Chapter 136: What Can I Change?
Chapter 136: What Can I Change?
After quite a while, Cheng Yang asked his sister, falteringly, “Did you sell this apartment?”
Cheng Xi staunchly replied, “No.”
Cheng Yang hit the table. “My god, if you didn’t sell it, then why did he say that in such a justified manner? Does he even understand who the owner of this apartment is?” He raised his eyes, looking straight back at Lu Chenzhou’s still gaze.
Lu Chenzhou calmly asked, “Do you have a problem with that?”
Cheng Yang laughed. “Ha!”
“Donglai’s project in Hainan… You’re part of it, aren’t you?”
“Hahahaha! As the young head of the household and the inhabitant’s brother,” Cheng Yang said as he suddenly had a shamelessly dramatic change in his attitude, “I feel like this apartment’s decor is indeed very strange. If you don’t like it, then feel free to change it! Don’t worry, I won’t be here in the near future, and neither my father, mother, aunt, or anyone from my family at all will be here in the near future! So please feel free to do whatever you please!”
Cheng Xi had no reply to this shameless display. “……”
Cheng Yang covered his face with his hand, avoiding looking at the sister who he had just betrayed. “Sayonara, I’m off!”
And he ran away even faster than a rabbit.
Cheng Xi massaged her forehead in agony. Having such a brother really… Brought! Shame! Upon! The! Family!
She looked severely at Lu Chenzhou. “You can’t do this.”
“Hmm?”
“……I don’t have a place to live at while you refurbish the apartment.”
“I do.”
“It’s too far!!!”
“Oh.” Lu Chenzhou thought for a moment, and then shrugged carelessly. “Then I’ll move in today.”
Cheng Xi was so exasperated that she couldn’t help herself from asking, “Aren’t you even going to ask if I’ll agree?”
“Will you?”
“No!”
Lu Chenzhou’s voice was cool. “But what can that change?” He was getting tired of arguing with Cheng Xi over this, even though he was being so shameless with a straight face. “We’ve already gotten in bed together, so stop wasting time! I can either move in today and slowly renovate this place, or I can slowly renovate this place before moving in. You choose.”
……If you’re going to renovate my place anyways, then what’s the difference?
She looked at him speechlessly, and eventually gave up and chose to have him renovate the place first before moving in. As for where she’d live while her apartment was being renovated…… she’d have to find a place herself.
She had to try to delay this for as long as she could. She still wasn’t mentally prepared to move in together so quickly.
Cheng Xi definitely wouldn’t admit that she had given in just because she was scared of his actions last night!
When she left, she was forced to tell him her apartment’s passcode, and then to save his fingerprint in the scanning device. However, what Cheng Xi didn’t know was that, when Lu Chenzhou came back later, he changed the passcode and removed all other saved fingerprints except for Cheng Xi’s. So, when Cheng Yang remembered to retrieve his change of clothes from his sister’s place, he failed to get in. He tried entering the passcode and failed, and then he tried to use his fingerprint…… he used all ten fingers, but none of them worked!
What was going on? His sister hadn’t moved out, had she!
Back then, neither Cheng Yang nor Cheng Xi had realized how completely Mr. Lu had taken over Cheng Xi’s place in the blink of an eye.
That day, when Cheng Xi wore a scarf to work. Naturally, the head nurse asked her amidst a gaggle of women, “Do you have hickeys again? Tell your man to be more gentle! What’re you going to do when it gets warm and you can’t wear scarves anymore?”
Cheng Xi made an o(╯□╰)o face.
Her uncomfortable expression made everyone start laughing, and Cheng Xi could only put on a serious face in response. “Aren’t you all going to get to work? Are you this free? If you’re this free, then go and check on the patients some more.” And then everyone rubbed her face before going back to work.
Cheng Xi ran to the confined wards as if she were escaping from her coworkers. And because she was so used to going to Chen Jiaman’s ward, she subconsciously headed there.
Chen Jiaman was currently drawing. The curtain that was usually closed off had been pulled open today, bathing her in soft rays of sunlight and causing her face to tilt upwards.
As Cheng Xi stood by the door, she started shaking with emotion, and she almost wanted to cry. How long has Chen Jiaman hid in the shadows for? She didn’t walk in and startle Chen Jiaman, and instead just stood there and watched her, until Chen Jiaman turned her head around and smiled at her.
Chen Jiaman was almost completely back to normal now; she woke up in the morning, went to bed at night, ate her meals properly, and smiled at others.
And now, she was even unafraid to stand in the sun.
Cheng Xi smiled back at her, her expression so warm that it felt like she would treat anything Chen Jiaman did as normal. Cheng Xi walked into the room. “What’re you drawing today?”
