It was already bright outside; by his reckoning, it must be around eight or nine in the morning. Guoguo was still fast asleep beside his pillow, though at some point her sleeping posture had shifted to lying face-down, her little face squashed against the soft bed, a long trail of drool running from the corner of her mouth.
Ye Tianxie didn’t wake her. He got up gently, and had just slipped his feet into his slippers when a burst of pounding at the door — thud, thud, thud — made him freeze mid-motion.
Thud, thud!
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
Evidently, the doorbell at Ye Tianxie’s house was broken. Whether it had been broken to begin with, or whether he’d deliberately broken it himself, only he knew.
The pounding finally disturbed Guoguo’s sleep. She opened her eyes, blinked a few times, then propped herself up laboriously on soft little arms, still-drowsy eyes turning toward Ye Tianxie. “Master… there’s a really loud noise.”
Ye Tianxie shifted his gaze toward the source of the sound and said feebly, “Good deeds really don’t pay… Trouble’s arrived.”
“Hm? Trouble? Huh-huh-huh-huh! Lollipops — I smell lollipops, and lots of them! Lots of different kinds of lollipops! Wah!” Guoguo’s drowsiness vanished without a trace in an instant. She flung off her little blanket, spun around — and that white dress of hers, as if by magic, came flying from who-knows-where to settle neatly onto her. With a delighted cry she went flying off toward the front of the house, following the scent… exactly like a little bee catching the scent of nectar.
Ye Tianxie stared for a moment, then suddenly remembered last night… the fifty lollipops that Su Feifei had swept into her own bag!
“Master, open the door! There are lollipops, the lollipops are here!” Guoguo drifted back and forth near the door, calling out impatiently. Ye Tianxie wrestled with himself for a little while, then finally opened it.
Long-standing filth had left the inside of Ye Tianxie’s house smelling far from pleasant, and so, the instant the door opened, that faint, pleasing fragrance from outside seemed all the more refreshing. And with it, a stunningly lovely girl appeared before him, looking at him with a smile brimming over — a smile that was unmistakably smug.
Eighteen or nineteen years old, her skin snow-white and flawless, her brows like distant hills, her eyes like stars against the night sky, bright and clear, her soft black hair spilling down like a clear mountain spring across her fair shoulders and back — it was Su Feifei. She was dressed just as she had been when Ye Tianxie saw her last night: a short top and hot pants, showing off her long, alluring legs and her graceful, slender figure.
A very beautiful girl, the kind who could easily rouse a man’s baser instincts and his urge to possess. Even in Ye Tianxie’s mind, a flicker of the desire to keep her for himself passed by.
“Tianxie, I’m here! Aren’t you going to welcome me?” Su Feifei raised a hand and waved in greeting, showing none of the bashfulness a girl ought to show entering a man’s home for the first time. Her gaze began darting past him to survey the interior of his house, and then…
“Ah!!” Su Feifei clapped a hand over her nose and staggered back a step as though shoved, knitting her lovely brows. “You— you— your house reeks… and it’s so filthy… A pigsty would be far better than this!”
“You’ve been in a pigsty?” Ye Tianxie said, his face stiff. He knew perfectly well how much of a mess his house was. The blankets were never folded, nothing was ever put away, all manner of junk was strewn across the floor, and empty bottles and cans lay everywhere. Whether from habit or simply because he had no heart for tidying, he had kept it this way, passing day after day in such surroundings. So used to it was he that he could barely smell the stench anymore.
“I— of course I have, and it was a hundred times cleaner than this! A thousand times! Hey! You live in the Tianyuan Estates — the most luxurious villa district in Jinghua, in all of Huaxia! How could you—”
Ye Tianxie raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips indifferently. “Miss Su, my home is exactly like this. If it doesn’t meet with your approval, there’s nothing to be done about it. I’d advise you to go on home like a good girl and stop trying to come running to this place that’s worse than a pigsty.”
His words made Su Feifei’s brow twitch. She abruptly dropped the hand covering her nose and marched forward a few steps in defiance. “I keep my word! I said I’d live at your house, so I’m living at your house! Even if it really is a pigsty, this young lady is settled on it! Hmph!”
She strode in on those white-jade legs, brushing past Ye Tianxie without the least ceremony, as casually as if entering her own home. And only once she was truly inside did she learn just how chaotic Ye Tianxie’s house really was — that “worse than a pigsty” scene at the door had been a small corner of it.
The hand she had lowered came back up over her nose. Su Feifei stared blankly at the interior of this most luxurious of villas, unable to speak for a long while. What degree of slovenliness did it take to produce an interior like a garbage dump… and yet, oddly, the master of this house was not the least bit dirty or unkempt in his clothes or his person. Even with her nose covered, the stench seeping through was nearly enough to send this girl, raised in a house of great wealth, fleeing in disarray.
Ye Tianxie stood behind her, waiting with interest for her reaction. He was confident the odds of this first encounter frightening Su Feifei off outright were better than eighty percent…
But Su Feifei, most unfortunately, chose the other twenty. She turned around, still holding her nose, but with a grinning expression on her face. “So you really do live alone — there’s no woman to help you clean up.” Her brows curved, and she gave a mysterious little smile. “So — here I am!”
Ye Tianxie: “…”
“Lollipops! Lollipops! She’s got the smell of lollipops on her! Apple flavor, lychee flavor, orange flavor, mango flavor… Boo-hoo! Master, I want some, I want some! Is this big sister going to live in our house? Then let her stay, all right? She’s got so many lollipops on her!”
Guoguo stood on Ye Tianxie’s shoulder, tugging at his hair over and over, her two big eyes fixed longingly on the pink bag hanging from Su Feifei — because that was where the scent of her favorite thing in the world was coming from.
Su Feifei turned and walked back outside, then called out, “Hey! Hurry up and bring my things over! Faster!”
Following the direction she called, an ultra-luxurious ladies’ maglev car was parked not far off, with four people of various ages, dressed as bodyguards, standing dutifully beside it. Their eyes, however, were fixed on this house, and the expressions on their faces were uncannily uniform… resignation, with the occasional bitter smile.
The car was driven up to the door. Su Feifei threw it open as wide as it would go and waved them on repeatedly. “Hurry up and bring it all in, faster! Careful not to damage my crystal dolls, and mind my goldfish — don’t let the water spill…”
Ye Tianxie came to stand behind Su Feifei and said in an exceedingly strange tone, “Miss Su, shouldn’t you be getting my permission first? I don’t seem to recall ever agreeing to let you move in.”
(End of Chapter 70)