Her back

As the sun sets, Zhuang Yu'an returns home.

As soon as I stepped into the living room, I heard my sister's crisp laughter: "Haha, is this true? Does anyone care about Wu Zichao being a marginal internet celebrity? He's as thin as a mummy, and his waist is not even as thick as mine!"

Zhuang Yu'an frowned, and then heard another voice say, "He works out every day and eats protein powder as a meal, so he's already got abs! Hey, look at this..."

Zhuang Yu'an put his fist to his lips and coughed softly. The two girls, one with red hair and the other with blond hair, turned around and saw him, and they both shut up at the same time.

"Hello, brother!" The blonde Zhu Jingjing turned off the screen and greeted him with a smile.

My sister said she wanted to have a barbecue tonight, so Zhuang Yu'an asked his aunt to prepare the ingredients first. He wondered how the preparations were going. He walked to the kitchen door and suddenly his breath stopped.

Besides the aunt, there was another young girl standing at the counter. She had long black hair and wore a mint green fitted dress. She was a sight to behold, with a slender waist that could be held in one hand.

He had underestimated his sister's willfulness. She had actually invited Zuo Xiao home again... Zhuang Yu'an's heart was pounding, and the blood rushed to his head—he was furious! It would have been fine if his sister had the guts to invite him, but how could she have the nerve to come?!

When the aunt turned around and saw him, she smiled warmly and said, "Are you back? I didn't dare to make the eggplant, so I was waiting for you! Jinghao said that your roasted eggplant is the most delicious..."

As the aunt spoke, the girl in mint green turned around. Their eyes met, and Zhuang Yu'an was stunned.

It turned out not to be her.

The girl smiled faintly at him. Zhuang Yu'an recalled his sister's description from last night: black hair, beautiful eyes, fair skin, and a quiet temperament...it really matched every detail.

He politely curled his lips and nodded at the other party. At this time, his sister came running over, grabbed his shirt sleeve with both hands and pulled it: "Brother, this is my friend Liang Sirui!" Turning to Liang Sirui, she said, "Sirui, this is my brother, you haven't met him yet, right?"

"Yeah." Liang Sirui nodded slightly, and then said, "I've marinated the fish. We can grill it directly in half an hour."

"Yeah, then you should take a break!" Zhuang Jinghao turned around and said to her brother with a smile, "Si Rui can cook and grill too! We didn't know how to prepare the fish just now, so Si Rui took the initiative. Hehe, she'll help you grill it later, and Liang Liang and I will be in charge of fanning you and keeping away the mosquitoes..."

During the barbecue, Liang Sirui stood beside Zhuang Yu'an and helped him. She was a good assistant, sometimes she would hand him what he needed without him even asking.

At night, after the guests left, Zhuang Jinghao pulled her brother to sit on the sofa.

"Brother, what do you think of Liang Sirui?" His sophisticated tone and demeanor sounded as if he had been acting as a matchmaker for decades.

Zhuang Yu'an found it funny and teased her, "In what way?"

"Of course, it's about being a girlfriend!" Zhuang Jing said with a smile, "Appearance, personality, how she behaves... Do you like her?"

Zhuang Yu'an replied: "This is the first time I've seen him, how can I make a hasty judgment?"

"The first impression is what matters most!" Zhuang Jinghao said seriously. "You'll know if people are compatible and if there's chemistry after just one meeting. Just trust your intuition!"

Intuition? Zhuang Yu'an pondered it seriously.

When he first met Liang Sirui, he seemed to have a strange feeling about her. But later, he admired her and felt that she was calm, considerate, and mature beyond her age, but he no longer had the initial feeling of heart palpitations.

"Brother, let me tell you something..." Zhuang Jinghao grabbed his arm and tried to sell him, "Si Rui is amazing! She's a level 10 piano player! She used to be my colleague, and now she's a piano teacher at a training institution. She usually goes to concerts and musicals, and she also loves reading. You'd definitely get along well with her!"

"Your colleague?" My sister found her first job by herself, and after working there for less than half a year, Zhuang Yu'an didn't have a good impression of that company at all.

"Well, Si Rui and I weren't in the same department at the time, but everyone in the company knew her!" Zhuang Jinghao said with admiration. "There was a manager who kept harassing us girls. Everyone else was angry but didn't dare to speak out, but Si Rui was the most capable! She quietly gathered evidence, praised her, and sent emails to the company leaders and dozens of colleagues. Eventually, that jerk manager was fired!"

Zhuang Yu'an admired brave women, and immediately had a better impression of Liang Sirui. He smiled and said, "I can see that you like her very much."

"Whether I like her or not is secondary, hehe..." Zhuang Jinghao said with a mischievous smile, "I found out, she's single now! Brother, do you want to give it a try with her?"

