Chapter 30
Pressing the switch, the main light in the living room turned on. Li Ye sat on the stool in the entryway to change his shoes, and handed the cake he was carrying to Zhou Yuan before opening the door.
Even changing from sneakers to slippers feels more comfortable. Taking the food from Zhou Yuan's hands, Li Ye set dinner on the table first. "How about we put carpets in the living room or the bedroom?"
Zhou Yuan wears leather shoes to work, but after a day, the difference in comfort when he changes into loose slippers is even more noticeable. "Isn't it included in the interior design plan?"
"I have a big carpet in my living room, the kind that covers the whole room."
Li Ye opened the packaging bag, reheated the cooled roast chicken, set the air fryer timer, and opened a carton of milk to make milk tea. "The two steamed buns in the car are enough for the main course. After reheating the roast chicken and sharing half of the cake, it feels like there's still room for more."
Zhou Yuan had already cut the cake. "Cherry mango?"
"This is what seasonal fruits look like, right?" Li Ye, carrying a small milk pot to the table, wasn't quite sure about the current dessert trends and the planting and logistics capabilities of modern society.
"Never mind that, let's eat first." Li Ye only found one pair of gloves in the packaging bag. Unlike Yao Yao, she didn't order takeout as often, so she just used her hands. "I'll save these gloves for next time."
As if to get right to it, Li Ye poured a cup of milk tea for the two of them first. "I just poured the opened milk into the pot when I remembered that I hadn't finished the fruit tea I made this morning. Luckily, I only opened a small box, so one cup for each of us was enough. I only put in a little bit of tea leaves, so it won't affect my sleep."
Zhou Yuan then disassembled the chicken, first breaking off the two large drumsticks, then the wings, and finally breaking the rest of the chicken body in the opposite direction along the opening, roughly dividing the whole roasted chicken in half.
"What do you eat at your company tonight?" Li Ye took a small sip of her milk tea, pretending that she hadn't started eating yet. "Don't eat too much at night, especially since it's already late for dinner. Today is an exception."
The disassembly process hadn't stopped yet. The chicken was roasted to be very tender and juicy. Zhou Yuan easily tore off the large pieces of chicken that were stuck to the skeleton and placed them on the foil that had been wrapped around the chicken, letting them soak in the broth that had flowed from the chicken.
After the last piece of chicken was removed, the incomplete chicken carcass was piled in the corner of the tin foil. Zhou Yuan picked up a piece of chicken soaked in broth and held it to Li Ye's mouth, "Feed Li, so you don't get your hands dirty."
Under the light, Li Ye's face was not very clear. She hesitated for only a moment, then slightly parted her lips and gently bit the delicious food at the corner of her mouth. The chicken entered her mouth, and she swallowed more quickly than ever before, even breaking Li Ye's habit of not talking while eating.
"You should eat too, it's not like I'm the only one who got this." Perhaps the habit had been broken, Li Ye no longer had any reservations. "Are you full? These can be saved for tomorrow."
"I've already spoken, why are you suddenly mute?"
In response to Li Ye, Zhou Yuan once again fed her meat, this time a chicken leg. She tried to take it and eat it herself, but she couldn't match Zhou Yuan's strength, mainly because it was inconvenient to exert force while holding the food.
Seeing Zhou Yuan lost in his own thoughts, Li Ye had no choice but to eat the large chicken leg he was holding with three hands. After finishing it with difficulty, Zhou Yuan picked up the chicken wing, but was stopped by the quick-witted Li Ye. This couldn't go on.
The little brain that had just been fed suddenly had a bright idea. Li Ye released his hand from restraining Zhou Yuan's movements, but simply guided the chicken wing to Zhou Yuan's mouth, "I'll feed you too."
In this state, Zhou Yuan was very obedient. He would open his mouth and eat whatever was near his mouth, allowing Li Ye to openly observe Zhou Yuan's eyes and the state of his pupils. His thoughts were indeed scattered to who-knows-where.
The consequence of being distracted while mechanically feeding was that Zhou Yuan put the finger that Li Ye was feeding him into her mouth. As soon as her teeth bit down, she immediately realized what was happening and pulled her finger out of Zhou Yuan's mouth. Without paying attention to her strength and movements, the chicken wing bone fell onto the table, startling Zhou Yuan out of his reverie.
"I'm sorry." Coming to his senses, Zhou Yuan felt very sorry for what he had done to Li Ye. He was about to continue feeding him when he remembered that this was the origin of the incident, and he was at a loss for what to do.
Looking at the incomplete teeth marks around his index finger, Li Ye asked, "How long do you think it will take to fade? Is tonight okay?"
"There's no bleeding, it's not as serious as you think." After checking his stomach capacity, Li Ye decided to end dinner. "I'm done eating, and I doubt you're in the mood. You can clear the table, and we'll go wash our hands together later."
"If you're injured, you should clean the wound as soon as possible, right?" Li Ye quickly found a way to arrange things for Zhou Yuan.
In less than a minute, Zhou Yuan led Li Ye to the bathroom, where all the lights were on. The light was so bright it was almost like daytime. The faucet above the sink was running, but it couldn't wash away the grease from the chicken on their hands.
Grape-scented hand sanitizer was applied to both of their palms, and the delicate foam swirled between their hands. Zhou Yuan pressed his body against Li Ye's back, his large hand covering her slender hands, carefully cleaning every corner of Li Ye's hands with the white foam.
The very gentle movements lost their rhythm when they touched the index finger with its teeth marks. Zhou Yuan's palm barely brushed against the thin foam on the finger, not daring to linger there.
