They are still close to me today despite their negative feelings

With a slightly roguish tone, the man interrupted Xiao Zhang's reminder with a laugh.

"...Jin Shuheng, what are you doing here?"

Chu Qingya stood up and looked coldly at the man in the suit.

"This is so disheartening, senior. Am I now an unwelcome guest to you?"

"If it were that naive junior from the past, I would welcome him. But as his senior, I really can't accept his businessman's attitude now."

Chu Qingya said sarcastically.

"Oh dear, to be honest, I'm really hurt," the man said with a laugh. "But unfortunately, I didn't come here today to catch up with you, senior. Miss Qiu is working backstage today, right? Aren't you going to call her out?"

"...So you really came for her?"

"Don't put it so harshly. I was asked to do this by the other party's parents." Jin Shuheng shrugged. "If you don't believe me, I can let you connect to their phone."

At the same time, several young men in suits next to the man took a step forward, which made Xiao Zhang instinctively take a step back in fear.

"All I know is that it's always Ning Ruoyu who takes Xiaoqiu home. Aren't you afraid that Ning Ruoyu will cause you trouble by doing this?"

After saying that, Chu Qingya herself felt it was absurd. Almost subconsciously, when faced with this kind of trouble, she blurted out the name of her junior employee.

"I'm so pathetic..." Chu Qingya thought to herself with a self-deprecating smile. Perhaps Ning Ruoyu's words and actions that day had left too deep an impression on her, like a brand. Despite being an adult, she had actually relied on a high school student to handle this kind of situation.

Surprisingly, upon hearing that name, the approaching youths actually stopped in their tracks and glanced at Jin Shuheng with some embarrassment.

"...You guys really embarrass me." Jin Shuheng slapped the youths hard on the head. "No matter how powerful Brother Ning is, is he even here right now? You chicken out just because he's mentioned?!"

"Brother, didn't you hear what he did last time and..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah my foot!" Jin Shuheng quickly shut up the young man who was about to speak. "Anyway, he's very busy right now and has no time to deal with things here. Do you choose to be afraid of Ning Ruoyu or Old Master Qiu?"

“Brother, Old Master Qiu is far away from the emperor, and he doesn’t need to bother with us. Brother Ning really will find us.” One of the young men looked somewhat frightened.

"Damn it, I must have had the worst luck in eight lifetimes to have met such a bunch of big shots like you," Jin Shuheng cursed. "Are you going to be held accountable by that guy later, or are you going to be...?"

"...Why is Ning Ruoyu so busy?"

A sudden and direct question interrupted Jin Shuheng's anger. Chu Qingya knew something was wrong and quickly ran out from behind the front desk to protect the girl who had run out from the staff backstage.

"Xiao Qiu, what's wrong with you!"

"Has Ning Ruoyu been given trouble by you guys?"

However, Qiu Luxi shook her head, gently pushed Chu Qingya away, and stubbornly spoke to Jin Shuheng.

"Well, I can only give a rough answer to this question." Seeing the person in question appear, Jin Shuheng, disregarding his subordinate's reprimand, stroked his chin and gave a vague reply.

"!"

"You, and Grandpa!"

A faint flame flickered in Qiu Luxi's usually calm and composed eyes, and her gaze toward Jin Shuheng was filled with hatred.

“…Don’t look at me like that, Miss.” Jin Shuheng gave a wry smile. “I was just a gofer for Old Master Qiu’s decision. You’ve been out for too long, it’s time to go home and give them an explanation.”

A deathly silence filled the Qingyin Cat House, and even several cats felt uneasy, sneaking away to a corner.

“I understand. I will go back with you, but I want to see my grandfather.”

Qiu Luxi said in a cold voice.

"I thought you would make demands like not to hurt Brother Ning."

"I can't trust you anymore. I'll talk to Grandpa about this myself."

Jin Shuheng looked at Qiu Luxi with some approval. Putting aside other aspects, this young lady had really grown a lot during her time living in the wild.

"Xiao Qiu..."

Chu Qingya said somewhat unwillingly.

"Thank you for taking care of me all this time, ma'am. I..."

Qiu Luxi tried to force a faint smile at Chu Qingya.

"So!"

Chu Qingya squatted down and picked up the "young lady" who hadn't run away and was still coldly watching the situation from the side.

"At least, please take this child with you!"

"Hey, senior, you're not making things difficult for me..."

"Jin Shuheng, shut up!"

Chu Qingya coldly rebuked him, and Jin Shuheng could only scratch his head and click his tongue. His underlings glanced at him, only to be met with a fierce glare from him.

"Boss lady..."

"Xiao Qiu, you must come back with this child."

Chu Qingya gently patted Qiu Luxi's head.

"No matter how long it takes, we will wait for you."

"With Xiao Ning."

……

In a villa in the city, Qiu Luxi huddled on her bed.

Night had fallen, and as the last rays of the setting sun were extinguished by the bleak autumn wind, her room was completely shrouded in darkness. Even so, she did not turn on the light.

"Meow."

The "young lady" next to her called softly, jumped onto the girl's bed, and rubbed her neck against the girl's ankle.

"Meow."

Qiu Luxi responded softly, gently stroking the cat's neck with her hand.

The young lady showed an expression of enjoyment and licked her slender fingers with her tongue.

