Chapter 375 One person is a house, two people are a home
Room 201, Unit 15.
A blue house number was nailed to the green-painted wooden door with many small advertisements on it. The door handle was rusty, but there wasn't much dust, so it was obvious that someone had always lived there.
"Do you feel a little disillusioned?" Xia Mi tore off the small advertisement that was used to cover the keyhole by some unscrupulous person with one hand, and searched for the key in her bag with the other hand.
"A beautiful girl's home is actually in a place like this."
Chu Zihang looked around and saw that the doors of several houses in the old corridor were open. The smell of cooking oil and the gossip of people could be clearly heard. He finally understood where the sense of familiarity came from.
He shook his head, a hint of nostalgia in his eyes: "I also lived in an old house like this when I was a child."
Before his parents divorced, his family lived in this old building, squeezed into a small rented room.
The good-for-nothing dad goes out early and comes back late every day. After sending his mom, who dresses up beautifully every day, to work at the city dance troupe, he goes to the company to work as a driver for his boss.
He walks to school every day, and occasionally his father will pick up his mother after get off work and wait for him to get out of school together.
It only happens occasionally, maybe only a few times a year.
Even so, that was the happiest time in his life, so even though he later moved to a bigger house, what he missed most were the days when the three of them lived in a rental house.
If a host of Today's Commentary were here, he would probably burst out laughing.
"Really?" Xia Mi took out the key and expressed the question in a declarative way.
Although Chu Zihang had already followed his mother to a new family when she met him, it was easy for her to find out about his past.
She had just woken up not long ago. After realizing that humans had evolved into incredible forms during her sleep, she began to concentrate on learning how to act like a human and integrate into the human community.
And Chu Zihang was the person she chose to observe.
So she knew everything about him clearly, even better than Su Xiaoyan, his mother.
With a "click", Xia Mi pushed open the door and a faint fragrance came in.
"I'm back~" the girl shouted to the empty room, walked in and pulled open the curtains. The sunlight slanted in from the floor-to-ceiling windows, giving her figure a golden edge.
Chu Zihang stood at the door and saw tiny dust particles dancing in the sunlight, while the elves enveloped by the light smiled at him:
"No need to change your shoes, just come in."
Chu Zihang had just calculated the area of the old building and the layout of the second floor in his mind, and knew that this room would not be that big, but the single room in front of him still exceeded his most conservative estimate.
There are no partitions, no bathrooms, and even the kitchen is just a gas stove in the corner.
He looked at the single room, which he could see the whole of at a glance. The sun was shining directly through the huge floor-to-ceiling window opposite the door, and he could feel the heat of midsummer just by standing face to face.
When he heard Xia Mi's greeting, he thought he would see a family of three that seemed to be in harmony with each other, or an idiot brother who was waiting for his sister to return home alone. However, he never expected that the house was empty.
The whole room was like a sketch faded by the sun, with only the simplest lines left: a bed covered with blue sheets, an old-fashioned chest of drawers with peeling paint, and an old double-door refrigerator standing next to the gas stove, humming.
There is nothing else besides this.
Not counting the lost memories, this was his first time in a girl's bedroom.
In the abandoned villa in the forest, he only stayed on the first floor and never went up to the second floor, which was the little world belonging to the girl.
He just didn't expect it to be so simple, far from what he imagined a girl's boudoir to be.
"How does it feel?" There was no table or bench in the room, so Xia Mi simply lifted the blue bedspread, revealing the all-white sheets and quilts underneath.
"Very clean and tidy." Chu Zihang praised sincerely. After leaving for a few days, there was not much dust on the ground and no dust on the walls. It seemed that they cleaned regularly.
"Hmph, you're quite good at talking." Xia Mi hummed twice, folded the duvet and placed it on the corner of the bed, then sat down and patted the bed:
"This is the house I bought to make it easier for me to go to school. It was originally a power distribution room. It's like this after the renovation. If I put tables and chairs in it, I won't be able to turn around."
She said with a teasing smile: "What should I do, Chu, if you don't want to stand there like an idiot, you can only sit on the bed~"
Watching Xia Mi patting the bed and calling him to sit over, Chu Zihang's mind seemed to suddenly brighten with countless images switching like scenes in a movie.
There were scenes of him and Xia Mi strolling around the campus together, of him hugging Xia Mi tightly by the Saône River, of him wearing a black suit and exchanging rings with Xia Mi in a white wedding dress at the wedding scene, of him pacing back and forth in front of the operating room with a frown on his face, of him frantically changing the child's diaper, of her wrapped in a nightgown, dragging herself into the room with a sly smile...
