had happened: “…Tonight you lie down on the beanbag, and I will lie down on you.”
She paused and said in a stern tone, “This is your punishment.”
After a long moment of silence, a muffled and helpless laugh came from above her head.
The sound followed the slightly rolling Adam’s apple, passed through his chest, and sneaked into her ears. It was like dragging countless small feathers along the way, tickling her while happily hitting her heart, and then slipping away from every pore of her limbs.
Gu Nian’s face became even hotter.
She closed her eyes hard, trying to bring back her senses and raw feeling. Beauty could not sway her! Even a voice that was too nice won’t work!
“I’m sorry,” the slight vibration in the chest made the sound in her ears even more magnetic, and even the sighs were full of emotion and alluring. “I made you worry.”
“…”
Gu Nian was quiet for a while and whispered: “You also know.”
Luo Xiu sighed softly and raised his hands to hug the girl’s shoulders and back comfortingly.
Gu Nian’s head moved, and she rubbed her head on his chest, then slowly raised her head, her chin resting on his chest, as she looked at him with a serious face: “So what happened now? Are you ready to tell me?”
Luo Xiu’s body rested on Gu Nian’s back.
Gu Nian waited for a long time, but still didn’t hear anything. She frowned, and finally used her trump card: “You promised me that you would never hide or deceive me about anything in the future.”
“…I know.” Luo Xiu hugged her tightly, “I don’t want to hide it from you, I just didn’t know how to say it.”
Gu Nian’s eyebrows furrowed even more tightly, but her tone was pretending to be relaxed and joking, “Well, it turns out that Mr. Luo Xiu, who has done everything possible, also feels embarrassed and doesn’t know what to do sometimes?”
After Luo Xiu was silent for a while, he laughed to himself and whispered: “I will always be troubled when it comes to matters related to you.”
“——?”
Gu Nian raised her head unexpectedly.
Facing the dim eyes that were dyed black by the night, she was stunned for several seconds before asking uncertainly: “Is it related to me?”
“Um.”
Guys, ads are my only source of revenue, so please do not turn on the AdBlock when you are accessing this website…. Thank you, this would be a great help…
You can buy me a ko-fi and sponsor a chapter on: https://ko-fi.com/midnightrambles
Or access advance chapters on: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=45665005
If you support me, I would be able to provide more chapters….
2 thoughts on “SMBY Ch. 74.1”