Chapter 57

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So Shen Wanying wants to experience puppy love with me, hmm?

When Fang Ke painted something for Huo Cheng, his name would always be written on the back, at the bottom right corner.

So just now it suddenly occurred to Huo Cheng that if this oil painting was given to that man by his mother, would his name be on the back of the painting too? As it turned out, it was.

“Xiang Chong?” Shen Wanying saw that name and frowned in confusion. “Who is this Xiang Chong? Do you know him?”

Huo Cheng shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

He hadn’t the slightest inkling as to who the man might be.

Seeing that he kept frowning, Shen Wanying reached out and rubbed his brow. “Alright, don’t think about it for now. Since we are here, why don’t we go sing for a while?”

Huo Cheng raised his eyes to look at her and gently took her hand in his. “Okay.”

She tugged her hand back as if electrocuted, but he refused to let go. She could feel her heart beat rapidly out of her control. Her ears turned a shade of red. “Huo Cheng, you shouldn’t do this.”

“Hmm?” Huo Cheng looked like he didn’t understand.

She pursed the corners of her lips and told him, “Puppy love is not allowed in school.”

Huo Cheng looked at her with a smile. “So Shen Wanying wants to experience puppy love with me, hmm?”

She was speechless. “……”

Huo Cheng should not be such a smooth talker 🙂

“Alright, let’s go sing.” In the end, Huo Cheng still didn’t let go of her and led her to the basement.

Shen Wanying had encouraged Huo Cheng to sing a few songs in the past few days, she knew he could sing and it was quite good. Today, at her insistence, Huo Cheng selected another song: “Love Letter” by Li Shen.

This was a popular song at weddings and had remained a long-running hit to this day.

This song had a special meaning for him; it was the same song that was played at his and Shen Wanying’s wedding in his previous lifetime.

“You sing it beautifully,” Shen Wanying complimented from the bottom of her heart. The greatest characteristic of Li Shen’s voice was its tenderness and deep feeling, especially this song written for his wife, which had brought countless people to tears. Huo Cheng was obviously very young, but the deep emotion he portrayed was not even a bit less than that of Li Shen.

“Were you in love abroad?” Shen Wanying looked at Huo Cheng inquisitively, “Foreign countries are not as strict as here, it should be common for high school students to fall in love.”

“No.” Huo Cheng said seriously, “I didn’t fall in love abroad.”

“Then how can you sing with so much emotion? You don’t sound like someone who hasn’t been in love before.”

Huo Cheng looked at her. “I’ve never been in love, but there is someone I like.”

She blushed once again. Huo Cheng was not playing fair at all!

She licked her lips and walked over to the karaoke machine to choose a song for herself. Huo Cheng pursed the corners of his mouth slightly and took his phone to post to his friend circle on WeChat.

“This love letter to you, with your name in every stroke. My love for you will last until death.” The lyrics to Li Shen’s “Love Letter”.

♥

When Xu Huiling came across this post, she couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows. Who knew this cold and handsome boy listened to Li Shen’s songs?

Since adding Huo Cheng on WeChat last time, she hadn’t seen him post anything. Today was the first time.

Did he have feelings for someone?

She had just thought this when she heard her parents arguing again outside. It started because her mother had met a friend for a shopping trip this afternoon and her dad thought she was dressed too nicely.

Xu Huiling put her mobile phone into her jacket pocket, changed her shoes, and went out of the door. “I’m going out to take out the trash.”

She said this with such insincerity that she didn’t even carry the garbage! Her parents didn’t care about her since they were arguing viciously.

Xu Huiling shut out the sounds of their argument behind the door and glanced at Room 706 next door.

She walked over and knocked on the door.

Xiang Chong had not yet woken up, so Xu Huiling kept knocking for a while before he came over and opened the door for her.

As soon as the door opened, a “thud” was heard from next door.

Xiang Chong glanced sideways and asked Xu Huiling, “What is it again today?”

Xu Huiling shrugged indifferently, “It’s probably because my father suspects that my mother has a man outside.”

There was another sound of pots and pans hitting the floor next door, Xiang Chong sighed and let Xu Huiling in.

Xiang Chong was a single man in his thirties, and his house was not usually tidy, so it looked a bit messy. Xu Huiling, however, didn’t mind at all and said that it was charmingly manly.

