Chapter 38: The femme fatale can deceive people forever, so I can pretend...
Feeling the unbridled invasion of a breath that did not belong to her, Luo Shu closed her eyes helplessly. Even though she was inexperienced, she knew Fang Qingzhuo was going to kiss her due to years of watching idol dramas.
Her heartbeat suddenly intensified, and slowly, Luo Shu could even feel that their breathing was getting closer and closer, as if blending together.
In the tense atmosphere, an out-of-place, slightly tearful voice of "Brother Qingzhuo" suddenly broke the ambiguous atmosphere, and all the actions came to a halt.
Luo Shu shushook and opened her eyes lightly. She subconsciously turned her head to look for the source, and there stood a strange girl.
The cooked duck flew away. Fang Qingzhuo slowly raised his eyelids and followed closely. When he saw Liang Anqi not far away, there was a flash of surprise in his eyes.
Twenty minutes later, Guan Siqi rushed over as soon as he received the call. When he arrived at the location, he only saw a lonely man sitting on a wooden chair.
Under the street light, Fang Qingzhuo's long legs were casually spread out, his facial features were covered by large shadows, and the swaying shadows of the trees made his entire facial contours flicker, making it impossible to guess his true emotions.
"Where's Angie?"
"Didn't I tell you to call before you arrive?" Fang Qingzhuo asked instead of answering.
Guan Siqi said sarcastically, "Why, Luo Shu is here too? Are you worried that she'll see me and it'll be hard to explain?"
As soon as these words came out, Fang Qingzhuo suddenly turned his head to look at him, his delicate, carved eyebrows and eyes completely exposed in the light, tinged with a strong warning: "Yes, so you should stay away from her for a while."
Guan Siqi was genuinely dissatisfied with his defection, his cold attitude towards her for the sake of a woman who had ruined their brotherly relationship. He was determined to make things difficult for her: "Okay, then beg me. If you please me, I'll avoid her."
"Well, please."
He gave in too quickly, and Guan Siqi was caught off guard and choked. Is this still the same Fang Qingzhuo?
Fang Qingzhuo continued, "She went to the bathroom with Anqi. Anqi wasn't feeling well. She got lost at school and her phone was dead. She couldn't find you and happened to run into us. She looked like she'd been crying. I guess she's been wronged by your mother again. You better be careful when you go back."
Sighing helplessly, Guan Siqi grabbed his pocket and sat next to him. He fumbled for his lighter, lit a cigarette, and exhaled the first puff of smoke while saying, "In front of An Qi, sometimes I feel like you're more competent than me, your own brother."
At the entrance of the teaching building, Liang Anqi came out after washing her face, and Luo Shu considerately took out wet wipes from her bag and handed them to her.
"Thank you." While wiping her face, Liang Anqi secretly looked at Luo Shu without leaving any trace. Her face was smooth and thin, with an oval face. When she had no expression, she gave people a sense of being close yet distant. When she was lively, she was in another state. Her beauty was not created by makeup, fashion brands, or atmosphere, but was genuinely good-looking.
"You're welcome." Luo Shu smiled, treating her like a younger sister and helping her tidy up her messy hair. "Just now I heard you call Fang Qingzhuo "brother", are you his cousin?"
When Fang Qingzhuo's identity was exposed, she looked up their family situation online. Although most of the results she found were company information and Fang Jueshan's personal news, she still found some useful information. Fang Qingzhuo was an only child and his mother had passed away many years ago.
"We are not related." Liang Anqi denied, "He is my brother. They grew up together, so as long as I can remember, I always followed them around to play."
"I see."
After that, they fell into a speechless awkwardness. Just as Luo Shu's brain was working rapidly to find a light-hearted topic to break the ice, Liang Anqi suddenly called her: "Sister."
"What's wrong?"
"I'm sorry, I seemed to have disturbed you just now."
"No, there's no need to bother. We really didn't do anything." Luo Shu's explanation was forced, as if she was trying to cover up her mistake. "You're mistaken. We didn't do anything..."
As they talked, they both laughed embarrassedly.
Liang Anqi seemed to have forgotten the unpleasantness of today and took the initiative to talk: "This is the first time I see Brother Qingzhuo talking about a girlfriend."
"My brothers used to talk about the class beauty next door and chasing girls, but Qingzhuo didn't really like to join in. I thought he was just a blockhead."
"Really?" Luo Shu was complacent. It seemed that Fang Qingzhuo was not lying.
