Free Web NovelChapter 132: Chapter 132: Double Happiness
Time seemed to freeze.
Tang Yuanxiao stood frozen, staring foolishly at Su Li.
His world was crumbling. A terrified, horrified, unending "Ahhhh" echoed in his mind, a scream long and winding enough to snake through a mountain pass.
His mind was crumbling, and Su Li... wasn’t feeling much better.
She wasn’t quite at the crumbling stage, but oh, how she wished she could poke out her own uncontrollable eyes.
Sometimes, your eyes just have a mind of their own. You know you shouldn’t look, but you look anyway, completely involuntarily.
Her gaze swept over Tang Yuanxiao’s stunned expression, across his well-defined eight-pack abs, and then dipped a little lower...
The whole process took two seconds.
When her brain finally rebooted, she snapped her gaze away and, with a wooden expression, slammed the door shut.
The door... was shut.
But the scene from before was now seared into her mind, impossible to forget.
Su Li’s face flushed a visible, brilliant red as she inwardly cursed her own recklessness!
’I should have waited until I heard some movement inside before opening the door! Why did my hand have to be so damn quick?’
Su Li looked down at her hands, wishing she could just chop them off!
In her past life and this one—in two whole lifetimes—she had never seen anything like that outside of television.
’Tang Yuanxiao... Why didn’t he make a sound when he came back? And why did he have to be changing clothes at that exact moment?!’
Su Li, at least, still had her wits about her, enough to feel regret. Tang Yuanxiao, inside the room... was well past the point of regret.
The moment he turned and saw Su Li, his mind had simply exploded.
The door was closed, but Tang Yuanxiao remained frozen in the exact same position.
His face flushed a visible, deep red, followed by his neck, and then his hands...
The phrase "about to explode" was a pretty accurate description of his current state.
He held that stupid pose for a good while before finally straightening up.
He raised a hand and slapped himself across the face.
It hurt.
This was all real.
Su Li had appeared before him out of thin air. The surprise he had been dreaming about had actually come true, but...
Tang Yuanxiao glanced down at himself, then slapped his forehead hard.
After changing his clothes at top speed, his gaze fell upon the bed, and... he felt the sudden need to just die.
He really, really, really, really hoped Su Li hadn’t seen it just now.
In a frantic flurry, Tang Yuanxiao gathered the things from the bed, hoping to hide all evidence of the crime.
After a full five minutes of mental preparation, Tang Yuanxiao finally opened the door, bracing himself as if walking to his doom.
Su Li... wasn’t in the living room, nor was she anywhere inside the house.
She was outside.
The front door was open, and Su Li was standing just outside, gazing toward the entrance of the family housing compound, lost in thought.
A gentle breeze stirred her hair and the hem of her dress.
It was a scene as beautiful as a painting.
Tang Yuanxiao’s eyes locked onto her with a single glance, and he found he couldn’t look away.
’Su Li... she’s gotten prettier again.’
’No... that’s not right. She’s always been pretty, but this time, she’s breathtakingly, dazzlingly beautiful.’
The phrase "completely transformed" would not be an exaggeration to describe her.
The Su Li before him was so radiant, she felt like a stranger. Awe and alarm warred in his gaze.
A Su Li like this... felt as if she might vanish before his very eyes in the next second, leaving him forever.
’No... I can’t let that happen...’
"Su Li," Tang Yuanxiao called out abruptly.
Su Li turned at the sound of his voice.
The moment their eyes met, Tang Yuanxiao snapped back to reality, his face flooding with embarrassment.
Su Li had been feeling awkward herself, but seeing the mortified look on Tang Yuanxiao’s face, her own embarrassment instantly vanished.
Su Li raised an eyebrow, walked up the stairs, and entered the house. As she passed Tang Yuanxiao in the doorway, the swaying hem of her dress brushed against his pant leg. He looked down just in time to see a flash of her fair, slender calf.
