Chapter 8#
Yan Heqing was not surprised that Lu Muchi would find him.
He also had no intention of hiding from Lu Muchi.
His light brown pupils flowed with a dark light in the low-wattage light and shadow.
The plastic bags he was carrying collided with each other, making a slight rustling sound.
Then, Yan Heqing raised his eyes.
Across a dozen steps, he calmly met Lu Muchi’s gaze and said faintly, “Did you find my brother?”
Lu Muchi had not expected that Yan Heqing’s first sentence would be about this.
He took a final drag on his cigarette. “Is it necessary?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think you are?” Lu Muchi pulled out the cigarette butt, threw it on the ground, and crushed it heavily with the tip of his foot. “Do you think you really have the right to negotiate terms with me? If I want, I can take you away and lock you up right now, and no one would dare to interfere.”
Lu Muchi sneered coldly. “And no one will care about you. In your adoptive parents’ eyes, you’re not even as good as a dog.”
Yan Heqing was completely unfazed. Lu Muchi’s insults were everywhere in the original text.
In the original text, on the night he signed the contract, he was taken to a resort villa by Lu Muchi.
[Lu Muchi leaned against the sofa, smoking casually, the words from his thin lips colder than sub-zero temperatures.
“Take it off.”
The villa’s main door was not closed, and the conversations of the bodyguards and maids could be faintly heard.
Yan Heqing’s face was pale. He tried his best to restrain his trembling and despair, maintaining his last bit of self-respect. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
Lu Muchi’s eyebrows raised slightly, and he drawled, “Negotiating terms with me?”
He sneered, “What do you think you are!”
He suddenly threw away the cigarette, stood up, and strode towards Yan Heqing, tearing at his clothes without a care.
Through the open door, the back of a maid turning away in embarrassment could be seen.
“Crying?” Lu Muchi’s index finger lifted his face, cruel and indifferent, crushing Yan Heqing’s self-respect bit by bit. “What are you pretending to be pure for? You’re just something I bought at a high price. In the future, when you get a taste of it, you’ll only kneel and beg to be fucked.”
The next day, Lu Muchi threw a piece of paper on his broken and messy body.
“Your withdrawal certificate. From today on, you will stay here obediently and are not allowed to go anywhere.”
…]
Yan Heqing’s eyes were calm and waveless.
Not seeing the expression he wanted on Yan Heqing’s face—shame, hurt, sadness… none of it.
Lu Muchi’s chest was filled with anger.
Was Yan Heqing not afraid of him, or did he despise him?
Either way, it made Lu Muchi irritable. “You—”
Yan Heqing spoke at the same time, “It seems you didn’t find him.”
“Then please leave. Before you find my brother, I have nothing to say to you.”
Lu Muchi was completely enraged. It seemed Yan Heqing still hadn’t figured out the situation.
“You—”
Meow.
A cat’s meow interrupted him.
Yan Heqing suddenly turned around.
Lu Muchi’s eyes moved slightly. So he was trying to buy time to run. He instantly felt relieved and rushed down the stairs. “You run…”
His voice stopped abruptly.
Lu Muchi stopped a few steps above Yan Heqing, his gaze fixed in astonishment on the landing at the corner.
The sensor light went out. Mottled and fragmented streetlights came in through the hollowed-out staircase window, landing like stars on the young man’s eyebrows and eyes, a gentleness he had never seen before.
Yan Heqing didn’t run. He was squatting gently, and at his feet were two very thin stray cats.
Yan Heqing carefully took out half of the prepared fish from the bag and fed them from his palm.
The two little cats must have been hungry for a long time and ate very eagerly.
Lu Muchi’s heart skipped a beat.
Lin Fengzhi also loved cats and had three of them, all his treasures.
Was this the tacit understanding of biological brothers?
Lu Muchi’s gaze gradually became complicated. He reminded Yan Heqing coldly, “Raw fish that hasn’t been sterilized has parasites. Do you even know how to raise cats?”
