True Apple
Perhaps because she was about to get off work, the older woman only frowned slightly in displeasure when she heard the young girl in front of her call the clan leader by his name, but she didn't want to say anything more. She walked over and snatched the ladle, and when she turned around and saw that the girl was about to leave the kitchen, she quickly raised her voice to stop her: "Hey! Where are you going? The clan leader just called back and said that they have something to do tonight and won't be back, so we have to eat by ourselves."
"Little girl? Come lend a hand! After we finish eating, clean up, and collect our red envelopes, we can leave work early today!"
Jin Xilu's shoulders slumped, instantly deflated. The fire started by small sparks had finally reached her. She felt a pang of anxiety thinking about Jiang Yilin. He was the most composed person. It seemed that since she wouldn't see him tonight, the sparks wouldn't reach him.
After a table was laden with food and firecrackers were set off, everyone returned to their seats with smiles, and each person tacitly left a seat for the clan leader. The oldest member of the clan, Grandma Jingran, looked at the large group of people with satisfaction and simply said, "Thank you all for your hard work, let's eat."
No one was making a ruckus or playing drinking games at the dinner table, but laughter still filled the air. Aside from not seeing Jiang Yilin return, Jin Xilu enjoyed the New Year's Eve dinner very much. While eating, she listened to everyone chatting in a relaxed manner. She knew that Jiang Yilin, as the head of the family, had never mistreated his subordinates, and their wages for the few days of the New Year would be calculated separately. Therefore, many people were willing to stay until New Year's Eve before taking a holiday.
After the New Year's Eve dinner, while everyone was receiving their red envelopes, Jin Xilu was playing with the cat. Everyone else received a red envelope except for Jin Xilu. Lai Xi, afraid that she would be sad, explained, "This should have been prepared in advance by the clan leader at Grandma Jingran's request. Don't worry, you will definitely receive a big red envelope next year!"
Jin Xilu picked up Sanhua and stroked the cat's flesh. She could feel Laixi's kindness towards her. "I know, thank you for comforting me."
"Alright, didn't you make plans to play games all night? Aren't you going home?" she kindly reminded him.
Lai Xi slapped his thigh excitedly, "Oh right! I almost forgot, I'm so envious that your house is so close by. Aren't you going back?"
"I'll go back soon." Kim Hee-ro's expression was normal, but she was actually lying.
Jiang Yilin finally returned before midnight. The lights in the yard were still on, which didn't seem strange to him. As usual, the lights were kept on all night on New Year's Eve. He glanced at his house but didn't choose to go through the main gate. Instead, he simply climbed over the wall. He stood on the wall with one hand on his hip, looking towards Jin Xilu's house.
The lights in the room are on, that's great.
The lights in her house were finally on. This year, on New Year's Eve, he wouldn't be sneaking into her house in the dark to light the lamp and keep watch over her home.
Kim Hee-ro really came back. He reminded himself of this again and again, shaking off those extreme plans in his mind. The smell of alcohol in his stomach dissipated a little, but his steps were still unsteady. He almost fell off the wall after taking two steps. Then he simply sat on the wall, letting his long legs hang down and kicking the wall intermittently.
His longing was like a silent clock, striking him one beat at a time, compressing his pent-up emotions. At first, it was one second, one day, one month, but later it lasted for several years. In the end, the longing pressed down on his body, forcing him to move forward. He knew that only by moving forward could he have a chance to see Kim Hee-ro again.
Goodnight, Xilu. May you have a carefree and prosperous new year.
Ever since Kim Hee-ro came back, he would come to the wall or window every night to look at her for a while. He couldn't actually see anything, but just staring at the warm yellow light of her house made his heart feel at peace.
He climbed down the wall again, moving very quietly so as not to disturb anyone. Whether it was because he had been sitting on the wall for too long and caught a chill, or because he had smelled too many roses in the yard, he felt even more dizzy.
Despite his exhaustion and disheveled state, he didn't rush upstairs. Instead, he went into the bathroom on the first floor, where he had asked someone to prepare a change of clothes for him.