"Yeah," Angela Leong recalled, "sometimes they would talk about this in front of me, and he would scold my brother."
Luo Shu seemed to be thinking: "Now that you mention it, I'm a little curious about what he was like as a child?"
"I have some photos of them when they were little." Liang Anqi revealed the truth and took out her phone halfway as if she remembered something. "Oh, I forgot. My phone is out of battery."
Luo Shu was not disappointed and comforted him, "It's okay, you can look at the photo any time. Was he like this when he was a child?"
"What's going on now?"
"Looks like you have a lot on your mind."
"Really?" Liang Anqi scratched her head. "Could it be that he's under too much pressure from starting his own business right now?"
Seeing that her question stumped the little girl, Luo Shu quickly changed the subject: "Then can you tell me more about his past?"
"sure."
Liang Anqi quickly sold Fang Qingzhuo out, telling him everything she knew. His childhood anecdotes easily opened up a conversation, and the two of them were unconsciously linking their arms, laughing all the way.
"I remember when they were in their first year of high school, Qingzhuo got hooked on a game and asked my brothers to cover for him. After school, he stayed in internet cafes playing his way through the game instead of going home."
"Then what?"
"Then my brother and his two teammates were idiots. They didn't communicate with each other beforehand. When Uncle Fang called, they both boasted that they were at home and comfortable."
The harmony on their end was incredible, while on the other end the atmosphere was as depressing as the darkness of the night.
There were cigarette butts piled up at Guan Siqi's feet, and Fang Qingzhuo's face was full of boredom. He was already trying to quit smoking, and the nicotine-making machine walking next to him was making him feel uneasy.
The light flickered a few times due to unstable current. He could no longer bear it: "Can you please stop smoking?"
Of the group, Fang Qingzhuo was the biggest smoker, but now he was acting like a gentleman. Guan Siqi glanced at him and commented from the bottom of his heart, "I haven't seen you for a while, and I think you've become even stronger."
"I'm trying to quit smoking."
"Are you serious?"
Guan Siqi's light but not too heavy laugh came to my ears.
"Seriously." Fang Qingzhuo glanced sideways, met the gaze of the person next to him, and said firmly.
"You know what I mean." Guan Siqi looked over with a serious tone.
Fang Qingzhuo's eyes were firm, and he didn't say a word, but it looked like he was about to speak.
The air seemed to stand still at this moment. The tacit understanding over the years told Guan Siqi that to some extent, this was his tacit agreement.
But he didn't want to give up. The relationship between them as brothers was not just a passing mention in poetry or a moment in a movie. It was a real relationship that had lasted for twenty years and was always there for them.
With the determination to save the misguided teenager, he withdrew his head and resolutely threw away the burnt cigarette butt.
"Azhu, it's not too late to turn back now. I'll just assume you're playing a cat-and-mouse game willfully, treating her as a distraction from your boring life..."
"She's not."
Fang Qingzhuo lowered his eyes and stared at the ground. If he was just playing with Luo Shu, he wouldn't be so painful. He was too greedy. He wanted her to have him in her heart and to have a future with her. He wanted it so badly.
Guan Siqi scratched his hair helplessly, resisting stubbornly, and guiding him step by step to face the reality: "Then tell me honestly, you must have done this out of spite, deliberately disgusting us, right?"
"I really like her."
He was so stubborn that Guan Siqi scraped his back teeth with the tip of his tongue, and his voice rose involuntarily: "No, you like Luo Shu when there are so many people you like. Didn't we agree to vent Yangzi's anger and get away with it? Why, why did you end up losing yourself?
He stood up and asked angrily, "I just don't understand, did she give you some kind of magic potion? After Huo Huo, Yangzi came to confuse you. I really underestimated her."
"She is a vicious woman with a heart of a snake and a scorpion."
Fang Qingzhuo laughed out loud after hearing this conclusion. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and rested his neck on the hard wooden backrest.
Guan Siqi didn't understand what was so funny: "What are you laughing at?"
"You're laughing at me for saying she's a vicious person."
"Do you know what I think of her?" Fang Qingzhuo opened his eyes and asked himself, "She's very stubborn. She's always stubborn. She gets stubborn when the charges are unreasonable, she gets stubborn when she's drunk, she gets stubborn when she's playing games. Lately, for some reason, she's become obsessed with catching geese. Isn't it the case that you have to flip the pan halfway through the game? She's so obsessed with it that she's actually thrown the phone away several times. I've gone with her to get screen protectors applied at least three times, and in the end, I learned how to do it, but she hasn't caught a single goose."
