Chapter 80 The Love-Brain Female Lead Awakens 23

Sang Ruo went all out and gave her parents a dazzling display of her cooking skills.

There wasn’t much time, so she couldn’t make anything too elaborate. She had only prepared a table full of home-style dishes suited to her family’s tastes.

For example, sweet and sour spare ribs that Mom liked, and stir-fried beef with celery that Dad liked.

Even so, the elderly couple were shocked speechless.

The two of them had already braced themselves. No matter how the meal turned out, they were determined to provide plenty of emotional support for their daughter. The praise, praise, praise policy would be carried through to the end. They absolutely could not dampen their precious girl’s enthusiasm.

When it came to praising their daughter, Old Sang was highly experienced. After whispering things over with his wife, they decided he would mainly be in charge of that job.

However, the truth was that for this dinner made by their precious daughter, the couple didn’t need to act at all.

Sang Ruo lay across the table waiting for praise. “Well? Well? Isn’t it amazing?”

Mom took a bite, set down her chopsticks, and got up from the table.

Old Sang said, “Honey, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to check whether there are takeout containers in the trash.”

Sang Ruo protested, “How can you say that? I really did make this with my own hands. Dad even went with me to buy the ingredients.”

Old Sang nodded, serving as his daughter’s witness.

Then he tasted the dishes himself.

After the first bite, his expression turned strange, and he glanced at Sang Ruo.

After the second bite, his expression turned even stranger, and he looked at Sang Ruo again.

By the time he had tried everything, he actually looked a little indignant.

Sang Ruo was exhausted. “What is it now with you!”

Old Sang said sourly, “There’s no way your first time cooking could taste this good. Tell me, which brat did you make food for before? Was he the one who got you to learn cooking?”

Sang Ruo felt guilty, but she wasn’t about to admit it. If she did, Old Sang would be very hard to placate.

She held her bowl and shoveled rice into her mouth. “Why are you bringing him up again?”

“Like I don’t know you. I’m your dad. How could I not know my own daughter is a Love Brain? You never showed any interest in cooking at home before. How could you suddenly go learn how to cook?”

In a way, Old Sang had actually hit the truth.

Sang Ruo said, “Not at all. It’s because your cooking is so good, Dad, and I can’t eat it at school, so I bought a pot and started cooking in the dorm. I make food for myself and my roommates when we’re craving something good.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

Old Sang was half-convinced. “Could it be you inherited my gifts and are naturally talented?”

Well, if thinking that made the old man happy, then sure.

Sang Ruo spent a week at home clinging to her parents and living like a useless baby who only had to reach out for clothes and open her mouth for food.

After wallowing long enough, she returned to Qingyang.

The internship training had begun!

MX’s training covered a very broad range, and it showed Sang Ruo a side of things she had never come into contact with before.

Her eyes were wide open through every class, and she wasn’t sleepy in the slightest.

So that was why the author she used to like had stopped writing.

So that was why the genre she used to love had never updated again.

She’d finally grown a brain.

The three days of training flew by. Sang Ruo passed the assessment with high marks and officially started work.

For content review work, practice made perfect. The hardest part was judging the limits in all kinds of gray areas.

Sang Ruo felt she had adapted quite well. She hadn’t received a single complaint.

Not only had she gotten a job that was fairly interesting, she had also met several like-minded coworkers.

Her job at MX had stabilized, but her plan to pursue Yi Chen’an had made no progress at all.

During this period, she had posted a few more Moments that were visible only to him.

The captions were things like, “Working late and going home alone always makes me feel a little scared,” and “When I walk through dark places, I always feel like someone’s following behind me.”

But that dog of a man, Yi Chen’an, let alone contacting her, hadn’t even left a single comment on her Moments.

Sang Ruo knew he had a habit of checking Moments.

So was the truth really that this dog of a man was completely ignoring her and didn’t care about her in the slightest?

She. Did. Not. Believe. It!

Sang Ruo was waiting for an opportunity.

Very soon, she got one.

That day, she was eating with a coworker at a restaurant downstairs from the company. They were seated by the window, and unexpectedly, she saw someone she knew.

Baby-faced Feng Nan.

Yi Chen’an’s friend, the one she had met before at his house.

After chatting for a couple of minutes, she found out that Feng Nan also worked nearby.

This whole area was an Internet Industrial Park, and Feng Nan worked at a large gaming company.

They had only met at noon, but by afternoon, dark clouds had crowded the sky, and a torrential rain began to fall.

It happened to be right when people were getting off work.

Sang Ruo hadn’t brought an umbrella.

But with rain this heavy, honestly, an umbrella wouldn’t have helped anyway.

She planned to call a car, but there were even more people nearby with the same idea.

Her place in the queue on the ride-hailing app had already reached over two hundred. By the time it got to her, the day lilies would be cold¹.

Sang Ruo took a screenshot of the ride-hailing page and posted it to Moments: An unexpected downpour. I’m stranded at the office.

Of course, it was still visible only to Yi Chen’an.

And still, there was not the slightest response from him. She was beginning to suspect her phone was so old it had broken.

