Chapter 37: Your Heart Aches for Him, Doesn’t It?
Li Ye poured him a glass of the sweet wine he had just mixed himself.
“So your heart aches for him, doesn’t it?” he asked softly.
Gu Xinglan took a sip of the wine, his eyelashes lowering slightly.
“I knew early on that Gu Xinglin had his eyes on him.”
“I can’t say it wasn’t intentional that I let him go out today.”
“But I had already arranged everything perfectly.”
“I didn’t expect there to be a slip-up…”
From his somewhat disjointed account, Li Ye pieced together the sequence of events.
He also finally understood the source of Gu Xinglan’s inner conflict.
Li Ye took a sip of his lemon water.
A serious expression settled over his refined, handsome face.
“Xinglan, all I can say is, treat Qin Wan well. Otherwise, you will definitely regret it in the future.”
As the saying goes, the bystander sees things most clearly.
At this moment, Li Ye was absolutely certain that Qin Wan was definitely not just a little pet kept for amusement, as Gu Xinglan claimed.
It was just that Gu Xinglan himself probably hadn’t realized it yet.
Gu Xinglan remained silent.
He paused for a long moment.
“He knows I lied to him, and he’s not in a good mood. How can I make him feel better?” he asked.
Li Ye thought about it. “Besides saying some comforting words, eating sweet things also helps improve one’s mood. You could try that.”
“Sweet things…” Gu Xinglan repeated.
Li Ye nodded. “How about I make a butter nut miniature cake for you to take back and let him try?”
A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of Gu Xinglan’s lips. “Alright then, I’ll trouble you for that.”
And so, an hour later, Gu Xinglan returned with a special miniature cake crafted by a Michelin three-star chef.
“This pastry chef’s skills are quite good, have a taste,” Gu Xinglan said, opening the cake box.
A sweet, buttery aroma mixed with the rich scent of nuts drifted out.
When Qin Wan first saw Gu Xinglan, he had intended to make an excuse about feeling unwell to avoid talking to him.
But catching a whiff of the rich cake aroma, he couldn’t help but lick his lips.
Gu Xinglan pressed the button by the bed, raising the head of the hospital bed to an angle.
He let Qin Wan’s body lean comfortably against the headboard.
Then, he used a small spoon to scoop up a piece of cake and brought it to the boy’s lips.
Up close, the unique aroma of the butter cake was even more intense, deeply stimulating Qin Wan’s taste buds.
To him, something like a cake was an absolute luxury.
When he was little, he had only eaten it two or three times, and it was always his Er Ge, Sheng Siyue, who secretly brought it to the basement where he lived so he could eat it quietly.
Since escaping the Sheng family, his life had been a constant financial struggle, leaving him with even fewer opportunities to eat such delicious things.
Now, with this delicacy right in front of him, Qin Wan couldn’t care less if the person feeding him was some terrifying monster.
He could ignore Gu Xinglan, but he absolutely could not reject the little cake.
He opened his mouth and took the small bite of cake from the spoon.
“Mn, it’s so good!” he mumbled while chewing. “So fragrant and sweet!”
“Is there rosemary and sea salt added in here?”
“Give me another scoop.”
“Oh, and plum icing, right? And I think there’s the scent of butterfly pea flower powder too.”
“Scoop a bigger piece.”
Gu Xinglan unknowingly curled his lips into a smile.
He continued to feed him.
“I want more, it’s too delicious!”
In no time at all, the entire miniature cake was completely devoured.
A genuine, radiant smile rippled across Qin Wan’s small face.
His eyes curved downward in delight.
Gu Xinglan was thrilled to discover that when he smiled, a small, exquisitely delicate pear dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth.
Watching him, Gu Xinglan’s mood brightened immensely.
“Qin Wan, is your tongue a mass spectrometer? It even has an ingredient analysis function. How can you taste the flavors of so many spices?”
As Qin Wan swallowed the last bite of the cake, he smiled brightly and said, “My tongue is very sharp.”
“In the past, my brother brought me little cakes a few times, and they had these familiar flavors in them.”
