Shoutout to Alinaza for the commission!
Junyue Hotel, executive suite on the top floor.
It wasn’t until Lu Huaiyan brought over a bowl of cooked noodles from the counter that Jiang Se gradually felt the absurdity of the situation.
She had originally wanted to treat him to a bowl of longevity noodles as a replacement birthday gift, but who would’ve thought the shop would be closed for a wedding? In the end, they ended up bringing back a free bag of handmade noodles and cooking it themselves.
Since they gave a red envelope, it wasn’t really taking it for free.
The suite had its own kitchen, stocked with pots, pans, oil, salt, sauces—everything one could need.
Of course, since Lu Huaiyan lived here, he’d never used it.
Jiang Se, though she hardly ever touched housework, had nonetheless watched Uncle Tong and Jiang Chuan cook. She took out a pot, filled it with water, tore open the plastic bag, and was about to put the frozen block of noodles into the pot.
Lu Huaiyan caught her wrist in time, took the noodles from her hand, and said with a half-smile: “Have you really never cooked noodles before?”
Jiang Se lifted a brow: “And you have?”
Lu Huaiyan: “I have. Go wait on the sofa, I’ll cook.”
Jiang Se had never been enthusiastic about cooking anything. She accepted this readily and obediently went to the sofa. It was only then she suddenly noticed that on the console table behind the sofa was a vinyl record player.
The record player was a portable suitcase-style one, with some years on it. The last time she was here, a different decoration had clearly been placed there.
Beside the player was a leather case for storing records. Jiang Se pulled out one record, glanced down, and found it familiar, another Lana Del Rey track, “young and beautiful.”
Pulling another out, this one was even more familiar, they had listened to it together over the phone just a few days ago.
Putting the record back, Jiang Se tilted her head toward the counter.
From the ceiling above the counter hung three white paper pendant lights. Light diffused through the layered paper, casting shadows across the man’s dark lashes and high nose bridge, making his features look even more defined and handsome.
He was holding the enamel jar the butler had just delivered, ready to make the broth. Sensing her gaze, he lifted his eyes and looked over.
Jiang Se said: “When did you bring in this record player?”
Lu Huaiyan lowered his eyes and smiled: “It came with me on the plane today. Guess what year it’s from?”
There was no need to guess this answer.
Jiang Se said: “The year I was born?”
“Mm.” Lu Huaiyan fished out the cooked noodles and placed them into the heated broth, speaking slowly, “There’s another one the same age as me. I left it in Beicheng, in that villa you used to stay in.”
After saying this, he picked up the bowl, looked toward the girl on the sofa, pointed his chin toward the small dining table by the window, and said: “Come eat some noodles.”
They sat at the small dining table.
Tongcheng’s nightscape had a different flavor from Beicheng’s.
Here, there was a kind of quiet after the fall of bustling lights.
They shared the bowl of longevity noodles in this quiet night.
Lu Huaiyan picked up a bite of noodles with a sauce dish, then scooped a spoonful of soup and slowly pushed it toward her: “Try a bite first.”
The custom here was that everyone present got a share of the birthday person’s longevity noodles. This was also the case for Jiang Ye’s birthday the other day, everyone had to take a mouthful.
Jiang Se had already eaten plenty at Han Yin’s place, and she only intended to take a single bite of Lu Huaiyan’s noodles. But once she had a spoonful of noodles and broth, she immediately felt she had room for a second bite.
It was simply too delicious.
She set down the sauce dish, savoring the sour and fresh flavor lingering in her mouth, and said: “Lemon shrimp broth, I thought you don’t like sour.”
The broth had been brought up from the hotel kitchen by the butler in the enamel jar. Jiang Se had assumed it would be Junyue’s famous lamb bone broth or seafood broth.
She hadn’t expected it to be this salty, fragrant, sour-spicy lemon shrimp.
Lu Huaiyan examined her expression, glanced at her empty sauce dish, and asked her: “Want a second bite?”
Jiang Se nodded: “Just one more is enough.”
