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.”
“Hey!” Su Feifei turned around, pouting up at him in a display of dissatisfaction. “I’m a great beauty, you know! A girl like me volunteers to come live at your place and you ought to be over the moon… Look, look — you live alone in this huge house, with so many rooms going to waste. You can’t be so stingy you won’t spare a single room for a great beauty, can you? And besides, besides — look how filthy your house is! Even a pig moving in here would feel hard done by. I can help you tidy up… And I’ll have you know, I’ve never tidied a room for anyone before. You’re getting a bargain — the deal of a lifetime!”
Ye Tianxie: “…”
“Hmph! Considering I’m your rescued damsel, and besides…” Her voice dropped quietly, and her head lowered a little as she said in a voice only Ye Tianxie could hear, “you rotten thing, you touched me… so you have to take responsibility. Once this young lady has her eye on you, you absolutely can’t escape.”
Ye Tianxie, who had never in his life been anything but the picture of health, suddenly felt a headache coming on. At the same time, he found himself very interested indeed in what sort of environment this girl had grown up in.
The things Su Feifei brought were absurd… her bed, her quilt, her pillow, her desk, her vanity table, a wardrobe stuffed full, every kind of toy a girl might like, luxury goods, daily necessities… and even an enormous bag of snacks.
She had moved everything from her room. She was telling everyone that she was in deadly earnest about moving in with Ye Tianxie.
She and Ye Tianxie had crossed paths only a handful of hurried times. She had no way of uncovering his background, still less any real understanding of him — she didn’t know his family, his temperament, his habits, his character… Calling him a stranger wouldn’t be far off the mark… and yet here she was, hurrying to move all alone into the home of such a man.
Not one of the people around Su Feifei understood what this far-from-stupid young mistress was actually thinking.
Was it the stirring in her heart when he’d pulled her out of despair that night? Or was it something else?
But one thing was certain: Su Feifei wasn’t joking, and she was in a tremendous hurry to move in at the first possible moment. Before daybreak this morning, every person she could summon had been hauled out of bed to help her pack.
When the four black-suited bodyguards carried that supremely lavish soft-jade bed across Ye Tianxie’s threshold, all four stopped dead in their tracks at once, eyes wide, mouths gaping, jaws nearly hitting the floor… They had seen dirty, cluttered rooms before, but never anything filthy to this degree. Even as grown men, they felt the urge to turn on their heels and leave… Was their honored young mistress really going to live in a place like this?
They couldn’t help glancing at Ye Tianxie, who stood off to one side saying little, wearing an expression that was hard to read. The meaning in their eyes needed no words.
“Look! My bed — isn’t it pretty? Hee… Now hurry and find me an empty room. Oh, and which room do you usually sleep in?” Su Feifei said with a charming smile. Her expression, which had been rather strained under the assault of the stench, had somehow returned to normal… Evidently, now that she was learning to ignore even this environment, she was truly dead set on living here.
Ye Tianxie mechanically raised an arm and pointed at the room where he usually slept.
“Then… I want this room! I knew it — you live alone, so there can’t be anyone else here.” Su Feifei clicked over on her high-heeled sandals. The closed door wasn’t locked, and it opened with a light twist of her hand. But the instant her hand touched the doorknob she regretted it — because what she felt was unmistakably a thick coating of dust on her palm. And the moment the door swung open, the dust that billowed out at her sent her scrambling back several steps, both hands flailing in front of her face, barely holding back a cough.
Ye Tianxie turned his face away, wearing a look of perfect innocence.
“You— you— you— how many centuries has it been since you cleaned!” Su Feifei stamped her foot, then carefully pulled open another door — and another great cloud of dust billowed out at her. Su Feifei was rendered utterly speechless. She turned around and pointed at the room she’d chosen first. “You four… I’m giving you one hour to clean this room until there isn’t a single speck of dust to be seen.”
The four bodyguards, all of impressive pedigree, stood in the doorway, wordless for a long moment. At last the older one leading them said, on the verge of tears, “Miss… this wouldn’t be much simpler than demolishing the entire house.”
Ye Tianxie: “…”
“No talking back! One hour, and if you don’t finish, I’m docking a full month’s wages from all of you! Hurry, hurry!”
The four bodyguards had no choice but to take up temporary careers as cleaners and plunge into the room, where the dust lay a good three feet thick. Three steps in, three of the four were choked back out again — then they gritted their teeth and went back in… Three minutes later, two of them hurried out, and before long a complete set of the most efficient, most rapid, and most extravagant cleaning equipment was being wheeled in.
In Ye Tianxie’s house, they could find no mop, no vacuum, no cleaning solution — not even a rag.
Ye Tianxie switched on the television and stared fixedly at the screen, letting Su Feifei’s shouting and ordering and pointing this way and that wash over him, not sparing so much as a glance for the four bodyguards bustling in and out… As if he were the outsider in this villa.
He had never allowed anyone into his home. Even the few friends he acknowledged, he had never invited over of his own accord. And those few who truly understood him had never come to his house uninvited.
Yet today, he had let Su Feifei through his door — and even let her turn the place upside down with total impunity.
What was he thinking, in his heart?
…Three hours later.
It really was a most bizarre scene. One of them was the daughter of Huaxia’s richest man, insisting on moving into a young man’s house and going about it in deadly earnest. The other was allowing it with almost no resistance or objection at all. They were like two friends who couldn’t be more familiar with each other. And in truth, all their encounters together amounted to three hurried meetings, a few minutes in total.
The garbage and bottles and cans strewn across the floor — accumulated over who knew how long — were gone, and the ground could at last claim some faint acquaintance with the word “clean.” In a villa this large, filthy to this degree, forget four people; forty couldn’t have set it right in a day. Non-professionals that they were, they could only hurriedly tackle the spots most offensive to the eye and the nose, concentrating above all on the room Young Mistress Su Feifei had chosen.
(End of Chapter 71)