Guan Siqi looked at him steadily with mixed emotions. When Fang Qingzhuo talked about her, his pupils lit up unconsciously, with a smile at the corners of his eyes, reflecting the gentle starlight in the night sky above his head. But there were clearly no stars tonight, and even the moon was slacking off and hiding in the clouds.
"But she never got tough with me."
"When I was little, I always thought that only children who made noises deserved candy. Until I met her, this perception was completely overturned. It turns out that people who are truly loved are children no matter where they are. It turns out that you can always get candy without making noises."
Fang Qingzhuo's eyelashes trembled slightly, and his Adam's apple rolled. "Siqi, she's really different with me. I admit, at first I was angry. I was angry that you and Zhong Zixu had set up a trap to test me."
The scene of that day flashed through his mind. Everyone had coincidentally come to my house at that time. "I thought I was angry because of your distrust, but it wasn't. On the way to the club, I had only one thought in my mind: I couldn't let her run into Yangzi. I couldn't let this be exposed. I couldn't let her find out the truth about my approach to her. The thought of that happening filled me with fear, so I scolded her and sent her away, using the most ruthless words possible. It was the first time she saw me angry, and she burst into tears. Even though she had just been bullied in there not long ago."
"What about us?" Guan Siqi squeezed out word by word from between his teeth.
"I thought about confessing to you, but when I thought about the price I would have to pay for confessing, I hesitated."
If you say it, you will lose the friendship; if you don’t say it, you will lose yourself.
"I used to think I could treat everyone equally, but the facts prove that I was naive. She means as much to me as you do..."
Fang Qingzhuo prided himself on not being a man blinded by lust, but ever since he'd gotten involved with Luo Shu, he'd never had a peaceful life. He often felt like a misfired pistol, carried away by his emotions. He couldn't avoid Luo Shu, nor could he push her away, allowing himself to sink deeper and deeper. To him, Luo Shu wasn't the femme fatale who'd hurt Gu Yang. She was beautiful, sure, but femme? At best, she was a gluttonous snake.
It seemed like falling in love with her was the most normal thing, whether it was Gu Yang, Duan Ran, or him.
"So, you'd rather not have a brother, and would rather drag it out than give up these twenty years of relationship?"
"Siqi, the choice is yours. I'm never the one who wants to give up."
Guan Siqi was so angry that he laughed, grinning. He tried to understand but couldn't empathize. He found it ridiculous and gave him an ultimatum, forcing him to choose between the two: "In one sentence, do you want a woman or a brother?"
Fang Qingzhuo remained silent.
Guessing the answer in his mind, Guan Siqi smiled again. In this situation, Luo Shu did not seem like a vicious snake or scorpion. Instead, she looked like a graceful and dreamy butterfly, camouflaged in the light and changing unpredictably, making everyone indulge in her beauty, but at the same time blinded by the scales on her wings.
"Have you ever considered Yangzi? How can you expect him to forgive you? Are you even going to bless you two? If he can't get over this, are you going to cut off all contact with him?"
"Yangzi, I've let him down. If he agrees to this, I'll owe him a favor."
Guan Siqi couldn't help but curse, "What about Luo Shu? Have you forgotten all the bad things she did?"
How could Fang Qingzhuo forget it, but he was hopeless and had no idea what to do, just like the warning on cigarette boxes that smoking is harmful to health, people do it even though they know it is wrong.
"I only remember that I have a beautiful girlfriend. Nothing else matters."
Guan Siqi was so disappointed that he asked anxiously, "Even if she deceived you?"
"If she can lie for a lifetime, then I can pretend for a lifetime." Fang Qingzhuo silently added in his heart that if she was unfortunately exposed, he could also cover it up. After all, this was what he was best at since he was a child.
Seeing him blindly defending and favoring others, Guan Siqi instantly became angry and grabbed Fang Qingzhuo's collar and lifted him up from the chair.
"Fang Qingzhuo, ah Fang Qingzhuo, what can I say? You're acting like a love saint here. You're loyal until death, but do you know what she did behind your back? I tell you, Luo Shu is just a... "
Before the word "crime" could be successfully uttered from his mouth, he saw Fang Qingzhuo's wooden face, like a puppet, full of fear and anxiety.
Following his gaze, Guan Siqi turned back and found that there was a person standing at the end of his sight.
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The author has something to say: Countdown to chasing my wife...
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