Lu Huaiyan gave her another bite of noodles, and only after she finished it and confirmed she didn’t want a third, did he finally pick up the chopsticks to eat.
Despite his eating speed not being slow, his manner when eating was elegant, downright pleasing to the eye.
Jiang Se held a cup of black tea, watching him finish a bowl of noodles.
“Used to cook often before?”
Lu Huaiyan dabbed the corner of his lips with a napkin, also poured himself a cup of black tea, and said: “When I was studying in England, after getting sick of the food at restaurants outside, I would cook for myself.”
After Han Yin left Beicheng, because her relationship with Lu Jinzhong was too terrible, old Master Lu sent him to study at an aristocratic public school in England.
The old man originally sent two butlers to England to take care of him, but Lu Huaiyan liked living alone, and directly sent the butlers back to the country.
The man took a sip of black tea, and seeing her not continue asking, set the teacup down, saying: “What else do you want to know? The dish I’m best at, my first love, or how many relationships I’ve had?”
Jiang Se met the eyes behind his glasses, yet asked a completely unrelated question: “When you kicked Lu Jinzhong out of Lu Corporation, what did it feel like?”
As if a little surprised that she asked this, Lu Huaiyan tapped his index finger against the black tea cup, contemplated, and said: “Delightful, excited, more precisely, it should be an unparalleled pleasure.”
Unparalleled pleasure.
Jiang Se dropped her eyes and slowly sipped her tea.
After a quiet moment, Lu Huaiyan looked at her lowered eyelashes and suddenly asked: “Feeling better?”
Jiang Se’s movement paused, she lifted her eyes: “What?”
“When you first arrived at my mother’s this afternoon, weren’t you feeling awful?” Lu Huaiyan looked into her dark eyes and asked again, “Feeling better now?”
Jiang Se was silent.
Zhao Zhicheng’s photo and Zhang Yue’s tearful face swept across her mind.
He said more today at Han Yin’s place than he usually did, was it because he noticed her mood, so he deliberately talked that much to coax her?
Jiang Seset down her teacup, smiled, and nodded: “Much better.”
Lu Huaiyan looked at her, but she stood up at this moment and said: “Mind if I play a song?”
He stood up as well, immediately asking back: “Which one do you want to hear? The one from last time?”
“Mm.”
The record player was already set up; putting in a record would play it.
Still the same song as last time, “Born to die”, Lu Huaiyan set the music and sat down beside Jiang Se. The leather sofa immediately sank a little, and a faint, almost indiscernible scent of agarwood drifted from him.
Jiang Se turned her face to look at him, and when she met his dark gaze, she didn’t avoid it.
The record turned slowly.
“Keep making me laugh, let’s go get high.”
“The road is long, we carry on.”
“Try to have fun in the meantime.”
When the female singer sang this line, Jiang Se’s gaze swept across the golden-rimmed glasses on the bridge of Lu Huaiyan’s nose and said: “I want to see you without your glasses.”
When he carried her out of the abandoned factory, he wasn’t wearing glasses.
Back then he was still lying low, hadn’t yet destroyed Lu Jinzhong, and Old Master Lu hadn’t made him wear glasses to weaken his fierceness.
Jiang Se thought she still liked seeing him without glasses.
Lu Huaiyan leaned back against the sofa, quietly looking at her, and said: “If you want to see, come take them off yourself.”
They were only half an arm’s length apart. Jiang Se leaned forward slightly, raised her hand, and took off his glasses.
She looked into his eyes.
He had never concealed his desire for her. Even though he always approached her gently, conquered her gently, the ruthless, sharp aggression in his bones had never been diminished—if anything, it only grew stronger and stronger.
As long as he appeared, as long as he looked at her, she could feel that gentle sense of invasion.
At this moment, the undercurrent in his eyes, with no glasses blocking them, was even more arresting.
They were like two magnets, slowly drawing closer.
When the needle reached the line “Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain”, their lips touched.
