What, exactly, had given her the illusion that he would become a kind person in the future?
Shen Yi found it unbelievable.
“I know you hate trouble. I know you can’t stand dealing with people. And I also know that if you hadn’t seen that little box, I’d most likely have ended up with a bullet in my head,” she admitted, counting each point off one by one. “You’ve never had anything to do with kindness. Your family’s philosophy has always been that as long as the outcome is what you want, it doesn’t matter if the path there is paved with blood.”
“I know how awful much of your past is. You won’t be a good person in the future, and you certainly aren’t one now.”
“As for whatever bad things you’ve done, the person who should judge you is a judge, not us.”
“And if you ever need help, I’ll be more than happy to assist you.”
Shen Sixing wondered if he was hallucinating.
His eyes seemed to widen slightly of their own accord. He had never looked particularly bright to begin with, and now he looked even more dazed.
“Assist me?” Shen Sixing stammered, his expression resembling someone who had just been doused with an entire basin of cold water.
He was completely stunned on the spot.
Watching this, Wen Ya couldn’t help falling into deep thought.
Had something gone wrong with her brain back then? Had a donkey kicked her?
How else could she possibly have thought Shen Sixing possessed a faint, melancholic air—as if he had stepped out of some old movie?
With his eyes rounded and his mouth hanging open for ages, where was there even the slightest hint of melancholy?
Wen Ya’s palm moved unconsciously to the top of his head. She patted him once, then again.
The boy’s fluffy hair was pressed completely flat, drooping over his forehead. Combined with his still-dazed expression, he looked exactly like some simple, honest country fellow who had been hit out of nowhere by a winning lottery ticket.
Looking at his somewhat bewildered eyes, Wen Ya slowly began to speak.
“I don’t care what your family is like, Shen Sixing.”
“I don’t care what you’ve done in the past, either.”
“You could have eaten three people alive, and I’d still compliment you for having a great appetite. After all, none of that has anything to do with me.”
Her tone had remained calm throughout, until the final sentence, when it abruptly took a sharp turn.
“But how dare you leave without telling me?”
At the same time as the words left her mouth, her fingers found the curl at the back of his head and gave it a precise yank.
This time, it really hurt.
He couldn’t help pulling a long face.
Wen Ya was so fierce.
Why was he so unlucky?
Why would his future wife be an assassin?
Shen Sixing thought that he had to be the least fortunate person in the entire world.
As he thought this, he turned to glance at Shen Yi, who was standing by and doing nothing to save him.
His expression grew even more miserable.
Seeing his aggrieved look, Wen Ya inexplicably felt like laughing.
This man was truly both cowardly and shameless.
After spending several months with him, it hadn’t been difficult to discover that Shen Sixing was an exceedingly lazy person. Whenever something happened, his first reaction was always to run away. If he couldn’t escape, he would stall—until the last possible moment, when he would scramble to deal with it.
And yet he was very clever.
He was skilled at disguising himself as a harmless lump of cotton, making others overlook and underestimate him, then quietly accomplishing his goals through the gaps in their guard.
He also had a sufficiently entertaining personality, with the air of a loser who would suddenly toss out some dry, offbeat joke.
Wen Ya had met all kinds of people, but no one else had ever made her feel that she could spend an entire day doing nothing but watch him make a fool of himself.
“Can you let go of my hair?” Shen Sixing pleaded. “I’m going to go bald.”
The strength in her hand unconsciously eased.
Shen Sixing had always been good at slipping through the tiniest cracks. Taking advantage of that small opening, he tilted his head and let his entire body topple forward, gently resting his forehead against her chest as he hugged her tightly.
His soft, fluffy hair brushed against her chin.
“Thanks, miss.”
Wen Ya couldn’t resist pinching his cheek.
He was like a puppy.
So adorable!
His meek, take-whatever-life-threw-at-him attitude dispelled most of Wen Ya’s anger. The hand that had been gripping his hair naturally shifted into a palm.
Wen Ya pressed down on his head and pushed him to the side, forcing him out of her arms.
“We’ll talk about it after we get home.”
Her tone was noticeably gentler than it had been when she arrived.
Before this, Shen Sixing had seriously suspected that furious Wen Ya might kick him to death on the spot.
Now that her anger had subsided, he quietly breathed a sigh of relief, knowing he had escaped the ordeal.
The other late-night gaming addicts inside the internet café saw what was happening and all retreated in unison, making way for this strange family of three.
By now, the sky was already bright.
Wen Ya stood by the roadside, holding her daughter’s hand in one hand and her phone in the other as she looked down and called a cab.
She hadn’t gotten off work until five that morning. She had planned to go home and collapse straight into bed, but this hopeless man had ruined all of it.
“I didn’t get off work until five today, and I wasted a lot of time looking for you.” Her tone was mild, impossible to tell whether she was complaining or merely stating a fact.
Shen Sixing immediately came over and stood beside her with a beaming smile.
He deliberately lowered his voice into an oily, breathy murmur and leaned close to her ear.
“Miss, it’s awfully dangerous for a lady like you to be walking alone so late at night. Why don’t you call me along with you from now on?”
Wen Ya looked up from her phone and glanced at him with a smile.
“Dangerous?”
“You can’t beat me. Do you believe that, Shen Sixing?”
Shen Sixing had no clear understanding, for the moment, of Wen Ya’s combat ability.
He only knew that when it came to hand-to-hand combat, Wen Ya was several leagues above him—but exactly how many leagues, he had never bothered to calculate.
After giving it some thought, he answered honestly, “Theoretically speaking, I can’t beat any professional assassin.”
Compared with fighting people head-on, he was better at setting them up from the shadows.
Wen Ya raised her fist and gave it a light feint in front of him, then added coolly, “Right now, I could kill you with one punch.”
Shen Sixing immediately shrank back half a step, hunching his neck as he raised both hands before his chest in surrender. Yet his eyes curved with a smile.
Wen Ya stared at his cowardly appearance for a while before suddenly asking,
“By the way, do you know how to kiss?”
Shen Sixing froze.
“What?” Even his voice cracked, as though someone had stepped on his tail.
“The book says the first step to becoming a couple is learning how to kiss,” she said without changing expression. “Do you have any experience?”
Of course Shen Sixing had no experience. He spent all day hunched over his computer, creeping about in the dark—where would he have found the time to know anything about kissing?
Quietly, he said, “I can go learn...”
Afraid she would be disappointed, he hurriedly added, “I learn very quickly. If you want to, I’ll figure it out soon.”
“But I have something to do right now, and I need to go home. Can you wait for me a little while?”
His tense, grave-as-if-facing-a-mortal-enemy expression made Wen Ya laugh. She let out a soft chuckle. “Then are you leaving now? I’ll call you a cab.”
As if waking from a dream, Shen Sixing squeezed out two words. “Okay.”
What a sweet, innocent little mouse.
Wen Ya couldn’t help thinking so.
