He was already eating his seventh mint candy.

Lu Yixin rested her cheeks in her hands, counting with utter boredom.

“Eating too many mints can cause excessive keratinization of the oral mucosa,” she said faintly.

Fang Yongnian’s hand paused as he unwrapped the eighth candy. He gave her a look that was hard to describe.

Those were his own words—said back when Lu Yixin had been addicted to mint candies, able to finish three 100g packs in a day. He had told her that to scare her into quitting.

The most terrifying thing about a child growing up is that she remembers every word you once used to scold her—and then uses them, intact, to scold you back.

“Are you very annoyed?” Lu Yixin asked, then answered herself, “You probably are. My dad’s been smoking all night lately. I’m afraid he’ll suddenly drop dead.”

Fang Yongnian: “……”

He still felt awkward toward Lu Boyuan. He knew that was probably childish, he still held resentment over Lu Boyuan’s cold attitude toward him through all these years.

When the project had first started, he had truly regarded Lu Boyuan as family. Yet when trouble came, that “family” not only didn’t stand by him, he didn’t even speak a word in his defense.

That kind of childish feeling couldn’t be spoken aloud, so it could only churn quietly in his heart. Hearing Lu Yixin say that her father smoked all night, he actually felt a bit pleased inside.

Turns out everyone’s the same.

If this matter really was connected to the professor, he wanted to see how Lu Boyuan would handle it.

After all, Professor Wu’s relationship with Lu Boyuan was far closer than with him.

He gathered the pile of candy wrappers on the table into a ball and tossed it into the trash can, asking Lu Yixin, “Will your dad be home tonight?”

Lu Boyuan had gone to Huating City again. This time, through Fang Yongnian’s help, he managed to contact Yu Hanfeng, who lent Lu Boyuan an entire auditing team.

Without even relying on Fang Yongnian’s list, Lu Boyuan still managed to lock down several of the people on it.

What he had once ignored, when looked back on now, was full of holes.

“He should,” Lu Yixin said, slouching on the stool with no sense of posture.

“Finished your homework?” Fang Yongnian pulled out her notebook.

She really had done as she said. Her grades had been steady lately, and she no longer asked him those obscure chemistry questions.

She was never stupid; before, she was just lazy and liked to play clever tricks. Most of the time meant for building her foundation had been spent daydreaming. Now that she was studying systematically, Fang Yongnian realized she actually had inherited Lu Boyuan and Liu Miqing’s intelligence.

Only her handwriting… was truly ugly.

Lu Yixin lay on the table, stretching her neck forward.

Fang Yongnian’s body carried a faint smell of smoke. He lowered his head, frowning as he checked her work problem by problem, not noticing that Lu Yixin was leaning closer and closer.

“When are you going to start practicing your handwriting?” After struggling for a while to recognize the character “thick,” Fang Yongnian finally looked up.

The girl’s face was right in front of his, her bright eyes fixed on him.

Fang Yongnian: “……”

He very discreetly swallowed the breath he almost gasped out from surprise, then leaned back half a meter in his chair.

“Your handwriting is too ugly,” he said calmly.

“Oh!” Lu Yixin, having succeeded in scaring him, retreated back into her seat, her round eyes curling into narrow lines as she laughed.

“I’ll hit you,” Fang Yongnian said, still very calm.

Scared him to death.

“Oh!” Lu Yixin laughed even more wildly.

Fang Yongnian shot her a sidelong glance, but the furrow that had been between his brows all afternoon finally loosened.

“Let’s go.” After checking her last workbook, Fang Yongnian locked the cash register and stood up.

Lu Yixin, who had been curled up in a chair reading a leisure book, looked up, face full of question marks.

Fang Yongnian reached out, took the book from her hands, and—expressionless—tore off the fake cover disguising it, revealing the garish, colorful title underneath: Crying Senior.

A comic…

The page she had opened to happened to show a man pinning a girl in a school uniform against a wall and forcefully kissing her.

A vein twitched between Fang Yongnian’s brows, but he expressionlessly slipped the fake cover back on the book.

“I’m taking the stray cats for sterilization today, closing early,” he explained, pretending he hadn’t seen that ridiculous comic.

Lu Yixin fumbled to shove her books into her bag.

She had been caught by Fang Yongnian reading leisure books several times already—some with even more explicit scenes—but as long as she finished her homework, he never said a word more.

He really was a good uncle.

Lu Yixin pouted as she slung her backpack on.

Just hearing the word uncle now made her whole body uncomfortable. But she was only eighteen. She could only be Fang Yongnian’s niece.

She couldn’t call him by his name. She couldn’t tell him she liked him.

Otherwise, Fang Yongnian would ignore her.

Adults were such a bother…

Lu Yixin hopped along, thinking that since it was the man she liked, she could only dote on him.

She would always grow up.

Just like Zheng Ranran had said, her presence was so strong that it really wasn’t easy for Fang Yongnian to ignore her.

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧

Fang Yongnian had been in Hecheng for more than two years. Besides running his pharmacy, the thing he did most was arrange sterilizations for stray cats.

He liked furry little animals. In the past, because of his work, he’d had to harden his heart toward the laboratory animals. Now that he no longer spent his days in a lab, his fondness for furry creatures had become very obvious.

He always kept small packets of cat food tucked inside his clothes. After coming to Hecheng, instead of getting along with the neighborhood aunties, he became close with several nearby pet hospitals. He even reached an agreement with some people who shared his interest: the hospitals would charge only the cost price for sterilizing stray cats and dogs brought in by them.

He had truly devoted thought and effort to this.