Xiang Chong seemed a bit distracted.

He simply cleaned out a table for Xu Huiling and handed her a book. “Read a book for a while.”

Xu Huiling was in her second year of high school and would soon be in her third, so her study load was still very heavy. Since she would come to Xiang Chong’s place from time to time to take shelter, he had prepared basic reference books for her and let her read them here. Otherwise, he was a grown man who really didn’t know what to talk to his high-school-aged kid sister about.

Whenever he brought books to her(XH), she would pretend to look at them, but the fact was, she preferred to look at Xiang Chong than the books.

He was in his thirties, lazy and unkempt, but even so, he couldn’t hide his good-looking face.

Xu Huiling liked him, something she had known a long time ago.

Although there was an age difference of over ten years between them, on the rainy night when Xiang Chong opened the door to his room, the door to her heart opened for him too. But her love for him could not be declared, at least not yet.

She did not ask him why he remained single and why he did not marry, but she could vaguely guess something.

She knew that Xiang Chong had a woman in his heart, and he would often visit her grave to pay his respects to her. Out of curiosity, she secretly followed him, and it was also at that graveyard that she first saw Huo Cheng.

She thought he might have had something to do with that woman.

When she saw Huo Cheng for the second time in the apartment block, she had been very surprised; she thought Huo Cheng had come to look for Xiang Chong.

Yet that wasn’t so, they had come to see Miss Tong about the leaked test questions.

It was a little too coincidental, wasn’t it?

She used the opportunity to find an excuse to add Huo Cheng on WeChat. She wanted to see his circle of friends and whether there would be any information related to that woman.

It turned out that, unfortunately, Huo Cheng was not a person who posted to his friend circle.

Today he posted a lyric of Li Shen, and she didn’t know what had prompted this.

Xu Huiling stared at the reference book given to her by Xiang Chong, thinking seriously, and finally, her gaze still couldn’t help but fall back on the man. He had already gone back to bed, his firm chest rising and falling slightly. Xu Huiling looked at him as if magnetised, and slowly walked over to the bed.

She wanted to kiss him, secretly, while he was asleep.

Holding her breath, she slowly bent down and approached Xiang Chong’s sexy thin lips.

Before she could succeed, Xiang Chong suddenly opened his eyes. Xu Huiling jerked straight up and sat back at the table. The room was quiet and the argument next door had stopped at some point. Xu Huiling stared down at her book, she knew he was watching her. Xiang Chong now regretted the day he had let Xu Huiling hide in his house in a moment of weakness.

She had feelings for him that transcended those of an ordinary man and woman, and he had sensed this long ago; after all, he was an adult. Nevertheless, he had no such feelings for the girl, not to mention the fact that she was still a high school student of 17.

Xiang Chong knew he was a scumbag, but not enough to prey on minors.

He stood up, walked over to the table, and bent down to look at Xu Huiling.

It was the first time Xu Huiling had ever been this close to him, but her heart raced with terror, and not her intense feelings.

Xiang Chong’s gaze was extremely sharp, like a newly polished blade to kill swiftly and subtly.

“I warned you before not to like me, right?” Xiang Chong’s voice was low as he spoke.

Xu Huiling unconsciously swallowed and said in a broken voice, “I, I—”

“I know that your parents have big problems, and the damage your nuclear family brought you has made you find something in me that they couldn’t give you. But that’s not love.”

Xu Huiling could tolerate him not accepting her love but not denying her love for him. “It’s not like that.”

“Not like what?” Xiang Chong looked at her. “I told you, I’m not a good person.”

“You are!”

Xiang Chong’s gaze darkened, staring at her intently. “I’ve killed someone.”

Xu Huiling held her breath.

Xiang Chong said, “Are you sure you want to like a murderer?”

♥

T/N: Thanks again to Bright Eyes for helping with this chapter! She’s the reason I could read one chapter ahead and then start yelling in the previous chapter. And man, I!! AM!! YELLING!! Sure, I never expected Fang Ke’s lover to also be her murderer, and maaaybe Xiang Chong isn’t referring to her when he says he’s killed someone, but maybe he is?? Oh my dear lord??? Now I’m wondering what else we’ll be hit with. What a cliffhanger to be left on. But it’s about time I stop screaming, so, if you want advance chapters or something, we’re listening~ see you in the next one (:

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