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The world often goes against one’s wishes.
When Lu Yixin woke up after falling asleep on Fang Yongnian’s sofa, her cold hadn’t improved. Relying on her youth, she forced herself to pack a pile of food and took a taxi to Fang Yongnian’s company, only to find that he had already gotten off work.
“Where’s your phone?” Lu Boyuan’s eyes widened like copper bells when he saw his daughter, face flushed with fever, swaying in the elevator with several large bags of food.
“It broke when I was packing up…” Lu Yixin’s voice had completely turned nasal.
“See if you aren’t just tormenting yourself!” Lu Boyuan took the bags from her, both exasperated and amused. “When you’re healthy, how come I never see you being this filial?”
Lu Yixin sneezed twice.
Her filial piety was just incidental…
“Where’s Fang Yongnian?” Lu Yixin craned her neck, looking around.
“…No manners!” This time Lu Boyuan finally caught what his daughter had called Fang Yongnian and shot her a glare.
Lu Yixin fell silent. Her head was spinning…
“He went back.” Lu Boyuan led his daughter toward the conference room, muttering as he walked, “Don’t know why, but after dinner and the meeting, he just left. Maybe something urgent came up at home.”
Lu Yixin: “…………”
Damn.
“Why did you buy so much?” Lu Boyuan was still muttering. “Have you eaten?”
Lu Yixin: “……”
Eat what, she was practically acting in a Korean drama with the male lead right now…
“How about this—you drink the porridge here first. I’ll finish the document I’m working on and then take you home.” Lu Boyuan divided the porridge, giving one portion to Lu Yixin, and carried the rest outside to share with the project team members working overtime. He was in such a rush that the porridge he left for Lu Yixin came with a bowl but no spoon.
Lu Yixin looked at the beautifully packaged claypot porridge in the disposable box, steam curling up, and the air seemed filled with the scent of mockery.
She had actually missed Fang Yongnian perfectly.
While paying for the food, her hand had slipped, and her phone had fallen straight into the fortune fish tank beside the Cantonese restaurant’s cashier. When she fished it out, it was black-screened and reeking of fish.
Without a phone to call a cab, she had stood by the roadside waving for ages with an armful of food.
She felt her cold getting worse.
She might as well have stayed asleep on Fang Yongnian’s sofa.
Having no appetite, Lu Yixin started peering around the conference room.
This company where Fang Yongnian and her father worked—she had only been there a few times, always just to drop something off at the front desk for her father before leaving, never actually going inside.
The place was even bigger than she imagined. The entire eighteenth floor was open-concept, and even past ten at night, the lights were still blazing.
Her father sat huddled at his desk with a bowl of porridge and hadn’t gotten up since. Sniffling, Lu Yixin looked around for a while, then decided to go out and find a spoon.
She had spent half a month’s allowance on that food—no matter how little appetite she had, she was going to finish it…
Most of the people in the office were young. A few wearing white coats took the porridge she’d brought, greeted Lu Boyuan at his desk, and then went upstairs.
Lu Yixin has always been rather fond of the researchers in white coats,and when they passed by her they couldn’t help but take another look.
Four or five young people holding porridge were whispering to each other.
“Did the unicorn leave?” Young man A’s voice was very, very low.
“Left, I guess, he left after the meeting.” Another young man pushed up his glasses and sighed.
Lu Yixin frowned.
Were they……talking about Fang Yongnian?
Using such excessive words?!
“You think he’s really a pervert or what, I only said a little more during the meeting just now, and that look he gave me, I nearly peed myself……” Young man A shifted the porridge in his hands because it was a bit hot, switching hands as he spoke, his voice low but still loud.
“I told you not to blab.” The other man, who looked a bit older, sighed, “Mr. Fang decided the verification team’s expert list a long time ago, you insisted on sticking your nose in.”
“I’m just trying to make things easier for myself……” the young man mumbled.
“Besides, it’s not such a big deal, why the constant cold face, have you ever seen him smile? Last time Director Yu came for the annual meeting and joked with him for so long, he didn’t even twitch a muscle.”
“And also that time Xiao Liu said he came downstairs at midnight to get some materials and saw the unicorn sitting alone in the office with the light off, silent, creepy……”
“Is he really a little messed up in the head……”
“After all, that rumor before was pretty tragic……”
“Speaking of Wu Yuande’s thing, is that true? Was he really hit and killed by his son?”
The few young people chattered on with gossip, pressing the elevator to the nineteenth-floor lab as they talked.
Lu Yixin, who had followed behind them the whole way, bit on the plastic spoon in her mouth, her brows tightened so hard they seemed glued together.
She guarded, loved, and hated Fang Yongnian so much that she didn’t want a single hair of his to be harmed,and in others’ eyes, he was just a psychopathic unicorn?
Called such harsh words, shown such rejecting expressions.
He really was a bit sharp-tongued, his temper not great, his personality a little awkward.
But he was clearly just a man who, when he sat on the floor and then stood up awkwardly because of his posture, would cover her eyes.
Why say such things about him……
She remembered that there were a pile of takeout menus at Fang Yongnian’s house,her father said Fang Yongnian was the first boss he’d seen who checked the company meals one by one.
He would keep a few of the household goods purchased for the company dorm at home, and to avoid quality problems he would try everything himself first.
Why say that about him！
Lu Yixin was so angry she almost wanted to snatch back the late-night food she had packed and throw it into the stinky gutter.