The last time, Lu Yixin had casually mentioned two unneutered tomcats that had wandered in, and Fang Yongnian had kept it in mind, finding time to make an appointment with the pet hospital.

His body didn’t allow him to run and climb after cats, but Fang Yongnian had a good brain—and was willing to spend money.

As soon as they reached the entrance of the residential complex, two young men in their twenties handed over the cats inside a pet carrier—it was indeed those two unneutered tomcats. One of them, a fat black-and-white one with heterochromatic eyes, bared its teeth at Fang Yongnian viciously the moment it saw him.

“This one’s super fierce,” said one of the young men, still shaken from catching it.

Fang Yongnian smiled as he made the transfer, casually patting the pet carrier. The fat cat, feeling insulted, yowled angrily, the sound almost like a sob.

“Do they really have to be sterilized?” The other young man, who had developed feelings for the cats after catching them, looked at the lively creatures with a faint sense that the surgery seemed… not very humane.

“Cats that have been sterilized are given priority for adoption,” Fang Yongnian said as he finished the transfer and handed them a business card. “If you’re interested, you can call to adopt. If you meet the requirements, adoption is free.”

After speaking, he patted the carrier again.

The fat cat grew even angrier, twisting around in the cramped carrier for a long time before wedging its head into the corner, refusing to look at anyone.

Fang Yongnian chuckled and waved to the two young men.

Lu Yixin followed behind him silently. When she glanced back, she saw the two young men whispering to each other while watching them.

“Why didn’t you explain to them why stray cats need to be sterilized?” Lu Yixin turned around again. The two young men were still whispering, so she widened her eyes and glared until they felt guilty and silently got on their bikes to leave.

“It’s something anyone can look up, so what’s there to explain?” Fang Yongnian said, placing the carrier on the back seat of the car and even fastening the seatbelt around it.

Lu Yixin leaned over the passenger seat, watching as Fang Yongnian patted the fat cat’s carrier again. The fat cat gave a sharp meow, stretching out a chubby paw in mock threat.

He seemed to really like that cat; there was a trace of warmth in his eyes whenever he touched it.

He just didn’t like explaining things. If he were willing to explain, maybe his standoff with her father wouldn’t have lasted this long.

What a stubborn man!

Lu Yixin secretly took out her phone and snapped a picture of the man and the cat.

She really liked this stubborn man.

She really liked Fang Yongnian—from the strands of his hair, to the folds in his clothes, to the way he drove.

Her thoughts drifted again, and she suddenly remembered the pharmacy that had closed before three that afternoon.

“Can your pharmacy really make money like this?” she asked, starting to fuss again.

Fang Yongnian, fully focused on driving, didn’t answer.

In the back seat, the two stray tomcats—soon to be eunuchs—let out restless whines. It was dismissal time at the kindergarten in the neighborhood, and the area in front of the school was crowded with cars.

Lu Yixin sneaked several glances at Fang Yongnian, then suddenly spoke: “Are you really leaving?”

She had held that question in for a long time.

Was Fang Yongnian really leaving?

He already knew all the best foods in every alley of Hecheng. His relationship with her father had finally thawed. He even had a pharmacy here—old, shabby, and with little revenue, but pharmacies were said to be profitable, so his life should be stable.

He didn’t seem to have any reason he had to leave. So… was he really going?

“Mm.” This time, Fang Yongnian actually replied.

When she was being a lovestruck fool and taking his photo earlier, he hadn’t even looked at her. Yet now, when she asked such a heartbreaking question, he decided to respond.

Lu Yixin puffed out her cheeks in anger.

“Then why are you still spending so much money helping stray cats get sterilized?” Catching cats wasn’t cheap, two hundred per cat!

That shabby pharmacy of his sold a box of cold medicine for only eighteen yuan, and when he was in a good mood, he even did “buy one, get one free.”

“I can help stray cats get sterilized no matter where I am.” At the red light, Fang Yongnian pressed the brake with one hand.

Now he was actually answering every question obediently again!

Lu Yixin’s puffed-up cheeks never went down.

“Why do you have to leave!” The girl’s face flushed red with anger, and her big eyes gleamed unusually bright.

Fang Yongnian glanced at her. When the light turned green, he calmly drove forward—and said nothing for a long time.

Lu Yixin also stayed silent.

She started to feel like crying, but then thought about how she had already cried too many times in front of Fang Yongnian recently. It wasn’t that it was embarrassing—Zheng Ranran had told her that if she cried too often, Fang Yongnian wouldn’t be moved anymore.

She planned to save the most shocking one for last.

If, in the end, Fang Yongnian still insisted on leaving, she’d grab his sleeve and sit right down in the middle of the street, bawling her eyes out.

Fang Yongnian drove steadily; the cries of the stray cats in the back seat gradually quieted down, and the car was filled with calm silence.

“I have shares in the pharmacy here in Hecheng,” he said, checking the rearview mirror as he changed lanes. “Even if I leave, I’ll still come back a few times each year.”

And that was it.

Lu Yixin sat there, half-open-mouthed, trying to decipher what he meant.

Did he mean that even if he left, he would still come back to see her?

That’s it?!

That heartless, five-thunders-strike-him dead scumbag!

—

Author’s Note:

Some readers said they didn’t understand the plot. From Ge Wenyao’s perspective: he discovered someone intended to cause a car accident, so he called the driver’s wife to confirm. The wife, holding a grudge because the driver had an affair, denied that the driver had taken cold medicine before leaving. Ge Wenyao then mistakenly thought it would be fine, which ultimately led to the tragedy.