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Meanwhile, after leaving that one simple message in the chat, Shen Shu had dropped his phone on the table and leaned back in his chair with a tense and uncomfortable expression.
After a while, he gathered himself and went downstairs to open a bottle of red wine for himself.
Mother Shen looked at him quietly from the top of the stairs. Eventually, she asked in a gentle voice, “You can’t sleep again?”
Shen Shu made a vague sound of agreement and then pressed his wine glass to his thin lips to take a sip.
Mother Shen came down and poured herself a glass as well. She murmured: “You’ve been the same way ever since you were a child. Whenever you’ve had something you obviously liked you would never express it. Even if it was snatched away by another child, you wouldn’t cry to an adult about it.”
“And even now, you’re still the same way. It’s clear who you like in your heart, but you still don’t want to admit it.”
Shen Shu’s fingers tightened on his wine glass and his handsome face turned a bit wintery.
Mother Shen continued: “I never disliked that child, Ruan Tian. Back then, it was obvious that you were the only one in her heart, and everything she did was for you. Even back when you were celebrating your eighteenth birthday and you didn’t invite her…”
“She still eagerly ran over here and stretched her neck to look through a gap in the fence. When I went out to see what was going on, she hurriedly passed me the gift in her hands and asked me to send it to you.”
“Back then, I felt she seemed pretty pitiful.”
Shen Shu felt a burst of dizzying pain in his brain.
Everyone had always said he was a perfect gentleman, but in reality that wasn’t the case.
He had a dark side.
Back then, Shen Shu had known she had wanted to come, but he deliberately didn’t invite her.
He had let her stay out by the gate just to trample her sincerity.
Shen Shu responded in a low and hoarse voice, “What happened to that gift?”
Mother Shen smiled, “Have you forgotten? I gave it to you, and you threw it away…”
A loud buzzing started to ring in Shen Shu’s ears, drowning out whatever his mother said next.
A hazy cloud seemed to rise up in front of him, clouding his eyes.
His whole body was overtaken by a strange and weary feeling, as if he had been sapped of strength all at once.
Shen Shu’s arm trembled weakly, and even the light wine glass suddenly felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
A deep feeling of suffocation swept through his chest.
It was like there was a huge and heavy stone pressing down on his head and his heart.
—————————–
After Ruan Tian and Qin An finished arguing, they sat down together and started playing a recently popular arena-based shooting game.
Qin An had thought she would be a novice, but unexpectedly while he was still fumbling around and trying to land, she had already picked up a gun and killed a few other players.
His eyes were practically popping out. With this kind of accuracy and efficiency, why didn’t she just go and be a professional gamer?!
Meanwhile, Xu Jing silently re-entered the room and sat down in a way that ‘coincidentally’ separated them. After that, he joined their team and ‘inadvertently’ ran Qin An’s character over, instantly killing him. He looked up and ‘sincerely’ apologized: “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
On the other side, Ruan Tian collapsed and started rolling around on the sofa while laughing hysterically.
After they played a few rounds, Ruan Tian managed to get a “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner” and became the person with the best K/D ratio on the entire server that night.
Cen Bei continued to take the initiative to handle most of the cooking and cleaning. At the same time, she also seemed to be continuing her efforts to intentionally imitating Ruan Tian’s style through her words and actions. However, she really wasn’t subtle about it at all and everyone could clearly see what she was doing.
Of course Ruan Tian, who could be considered a little bit dim, didn’t notice Cen Bei’s small little ploys at all.
But when Cen Bei took out a bunch of bamboo strips and said that she wanted to weave some baskets for everyone, Ruan Tian finally reacted. Of course, she could put her hand on her heart and swear to the heavens that she was really just joking around, but it still sounded a bit brutal when she suddenly burst out with: “Oh my gosh! BeiBei, are you trying to copy me?! To go this far, you’re really too diligent!”
Having her scheme suddenly loudly pointed out in front of everyone, Cen Bei’s blood surged to her head and her face turned white with shame.
Ruan Tian’s words seemed to strike directly at her weak point, and the hands holding the bamboo strips trembled and almost lost their strength.
Eventually, Cen Bei opened her mouth to reply. Her voice wasn’t stable at all, and as she spoke there were audible tremors, “I…I’m not copying…”
Ruan Tian said, “You obviously are! So shameless!”
Of course, in fairness…
This was how Ruan Tian would usually speak with Jiang Lili when they were joking around, so she was used to communicating in this straight-forward sort of way.
She really wasn’t deliberately targeting Cen Bei or anything.