These images came so suddenly, like snow melting in the sun, revealing the seeds buried deep underneath.
When he came to his senses, Chu Zihang suddenly realized that just because of the girl's small action, he had even decided on the name of their future child.
Is my concentration really that poor?
Or did Xia Mi use some inhuman means to confuse my mind?
Chu Zihang was doubting himself in his heart, but his body walked to the bed very honestly, and sat down directly in the eyes of Xia Mi who exclaimed, "You really sit down?"
The boy and girl sat on the same side of the bed, only thirty centimeters apart. Their legs would touch each other if they moved, and the atmosphere was silent for a while.
After a while, Xia Mi recovered from her shock, her eyes curved into crescents, and a mischievous smile played at the corners of her mouth.
She leaned forward slightly, her hair falling down, casting a flicker of light and shadow in front of Chu Zihang's eyes.
From this angle, the boy's taut jawline looked like the edge of a glacier melted by the sun, just like his heart at the moment.
"Oh, are you blushing?" She deliberately dragged out the ending of the word, like a feather gently tickling my heart:
"Does it make you so excited and happy to sit on a girl's bed for the first time?"
Chu Zihang didn't feel his face getting hot. He knew she was teasing him on purpose. He suppressed the throbbing in his heart and stared into those lively eyes like a monk in meditation.
"Where are we going to eat later?"
As the favorite disciple of the Executive Department Director and the next President of the Lionheart Club, he has received more professional training than other students and is very good at regulating his emotions.
Professor Schneider once praised him, saying that even if the Dragon King was in front of him, he would not frown and would still be able to draw his sword.
Now, he has lived up to his mentor's evaluation. Not only did he easily catch the heavy punch from the Dragon King, he also tried to guide the direction of the situation.
"Tsk, boring." Seeing that this guy didn't accept the challenge, Xia Mi curled her lips in dissatisfaction, raised her long legs, leaned her slender body back, and rolled on the bed like a squirrel that didn't grab a pine cone. She picked up two boxes from the other side where the bedside table should be.
"Would you like braised beef or spicy beef?"
Chu Zihang's eyes followed her all the time. Seeing the two boxes of instant noodles in her hands, he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow: "Is this what you usually eat?"
"No, I usually eat in the cafeteria." Xia Mi looked at her like a fool. It was just that the place she lived in was a little casual, but that didn't mean she really didn't have money to eat well.
Don't underestimate my financial resources, you bastard!
"What about school holidays?" Chu Zihang looked at the refrigerator next to him again.
Xia Mi just said that this house was bought for schooling, but did not mention her parents.
The room was bare, with no signs of anyone else living there, no family photos, and not even a pair of extra slippers. This was obviously her official residence.
"Of course I make it myself." Xia Mi put down the instant noodles and opened the refrigerator door, revealing a fresh-keeping layer with only a few boxes of milk and a bottle of oil-consuming food inside.
She took out two cartons of milk and opened the freezer below, where two bags of hard meat were frozen.
"Why, do you want to try my cooking?"
Chu Zihang looked at the extremely simple ingredients and nodded without hesitation.
"Then come and help." Xia Mi closed the refrigerator with her foot, then stuffed two bags of meat into Chu Zihang's arms, humming a song while washing the pot and boiling water.
Chu Zihang looked down at the two lumps of meat in his arms, his eyes somewhat helpless, but he still came to the gas stove, released the Word Spirit to carefully control the temperature, and thawed the meat bit by bit.
Ever since he met Xia Mi, he felt like he was either violating the rules and regulations of the Executive Department or on the way to violating them.
As for why it wasn't after he met Lu Mingfei, he was carrying out a formal mission at that time and could use the Word Spirit.
Under Jun Yan's heating, the two bags of meat melted quickly, and blood gradually seeped out, staining his hands and dripping onto the ground.
Looking around, I found that there was no chopping board or even a washbasin in the kitchen in the corner, only a pot and a gas stove.
Xia Mi took the pot and washed it somewhere unknown.
So, her so-called cooking for herself really just means cooking instant noodles and soaking them in water, right?
Looking around this house that doesn't even have a TV, Chu Zihang inexplicably began to wonder what kind of life Xia Mi was living alone.
When he was a child, his useless father sometimes had to go out for social events with his boss after get off work, and his beautiful mother would come back late from performances. He had to eat alone, do his homework alone, and sit there watching TV alone, waiting for his worry-free parents to come home.
But at least he still has popular science books and TV to watch, but what about Xia Mi?
She had no one to accompany her and nothing to occupy her time, so she could only sit on the bed, listening to the noises of other people's homes and trying to learn about human affairs.