It was Li Ye who stepped in and took Zhou Yuan's mischievous hand away. With her slender palms and long, shapely fingers, she performed a scientific handwashing procedure, washing her hands twice and finally rinsing them clean with running water.
The hand, covered in water droplets, seemed to sparkle like it was adorned with a handful of jewels just from the gentle swaying under the light. Li Ye chuckled at his own sudden thought, "Could this mark be a ring?"
Zhou Yuangang had just returned from his reverie and hadn't quite caught up with Li Ye's train of thought. He looked at the bite mark under the light, which was starting to fade, and felt much more relaxed. "It looks like it will be fully healed tonight. Using a bite mark as a marker requires biting until you bleed, which is unsafe and doesn't last long."
Li Ye didn't find Zhou Yuan a spoilsport, but was just curious, "What are you thinking about? And what about the questions I asked you before? You still haven't answered them. Are you too tired from work? You shouldn't be doing so many fancy things."
Zhou Yuan, who was about to take Li Ye's hand, froze, unsure of what to say now. He could only answer the previous question first, "I ate fried rice and tofu soup at the company, so I'm not hungry now."
Li Ye narrowed his eyes, turned off the bathroom light, and ignored the question Zhou Yuan had avoided, saying, "This means our plans to have dinner together in the future can't be counted, and our plans to eat together have completely failed."
Turning around stiffly, Zhou Yuan saw Li Ye nodding affirmatively, but he didn't want to accept it. "Lunch, we haven't tried it yet."
There was a reason why lunch wasn't mentioned at the beginning. Li Ye asked, "What would you like to do to have lunch together?"
Zhou Yuan's concept of eating together is much broader than Li Ye's, "making phone calls while eating."
"This counts?" Li Ye found it hard to accept. Talking during a meal was already a serious mistake, and now playing on a phone was added on top of that. "It will affect your appetite and digestion."
Zhou Yuan knew that Li Ye would never agree to a video call at first, so his method was to slowly boil the frog in water, as always: "A voice call, no need to speak, just listen to the sound of eating, just like eating together."
That's true. With her and Zhou Yuan's ability to judge sound, even with the distortion from the equipment, they could indeed make it sound like they were eating together, since two people don't need to talk when they eat normally.
"Try it tomorrow. Remember to send a message before you call to avoid any time discrepancies." Li Ye felt that something was wrong. It seemed that she was being controlled by Zhou Yuan again, and things were gradually turning into the situation that Zhou Yuan wanted.
With her hand on her hair, unconsciously stroking her smooth, long hair, Li Ye thought to herself, "Anyway, Zhou Yuan won't hurt me. It's probably just another attempt to change our way of getting along. I'm having a lot of fun."
Back at the dining table, there was still a quarter of a fruit cake left. The cake that Li Ye bought was very small, about the same diameter as a regular noodle bowl, and he didn't choose a tall type with many layers. In the end, he still had to finish it over two days.
Carrying a small cake plate and a fruit teapot to the coffee table, Li Ye began his drawing time in the living room. Zhou Yuan went to the bedroom to get his violin; his practice time was now fixed in the evening.
Li Ye considers his work hours to be strictly divided. He uses his mornings, when he is full of energy, to work on animation, and his evenings, when he has a warm atmosphere, to draw private commissions.
Currently, Li Ye's drawings depict a more concrete vision of her new home after visiting the renovation site. Accompanied by the sound of a violin playing an unknown piece, her thoughts flowed like a spring. The line drawing she started today was completed in one go, and she was very satisfied with it after looking at it from different angles and zooming in and out.
At this point, Zhou Yuan finished working on the clips. Since he was going to show them to Zhou Yuan anyway, Li Ye called him over and said, "Zhou Yuan, come and take a look. Can you spot anything wrong?"
Zhou Yuan put down the strings he was about to play. His knowledge of painting was limited to Li Ye's paintings and the art classes at school. He looked down at the sketchbook in Li Ye's hand, which contained scenes of life in their new home that he had previously promised to give him.
"Nobody here?" Zhou Yuan's focus has always been on people, and he wanted to see scenes of the two of them living together in Li Ye's writing. But there are none of them here. "Just ask the designer for the scene drawings."
Li Ye felt she had been scolded, but dared not talk back. She knew that running away was shameful, so she used her quick thinking to come up with a clever idea: "We've been thinking about how to display these paintings, right? Use these scenes as backgrounds, make two little figures walk on them, and finally combine them into a mechanical notebook. When you want to look at them, you can take them out and play with them."
"The scenes have only just started to be drawn, and of course, the characters haven't even been started yet." Li Ye continued to patch up the scenes, following his own words.
Zhou Yuan didn't expose the idea that came to him on the spur of the moment. This way, he might be able to get a lot of Zhou Yuan figurines handmade by Li Ye. "Will the figurines have many movements?"
Li Ye's eyes began to wander, and he didn't forget to warn Zhou Yuan to lower his expectations: "There should be, but it's hard to say. Look at the costumes of those streamers online, the movements are very complicated to disassemble, and the workload is huge. I won't do it that meticulously."
The phone rang, and Li Yefei rushed over to turn it off. "The alarm went off. I'm going to take a shower first today."
Zhou Yuan blinked. This was the prelude to one of Li Ye's special phone ringtones, a different tune from the alarm clock. Moreover, he looked up at his smartwatch and realized it wasn't time for his usual shower yet.
Out of consideration for the boundaries of living together with someone of the opposite sex, Zhou Yuan put the cake, which no one had eaten, back in the refrigerator. While Li Ye was getting his pajamas, Zhou Yuan took his violin back to the bedroom and continued his unfinished practice.
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