Chapter 14

9:00 AM (1)

Drunk, Xu Muzi was relatively easy to talk to.

As soon as she heard that Deng Yun was there to pick her up, she immediately let go of the handrail on the stairs and clung to him as a more reliable support.

In the moment Deng Yun securely held Xu Muzi, she relaxed and opened her arms, burying herself in his embrace.

This kind of unreserved trust caused him a momentary distraction.

However, Xu Muzi, still hazy from her drunkenness, urged, “Aren’t you here to pick me up? Why aren’t we leaving yet?”

Deng Yun carried Xu Muzi up to the second floor and asked where her room card was.

Too drunk and too sleepy, she couldn’t open her eyes and mumbled, “Room card… probably in my pocket.”

Xu Muzi was wearing a thick bathrobe over her floral dress. Deng Yun reached into the pocket of her bathrobe and felt her phone and the room card…

The card was placed close to the sensing door lock, and with a “beep,” the door opened. Deng Yun used one hand to push the door open while holding Xu Muzi and carried her inside.

Aside from the frequently ventilated common areas, which had some unique aquatic plants like small pineapples and lilies, each room had the same air freshening product.

At that time, they were using sweet orange essential oil, which was very faint as it dripped onto the mineral stone.

Xu Muzi had only been in the inn for five hours, yet the room was already devoid of the scent of sweet orange essential oil, filled instead with her own fragrance.

Completely unaware, after being carried back to the room and laid on the bed, she wrapped herself in the sheets and fell asleep.

This room brought a certain sense of torment to Deng Yun.

Xu Muzi’s washed intimate garments hung in the bathroom with the door ajar, filled with steam.

A few discarded dresses were piled on the sofa, there were several hair ties on the table, and on the other side of the double bed were a power bank and a comic guide from the inn…

After several turns, the items piled on the bed were pushed to the edges.

Xu Muzi’s calves peeked out from under the hem of her dress and the sheets, with a red mark on her ankle still visible.

Among the group of people drinking in the screening room, probably no one would have been thoughtful enough to remember the electric mosquito repellent.

She had been bitten by mosquitoes and had a mild allergy. Lying on the pillow with her head turned, her hair softly pressed underneath, there was a small, red, swollen circular mark behind her ear.

In this everyday scene, Deng Yun suddenly turned his gaze away.

The small white chrysanthemums on the balcony swayed gently, and it didn’t feel right to leave a drunk person alone in the room.

He couldn’t go in or retreat.

The rain continued to fall, and the bedroom was stuffy since the doors and windows weren’t open.

Deng Yun moved a chair, navigating around the large suitcase and backpack spread out on the floor, and sat by the window, silently watching the rain outside.

He recalled how she looked the last time she was drunk.

The last time Xu Muzi was intoxicated, she acted like a serious sheriff on a mission, insisting on running down the street to catch snowflakes.

When stopped, she would recite that she definitely hadn’t drunk too much.

She even accused Deng Yun.

She asked if he found her annoying and deliberately planned to leave her on the side of the road while she was drunk.

The cool girl who had been taciturn before leaving was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a lively chatterbox.

Deng Yun found it amusing to ask, “Why would I leave you by the side of the road?”

Xu Muzi, tipsy, half-closed her eyes and spoke like a fortune teller.

She said, “Deng Yun, you’re not honest. Human nature is complex, and people have many sides. There’s a sunny, positive side, so naturally, there’s also a dark side, the kind you’d rather not show. There’s nothing embarrassing about admitting that.”

“Hmm, so where am I being dishonest?”

After the spiritual chicken soup lecture was over, Xu Muzi unwittingly confessed, using herself as an example in a silly manner: “I don’t believe you haven’t felt this way. Just now, I thought that if you drank too much, I was planning to leave you on the side of the road…”

“Are you that heartless?”

“Who told you to laugh at me in the car?”

That night, Xu Muzi still insisted that she was very clever.

As if afraid he couldn’t hear her clearly, she leaned closer through the softly falling snow and whispered to him, “I have a backup plan.”

After saying that, her eyes sparkled, fixed on him with a look that seemed to say, “Come on, tell me you want to hear my insights.”

Deng Yun suppressed a smile, saying, “…I would like to hear more.”

“Wait for me to show you.”

Xu Muzi tried to pull her phone out of her down jacket pocket, but her clumsy mittens hindered her movement.

After several attempts, she finally managed to pull out her phone with a thumb-up gesture.

Xu Muzi took off her gloves and pulled up her Weibo page.

She had posted a status visible only to herself: “I’m out with Deng Yun.”

“Look, you brought me out, so you have to take responsibility for me. If anything happens, you can’t just walk away from this.”

What Xu Muzi didn’t notice was that there was more than one post on the screen. Another line of text revealed her vulnerability:

“Xu Muzi, you are an idiot.”

With her new large-screen phone, there were indeed other posts that flashed by Deng Yun’s eyes as Xu Muzi moved.