For Zhuang Yu'an, admiration and desire for a romantic relationship were two completely different things. But he was old enough to be comfortable with moderate contact with the opposite sex, so he said, "If by 'try it,' you mean getting to know each other like friends first, then I think it's fine."

Originally, Zhuang Jinghao had meant to fast-forward her brother and Liang Sirui to the date, but after hearing what her brother said, she felt like she was being a bit hasty. She decided to quit while she was ahead and said with a chuckle, "Okay, then let's just be friends for now! Hey, I'll ask her out next week! What night are you free?"

Zhuang Yu'an wanted to let things take their own course and told his sister not to worry about making arrangements for him. But thinking of her guilty expression last night, and how she thought he was a burden to him, he couldn't say no. He raised his hand and gently rubbed his sister's head, saying with a smile, "Shouldn't you ask the girl what she thinks?"

"Of course I'll ask!" Zhuang Jinghao's little mouth was as sweet as honey. "But it's useless to ask. My brother is such a good man, what girl in the world wouldn't like him?"

She was speaking from the heart. In her mind, her brother was the best man in the world. Any girl who could become his sister-in-law would be like saving the earth in her previous life! If her brother and Xiaoxiao Beibi didn't get along, she would even want to bring them together! If that happened, she would be the happiest person in the world...

Zhuang Yu'an was amused by her, and before he could say anything, she urged him, "Brother, check quickly, which day of the week are you free?"

Zhuang Yu'an thought for a moment and said, "Next week will be busy, let's do it on the weekend."

"Not on the weekend!" Zhuang Jinghao said hurriedly, "I'm going to Aranya this weekend and I've already made an appointment... How about midweek? Or next week?"

Zhuang Yu'an frowned: Could it be that my sister is dating Zuo Xiao?

Knowing his sister well, he knew she had been hanging out with Zuo Xiao quite a bit recently. However, she didn't show any signs of being influenced by the company of bad company; instead, she seemed more sensible than before. So, he turned a blind eye, as long as she didn't bring anyone home or do anything else out of line. Going on a long trip with Zuo Xiao and spending the night out would undoubtedly fall under the category of "out of line."

"Who did you meet?" He asked unkindly.

Zhuang Jinghao quickly said, "It's a colleague!" Seeing her brother's sharp eyes, she quickly raised three fingers and said, "I swear, it's a colleague!"

Zhuang Yu'an felt relieved, but after thinking about it, he was still worried, so he said, "I'll go too. I haven't been to the beach for a long time."

"What are you going to do?" Zhuang Jinghao's face was full of rejection. "Brother, please consider my colleague's mood! Who wants to go out with the boss on the weekend..."

Zhuang Yu'an had no choice but to give up and gave her a few more instructions before letting her go.

He worked in his study until late at night and felt thirsty. He found his kettle empty and went downstairs to get some water.

When passing by the second floor, I suddenly heard a faint sigh:

“Hmm…”

In the silence of the night, the sigh was almost imperceptible, as if it was floating out from my sister's room.

He stopped immediately and listened attentively.

“Hmm… ah…”

My heart tightened:

Is your sister not feeling well?

Following the sound, I came to the bedroom door and was about to knock when the groaning inside suddenly became rapid, rising, and the ending tone was prolonged:

“Ah… wuah…”

In an instant, Zhuang Yu'an's whole body stiffened:

He finally realized what his sister was doing.

After a moment, he left quickly like a deserter, returned to the third floor, and did not go downstairs again all night.

The next day, he made breakfast and drove away alone without waiting for his sister to come downstairs.

I felt uneasy all the way.

He still remembers one night when his sister, in sixth grade, panicked and said, "My period has come." By then, physiological education had become commonplace in school, and his sister knew what was happening to her body. But he, a man several years older, knew about "menstruation" but not "period." He panicked and went out to buy sanitary napkins.

From then on, he began to care about the gender difference between himself and his sister, and also paid more attention to the invisible boundary between siblings. The most obvious manifestation was that he no longer had overly close physical contact with his sister, no longer allowed her to sleep with him on thundering nights, and no longer entered and exited her room at will.

Yet, he couldn't help but gather various signals to ensure his sister wasn't straying from the right path in terms of sex. As far as he knew, his sister had never been in a serious relationship, and her most erotic explorations of sex were limited to reading erotic online romance novels. Beyond that, he believed his sister had never experienced any substantial sexual experience, nor had she ever expressed any signs of sexual arousal. While she possessed more feminine traits physically, she remained a pure, innocent girl at heart, and this knowledge gave him a sense of security.

But last night, his sense of security was shattered. He realized more than ever that his sister had grown into a woman. Soon, she would no longer rely on her brother as a girl, but would need another man to meet her needs and complete her life.

The day he and his sister would be separated was approaching. As a responsible brother, perhaps he should take the initiative to start looking for a suitable partner for her, rather than selfishly delaying that day to satisfy his own attachment to his sister.

