Awkward.

Or rather, it was only Cheng Liang who was feeling awkward. The two girls in the room were very warm and friendly, with smiles on their faces. When they heard that an electrician would come to fix the air conditioner tomorrow, they both expressed their warm welcome and said that they would definitely cooperate actively.

Then he went downstairs, and because he was in a complicated mood. he took out the clothes that he had washed before and threw them into the washing machine to wash them again — the sound of the washing machine spinning would calm him down, and the scent of the laundry detergent when the freshly washed clothes were hung out to dry would also make him feel comfortable.

That bright, upright, and generous girl lived upstairs from him, and the sounds of opening and closing doors, footsteps, and talking that he heard at home could all have come from Sheng Xia.

Cheng Liang leaned against the doorframe, stared at the washing machine, and let out a laugh as he wiped his face.

He didn’t know why he was laughing, just as he didn’t know why he felt so flustered when he saw Sheng Xia.

***

The girls held their breath until they saw Cheng Liang enter the elevator and the elevator moved before they breathed out.

“Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn,” Tang Caixi muttered under her breath.

“Why doesn’t he just cut his hair if it gets messy so easily?” Sheng Xia understood Tang Caixi’s exclamation and brought up a new topic.

Tang Caixi choked. “…Sister, how did you manage to focus on such a strange thing out of all the important things just now?”

Doctor!

Landlord!!

Invisible tycoon!!!

And the hanging bandage around his neck!!!

Who would notice a strand of hair sticking up behind so many important points?!

Sheng Xia closed the door and thoughtfully added another sentence: “Has he lost weight……”

Tang Caixi was stunned for a moment and leaned forward.

Sheng Xia was startled by Tang Caixi’s face suddenly moving forward and asked, “What are you doing?”

“There’s something strange with you…” Tang Caixi squinted her eyes. “First, you asked him to cheer up when you were under anesthesia, and now you’re concerned about whether he’s lost weight.”

“I just think he’s acting weird.” Sheng Xia pushed Tang Caixi’s face away, pinched it, and explained lightly in the midst of Tang Caixi’s protest and screaming.

“Where is it weird?” Tang Caixi covered her face and angrily wanted to pinch Sheng Xia’s waist, but then she remembered that she had just a surgery a month ago and resentfully withdrew her hand.

Sheng Xia sat back at the dining table and picked up her chopsticks and bowl, but she didn’t answer right away.

She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was odd, she just felt that Cheng Liang, this person, was…… very angry.

“Maybe it’s because of his face.” Given that it was someone else’s business, Sheng Xia hesitated for a few seconds before giving up, “I just feel like he’s always so world-weary.”

Beneath his carefree and indifferent attitude was an anger he had nowhere to vent.

Tang Caixi bit her chopsticks and stared at Sheng Xia for half a minute, but she didn’t see any other emotions on her face. She decided to drop this topic.

That’s right, even the neutered stray cats downstairs were more hormonal than Sheng Xia.

This child, although she was already twenty-two years old and had lived honestly for twenty-two years, the only time she had ever been attracted to the opposite sex was when she was ten years old and fell in love with Optimus Prime from Transformers……

Emphasis: The animated version.

And she had loved him ever since.

“But living here makes it convenient for him to go to work at the hospital,” Sheng Xia felt a little envious.

The school she was admitted to was several subway stops away from here, and she had to transfer buses after getting off the subway.

Tang Caixi was completely speechless, losing interest even in this topic that could have been very gossipy.

“Yeah,” she also followed suit and said enviously, “it’s only a few minutes’ walk away.”

“Damn capitalism,” Sheng Xia murmured enviously, and the two of them never talked about their doctor landlord again.

Even though their lives had intersected objectively, they were still strangers after all.

They had many other things to talk about: Sheng Xia’s studies, Tang Caixi’s work, and the dishes they planned to make this week.

There were even the neutered stray cats downstairs that had mysteriously attracted back many wild cats.

***

At 7:30 the next morning, the very punctual Sheng Xia and Tang Caixi were already waiting at the door. When they saw a man leading a few people dressed as workers come out of the elevator, both parties were stunned.

“Dr. Zhou?” Sheng Xia recognized the man.

With his perennial glasses, wearing a white shirt even after taking off the white coat, and his scholarly demeanor, pushing his glasses up whenever he spoke seriously, he was too easy to recognize.

Xiao Zhou was obviously much more surprised than Sheng Xia. He pushed his glasses several times before nodding at Sheng Xia. “Ah… hello.”

Sheng Xia noticed that Xiao Zhou glanced at Tang Caixi several times before greeting her, and Tang Caixi, who always rushed forward in everything, hid behind her the moment she saw Xiao Zhou appear.

Sheng Xia looked at Xiao Zhou with interest.

Xiao Zhou looked away uncomfortably and rubbed his nose, intending to get straight to the point.

He was really scared, almost thinking that the matter of him scaring the patient’s family outside the operating room had been exposed…

“…That…” He spoke with some lack of confidence, “These guys will help us look at the circuits…”

Really, one shouldn’t do bad things.

Xiao Zhou couldn’t imagine that the patient’s family he had scared to tears outside the operating room and the patient themselves actually lived right across from him…

“They might need to enter your place when checking…” he continued with a hardened scalp.

At that moment, the elevator dinged again, and Cheng Liang walked out of it with several bags of food in his hands.

Xiao Zhou: “……”

Didn’t this person say that he didn’t care about anything and that he would just leave it to him?