At first, it was only a light touch and brushing, as if simply using lips to trace the shape of the other’s.
Their lips had been moistened by black tea, carrying a faint dampness.
That faint dampness was quickly evaporated by the heat of their breaths.
Lu Huaiyan lost patience first, opening his lips to take hers in.
The next moment, Jiang Se only felt a tightness at her waist; she was already scooped into his arms, sitting on his lap.
The man held the back of her head, deepening the kiss.
It was an utterly lingering kiss.
Not the violent one from last time, nor the tentative one from just now, but more like endless gentle wind and rain.
Both were the sort who didn’t like closing their eyes when kissing. Lu Huaiyan could see clearly the tremble of her eyelashes each time his tongue twined with hers.
Her tongue was very hot.
Soft, sticky, like a ball of cotton candy slowly melting in one’s mouth.
Only when his fingers touched the skin of her neck did Lu Huaiyan sense something wrong. Suppressing the heat raging through his body, he held both sides of her face, tilted his head back, and with a “pop” sound forcibly broke the kiss.
Jiang Se’s moist eyes still carried a bit of haze and daze.
Lu Huaiyan raised his hand and touched her forehead, his low, hoarse voice tinged with breathless frustration: “You have a fever.”
Jiang Se knew she had a fever.
After walking out of Zhang Yue’s room, she already knew her fever was back again.
This simmering, slow-burning fever she had long been used to, like an inherent bodily defense mechanism. Every time she had emotional fluctuations because of what happened seven years ago, it would activate, burn silently for a while, and after a sleep she would return to normal.
“Having a fever means we can’t kiss?” Jiang Se looked at Lu Huaiyan, “Don’t you really want me? And I just happen to want you now.”
She showed no trace of surprise, clearly she was fully aware of her condition.
Having a fever yet going to eat, having a fever yet accompanying him to eat longevity noodles, and now even recklessly tempting him to kiss her and sleep with her.
Lu Huaiyan let out a frustrated laugh: “Even if I want you that much, I’m not so desperate that I can’t wait for you to cool down, and I’m certainly not beastly enough to sleep with a fever-addled girl.”
“……”
Both hands slipped under her armpits, the man put her back in her original seat, then stood and walked toward the TV cabinet opposite the sofa.
The haze mixed with desire in Jiang Se’s eyes completely dissipated, her gaze gradually returned to its usual clarity and calm. She looked at Lu Huaiyan’s back and said, “I’m not fever-addled, I know what I’m doing.”
Lu Huaiyan didn’t reply, rummaged in the medicine box and pulled out a mercury thermometer and some fever medicine, then turned and walked back to the sofa.
“Really not fever-addled?” The man took the thermometer from the clear case, the mercury end facing her lips reddened and swollen from the kiss, and said, “Hold this in your mouth to take your temperature, then I’ll believe you.”
Jiang Se: “……” She was basically being treated like a child being coaxed.
She looked at the thermometer in his hand, thought for a moment, then opened her mouth and held it in.
Lu Huaiyan watched her for a moment. Seeing that the thermometer stayed firmly in place and didn’t fall, he got up and went to the kitchen to pour a cup of warm water.
He glanced at his watch, timed it, then took the thermometer out of Jiang Se’s mouth.
“39.1 degrees.”
This temperature surprised Jiang Se somewhat. In the past, when she had a fever, it was always a low fever, rarely above 38 degrees.
When people are excited, body temperature rises. The temperature of her tongue at the start of the kiss was probably even higher than this. No wonder he stopped the kiss.
Lu Huaiyan put down the thermometer, broke two fever pills, fed them to her, then gave her a sip of water.
“Besides the high fever, where else hurts?”
When she thought it was just a low fever, Jiang Se only felt chills but nowhere else uncomfortable.
But now knowing she was burning badly, her hands and feet were starting to go soft, and her head had a faint ache.
People are like this; once they realize they are weak, their spirit often collapses faster than their body.
She swallowed the medicine without changing expression and said, “Nothing else, maybe I caught the flu virus. You might get infected by me.”