Half an hour later, he finished tidying himself up and walked out of the shower. The fog on the glass mirror covered his face. As the water droplets gradually disappeared, he could vaguely see the transparent water droplets hanging down on his well-defined abs. After drying himself off, he was only wearing the most basic clothes underneath. He took off his bathrobe and put it on casually. He dried his wet hair as he went upstairs, forgetting to fasten the belt around his waist. He just wore it loosely, since there was no one else at home.
The house was still filled with the fragrance of flowers, and the flowers in the yard were planted by Jiang Lianyin himself back then. The fresh flowers displayed in the house were his choice. The Jiang family could not live without this mountain, nor could they live without the plants that grow on this land.
Jiang Yilin hadn't been deliberately avoiding Jin Xilu these past few days. Something had indeed happened at the mine and with Jiang Lianyin, and he wasn't planning to resolve it hastily. After all, he was waiting for Jiang Lianyin to lose her temper first.
He told himself to wait a few more days; he had waited for years, so he shouldn't be impatient and scare Jin Xilu. Soon he would be able to walk openly and honestly beside her.
At that time, I will be the wolf that she can't get rid of.
He had originally planned to push open the bedroom door and drift off to sleep, but unexpectedly found the spring that would activate his clock at the doorway.
His eyesight has always been excellent, so he is used to going upstairs without turning on the lights. He has walked up this narrow wooden staircase thousands of times. He even rolled down it when his father scolded him for it when he was a child. No matter what, he never bumps or falls down it now.
But tonight, as he stood walking out of the stairwell, his legs involuntarily staggered. Jiang Yilin clutched his heart tightly, and that pain, enough to destroy a person's entire consciousness, once again burrowed into his body. Damn it, the headache came back to haunt him.
In the last second before he collapsed in front of the door, Jiang Yilin began to wonder if he was still drunk tonight, or if the scent of roses had a hallucinogenic effect, which was why he saw Jin Xilu's concerned and anxious face.
After all, I had dreamed of her when I was in so much pain that I fainted.
That's wonderful! I wish this dream could last a little longer, so he could look into her eyes a little longer and remember how much she loved him.
Kim Hee-ro volunteered to be the last to leave so everyone could leave without worry, but in reality, she secretly took the key and waited outside Jiang Yi-lin's room.
She wasn't sure if Jiang Yilin would come back tonight. She just didn't want to go back to the house where she was all alone. She secretly wanted to be closer to him.
Fortunately, she made the right bet; Jiang Yilin really did come back.
It was past 11 p.m. before he went upstairs. Jin Xilu was still thinking about whether to call it a night. She was worried that he must be very tired and that it would be easy for the two of them to have a bad chat. She thought that she should just wait for him to go into his room, stand guard at his door, and hold him there as soon as he woke up, so that he would spare some time to listen to her finish what she had to say.
She was thinking this, but when she heard Jiang Yilin's footsteps getting closer and closer, Jin Xilu still showed her fear. She held her breath and hid at the corner of the stairs. It was actually quite creepy. It was pitch black everywhere, and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. In addition, the Jiang family's house was a traditional wooden building, and red "Fu" characters and decorative paintings were pasted everywhere during the New Year, which had a bit of a Chinese horror movie feel to it.
She held her breath. She heard Jiang Yilin's footsteps stop. Just when she thought he had discovered her and was about to come out on his own, she watched helplessly as he collapsed vertically in front of her without warning.
She couldn't care about anything else anymore; her mind was entirely on Jiang Yilin. She ran up to him and called out his name anxiously.
"Jiang Yilin, Jiang Yilin, wake up, what's wrong with you?"
Jin Xilu helped him up and leaned him against her. Perhaps it had been too long since she had touched his body, because her first thought when she hugged him was that he was too cold. This was definitely not a normal human body temperature. She hurriedly rubbed her palms together to warm them up, and used her hands and feet to hug him even tighter, her face pressed against his, her hands on his porcelain-white neck, until she could feel his breath, and then she breathed a sigh of relief.