After the car pulled into the office building's basement, Zhuang Yu'an sat in the car for half an hour, his thoughts gradually becoming clearer. Just before 9 a.m., he stepped into the elevator.

The elevator door opened on the first floor, and more than a dozen men and women rushed in. Soon, the elevator alarm sounded: overloaded.

It was rush hour, and the wait for an elevator was long. No one wanted to risk being late. Seeing that the elevator door was taking too long to close, someone said, "Come on, everyone, spread out and stand evenly."

Several people moved as instructed, but the overload warning continued to beep. A young boy in a green T-shirt said, "You're the last one on. Behave yourself!"

Suddenly, several people turned their attention to a girl standing sideways beside the boy. She looked to be in her twenties, plump and wearing a yellow-green plaid shirt. Surrounded by everyone's gaze, her round face quickly flushed.

"I wasn't the last one to come up..." She lowered her head and whispered softly.

"You, hurry up!" the boy in the green T-shirt urged loudly. The person who had been giving the order echoed, "The fat ones should go down, that makes sense."

The girl in the plaid shirt was silent for a moment, then her figure swayed.

"Stop." A hoarse female voice sounded.

Zhuang Yu'an and the others turned their gazes. The person who spoke was a slender girl wearing a loose white T-shirt, a red baseball cap, and a white mask. She grabbed the wrist of the girl in the plaid shirt and said in a commanding tone with a heavy nasal voice:

"The one wearing green, you were the last one up, you go down."

The boy in the green T-shirt was stunned for a moment, then turned around and said, "Which of your fucking eyes saw me come up last? It was obviously her!"

"Don't try to quibble. It's you," the girl in the red hat said decisively. "Get out of here now. Don't delay everyone's work."

"Stop talking nonsense!" the boy in the green T-shirt clenched his fists in a threatening manner. Someone in the crowd began to murmur, "What are you making so much noise for? Just get out of here!" "We're going to be late..."

The two people in the center of the vortex remained calm, but the girl in the plaid shirt couldn't stand it anymore: "Stop arguing, I'm going down..." She was about to leave, but was forcibly grabbed by the girl in the red hat.

She wanted to leave but couldn't, and was being stared at. She was so anxious that she was about to cry. She begged the girl in the red hat, "Please let me down!"

"Don't be a coward!" The girl in the red hat held her head high with a domineering look, "I saw with my own eyes that this guy was the last one to come in. Either he goes down, or we will all be late." After saying that, she coughed twice.

Suddenly, voices rose up in the elevator: "Girl, don't be like this!" "Take a step back and the sky will be clear." "If they want to get off, just let them go!" "Yes, even if you don't go to work, we still have to go to work!"

The girl in the red hat immediately became the target of public criticism, yet she maintained her "I'm in charge" attitude. The boy in the green T-shirt, seemingly feeling even more popular, straightened his back even more: "Don't think I can't hit you just because you're a woman! You're showing no manners and you deserve a beating! Do you understand?"

"Okay, go ahead and hit me." The girl in the red hat reached out and poked her masked face. "Hit me here, come on."

Someone in the crowd sneered, and Zhuang Yu'an couldn't help but curl his lips.

The boy in the green T-shirt blushed immediately: "Are you crazy?" He thought for a moment, raised his fist and shook it, "If you dare to do something naughty again, I'll really beat you up..."

Zhuang Yu'an finally couldn't bear it any longer and said in a deep voice, "I saw it. The one in green came in last."

Everyone turned to look at him. He stood at the back, tall and solemn, giving off the air of a judge. But in reality, the green T-shirts and the plaid shirts were the last to come in; Zhuang Yu'an couldn't remember which came first. But he couldn't stand this man's poor character and his constant whining. He decided to send him away.

The situation suddenly reversed and the boy in the green T-shirt became a rat crossing the street.

"Then hurry up and get down!" "The thief is crying thief..." Amidst the constant shouts of condemnation, he dejectedly walked out of the elevator, turned around and glared at Little Red Riding Hood fiercely: "Just wait for me!"

Although she was clearly threatened, she shrugged her shoulders and acted indifferent.

The elevator slowly went up. Zhuang Yu'an stared at Little Red Riding Hood's back and couldn't help but curl his lips.

This girl is truly fearless, even acting like a bit of a street thug. Perhaps she's watched too many Hong Kong movies since she was little. If she were to encounter the wolf grandma, wouldn't she tear her into pieces and make wolf meat skewers?

The elevator door opened and closed, but the girl remained where she was. When it reached the 19th floor, there were only a few people left in the elevator.

The door opened, and the girl and another person walked out of the elevator one after another. Zhuang Yu'an suddenly felt a little bit of anticipation——

There is only one company on the 19th floor.

He followed the girl into the company gate. She turned left, and he turned right. As they separated, he turned his head and looked at the defiant figure:

I didn't expect that there would be such a person among my employees...

interesting.