"Sorry, meow, you're locked up here with me."

Qiu Luxi gently apologized to the cat. But the cat didn't seem to understand what had happened. It just glanced at her and then got back to its usual antics, stomping on the pillow.

"What kind of trouble will Ning Ruoyu encounter?"

Qiu Luxi spoke softly to the only person she could talk to at the moment.

"Meow?"

The young lady tilted her head.

"It's that idiot. He's got dead fish eyes when he wears glasses, but when he takes them off he's all flirtatious and womanizing." Qiu Luxi explained to "Miss," "You were very clingy to him, you haven't forgotten, have you?"

"Meow."

She called out "Young Miss," as if to retort that she wasn't stupid.

"Hmm, it seems like he got into trouble with Grandpa because of me," Qiu Luxi said softly.

"I wanted to talk to Grandpa, but when I got home, they said he was very busy these days..."

"It's been almost two hours now."

Qiu Luxi glanced at the cat. The cat was also looking at her and blinked.

“Oh, ‘Young Miss,’ what should I do? If Grandpa really hurts Ning Ruoyu… I’m so grateful that Grandpa adopted me when I was an orphan. But if he does that now, I probably…”

"I'll hate him for the rest of my life."

Qiu Luxi said with a pained yet resolute expression, scratching the back of her hand with her fingers.

"If only I hadn't been so willful and come to the foreign language high school. No one would have gotten hurt, and no one would have been sad."

Perhaps the dark environment affected the girl's mindset; unknowingly, her words were tinged with an imperceptible bias.

"Hey, 'Miss,' if Ning Ruoyu got into trouble because of me, would I still be able to act so easily, like nothing ever happened, and stay in this house?"

Of course, the cat wouldn't answer that question; the cat just wanted to lie down.

Perhaps stumped by this complicated problem, the "young lady" lay down with a thud and stretched lazily.

"You didn't know either? I knew it."

Qiu Luxi said softly, then sighed.

"It's so dark at home. It's really pitch black. So many things have happened recently, and I didn't realize how dark it was at home. I really want to go back to Ning Ruoyu's rented room, and I really want to eat his cooking."

The girl touched her stomach.

"If, if Grandpa really did something bad, then I'll desperately try to escape from this house. If they won't let me out, I'll hurt myself, like stabbing my own neck with a knife."

"Meow?!"

The young lady seemed startled and scrambled out of bed.

"Okay, then, then I'll go to Ning Ruoyu's house. I have his and Ning Ruoxin's phone numbers, I'm sure I can find them."

Qiu Luxi continued talking to herself.

"Now that I've found Ning Ruoyu, things have come to this point, so I guess I should marry him. If that's the case, when Grandpa and the others come looking for me, I'll hold onto Ning Ruoyu's arm and say that if he gets hurt again, I'll take the baby in my belly with me."

The young lady looked somewhat bewildered, glancing around as if she didn't understand what she had done wrong to deserve such a speech.

"Oh, but can you have a child right after getting married? I'm not really sure... I only know that a child is conceived naked in bed, but how exactly is it done?"

"Forget it, Ning Ruoyu definitely knows. Let him teach me. Okay, that's settled."

Qiu Luxi nodded as if she had figured something out.

"Well, that's good."

Qiu Luxi looked at the "young lady" and suddenly smiled shyly.

She touched the head of the bewildered "young lady".

"But there's a secret I'll only tell you, 'Young Miss'."

"When I first thought about giving myself to Ning Ruoyu, I felt happy for a moment. No, twice. ...Hehe, okay, I've actually been hiding my happiness the whole time."

"Shh! But you can't say things like that in front of others, it's too embarrassing, you know?"

The girl gently stroked the "young lady's" head, her eyes revealing a hint of coquettishness.

"He'll be willing to take care of me, right? Don't worry, I'll take you with me then. We're both very attached to him, aren't we?"

The darkness seemed to be devouring the girl's reason and heart, making her indigo eyes increasingly murky and frantic.

"!"

As if sensing something, "Miss" jumped out of bed with a "biu" and ran to the door of the room.

"Young Miss?! Come back quickly! Don't leave me! Don't leave me alone!"

Qiu Luxi jumped hurriedly from the bed to the floor and ran to the door in a panic, trying to pick up the child.

"I...I don't want to be like this anymore, alone forever..."

The darkness seemed to devour her rationality, shattering her usually strong exterior, and she even unconsciously began to murmur softly.

"Dad, Mom,..."

“…Ning Ruoyu”.

However, at that very moment, the door was opened.

The light from the outside corridor shone directly into the pitch-black bedroom, causing the girl crouching on the floor to instinctively shield her face with her hand and squint.

"So bright..." she said instinctively.

Meanwhile, the cat next to it seemed eager to complain, rushing out of the room and affectionately rubbing its neck against the guest's trouser leg.

"Wow, you scared me!"

A familiar voice rang out. It was so familiar that Qiu Luxi couldn't believe it.

"Okay, okay, I appreciate your enthusiasm. Oh, you're in the room, why aren't the lights on?"

The door was flung open, and a boy in a school uniform looked at him with a smile, extending his hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Do you want me to turn on the light for you, or should I take you to a place with light?"

He appeared in my life as suddenly as he had before, catching me off guard, yet like a reunion with an old friend.