Chapter 28
After parking the car, Yu Lei carried Tang Ruxin upstairs.
It was a run-down, old house in the city center, just one block away from the Municipal Public Security Bureau. It had no elevator, and the hallway was cluttered with junk. Yu Lei stumbled up to the fifth floor carrying her on his back. Once inside, he threw her onto the bed and pulled the quilt over her. Before he could even catch his breath, he realized she had only one high heel left.
Yu Lei stood by the bed, trying to recall what had happened. He thought he had heard something fall as he was climbing the stairs. The corridor was pitch black, and he didn't bother to look.
With a sigh of helplessness, Yu Lei had to go out again to find her shoes. He couldn't afford to pay for the shoes of a director with an annual income of seven figures.
After searching with the flashlight on his phone, he found that he had indeed dropped his shoes on the third floor. After retrieving his shoes, Yu Lei returned to his home on the fifth floor, only to realize that he had forgotten his keys.
His mind went blank for a moment, and he immediately started thinking of a solution.
First, there was no way anyone could open the door at this hour. Second, he didn't have his office key. Or if he was staying at a colleague's house, would he have to carry that high heel with him? That wasn't just embarrassing; it was a question of lifestyle. Or was he booking a hotel room? If he didn't even have his key, how could he have his ID?
It seems that he will have to squat in this cramped corridor all night tonight - he wants to die so much, Yu Lei looked up at the sky in despair.
He pulled out his phone and, desperately trying to find a place to call Tang Ruxin, no one answered. Furious, Yu Lei called three times, then banged on the door twice before leaving in a huff, high heels in hand, ready to find a 24-hour place that didn't require ID to stay overnight.
Just as he reached the corner of the stairs between the fourth and fifth floors, the door above opened with a click, and Yu Lei quickly turned around and went upstairs.
Tang Ruxin leaned against the door with one hand, looking down at Yu Lei with a cold and hard expression. There was no trace of gentleness or grace in her. She seemed to be soaked in anger, her eyes piercing with a knife.
"What are you doing?" she asked coldly.
Yu Lei was completely bewildered. What kind of drunken madness was this? She was occupying his bed and his home, yet she could still ask so confidently.
"...I'll pick up the shoes for you." Yu Lei picked up the beige high-heeled shoe hanging on his finger and shook it in front of her.
The lights in the room were on. He threw his shoes in front of the shoe cabinet at the entrance. Then, seeing that Tang Ruxin was barefoot under her long skirt, he opened the shoe cabinet and took out a pair of slippers and threw them to her.
"You sobered up quickly, or you weren't drunk at all." Yu Lei opened the living room window, lit a cigarette, took a deep breath, and let out a long breath towards the window.
White smoke rushed out of the window and disappeared into the inky night.
Tang Ruxin's face was gloomy. After looking at him coldly for a moment, she turned around and walked towards the bedroom steadily.
"Hey, I say..." Yu Lei stepped forward.
"I've tolerated you for a long time." Tang Ruxin suddenly turned around, raised her finger and pointed at him, saying sternly: "Either you don't want to be a good person, or if you want to be a good person, do it to the end. You don't have to come to pick me up, but if you do, don't disturb my sleep."
Yu Lei was astonished, wanting to applaud her irrational and shameless remarks. He'd seen people grumpy when they woke up, but never one this grumpy. She didn't care where she was or who she was with, as long as she could sleep.
He had wanted to say that since she was awake, he would take her home, but if he had said that, she would probably have immediately gone to the kitchen to grab a knife. Yu Lei raised his hands in surrender and gestured to the bedroom door.
After a moment, Tang Ruxin was still standing there, looking at him with a cold, ghostly gaze. Yu Lei was frightened by her stare, and when he saw her stepping towards him, he even took two steps back.
Tang Ruxin stretched out her hand towards his face, and he blurted out before he could even take down his cigarette:
"Don't do it! Hitting me is considered assaulting a police officer!"
The next moment, the cigarette between her teeth was suddenly taken away. Tang Ruxin skillfully placed the cigarette between her lips and took a slow puff.
The room fell silent for a moment. Yu Lei wasn't surprised she'd smoke, but he couldn't tell if she was drunk or awake. She looked like she was awake, but this behavior was clearly not something a Green Tea Director would normally do.
He was tired and didn't want to play with her anymore because he couldn't beat her.
"Whatever you want."
As he said that, Yu Lei walked to the entrance, turned off the lights in the living room, then lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes to sleep.
Tang Ruxin leaned against the window and quietly finished the cigarette, and she was completely sober.
She was indeed drunk tonight, and like any other time, she didn't stay drunk for long, her consciousness's craving for her brain reaching its peak. The longest she'd ever been drunk was only four hours before she woke up.
After vomiting in front of the bar, she was able to make a rough assessment of her surroundings. She knew the bartender had called the wrong number, that it was Yu Lei who was picking her up, and that he'd asked for her address. But how could she tell him her address when Tong Jiayu also lived there? If it had been Song Mu who had come to pick her up, she could have told him her address—but it had been Yu Lei who had come.
She was tired, very tired, so tired that she was cautious even when she was half drunk.
Ever since Liu Dong died in the well, ever since she first met Yu Lei, over half a month had passed, and she hadn't had a single moment to truly relax. She'd been juggling the company, the police, and the emergency department, barely getting more than four hours of sleep a night.
She thought the string that had always been stretched in her head had been stretched to its limit after Chen Junan's accident, and any more would have broken. It wasn't until Tong Jiayu was investigated that she realized that the string could be stretched even tighter, even tighter.
Under the cover of alcohol, she lost her temper at Yu Lei, but it was just a short, weak breath before she was about to suffocate. It didn't matter whether he understood or not, he just thought she was drunk and crazy.
The sun will rise tomorrow as always, and nothing will change.
Tang Ruxin left the window and silently walked around the sofa to the entrance. There was only one of her shoes on the floor, which Yu Lei had just picked up. The other was still in the bedroom.
She opened the door softly with her bare feet.
When the lock of the security door snapped into the keyhole, Yu Lei's eyes opened. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, then sighed silently.
Ten minutes later, Yu Lei left the house and drove behind Tang Ruxin's taxi, deeply impressed by the taxi driver who dared to pick her up. In the middle of the night, with temperatures below 10 degrees Celsius, a thinly dressed barefoot woman was standing on the side of the road waiting for a car, and this driver had the audacity to stop.
If he saw someone like this standing on the side of the road, he would probably have to silently recite the core socialist values in his heart, otherwise he would never be able to step on the brakes.
Following the taxi to an area of townhouses, Yu Lei watched her get off the car, walk into the house, close the door, and then turn on the lights.
Through the French window in the living room, he clearly saw someone coming towards her. The person was frantically patting her shoulders, rubbing his hands and breathing heavily, fearing that she would catch a cold.
That person is Tong Jiayu.
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