Tang Yuanxiao snapped his gaze back with a WHOOSH, his face turning red again.
He remained frozen in the doorway, but Su Li had already walked past him and was standing in the living room.
She tilted her head, her gaze drifting through the still-open bedroom door to land leisurely on the bed inside. Then, she raised an eyebrow.
Before, shocked by the sight of Tang Yuanxiao’s predicament, she had slammed the door shut at once.
But after she’d had a moment to calm down, she suddenly recalled everything else she had seen.
She distinctly remembered that the previously neat and tidy bed had been covered in a deep, rich red.
It was a bright red—a bright red quilt and bright red sheets, with an incredibly eye-catching golden "double happiness" character embroidered on them.
It was this dazzling red, spread out on the bed, that had allowed Su Li to see a flash of color through the crack in the door, making her mistakenly think a stranger had gotten in, and causing her to open the door in the first place...
Now... the bed was back to normal, without a trace of anything unusual.
Su Li gave Tang Yuanxiao a long, searching look. From the time she shut the door to the time he came out, a quarter of an hour must have passed.
’He must have put it all away.’
"You didn’t run into Yu Le?"
As Tang Yuanxiao stood there, red-faced and tongue-tied, Su Li decided to speak first.
"No... I didn’t." Tang Yuanxiao took a deep breath with his back to Su Li before turning around to answer.
"He went to find you. It seems you two missed each other." Su Li figured out what must have happened with just a moment’s thought.
In an era without cell phones, it was perfectly normal to miss someone when you went looking for them.
Yu Le and Tang Yuanxiao had missed each other, which meant Tang Yuanxiao had no idea that Su Li and Momo had arrived.
"When did you get here? Where’s Momo?" Tang Yuanxiao had considered the possibility that Su Li might just show up without sending a telegram, but he never thought it would actually happen.
"We arrived at noon." Su Li glanced at the second bedroom. "Little Mo is asleep."
"Okay." Tang Yuanxiao finally calmed down, forcing himself not to think about what had just happened. Instead, he walked toward Su Li.
"Have you had lunch?"
"We have. Yu Le brought us food. He was the one who picked us up, too," Su Li said. "Where were you?" freeweɓnøvel.com
"I went to the county town to buy some things."
Lately, Tang Yuanxiao had been going into town often to buy things. He was buying this and that so much that the entire family housing compound knew Tang Yuanxiao was on a constant shopping spree because his wife was coming.
Tang Yuanxiao glanced at Su Li. "Knowing you were coming, I’ve been gradually buying things."
"Oh." Su Li had just started to sit down when a soft THUD came from the bedroom.
Su Li paused and looked at Tang Yuanxiao. "What was that?"
"I don’t know." Tang Yuanxiao entered the room first, and Su Li followed with a frown.
As soon as Tang Yuanxiao went in, he saw the mass of bright red on the floor and froze, completely caught off guard.
Standing behind him, Su Li raised an eyebrow and spoke in a leisurely tone, "You know, earlier I saw a flash of red through the crack in the door. I opened it because I thought someone had broken in."
The thing that had fallen on the floor was the four-piece bedding set with the bright red "double happiness" character. In his haste, Tang Yuanxiao had frantically stuffed it into the wardrobe.
But he hadn’t secured it properly, and it had pushed the wardrobe door open and fallen out.
Tang Yuanxiao stiffened at the sound of Su Li’s voice. Mortified, he bent down to pick up the bedding. "You... you saw..."
Su Li was speechless. ’It’s not like I’m blind. How could I not see it?’
As for why Tang Yuanxiao would buy this kind of bedding, Su Li had no desire to find out. "Put it away properly and come out. We need to talk..."
Su Li turned to leave, but she was interrupted by Tang Yuanxiao’s sudden question.
"Do you like it?"
Su Li turned back. "What?"
Tang Yuanxiao awkwardly clutched the bedding. Seeing her indifferent expression, the words tumbled out of his mouth. "The bedding. It’s for the two of us."
