“Lei Feng, are you still going to tell me I’ve got the wrong person?” The girl looked at him and broke into a happy smile. And the name she called him made Ye Tianxie’s face twitch.

“Before you met me, had you ever heard the name Lei Feng?” Ye Tianxie asked, keeping a straight face, his gaze stealing a glance at the bag hanging from her shoulder… Inside it were his… no, wait — Guoguo’s lollipops!

In short, even with a hundred mouths he’d never explain his way out of this.

“Hm? No… Are you famous or something?” The girl’s brows lifted in a smile.

“…” She doesn’t even know who Lei Feng is and still dares go out into the world — no wonder she got kidnapped… Ye Tianxie said in all seriousness, “Actually, my name isn’t Lei Feng.”

“Hee! You’re finally telling the truth. I know already — your name is Ye Tianxie, isn’t it!” The girl’s smile grew brighter still, though her two hands, clasped lightly before her and fidgeting without her noticing, still betrayed a trace of the nervousness she felt facing him.

Ye Tianxie: “…And what’s your name?”

“I’m Su Feifei… Got it memorized?” At his question, the girl gave her name at once. Then the two of them fell silent together. Su Feifei opened her mouth and asked in a small voice, “Do you… really like lollipops that much?”

Ye Tianxie’s face went dark — dark as an African refugee’s. Forcing himself to stay composed, he said, “No. I usually buy them for my daughter.”

Guoguo… just be a good girl and play my daughter this once.

“Huh? You have a daughter?” Su Feifei’s mouth fell open, her face full of astonishment. “But you clearly live alone right now — in Villa No. 6 of the Tianyuan Estates.”

Ye Tianxie’s face went darker still. He quirked the corner of his mouth. “You’ve been investigating me?”

“You’re my lifesaver, aren’t you? Of course I’ve wanted to find you all this time. My dad’s been looking for you too — he wants to thank you properly. And then, what a coincidence… the Tianyuan Estates where you live happens to be my dad’s property, so it was easy to find you. But I was afraid of disturbing you, so I… I just waited here for you to show up.”

Young girls always yearn for things with a whiff of romance about them — a romantic chance encounter, for instance.

Besides which, that night, Ye Tianxie had blocked a bullet with his body from ten paces away and taken four men’s lives in an instant, and she had witnessed it all with her own eyes. Could such a man be an ordinary person? And so, knowing all this, Su Feifei’s father hadn’t dared disturb him before he’d uncovered the full truth about him. With power like that, the first thing that came to mind was that Ye Tianxie was an esper… and humans on that plane were simply not people ordinary folk could approach or offend.

But Su Feifei, after all, was a girl not yet twenty. She didn’t have her father’s steadiness, caution, and patience. So she’d manufactured a chance to meet him again in her own way, and then…

“Oh? And why are you looking for me?” Ye Tianxie began to feel a faint headache coming on. In this girl’s eyes — brimming with laughter, nervousness, and delight — he saw a light that could only be called determination. It seemed that on seeing him, she had made some decision she would not be changing. Faintly, he had a premonition he was about to be entangled in something… The Tianyuan Estates where he lived was her father’s property. Huh… that counted as a strange sort of fate, he supposed… Wait! Tianyuan Estates… her father’s property… her father…

This girl’s surname was Su!

Damn!

Ye Tianxie, whose temperament was as steady as bedrock, nearly shouted and leapt to his feet… He’d thought of someone — a man famous across all of Asia, and in the nation of Huaxia known to every last soul: Su Luo!

The richest man in Huaxia… that Su Luo, whose wealth was said to be enough to buy half of Asia!

This girl called Su Feifei… could she really be the daughter of Huaxia’s foremost tycoon?

And rumor had it that Su Luo’s wife had fallen victim to an enemy’s poisonous hand nearly ten years ago, and that he had never remarried, with only one girl ever at his side. However great a summit a man climbs — be it power, renown, or wealth — he usually does so by treading on countless “corpses” of one kind or another, which means accumulating no end of enemies of every sort… And so he himself, and his family, might face danger at any moment. Beneath their magnificent outward trappings, they bore a weight ordinary people could never understand.

“I already told you — you’re my lifesaver.” Su Feifei smiled sweetly, not pressing the lollipop question any further.

The look in Ye Tianxie’s eyes as he regarded Su Feifei was now plainly different from before. He raised his brows indifferently. “But that day I seem to have ‘accidentally’ molested you, so I’d say we’re even.” With that, he waved a hand and turned to go… abandoning even the lollipops he’d gone to such trouble to buy.

In truth, it was just as he’d said: had he not, that day, molested her — unintentionally-yet-quite-deliberately — as a bit of malicious seasoning for his own life, he wouldn’t have meddled and stepped in to save her that night.

“You… you… hey!” Su Feifei had already resolved to deliberately avoid mentioning that incident, to act as though she hadn’t recognized him as that man at all — and she’d never expected him to state it so bluntly. Her face flushed faintly, and seeing him turn to leave, she hurried over to block his path. “You… stop right there! You’re not allowed to leave!”

“Going to report me for molestation?” Ye Tianxie looked at the girl before him with a strange smile all over his face.

“Hmph!” Su Feifei showed no sign of anger at all. She pursed her lips and said something that nearly knocked Ye Tianxie flat on his back: “I’m going to come live at your house!”

“W-why?!” After three seconds of silence, Ye Tianxie discovered his own voice had actually wavered. Are girls these days really that liberated? Just grabbing a man off the street and… Or is my charm simply so overwhelming that any woman who lays eyes on me starts weeping and begging to get into bed?

“Because you molested me that day!”

“…Why does molesting you mean you have to come live at my house? Is there any connection there?” Ye Tianxie’s brain was going a little fuzzy. The daughter of Huaxia’s richest man really did have a way of thinking unlike normal people’s.

“Because… because…” A layer of pink quietly crept over Su Feifei’s face, and then she gathered her courage and looked at Ye Tianxie with a firm, stubborn gaze. “…No man has ever touched me before… so that day, you… you have to take responsibility for me.”

Ye Tianxie was faintly taken aback, his gaze gathering slightly as he took in every trace of the expression on her face. That stubbornness of hers, mixed with obvious bashfulness and a slight shyness, was absolutely not something that could be faked, and there was no trace of guilt or unnaturalness in it… She was telling him that she was a girl of flawless white jade, never once profaned.

In Ye Tianxie’s understanding, most children of wealthy families, freed from the pressures and strivings of life, had lived from a very young age in a manner many times more lavish and dissolute than ordinary folk. Rich children raised in such a life had long since severed any relationship with the word “pure.”

And Su Feifei, the daughter of a true magnate — she really was…

Then again…

“Miss Su,” Ye Tianxie rubbed the tip of his nose, his face full of something strange, “what era do you think we’re living in…? Don’t tell me that just because I accidentally copped a feel, you’re prepared to pledge yourself to me and refuse to marry anyone else.”

“You… you wish! Who said I wanted—”

“Mm! Right, right! So what you said just now about living at my house must have been a joke. In that case, goodbye.” Ye Tianxie, as if granted a special pardon, immediately turned on his heel and headed back.

(End of Chapter 65)