Slumped over her desk, hungry and bored out of her mind, she had nothing to do.

She placed her phone face down on the desk. Out of sight, out of mind.

The moment she did, the phone vibrated. A message notification.

She opened it in surprise.

The sender wasn’t Yi Chen’an. It was Feng Nan.

[The rain’s coming down so hard, if Old Yi comes over to pick you up, he’ll definitely get stuck in traffic, and who knows when he’ll arrive. Why don’t you just take my car instead? Tell him not to come.]

Alas, where was there any Old Yi? There was only one pitiful girl the ride-hailing platform itself seemed to dislike.

Catching a ride with Feng Nan was one solution.

Sang Ruo agreed.

The road into the parking garage was also badly jammed, so Feng Nan picked her up at the company entrance, and she got a little wet in the rain.

Even her hair was damp and dripping.

Even though it was raining, the weather was still muggy, and Feng Nan had the air conditioner running in the car.

Feng Nan got ready to set the navigation. “Straight to Old Yi’s place?”

Exactly what she wanted.

“Sure.”

Feng Nan had something to do, so after dropping Sang Ruo off in the underground parking garage at Yi Chen’an’s building, he left. “I’ve still got something to take care of. You can go up by yourself, right?”

“No problem.”

Sang Ruo declared with absolute confidence.

But there really was a problem.

The elevator from the parking garage required keycard access.

“…”

So Sang Ruo had no choice but to wait by the entrance to the apartment building, the route Yi Chen’an had to pass on his way home.

Yi Chen’an came back later than Sang Ruo had expected.

She had originally planned to let him see her at her very best. At first, she even struck a few poses while she waited, but after waiting far too long, her legs went weak and her feet started to ache, so she thought she’d lean against the wall and squat down to rest for a bit.

And as it happened, things were just that coincidental.

She had only been squatting there a short while when she saw Yi Chen’an.

Looking at herself now, she was nothing more than a pitiful little thing crouching in the corner.

What a miscalculation…

Sang Ruo pushed herself up with a hand against the wall, her legs still a little numb.

“My internship is near Feng Nan’s company. Since it was raining so hard, he gave me a ride over.”

“Mhm.”

Mhm?

Just one word?

Did the Yi family charge by the word or something?

Yi Chen’an took out his car keys again.

“Come on, I’ll take you back.”

After all the trouble she’d gone through just to see him, there was no way she was leaving that easily.

She caught hold of the corner of his shirt and put on a pitiful look. “I’ve been waiting forever. I’m hungry, and my hair’s all wet too. Feng Nan had the AC blasting in the car just now, and I think I even have a bit of a headache-“

Yi Chen’an’s brows drew tightly together.

“Come upstairs first. Dry your hair.”

Oh yeah.

Once again, she stepped into Yi Chen’an’s territory.

Sang Ruo made a point of looking around. All those little things she’d deliberately left behind to make her presence known were still there.

Tsk tsk… so what exactly was this man being so stubborn about?

The last time they fought, she had left in a hurry, and some of her clothes were still here.

Sang Ruo took them first, then went to wash her hair and shower. When she came out fully dressed, Yi Chen’an handed her two cold pills, and she obediently swallowed them.

By the time she finished drying her hair, there were already two bowls of noodle soup on the table.

It tasted exactly like the one she made!

Yi Chen’an said, “I added the seasonings according to the proportions you told me, and I timed the noodles with a stopwatch.”

Oh? So he was pretty obedient after all.

This meal was not a comfortable one, really. Ever since Sang Ruo had laid her feelings bare, things between them had stopped feeling natural.

Yi Chen’an acted like a robot. Whenever he handed her something or came into contact with her in any way, he always deliberately kept a fixed, safe distance.

It was irritating.

She mechanically finished her noodles.

Sang Ruo was about to say something to break the awkward stalemate between them.

But Yi Chen’an spoke first. “Pack up the things you left here. I’ll drive you back.”

He was kicking her out!

She refused.

Ignoring him, Sang Ruo called him by his full name and asked bluntly, “Yi Chen’an, have you thought about what I said last time?”

Yi Chen’an frowned.

Like a little bandit, Sang Ruo pressed one step closer. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it at all. Then let me remind you one more time, I like you. I want to date you. When are you going to think it through and give me an answer?”

Yi Chen’an turned his face away. “Sang Ruo, stop fooling around. I’m not right for you.”

“Are you still rejecting me? I don’t accept that answer. And besides, who’s fooling around here? What will it take for you to believe that I really do like you?”

Yi Chen’an did not answer. “Hurry up and pack. You’re a young girl. It’s not appropriate for your things to stay here long-term.”

“Now you’re saying it’s inappropriate. Why didn’t you say that when I moved them here before? You say I’m fooling around, but shouldn’t those words be directed at yourself instead?”

Yi Chen’an took a deep breath. “Before, I didn’t keep proper boundaries. I apologize. Before, I treated you like a little sister. I didn’t realize you’d already grown up.”

That kind of talk again.

“I told you, I don’t want to be your little sister. I want to be your girlfriend, and later, your wife!”