Tongcheng had been suffering a severe flu epidemic for the past two months, resulting in overcrowded hospitals.
They had just kissed, and for so long. If it really was the flu virus, he wouldn’t escape either.
Lu Huaiyan sat on the coffee table tidying the thermometer and medicine box. Hearing this, he didn’t even raise his eyebrows, casually said: “Good that you know. Jiang Se, remember, if I get a high fever in a couple of days, how I take care of you tonight, you have to take care of me the same way.”
“……”
He sat higher than her in position. Jiang Se looked up at him and said: “I don’t need you to take care of me.”
As she spoke and tried to stand, Lu Huaiyan tossed the medicine box beside him, pressed her back down to the sofa with both hands on her shoulders.
“Either stay here and I take care of you, or have your family come pick you up and let them take care of you.” His gaze was direct, his voice carried a hint of grit between his teeth, “Choose one.”
—
The sound of water falling on her fluffy hair made Jiang Se’s scalp tingle.
Her brain hurt more.
She didn’t wash her hair, just rushed through and wrapped herself in a bathrobe, then left the bathroom.
Lu Huaiyan waited outside the bathroom, seeing her come out, first appraised her complexion, then handed her some clothes.
“These clothes I haven’t worn, make do with them. Someone will bring you proper clothes later.”
It was a set of black men’s pajamas, long sleeves for autumn and winter.
Jiang Se took them: “Thanks.”
“The medicine I just gave you has a sleeping aid in it. Feeling sleepy?”
Jiang Se did feel somewhat drowsy; she nodded.
She looked quite obedient like this.
Lu Huaiyan’s little anger at her not taking care of herself slowly disappeared.
“Sleep. There’s a glass of water on the nightstand, remember to drink if thirsty. I left the door open, call me if you need anything.”
The room Jiang Se slept in was right next to the master bedroom, the door left open. Whatever happened on her side, he would know.
After Lu Huaiyan left, Jiang Se looked at the half-open door, took off the bathrobe, and slowly changed into his pajamas.
Her last thought before sleep was a little whimsical: No wonder Auntie Han still retained a trace of innocence, he always managed to take good care of the people he wanted to.
—
Jiang Se’s sleep was restless, always feeling tired, like she just crossed a volcano then suddenly fell into an icefield. Her body alternated between cold and hot, over and over, yet she couldn’t wake.
She had no idea she was talking in her sleep, nor that a figure had entered the room.
Lu Huaiyan used the back of his hand to feel her forehead, then frowned and sat at the bedside. While helping Jiang Se sit up, he brought the glass of water from the nightstand.
Just as he brought the glass to her lips but before he could speak, she reflexively opened her mouth, closed her eyes, and sipped the water in small sips.
When the glass was empty, her head softly leaned on his shoulder, and she whispered almost inaudibly: “Aunt Zhang, Sese only drinks one cup per hour.”
Lu Huaiyan’s hand paused slightly, looking down at the girl resting her head on his shoulder.
She really was fever-addled, even calling him Aunt Zhang.
When sick, she was very obedient, easy to take care of, drank water when told to, but still haggled, obviously someone who didn’t like drinking water much.
Lu Huaiyan suddenly remembered Jiang Se as a child.
That scorching summer day, she was soaking wet hanging on his shoulder, clearly terrified and trembling, yet still shivering as she asked: “Older Brother Huaiyan, when we get to Auntie Han’s, can you call Aunt Zhang for me?”
Other kids barely escaped death and mostly cried and screamed for their parents. She only wanted her housekeeper.
Was it because whether sick or wronged, she could only turn to Aunt Zhang?
In the dark, Lu Huaiyan sat quietly for a long time, until his shoulder ached slightly. He then put down the glass and carefully laid the girl, sleeping soundly with her head on his shoulder, back in bed.
The man tucked her in, gently brushed strands of hair stuck to her face aside one by one, and softly said: “You used to really like calling me Older Brother Huaiyan when you were little.”
