Chapter 16

…Little, little grape!

Yu Lan took the lollipop out of his mouth and nervously said, “A-Are you referring to me?”

The man smiled, tilted his head and said, “Who else am I referring to?”

Yu Lan, “!”

Mr Shao actually called him little grape!

At this moment, Yu Lan really felt the sweetness on the tip of his tongue went directly to the bottom of his heart.

Shao Mingyu looked at the youth in front of him with a smile and then turned his head.

The eyes slowly swept over the carousel, the doll people under the tree with luminous balloons, the castle spire in the distance and the night sky with white doves flying over-

No, that day wasn’t night time.

The sky was turquoise blue that day, but not as blue as the child’s eyes.

Shao Mingyu lowered his head as the night breeze brushed by.

Yu Lan was still immersed in that “little grape” when he heard the man in front of him murmur, “One day you will remember…”

“What?” Yu Lan was puzzled.

Shao Mingyu shook his head and asked him, “Want to have some fun before you go?”

Yu Lan hesitated and looked back in the direction of the gate.

Assistant Lin was still waiting…

“Little grape?” the man called with a light chuckle.

“…” Yu Lan blushed in shame and whispered, “T-then I’ll play a little before leaving…”

Lin Yu, who was at the gate in the luxury car’s driver’s seat sitting in air-conditioning: Forget it, I’ll watch an episode of the serial update first.

*

Under the interplay of lights and laughter, Yu Lan constantly felt a kind of dream-like feeling.

This dream-like feeling seemed to come from the man beside him, who was too gentle to talk about, and a strange sense of familiarity.

Of course, given that Yu Lan was clear that he really had not had the opportunity to play in such places in his 22-year career, he felt that sense of fantasy came more from Mr Shao.

A date.

By the way, doesn’t this feel a lot like going on a date?

After all, they were surrounded by couples passing by.

Once this thought came out, Yu Lan’s heart felt like it was jabbed.

And that man’s drunken appearance made that selfish heart of his quietly swell.

As he sat on the Ferris wheel, the man rested his head on the back of the seat.

He slightly lowered his eyes. His gaze seemed to still be looking at Yu Lan, but also seemed to have fallen into the void.

His drunken eyes make Yu Lan’s heart jump around, and for the first time, his guts got slightly bigger.

He tried getting up from his seat, crouched down in front of Mr Shao and raised his head.

The man raised his hand, propped himself up on the side of his face and looked at him with an indulgent smile.

“Mr Shao?” Yu Lan called out.

“Hm?” The man’s response was low and sexy.

Yu Lan’s face was hot but he still called out, “Mr Shao…”

Shao Mingyu smiled and said, “What’s wrong… little grape?”

Yu Lan’s eyes lit up.

His shout also brightened up. “Mr Shao!”

The man helplessly said, “…Little grape.”

Yu Lan, “Mr Shao!”

The man flexed his fingers and scratched his nose.

Yu Lan shrank his neck and heard the man say, “When we get down I’ll buy you another lolly.”

Yu Lan arched his eyebrows and happily nodded. “Okay!”

“Mr Shao.” Yu Lan called out one last time, raising his head and gazing at the man as he softly said, “I like listening to you call me ‘Little Grape’.”

He didn’t know why Mr Shao would suddenly bring him to this paradise.

But this night, it was sweet.

*

He felt the same amount of emptiness in his heart as he felt happiness the night before when he woke up in the morning.

But Mr Shao was probably drunk. Drunk people usually lose their memory the next day- that’s how it was in TV-dramas.

As he descended the stairs, Yu Lan muttered apprehensively in his heart.

The man sat down at the table as usual to read the newspaper and smiled at him when he heard footsteps.

He was the same as usual!

Yu Lan breathed a sigh of relief and walked over to sit down with brisk steps and ate breakfast.

As he was biting into his bread, he heard the man say, “Ah Lan, I’ll have a driver contact you later, and every night after you get off work, let him be responsible for bringing you back.”

“Oh, okay.” Yu Lan hurriedly responded.

And then he suddenly stiffened-

Wait a minute, M-Mr Shao still remembered what happened last night?

Putting the newspaper down slightly, the man revealed a pair of eyes with a teasing smile in them.

Yu Lan, “…”

Yu Lan weakly said, “Mr Shao…”

Shao Mingyu sipped his tea. “Weren’t you happy when you called me last night?”

Yu Lan, “…”

He felt his vision go dark a little.

No, his eyes were literally spinning like mosquito coils!

“You even called me many times.” Shao Mingyu paused and raised his lips. “Little grape?”

“M-Mr Shao!” Yu Lan stammered, “You pretended to be drunk!”

“I was drunk.” Shao Mingyu put down the newspaper, smiled and said, “I don’t have amnesia.”

But in the TV drama-

“Don’t take what’s played out in TV dramas seriously.” It was as if the man could see through what was going on in his head.

Yu Lan had a bit of a heart attack and his mouth twitched.

T-Then, wouldn’t he also…

“So- I also received your request last night.” Shao Mingyu meaningfully said.

Yu Lan wandered around panicking, attempting to deny. “I-I did not make any requests…”

Shao Mingyu looked at him with a smirk.

Yu Lan lowered his head and sometime later remembered what the man had said to him, jerked his head up and looked straight at the man.

Shao Mingyu paused.

He was very satisfied with Yu Lan’s reaction, but he was still amused. “You didn’t mention it? So I’ll also pretend that I didn’t remember it?”