The canvas was still blank, and Chen Jiaman pointed at it as she said, “The sun is the artist today.”
She hadn’t howled in a long while and her throat had noticeably improved. Her voice had also returned to its original sweet tone, which was particularly soft because of her timidness.
The sunlight danced across the white canvas through the window, leaving spotty and translucent shadows on the page. “It does seem like it, doesn’t it?” Cheng Xi said as she looked at the canvas, “The sun is a very good artist. It can create the form of green mountains and sparkling water, draw out the vibrant redness of peaches, greenness of willows, and all the hues of a maple forest, and display a thousand worlds, letting people feel the beauty of nature. The sun represents heat, warmth, and even coolness—it all comes from the sun.” She lowered her head and caressed Chen Jiaman’s head lightly. “Jiaman, do you want to go out and look around? To see the wonderful world of the sun?”
Chen Jiaman shuddered and withdrew into herself, the smile on her face quickly turning into fright.
Cheng Xi didn’t force her. Cheng Xi’s decision making process was very patient, and when she saw Chen Jiaman’s behavior, she quickly consoled her. “It’s alright. When you want to see the outside world, just let me know. I’ll bring you out whenever you’re ready. By the side of the river, there’s a full grove of sakura trees. In the spring, they’ll all bloom at once. It’s really a pretty sight.”
And then Cheng Xi led Chen Jiaman down another conversation path and accompanied her for quite a while before leaving.
As Cheng Xi was walking back to her office, she ran into her middle school classmate and his wife. They were back for a checkup. Cheng Xi never acted too formally with her patients, and she greeted them amiably, poured both of them a glass of water, and then, because they brought their baby with them, even played with the baby.
This little baby, swaddled in a bundle of blankets and sleeping with a red face, looked particularly cute.
Cheng Xi filled the time by asking about how hard it was to raise one, how the baby’s health was, how it was sleeping, and so on.
When they finished talking, she said, “Alright. It seems that your illness has improved a lot already.”
Cheng Xi’s classmate and wife were both slightly taken aback. “Just like that?” His wife even cautiously asked, “Is there really nothing else that has to be examined?”
Cheng Xi smiled kindly. “What else is there to do? If you’re in the state of mind to ask something like that, then that already shows that you’ve improved a lot since last time. People don’t have to be worried about always being clear-headed. Rather, they should be worried about living in a messy state of mind. And right now, you’re certainly very awake. For example, you didn’t even cry when we talked about how tired you were from raising your child. Thus, I feel like you’re already in a much better place. Postnatal depression originally stems from not being able to adapt to an entirely new set of circumstances after giving birth. So, you just have to remember that, whether it’s your first pregnancy or your fourth, we’re all new to this, and since it’s something new, we’ll inevitably make some mistakes and have to correct them as they come. But that’s alright, because as we keep moving forward, we’ll learn how to deal with all these problems. As long as we try our best, things will always get better.”
Cheng Xi’s voice was warm and gentle as she encouraged the couple, and even as she said these truisms, it didn’t sound long-winded. Both her classmate and his wife were captivated by her monologue.
After a while, Cheng Xi’s classmate sighed in admiration. “You’re getting better and better at talking, and your charm has only increased.”
This classmate of hers hadn’t progressed very far in his studies, and nuanced words like ‘affinity’ didn’t exist in his vocabulary. Instead, he had chosen to use the unusual description of ‘charming.’ Cheng Xi noticed that his wife’s expression faltered slightly, but Cheng Xi could only pretend to not have noticed anything. Instead, she smiled and told the wife, “See, he likes long-winded people. So whenever something comes up, or whenever you feel tired, wronged, in pain, or exhausted, just tell him. Tell him everything. Men rarely pay attention to these things, so don’t expect him to anticipate your needs from just a glance. If you try to do so, you’ll just be stifling yourself, and on the other side, he’ll think that you’re trying to act coy.”
The young wife started chuckling, and Cheng Xi’s classmate was somewhat embarrassed. “Hey, don’t talk about me like that. I’m still a very good, caring, and affectionate man.”
“Yes, keep being a good man, then.” Cheng Xi said with a smile, ending the day’s consultation.
Because she had been at the university for the whole day yesterday, there were a lot of tasks on her plate today. Thus, Cheng Xi was preoccupied and didn’t have time to think about anything else. Only after she got off work, returned home, and saw her empty apartment did she recall that Lu Chenzhou had said that he was going to renovate her apartment.
But was there a need to be this efficient and thorough? My goodness, all of her furniture had been dismantled and removed, her clothes and shoes were gone, and her apartment was truly devoid of anything besides its four walls.
At least leave her undergarments. Otherwise, what was she going to change into at night?
Moving everything away so quickly would leave even Dr. Cheng in shock, all right?