Sang Ruo’s last sentence quite obviously made Yi Chen’an freeze for a moment.

But it did not last long.

Yi Chen’an came back to himself and repeated the same thing. “Pack your things.”

How could someone be this impossible?

Sang Ruo was starting to lose it.

She could leave, but her things could not.

She did not pack anything and planned to leave directly.

She stormed to the door, only to notice a bag on the shoe cabinet, one Yi Chen’an had carried back earlier.

The bag was slightly open, and Sang Ruo could see the paper box inside. It had the logo of a crispy pork rib shop.

That shop didn’t have a branch in Qingyang. There was only one in a small alley near MX.

So Yi Chen’an had gone to the Internet Industrial Park today. He saw her post on Moments?

No wonder he had come back so late.

She turned around. Yi Chen’an was right behind her, just about to change his shoes.

“You went to pick me up today, didn’t you?”

Yi Chen’an said nothing.

Sang Ruo hated this blockheaded side of him, never saying anything out loud.

“Why won’t you say anything? Did I guess right? You care about me, don’t you? Who would fuss over a girl with a different surname and no blood relation like this? And you still say what you feel for me is only an older brother’s affection for a younger sister?”

Director Sang bared her teeth and waved her claws as she demanded answers.

These past few days, the high wall Yi Chen’an had built around himself, shutting her out, had already worn away both her patience and her confidence.

The more she thought about it, the more wronged she felt. By the time she asked her final question, her voice had already turned tearful. “Yi Chen’an, do you like me or not? Please stop making me guess.”

Her eyes brimmed with tears, but the Yi Chen’an standing before her still said nothing. The hope in Sang Ruo’s eyes dimmed bit by bit. She sniffled, opened the door, and prepared to leave.

This man did not seem to feel the slightest bit sorry for her. She did not want to break down crying in front of him.

Suddenly, a hand reached out from behind her ear and pushed the door she had just opened shut again.

Sang Ruo turned around in surprise and found Yi Chen’an standing extremely, extremely close to her.

The tall man had trapped her in the narrow corner between himself and the foyer wall.

Yi Chen’an looked into her eyes, kept looking, as if he wanted to find some answer within them.

He asked, “Are you sure you want to date a man eight years older than you?”

He moved even closer. His breath brushed against her eyelashes as he spoke, making them itch.

Sang Ruo suddenly felt a little nervous. In a small voice, she asked, “Would an older brother stand this close to his younger sister?”

The man did not leave. Instead, he moved a little closer.

“Answer my question.”

Sang Ruo met his gaze without fear and said, word by word, “I only want to be in a relationship with Yi Chen’an. If he’s eight years older than me, then I’ll have a romance with an older man. If he’s eight years younger than me, then I’ll wait for him to grow up and have a younger man-older woman romance with him.”

The man clearly had not expected her to say that. Something new appeared in his eyes.

“You don’t understand me. Yi Chen’an isn’t just the man who jokes around and plays with you. He has another side you know nothing about.”

Stubbornly, Sang Ruo said, “Then give me the chance to understand you. Otherwise, I’ll never be able to.”

The moment she finished speaking, her chin was suddenly lifted, and the man bent down and pressed his lips to hers.

Caught completely off guard, Sang Ruo could only receive the sudden kiss.

He was not gentle in the slightest. The instant he seized her lips, he began to storm through them, wanting more.

Inside her city, he swept through like a bandit, plundering and claiming.

Under his fierce assault, she had no strength to fight back at all.

Sang Ruo’s heart was pounding wildly. She could feel the lack of oxygen and the dizziness setting in.

The man had no intention of letting her go. He caught her hand and placed it on his shoulder, making her cling to those broad, solid shoulders. As for him, both his arms had already locked around her waist, holding her tightly, so tightly.

Sang Ruo was really about to suffocate, so she reached up and grabbed his hair.

The man winced in pain and pulled back slightly.

But he still didn’t let her go. Resting his forehead against hers, he panted heavily. “Do you understand me a little better now? Aggressive, possessive, domineering, that’s all me, and it’s a big part of who I am.”

Sang Ruo was still in shock.

Yi Chen’an had kissed her, kissed her on his own initiative, and even kissed her deeply?

Did that mean her pursuit had finally succeeded?

Her lips now felt numb and sore. They were probably swollen too.

The man was displeased by her distraction. He bit her lip lightly. “Answer me.”

Sang Ruo opened her mouth, her voice soft and sweet in a way even she hadn’t noticed. “I really like it. I want more!”

From that close, she clearly saw the way the man’s Adam’s apple bobbed after she said those words.

Oh, damned sexy.

Sang Ruo leaned in and kissed it of her own accord.

The man’s fingers tightened even more around her body.

The little shorty who had been standing on tiptoe was lifted right up and set on top of the shoe cabinet in his arms. At this height, the man could kiss her without even lowering his head.

Sang Ruo’s lips hurt so much she let out a soft whimper and smacked his shoulder once. “Be gentler with me.”

This time, he loved her like the spring breeze, like the spring rain.

Translator’s Notes