For the next two days, the guest room remained in an icy silence.
Chao Youye drifted between drowsiness and the numbness brought on by the drugs. Every time he regained consciousness, the heaviness and dull pain in his body reminded him of the price of his collapse.
Ye Qingliu was like a silent guard, always by his side, flipping through documents or processing data, appearing precisely when he needed him. His movements were efficient and silent, like an ice-cold program, isolating him from the outside world and all his tentative thoughts.
Mu Xinrong was bound by invisible strings between the dining room and the living room. He wandered anxiously, but did not dare to approach the door.
Every time Ye Qingliu appeared, his calm and indifferent eyes were like a basin of ice water, instantly extinguishing all the questions that came to his lips.
He forced himself to eat and read, but his eyes always involuntarily wandered to the depths of the corridor.
Hua Jinyue became the only faint warmth in this oppressive space. She heeded the warning and dared not approach the guest room, but her worries turned into actions.
She clumsily cooked porridge and tried some light side dishes, carefully placing them on a tray for Ye Qingliu to bring in.
She folded paper cranes in the corner of the living room, pink and blue, and piled them on the low cabinet near the guest room, like silent prayers.
Early in the morning of the third day, the sky was gray and the wind was howling.
Chao Youye felt slightly refreshed, the pain in his body receding, leaving only a deep sense of fatigue. He watched Ye Qingliu replace his nutrients, a glimmer of light flashing in the depths of his violet eyes.
"Ye Qingliu," his voice was hoarse but clearer, "I'm... much better." He paused, and with cautious tentativeness, "Can... look out the window? Is it snowing?"
Ye Qingliu pushed the needle without a pause. When he finished, he looked up at him, his gaze calm and assessing. After a few seconds, he nodded imperceptibly, walked to the window, and pulled open the heavy blackout curtains.
Cold sunlight streamed in. Outside the window lay a bleak winter courtyard, a gray sky, and dead leaves swirling in the chill wind. Chao Youye's gaze greedily darted out the window, as if to absorb this ordinary reality.
However, when my sight passed by the bare ginkgo tree beside the path not far away, it suddenly froze!
Mu Xinrong!
He was wearing a thin dark coat, without a scarf or hat, and the cold wind blew his black hair wantonly.
He just stood there alone, with his head slightly raised, his eyes straight, stubborn, burning with anxiety and heaviness, piercing through the cold air and piercing straight at the window.
How long had he been standing there? It was so cold...
A huge panic gripped Chao Youye! He instinctively wanted to hide, but his body froze. He suddenly looked at Ye Qingliu, his eyes filled with panic.
Ye Qingliu naturally saw it too. His gray-blue eyes flashed with a cold light, and without any hesitation, he pulled the heavy curtains back together with a "swish" sound!
The cold darkness instantly engulfed the room, completely blocking out that burning gaze.
Chao Youye fell back heavily onto the pillow, her chest heaving violently, her breathing rapid. The shock of that glance far outweighed the pain in her body.
Mu Xinrong's eyes... were no longer filled with hatred. He didn't dare to look at what was churning in them, let alone bear it.
"He...he..." His voice was trembling and out of tune.
"Useless consumption." Ye Qingliu's voice was as cold as a knife as he adjusted the IV tube. "You need to rest, not be sad through the window. His emotions are poisonous to you."
His eyes fell on Chao Youye's pale face, and his words were cruelly blunt.
"Want to protect him? Take control of yourself first. Otherwise, the next time he collapses, no one will be able to save him. And your father's patience," he deliberately emphasized the last two words, "is not infinite."
"Father" - these two words were like poisoned ice cones, piercing into the heart and instantly freezing all confusion and weakness.
The cold atmosphere of the study seemed to envelop him again.
The photo of him and Mu Xinrong kissing in a secret corner was thrown on Chao Nanxing's mahogany desk, which symbolized power.
His father's hawk-like eyes swept across calmly, without a trace of emotion.
"explain?"
He straightened his stiff back and tried his best to maintain his shaky composure: "It's just for fun, I'm tired of it."
The sound of a heart breaking was clearly audible. The flash of cold satisfaction in his father's eyes was like a brand.
Chao Nanxing did not need an heir with "flaws", especially when the flaw was an ordinary boy who could not bring any benefits. He needed a perfect and ruthless tool.
Mu Xinrong is Chao Youye's most fatal weakness.
The only way to protect Mu Xinrong is to cut him off with his own hands, and push him away in the most cruel way, out of his father's sight.
And wasn't his shattered, broken appearance, on the verge of collapse, a testament to his fragility and incompetence? Unable to control his emotions, unable to manage his body, how could he stand up to his father? Guard against Wu Zeyu and his mother? And how could he... protect that fool standing in the cold wind?
A cold, rusty determination rose from the deepest part of Chao Youye's heart, freezing all panic, weakness and embarrassment.
He stopped looking at the tightly closed curtains and turned his gaze to Ye Qingliu. His voice was unusually steady, even with a deliberate distance: "Qingliu, please ask Hua Jinyue to prepare a clean school uniform for me. And my schoolbag."
Ye Qingliu's movements paused imperceptibly.
The gray-blue eyes behind the lenses cast a clear scrutiny on the overly calm face for the first time.
Beneath the calm, something more dangerous was brewing. But he didn't ask, simply nodding imperceptibly: "Okay."
The curtains blocked the view, but they couldn't keep out the biting cold. Mu Xinrong stood under the ginkgo tree for a long time, his limbs numb from the cold. He stubbornly looked up, staring at the window that had been sealed again with curtains.
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