Yan Heqing didn’t look up, concentrating on waiting for the stray cats to eat. “As long as they’re alive.”
Lu Muchi frowned. “What…”
His peripheral vision caught the dirty wall. Most of the wall paint had peeled off, with large patches of mottling and various small advertisements stuck on it.
This environment was even worse than the Yan family’s house last time.
Broken, old, poor.
For the first time, he clearly realized that Yan Heqing was very poor.
Yan Heqing couldn’t provide imported canned food, air-freighted pet goat milk, or sterilized raw meat. A raw fish was all he could offer.
Yan Heqing was no different from those two stray cats. As long as there was food and they were alive, it was fine. Sterilized or not, it was meaningless.
Lu Muchi fell silent.
He looked at Yan Heqing again. Compared to the last time he saw him, Yan Heqing was dressed a little thicker, but it was still obvious that the clothes were hanging on him.
An adult man of over 1.8 meters, as thin as Yan Heqing, couldn’t find a suitable size in ordinary brands unless it was custom-made.
All of Lin Fengzhi’s clothes were custom-made. His skin was delicate and sensitive and required the softest, skin-friendly fabrics.
The sensor light came on again, and Lu Muchi saw Yan Heqing’s hands clearly, red and translucent.
It wasn’t the blood of the fish; it was red from the cold.
A strange feeling suddenly arose in Lu Muchi.
He thought of that woman for the first time in a long time.
In the same winter, the woman built a big snowman for him. Her hands were red from the cold, but she still excitedly ran back into the house to call him.
As a result, when they got to the yard, a maid was pouring hot water on the snowman.
Grandpa leaned on his cane, his expression blank. “The eldest grandson of the Lu family does not need cheap gifts.”
The woman stood there helplessly, timid and wronged.
His memory was very clear. That woman was as poor as Yan Heqing.
She would occasionally mention her childhood, being so poor that she couldn’t afford to eat. Once, she was so hungry in the middle of the night that she ran to someone’s field to steal sweet potatoes. Before she could act, she was discovered by a dog and chased for a long distance, still getting a big bite.
Lu Muchi had seen that wound, on the little finger of the woman’s left hand, a mark that couldn’t be removed even with money.
So the woman was not allowed to attend any public occasions.
Her scar was the brand of the poor.
The Yan Heqing in front of him gradually overlapped with that woman.
Lu Muchi’s temper became unprecedentedly bad. He said viciously, “Don’t pretend to be noble when you have no money. I’ll give you one more chance, 5 million a year, money you’ll never earn in your lifetime!”
Yan Heqing was unmoved, his voice cold. “I’ll earn my own money. I only have one condition: find my brother.”
Lu Muchi’s knuckles cracked.
He could grab Yan Heqing and take him to any hotel right now, or to the dilapidated room of less than 20 square meters that Yan Heqing rented, and just take him.
This was even his only purpose for coming here today.
However, at this moment, he lost the strength to lift his foot.
The corridor was extremely quiet, with only the sound of the stray cats eating. Lu Muchi was silent for a long time, then suddenly took out an old-person phone from his pocket.
It was Yan Heqing’s phone.
He walked down the stairs and threw the old-person phone into Yan Heqing’s hood.
“Answer my calls. Don’t think about running away again. I can find you anywhere.”
Lu Muchi left.
After a while, the sound of footsteps disappeared, and he left the unit building.
The sensor light in the corridor went out one by one. One of the stray cats finished the fish and jumped onto the hollowed-out window, running away through the gap.
The other one was still licking Yan Heqing’s palm, where some fish residue remained.
The soft tongue had barbs, and the feeling of being licked was not so good. Yan Heqing still patiently waited for the cat to finish licking and leave before taking his vegetables home.
Back home, Yan Heqing turned on the light, changed his slippers, and went into the kitchen first.
Warm water flowed over his fingers.
He replayed Lu Muchi’s expression just now in his mind and knew that the bait he had put down had succeeded.