Yu Lan, “…”

At that moment, Uncle Liu came in and said, “Mr Shao, the car is here.”

Since the car came, the man had to go to work.

He stood up and looked like he was about to walk away.

Yu Lan was a little depressed, regretting whether he shouldn’t have denied it. The man walked behind him when he stopped again. “Ah, there is another thing I have not forgotten.”

Hearing this, Yu Lan hadn’t reacted yet when a hand stretched out from behind him and turned his head over.

And the man leaned down and touched foreheads.

Yu Lan took a deep breath.

This time, the man did not close his eyes, Yu Lan even saw his own reflection in the other party’s smiling eyes.

At such a close distance, the man opened his mouth and whispered, “Were you scared yesterday? But I said I was drunk, sorry, little grape.”

After the words, he rubbed him, then let go, leaving a smile in his eyes, and turned to leave.

Yu Lan’s mouth was still stained with bread crumbs, staring blankly at the man’s back. After a while, his face reddened and he lowered his head… and hit the table with his forehead.

The sounds of “bathump”, “bathump” came one after another.

He rubbed his forehead while apologising.

Mr Shao… did this on purpose!

He remembers it all! All of it! Ahhhhhhh!!

But… he still calls him “little grape”!

*

This day, Yu Lan was still in a bit of a trance until he arrived at the milk tea shop.

Thinking about last night, it was as if his heart was soaked in sugar water and when thinking about what happened in the morning, he wanted to find a crack in the ground and hide in it.

At the end of the day, he almost tripped over the short flight of steps in the milk tea store!

“Be careful. What are you thinking about.” Wen Zicheng’s voice rang out. “Oh, look at this face, it’s radiating with happiness. It seems you had a good time last night?”

“Manager!” Yu Lan raised his head and fiercely stared and froze when he saw the person beside Wen Zicheng.

The other party was surprised to see him and said, “Yu Lan?!”

“Huh, you two know each other?” Wen Zicheng was surprised.

The young man beside Wen Zhicheng looked the same age as Yu Lan and also had black hair, but with black eyes. Although his facial features were much more beautiful than ordinary people, they were still inferior to Yu Lan.

Yu Lan came back to his senses and said in a dace, “Ah, y…yes.”

This person’s name was Yu Yi.

He was a silver moon who was also in the trafficker’s cage before.

Yu Lan did not expect to see him here at all.

Yu Yi had a lively personality and said to Wen Zicheng, “Yu Lan and I knew each other from before, but we haven’t seen each other for some reason for a while, specifically-”

“Has it almost been a month?” He smiled at Yu Lan.

“It’s good that you guys know each other,” Wen Zicheng said, feeling quite like it was destined. “Ah Lan, Yu Yi will be working here from tomorrow, he will work with me on the day shift, so you can come and cover his shift in the evening.”

“Okay… I see.” Yu Lan nodded sluggishly.

“Then Manager, I’ll go back first today and come back tomorrow!” Yu Yi waved to Wen Zicheng.

“Mhm, be careful on the way.”

When Yu Yi left, he pulled Yu Lan outside the store and said, “Yu Lan, where the hell have you been? When we were rescued half a month ago, we heard the police say you had been rescued, but we haven’t seen you since!”

“I was rescued when I was being sent there, later,” Yu Lan hesitated and vaguely said, “There was someone who was willing to let me stay with him temporarily.”

“Eh, was it that straightforward? Most of us were dispersed to various social assistance agencies, I did not expect to come to the same planet as you.” Yu Yi seems to have endless questions because of the unexpected meeting. “Then how did you escape? The police didn’t tell us anything. Weren’t you drugged that day? Or did the couple themselves go off the rails?”

“Pretty much…” Yu Lan didn’t want to elaborate on that day and after a pause, he asked, “How come you’re also coming out to look for a job?”

“Oh, because my mental health status is B. They said I could go out to play so I did.” Yu Yi curled his lips and said, “I can’t live in that sort of place forever, so I have to find a way to make money. Or-”

He looked at Yu Lan and raised his eyebrows, “Or, like you, get help from someone rich and move out!”

Yu Lan pursed his lips.

Yu Yi suddenly came over and lowered his voice to say, “Tell me honestly, was the one who agreed to let you live in his house an alpha?”

“What are you asking this for?” Yu Lan lightly said.

“If he wasn’t interested in you, how could a stranger be willing ti take a silver moon home!” Yu Yi smiled strangely. “After experiencing the orphanage and those few human traffickers, you wouldn’t think that there were many good people in the world, would you, Yu Lan?”

Yu Lan’s eyebrows grew cold.

Keenly aware of the change in Yu Lan’s emotions, Yu Yi stopped smiling, collected his expression and said, “Alright, I know that person who’s helping you is a good person, you don’t need to be angry.”

Yu Lan was silent for a moment and said, “In this world, there are still more good people than bad people.”

“Then why were we particularly miserable, having been manipulated by bad people for over twenty years.” Yu Yi looked away and laughed self-depreciatingly.

Seeing him like this, Yu Lan’s expression softened a little.

After hesitating, he said, “It will get better in the future.”

“You believe that?” Yu Yi looked at him.

Yu Lan solemnly nodded his head.

“Then have you ever thought about how to solve the estrus problem?” Yu Yi asked.

Yu Lan froze.

“If you’ve also seen a doctor, they would’ve told you that we can’t mess with inhibitors anymore and that most of the time we need to rely on temporary marks from alphas during our estrus.”

Yu Yi paused and said in a low voice, “But if you get permanently marked, your estrus problem will be directly solved.”