Maybe because she was feeling unwell from drinking, Xu Muzi frowned in her sleep and tossed and turned frequently.

Deng Yun took Xu Muzi’s room card and left for a while. When he returned, he boiled some hot water with a bottle of mineral water and prepared a cup of hangover medicine while he himself opened a can of chilled herbal tea.
—-
In the past, Deng Yun knew many things about Xu Muzi.

He knew how she acted when drunk, and he knew how she looked when she was disheartened and cried;

He understood the reasons behind her insomnia and her rebellious thoughts, as well as the low points in her life.

He knew she was a paper tiger and that she would tremble when she kissed.

But that was all in the past.

Now, there was probably more he didn’t know. The most puzzling thing for him was how to handle Xu Muzi.

The outdoor temperature was low, and the fog was heavy. After boiling hot water, the glass window had a layer of condensation.

Rainwater slid down the blurred glass, and Deng Yun tilted his head to finish the entire can of herbal tea in his hand.

After letting the hangover medicine cool down a bit, Deng Yun brought it over.

Xu Muzi was awakened.

She groggily sat up against the headboard, still finding it too hot and refusing to drink from the mug.

She seemed to get lost in thought for a moment, then suddenly asked Deng Yun, with evident dissatisfaction, why he had to eat that piece of pineapple tart at breakfast.

Steam drifted from the mug, slowly dispersing into the air. After drinking too much, Xu Muzi tended to talk more:

“I did tell you before that I easily get caught up in my thoughts and overthink.”

“I also mentioned that I’ve been told I’m dull and boring, so for a while, I was even more afraid of communicating with people and didn’t dare to refuse others.”

“But that’s not how it is now.”

“Do you think I’m still the same Xu Muzi from before? You have no idea how much I’ve gone through; I’ve changed a long time ago…”

After analyzing herself, the familiar routine began.

Xu Muzi started explaining to Deng Yun that she didn’t say, “I’m allergic to pineapple,” but rather, “I’m almost full,” and the thought behind that.

She said that she shouldn’t casually disclose her allergies to strangers; it was her sense of safety.

In the past, she had heard on the news about a middle school student who was allergic to peanuts but was deliberately induced by classmates to eat a dessert containing peanut butter.

Xu Muzi said, “Can you guess what happened?”

Deng Yun looked at her as she said, “That child couldn’t be saved; he died.”

To Xu Muzi, there was no need for him to help her out of the situation; she felt she could handle her relationships well now.

Her words implied she looked down on Deng Yun for being overly protective.

Deng Yun didn’t expect that after several years, Xu Muzi’s fixed performance when drunk would still be to accuse him.

He even chuckled softly.

That smile, however, was quickly caught: “You’re smiling again!”

“I’m not laughing at you.”

Xu Muzi’s thoughts seemed trapped in the maze of the “pineapple tart” issue, repetitively bringing up the same points.

At first, Deng Yun patiently responded, saying he wouldn’t do it again.

But when he saw her struggling to keep her eyes open, refusing to sleep and stubbornly holding on to this matter, he decided to change his strategy.

When Xu Muzi asked him for the umpteenth time why he had to eat the pineapple tart, Deng Yun changed his answer: “I wanted to eat it.”

Xu Muzi looked at him blankly.

“Your friend described it too enticingly, so I wanted to try it.”

Xu Muzi was at a loss for words, holding her cup in silence.

Her thoughts were quite chaotic.

It seemed she had an obsession, hoping to win against the person in front of her in this debate so that she could resolve her discomfort and properly digest the rib soup and bread rolls in her stomach.

But after her opponent clearly relented, she didn’t feel the joy of victory.

Instead, she felt very stifled.

Deng Yun saw Xu Muzi frown and reminded her, “Drink the medicine first.”

Perhaps the drunkenness had eased or perhaps she was finally too tired to keep it up, Xu Muzi quietly finished her medicine and, within minutes, fell asleep again.

She was sitting up, and her posture was quite awkward.

Deng Yun had no intention of staying in Xu Muzi’s room for long.

It didn’t feel appropriate.

Before leaving, he wanted to help her adjust her sleeping position so she could sleep more comfortably.

But as he leaned closer to support her back, she unexpectedly wrapped her arms around his neck.

Xu Muzi held on tightly, burying her head in the crook of Deng Yun’s neck, her warm breath brushing against his skin.

“Xu Muzi, don’t breathe on my neck…”

But it was no use.

Deng Yun felt his entire body tense up, resisting as Xu Muzi kept her arms wrapped around him.

He rearranged the pillow before attempting to get her to loosen her grip.

When Xu Muzi finally let go and lay back on the pillow, the tip of her nose brushed against Deng Yun’s chin.

The herbal tea was wasted, unable to suppress his lingering feelings.

At that moment, he felt an impulse to put aside all his thoughts and kiss her, but in the end, he restrained himself.