Feeding stray cats was a kindness that only Lin Fengzhi was worthy of. In the past, he had been hungry for three meals and full for one, and really had no energy to sympathize with others.
On the first night he moved, he discovered that there were many stray cats in this community.
He began to feed them every night.
Each time, he would pack the food in a plastic bag and make a rustling sound by rubbing the bag when feeding them. Gradually, when the stray cats heard the sound, they knew it was time to eat and would come out to find him on their own.
There were fewer stray cats tonight, but two were enough.
Yan Heqing washed his hands. The sink was half full of water. He took out the old-person phone from his hood.
Then—
Thump.
The phone slowly sank to the bottom of the water.
Yan Heqing turned around, picked up the broom and dustpan, went out again, and cleaned up the cigarette butts at the door, leaving not a single speck of ash.
Downstairs, Lu Muchi lowered the car window and looked at the small room that had turned from dark to bright. A strange emotion appeared in his dark eyes.
He instructed the driver, “Drive.”
The driver asked cautiously, “Where to?”
“The ancestral home.”
Lu Muchi usually didn’t go back to the ancestral home, only returning for holidays.
In the dead of night, the gatekeeper opened the barrier, and the car drove into two private streets lined with plane trees. At the end was the Lu family’s ancestral home.
A retro-style villa from the last century, with a low-key and restrained appearance. The living room lights were still on.
Lu Muchi changed his shoes and went in, somewhat surprised. It was past midnight, who was still—
“Uncle?” Seeing the man at the island counter, Lu Muchi was even more surprised.
Lu Lin’s head was slightly lowered, his jade-like fingers holding a bottle of Campari.
On the island counter, a neat row of Old Fashioned glasses was placed.
“So late?” Lu Lin didn’t look up and poured wine into a glass.
Lu Muchi said vaguely, “Something came up.” He took a few steps forward. “In such a good mood today?”
Lu Lin didn’t drink often, let alone mix his own drinks.
Lu Lin recalled the taste of that night. It was a Negroni that perfectly suited his taste.
He liked bitterness.
Adding a little more Campari, Lu Lin tasted it again. Still not right.
He put down the glass, turned to the wine cabinet. “Go to bed, it’s late.”
Lu Muchi had no desire to sleep. His gaze followed Lu Lin’s movements, his Adam’s apple rolling violently several times before he managed to speak with difficulty, “Uncle, is there…”
With the Lu family’s power, if they couldn’t find a common woman, it must be his grandfather’s obstruction, and that woman was deliberately hiding, never wanting to come back to see him.
The resentment of being abandoned washed over him, and Lu Muchi stiffly changed his words, “Can you withdraw the bodyguards? I have no privacy at all.”
Lu Lin returned with a bottle of Regan’s No. 6, his sharp jawline showing no warmth. “It’s your grandfather’s idea.”
Lu Muchi’s voice was very low. “I know, but…” Now the entire Lu family was under Lu Lin’s control.
If Lu Lin mentioned it, Grandpa would definitely agree.
“The bodyguard’s duty is to protect the employer.” Lu Lin poured some Regan’s No. 6 into the glass. “It will not involve privacy.”
The implication was that the bodyguards would not report Lu Muchi’s privacy.
Lu Muchi’s lips moved a few times, but he didn’t dare to say more. “I’ll go to bed first. You should also rest early, Uncle.”
Lu Lin replied faintly, “Good night.”
“Good night, Uncle.”
Lu Muchi went upstairs.
Only Lu Lin was left. He calculated the proportions in detail, stirred evenly, and mixed another Negroni.
He took a sip. The bitterness was close, but still a little off.
Lu Lin poured it out, went to the freezer to get another Old Fashioned glass, and continued to mix.
Time passed in the low sound of stirring. At dawn, Lu Lin tasted the newly mixed Negroni again.
A rich and layered bitterness, the same as that night.
His dark eyes flickered slightly.
That young bartender had added two extra drops of olive juice to the recipe.