Year after year, day after day.
Surrounded by loneliness and surrounded by solitude.
This discovery caused a sharp pain in his chest, as if someone had thrown a handful of broken glass into his heart.
I heard footsteps approaching and turned to look at the door, but it was not Xia Mi, but an old lady holding a bowl of braised pork with a smile on her face.
The old lady who had just heard Xia Mi come home and was worried that she had not eaten lunch, specially served a bowl of meat with noodles for Xia Mi, was standing at the door. The kind smile on her face gradually stiffened.
She stared at the expressionless boy with blood on his hands in the room, then looked down at the bloodstains on the ground. Her eyes gradually became terrified and her expression began to distort.
The neighbor's old lady's face turned pale at a speed visible to the naked eye. Her hands were shaking, and her lips were trembling as if she was beatboxing. Under Chu Zihang's murderous gaze (from the old lady's perspective), she struggled to squeeze out a few words from her throat:
"Kill, kill, kill!"
The decibels gradually grew louder, and just as the unbelievable whispers were about to turn into screams of terror, a girl's clear voice came from behind:
"What are you killing? Grandma Li, are you killing chickens today?"
The old lady from the neighborhood who was about to yell "old lady" stopped yelling immediately after hearing this. She turned around and looked at the unharmed girl with a look of disbelief:
"Xiao Mi, are you okay?"
"What could possibly happen to me?" Xia Mi washed the pot, her face full of confusion. "I just got back and was preparing to cook."
"Then, then he is..." The old neighbor lady pointed at the motionless murderer in the room, stammering, not knowing what to say. She had just imagined a 30-episode campus youth melodramatic romance drama in her mind. The main plot was that a perverted murderer had a crush on and stalked a girl living alone, and killed her after his confession was rejected.
Most of them are classic plots of her running away, him chasing her, and her being unable to escape, but with an element of murder.
Xia Mi came closer and saw the cold-faced butcher standing there, holding the thawed meat in his hand and looking at them expressionlessly. Blood kept dripping onto the ground, and he looked like he had suddenly realized something:
"Ah, he's my former classmate. I happened to meet him when I was traveling, and he dropped me off on the way back."
"Oh, so, hello, classmate, hello..." The old neighbor lady breathed a sigh of relief, and her hand holding the bowl, which was shaking like Parkinson's disease, regained its composure.
"I thought... Uh, grandma made some extra braised pork. Xiao Mi, you should eat with your classmates. Don't always eat instant noodles. You look so skinny, with thin arms and legs."
As she said that, she put the braised pork in Xia Mi's pot, waved her hand and went back to her room.
Under normal circumstances, if a striking girl like Xia Mi brought home a good-looking boy, she would definitely gossip about it, but after the scare she just had, she decided to go back and take some blood pressure medication first.
"Why are you scaring people when you have nothing better to do?" Xia Mi closed the door and gave Chu Zihang a reproachful look: "He's already in his seventies or eighties. What if something happens to him?"
"..." Chu Zihang pondered for two seconds, and finally uttered two words: "I'll pay."
"You have money, why show it off?" Xia Mi snorted twice, put the pot and meat on the gas stove, and took out two small basins from under the bed.
"Why did you thaw so quickly? You've made the ground dirty."
Chu Zihang put the meat into the basin and watched Xia Mi mutter as she took out a mop from behind the cabinet and told him to wash the meat quickly. Suddenly, another scene appeared in front of his eyes.
It is no longer a "fantasy", but a personal experience.
When I was a child, my father bought some large intestines on a whim and prepared to braise them himself. As a result, the fat from the large intestines fell to the ground. My mother quickly hugged him away when he wanted to pick it up, and then took the mop and mopped the floor with a look of disgust on her face.
At this moment, the mother's figure gradually overlapped with the girl's.
Chu Zihang suddenly remembered Lu Mingfei's words: "She is right in front of you, you must consider whether this may be your only chance in this life.
Some people, some things, once they are wrong, are gone."
Just as I was lost in thought, a delicate and flawless face suddenly appeared in front of me, almost occupying my entire field of vision.
Xia Mi put her hands on her hips and looked at Chu Zihang, who was distracted, with dissatisfaction: "What are you thinking about? You look so serious. Hurry up and get to work!"
"Yeah." Chu Zihang put his thoughts aside, nodded, turned around and left with the basin.
Watching his back disappear at the door, Xia Mi looked around and found that the room, which always seemed cold and lonely when she was alone, was no longer empty this time.
But that person clearly didn't bring anything with her, and the things in the room were all her own.
Is this what they say on TV?
One person is a house, but two people make it a home?
(End of this chapter)
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