But in the end,she could only angrily eat her own portion of the claypot porridge,half asleep in the well-heated conference room, until her father shook her awake.
“Let’s go home.” Lu Boyuan frowned as he felt her forehead, “You’re still running a fever.”
“If it doesn’t get better by tomorrow you’ll have to go see a doctor.” At times like this,Lu Boyuan still acted very much like a father, “When you go out put the blanket over you, I’ll go downstairs to start the car and turn on the heater.”
“Dad.” Lu Yixin rubbed her eyes.
“Do the people in your company all dislike Fang Yongnian?” She had just woken up, and because of the cold, her voice was so hoarse it was almost unrecognizable.
Lu Boyuan froze for a moment. “What did you hear?”
“Nothing.” Lu Yixin wrapped herself tightly like a zongzi and shook her head.
She didn’t want to repeat it.
She hated those people.
She felt even more heartache for Fang Yongnian.
Why was it that no matter where he was, everyone always focused on his disability?
She suddenly understood very clearly what Fang Yongnian had meant that day when he kept confirming it with her again and again—he said that because he was a disabled person, she would have a hard life, and their children would also be pointed at and judged by others.
At that time, all her attention had been on the fact that Fang Yongnian was already thinking as far ahead as marriage and children, and she hadn’t thought deeply about the cruelty within those words.
Fang Yongnian had been disabled for more than five years.
He had lived every single day like that, so… was he afraid she would experience the same thing?
“Nothing.” The girl’s feverish face was flushed red. Sitting in Lu Boyuan’s Chevrolet, which she had decorated in a girlish way, she murmured faintly, “I just really hate it when people say he’s disabled.”
Lu Boyuan glanced at his daughter and sighed.
In the end, he didn’t say anything. He turned the heater up a bit more and wrapped Lu Yixin’s blanket tighter around her.
“Sleep.” He patted his daughter’s head.
He hated it too.
But Fang Yongnian’s missing leg had always been there, always glaringly visible.
୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧
Lu Boyuan drove fast, unlike Fang Yongnian, who was steady. Sitting in her own father’s car, Lu Yixin was jolted so much she couldn’t sleep at all. When they got into the elevator, she simply leaned completely against Lu Boyuan, wrapping the blanket over her head as well.
Her head hurt badly.
The negative energy inside her body was about to explode.
So she didn’t hear the sound of the elevator arriving, nor did she notice that when her father stepped out of the elevator, his footsteps paused.
“Yongnian?” Lu Boyuan’s voice carried a trace of surprise. “It’s so late, where are you going?”
Still feverish and dazed, Lu Yixin pulled down the blanket. The man she had been aching for was now standing right outside the elevator, dressed in a black trench coat, holding a blanket in his hand.
Fang Yongnian took a step back. “Nothing.”
Restrained, he stepped back again.
Lu Yixin coughed twice and followed Lu Boyuan out of the elevator. Because the car ride had left her dizzy, she staggered and nearly tripped over the gap at the elevator door.
Then both men reached out to grab her at the same time—Fang Yongnian stepped forward and steadied her by the shoulders, while her father pulled her arm, none too gently, trying to make her stand upright instead of slumping.
Lu Yixin: “……”
In this lifetime, she had actually managed to encounter such a bizarre moment.
Fang Yongnian quickly let go of his hand.
Lu Boyuan tugged at Lu Yixin’s arm and smiled at Fang Yongnian. “This girl’s running a bit of a fever.”
Lu Yixin couldn’t see Fang Yongnian’s expression. Her father’s grip on her arm hurt, and she frowned, stepping back—right to Fang Yongnian’s side.
Lu Yixin: “……”
She really hadn’t meant to. Her body had a will of its own.
“If she’s not better by tomorrow, I’ll probably have to take her to the hospital.” Lu Boyuan was busy searching for his keys and didn’t notice that Lu Yixin was already standing shoulder to shoulder with Fang Yongnian behind him. “I won’t attend the morning meeting tomorrow.”
“How long has she been running a fever?” Fang Yongnian’s voice.
Lu Yixin secretly tilted her head to glance at him.
Because of the height difference, she could only see half of Fang Yongnian’s face.
He looked thinner again, his jaw tightly clenched.
“Two days?” Lu Boyuan turned back, frowning. “Or three?”
“Two days……” Lu Yixin, utterly hopeless, raised two fingers.
That she had managed to survive and grow up safely was truly thanks to Buddha.
“So if it’s still not better tomorrow, you need to get it checked.” Lu Boyuan concluded swiftly and finally found the long-unused key tucked in the corner of his bag.
Fang Yongnian reached out, gently pulling down the two fingers Lu Yixin was holding up, then placed his hand on her forehead.
Lu Yixin’s mind went blank with a bang—she couldn’t even tell if it was from the thrill or from being startled.
“Go now.” Fang Yongnian pressed the elevator button.
“Ah?” Lu Boyuan, who had just opened the door, was left gaping.
“There’s a lot of flu going around lately.” Fang Yongnian had already stepped into the elevator. Holding the door open, he looked at the father and daughter at the entrance. “It’ll be safer to get her checked at the hospital.”
Lu Yixin was dumbstruck.
“And,” she heard her man’s calm voice say, “that morning meeting can’t go without you anyway. If you go now, you won’t need to take leave.”