“My brother told me that when the cook made the cake, she added…”
He was speaking with great enthusiasm when he suddenly realized something was wrong.
Oh no, oh no, I think I just stepped on Gu Xinglan’s taboo again!
He immediately shut his mouth.
He didn’t want to provoke his displeasure.
He still wanted to go see Rong Yi as soon as possible.
Qin Wan timidly raised his eyes, shooting Gu Xinglan a very light, cautious glance.
Gu Xinglan looked back at him, his expression showing no obvious changes.
But it was enough to make Qin Wan’s hair stand on end.
“Uh, what I meant just now… was my Er Ge…”
His voice was tiny, like a child who had done something wrong.
“Mn,” Gu Xinglan uttered a single syllable.
Qin Wan’s little heart clenched even tighter.
He reached out and gently tugged at the sleeve of Gu Xinglan’s dress shirt.
“Just now, I just blurted it out without thinking. It doesn’t count. Don’t be angry…”
The look in Gu Xinglan’s eyes, which had turned somewhat cold and gloomy, now slowly warmed up.
Originally, hearing him call Sheng Siyue ‘Gege‘ again had caused a surge of jealousy mixed with irritation to violently rise within him.
But with this small, submissive tug on his sleeve and the soft apology, his anger dissipated before he even realized it.
Gu Xinglan gave a slight nod.
After all, the boy was still injured; he didn’t want to keep harping on his small mistakes.
“Qin Wan, you’re nineteen years old, yet you still act like a child,” his voice took on a hint of amusement.
“You manage to get crumbs everywhere when you eat.”
Seeing that Gu Xinglan had changed the subject and wasn’t pursuing the matter, Qin Wan finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Thinking he had dropped cake crumbs on the hospital bed, he lowered his head and looked left and right.
The next second, his chin was gently lifted by an elegant, well-defined finger.
“It’s not on the bedsheets, it’s here.”
Gu Xinglan murmured softly, and immediately pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
It was light and gentle, just a brief touch.
Then he kissed his lips, and then his chin.
He didn’t kiss him for long.
“Mn, the taste really is quite good.” He seemed to be savoring the flavor lingering on his lips and tongue.
Qin Wan blinked his eyes blankly.
Only then did he realize that Gu Xinglan had actually used this method to clean off the cake crumbs stuck to the corners of his mouth.
Was this okay?
Wasn’t he being too shameless?
His small face instantly flushed bright red.
Gu Xinglan stared into Qin Wan’s clear, bright black eyes and said slowly, “The little cake’s flavor was really good, I haven’t had enough. Qin Wan, what do you say we should do?”
Qin Wan: …
You’d better actually be talking about the little cake!
But clearly, he wasn’t.
Because at this moment, he could feel a fire igniting in Gu Xinglan’s beautiful phoenix eyes.
This guy, usually as aloof and cold as an iceberg, why did he always flare up with wicked fire the minute he saw him?
“If you wanted some, you should have said so earlier, I would have saved you a little…” he played dumb strategically.
Gu Xinglan put down the small spoon and leaned over, closing the distance between them.
He whispered into his ear, “The cake is gone, so I’ll just have to eat something else.”
“No!” Qin Wan panicked a little and cried out, “I-I’m an injured patient, we can’t… we can’t…”
“Can’t what?” Gu Xinglan teased him deliberately with wicked intentions.
“Can’t… exercise!” Pushed to the brink, Qin Wan threw out this word to save his life.
Gu Xinglan chuckled, the pad of his finger gently touching the boy’s lips.
“Can’t exercise? Well, this little mouth just ate so much cake—does that count as exercise?”
Qin Wan shook his head. “Moving my mouth obviously doesn’t count.”
Gu Xinglan: “Moving your mouth isn’t an issue? Good.”
Hearing this sentence, Qin Wan suddenly realized he seemed to have been outsmarted by Gu Xinglan again, led right into a trap.
But it was too late.
“Hey—” Before he could even speak, Gu Xinglan’s kiss had already pressed down on him.
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