“I brought breakfast,” Cheng Liang, now a responsible landlord, said with an upright face, dragged half of his body that wouldn’t at will, and brought breakfast for ten people.

“Didn’t you say you didn’t care?” Cheng Liang had bought sticky rice and soy milk. After taking a few bites, the workers began to take out their tools to start working. Sheng Xia and Tang Caixi led the workers into their room first. Xiao Zhou, eating his sticky rice, asked with a muffled voice.

“Do you know that when I was in my first year of high school, I was addicted to games and my grades dropped to the bottom of the year,” Cheng Liang sipped his soy milk and looked at Sheng Xia and the others.

How could someone have such a straight back at all times? Her posture was too good. She must have had extreme self-discipline all the time.

Xiao Zhou looked at Cheng Liang bewilderedly, not understanding why this topic was so long-winded.

“Afterwards, my homeroom teacher changed my seat,” Cheng Liang’s eyes were filled with vicissitudes, “and my deskmate became the top student in the year.”

“That person studied every minute and every second of the day, whether it was in class, after class, meals, going to the toilet, or sleeping.”

Xiao Zhou: “…………”

“When I played games during breaks, he didn’t say anything, he just asked me to lower my voice because he still had a few questions to do.”

“When I slept in class, he didn’t say anything, he would just tap and whisper to me that I was snoring, and he was afraid the teacher would hear it.”

Xiao Zhou: “……”

He didn’t understand why he was listening to this nearly thirty-year-old man’s story so early in the morning. He had only asked him why he came over.

“When the exam results came out, I failed the exam, and he listed out the knowledge points of the questions I got wrong one by one and put them on my seat without saying a word.”

Cheng Liang sighed quite sadly: “Later, I slowly stopped playing games, and my grades went up.”

Xiao Zhou: “……”

Isn’t this an inspirational story? Why is the tone so miserable and unwilling?

“Now, Sheng Xia…” Cheng Liang finally got to the point, “…is very similar to my deskmate back then.”

Xiao Zhou: “……Ah?”

Cheng Liang held the straw in his mouth and smirked, but he didn’t bother to explain further.

He woke up at six in the morning today, and Sheng Xia’s model student’s face filled his mind, then he couldn’t fall asleep anymore.

He began to morally criticize himself.

After all, he was the landlord, and the agent had run away because he was irresponsible. In today’s situation, it was reasonable and justified for him to show up.

Since the construction, renovation, and rental of this building, he hadn’t cared about being a landlord. But because of Sheng Xia, he actually started to care.

He never seemed to care about things that most people wouldn’t care about, but once he found out that someone else would care, he would subconsciously begin to demand strictness from himself as well.

The nightmare returned.

He is now the high school student who was led by the top student.

At this moment, Sheng Xia happened to turn her head to look at him, and Cheng Liang snapped his straw with a click.

“Doctor… Cheng,” Sheng Xia hesitated in addressing him, “the workers said that the wiring in the room we live in may have been modified with by the previous tenants, but it’s all covered up by wallpaper now and we can’t see it.”

Cheng Liang stood up straight and took a few steps forward, stepping into 302 for the first time since living in this building.

The layout of 302 was actually the same as his, with three bedrooms, one living room, and two bathrooms. However, the decoration of the rental unit was done by the engineering team his parents hired, and it was uniformly decorated in the simplest style. After several changes of tenants, it was now unrecognizable. The walls were covered with floral wallpaper, and the corners of the walls were also beginning to show signs of wear.

“This wallpaper needs to be removed, otherwise we won’t know how the wiring was buried,” the electrician held the floor plan of the building that Cheng Liang had given Xiao Zhou before, shaking his head with a serious expression. “I don’t know what the previous people did, but there’s definitely a short circuit in this room. We need to find out as soon as possible, otherwise it will be a big trouble.”

Cheng Liang watched the electrician walk into Xiao Zhou’s place with a serious face and shaking his head. He lowered his voice to ask Xiao Zhou: “Where did you find this electrician?”

Xiao Zhou pushed his glasses: “On the wall of the hospital toilet.”

Cheng Liang: “……”

Sheng Xia and Tang Caixi, who were standing behind them and heard everything clearly: “……”

“…That place is full of psoriasis advertisements for male diseases, where did you find the electrician??” Cheng Liang gritted his teeth.

He just knew that Xiao Zhou was definitely not a normal person.

“It’s because among the bunch of long, hard, and long-lasting ads, there was one about circuit repairs, so it’s especially noticeable,” Xiao Zhou’s logic ability was quite strong.

So strong that Tang Caixi behind him showed an expression of sudden realization.

“If it’s going to be a major change, it’s better to find a regular company and schedule another time,” Sheng Xia, who was also behind him, was very calm. “If it’s going to take several days, we’ll have to find a place to stay in advance.”

That was exactly what Cheng Liang meant.

But when Sheng Xia said it first, he felt subtly displeased, so he chose to nod coolly.

“But they brought tools…” Xiao Zhou didn’t want to complicate things, but before he could finish his argument, there was a loud bang from inside his room.

“Damn it!” The electrician cursed and then looked at everyone, poking his head out. “I’ve found the line that’s short-circuiting.”

No one asked for further details because everyone felt that whatever this muscular electrician had to say next was probably not what they wanted to hear.

“But I messed up,” the electrician scratched his head again, flexing his arm muscles, and chuckled innocently. “Looks like the whole building might be without power now.”

Cheng Liang: “………………”

So, as they say, none of the psoriasis advertisements in the toilet can be trusted!