This couldn't go on. Just as Jin Xilu was still worrying about what could raise his body temperature, he heard the creaking sound of a wooden door being pried open.
Jiang Yilin's door was pushed open from the inside. At the same time, there was no wind or people at the corner of the stairs, but the wall lamp suddenly turned on. The closest thing to the lamp was a potted orchid on a rosewood round-cornered cabinet. The orchid leaves rustled and the shadows swept across the soles of the feet, scratching something.
"Is this some kind of ghost?" Jin Xilu only dared to say in her heart. She was afraid that there really were ghosts, or that there were unseen things listening to her. After all, the Jiang family members were all too strange.
The door opened, and Sanhua jumped out first, puffing out her chest, her bright cat eyes, and turned to signal Jin Xilu to come in quickly.
"Phew, at least it's just a cat."
Looking again under the wall lamp, the orange cat lazily emerged from behind the rounded cabinet, its black shadow passing over her knees as she knelt on the ground. Kim Hee-ro breathed a sigh of relief, and could only say with a wry smile, "Thank goodness it's you guys."
"Meow! Meow." The calico cat meowed again. Who else could it be?
Reminded by Sanhua, Jin Xilu decided to find a way to get Jiang Yilin into the room, help him onto the bed, and find several blankets to warm him up.
Despite Jiang Yilin's gentle and mild-mannered demeanor, resembling a frail and sickly scholar, Jin Xilu failed several times when she tried to support him by his shoulders and half-carry him on her back. His long arms and legs gave him a better physique than the average man, and the thin muscles on his back were well-developed, making Jin Xilu's palms go numb every time she touched him.
Her hands slid down his chest again and again, already ruffling his bathrobe and revealing his chest below his collarbone, which aroused many thoughts. Fortunately, she finally steadied him on the last occasion, letting his head droop behind her neck, with her two soft hands resting on her shoulders. Rather than saying that Kim Hee-ro carried him on her back, this posture looked more like that of Jiang Yi-lin hugging her from behind.
Water droplets dripped from his damp hair, landing on her earlobes, ear cartilage, and neck. At first, it was just one or two drops, but later it became indistinguishable whether they were her sweat or his water droplets. Kim Hee-ro's breathing became more and more rapid, and her face and heart were burning.
Jin Xilu swallowed hard. She dared not imagine how she would explain her actions as unintentional if Jiang Yilin suddenly woke up.
I'm afraid it's impossible to explain no matter how you put it.
Apart from the stairwell, the entire floor consisted of Jiang Yilin's room alone. There was a distance from the door to the bed, and the room was completely dark with the lights off. Jin Xilu couldn't see clearly and didn't know where to go. Remembering Sanhua who was still beside her, she said in a dry voice.
"Sanhua, could you please turn on the light?"
"Meow!" The meow didn't come from the cat next to her. Jin Xilu felt strange and was about to look down to find the cat when she realized that the pink and green glass lamp on the bedside table, which was about five or six meters away from her, had been turned on, and the orange cat was standing on the bedside table lazily yawning.
"Huh? When did you jump to that place?" Jin Xilu asked in surprise, as the orange cat walked without making a sound.
"Meow!" The calico cat beside her also meowed, then ran to the glass lamp and grabbed the shadow of the orange cat's wagging tail.
With only a low-wattage glass lamp, Kim Hee-ro still couldn't see clearly what was in the room, but at least she could now determine the approximate location of the bed.
Just then, Jiang Yilin on his back groaned uncomfortably. He rubbed his nose against his chin. Jin Xilu's legs felt weak. When one's vision is blurry, a lack of security can amplify other senses, such as touch and smell.
It wasn't the wind; she could clearly feel Jiang Yilin exhaling cold air at the junction of her neck and chin. Then, he pressed his face against her neck and rubbed it, before gently raising his chin and lingeringly following her, kissing her earlobe with his only slightly warm lips.
Why is Kim Hee-ro certain it was a kiss, and not an accidental brush? Because he kissed her more than once.
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