Chapter 36
As Luo Shizhen spoke, he looked at the quilt Lu Qiujin was hugging and asked in confusion:
“But if you are hot, wouldn’t hugging the quilt make you even hotter?”
Lu Qiujin couldn’t say he was hot, nor could he say he wasn’t.
He could only spit out a sentence: “It’s a constitution problem; I flush easily.”
“Oh…”
Luo Shizhen had heard him mention a constitution problem before, but at that time he thought it was a constitution afraid of heat.
So it was a flushing constitution.
Luo Shizhen didn’t know if such a constitution existed, but the world was big and there were so many illnesses; it was reasonable for Lu Qiujin to have a flushing constitution.
“Will it be uncomfortable? Don’t get a fever.”
He had just pushed the bed over, so now the two beds were joined. Luo Shizhen knelt on the bed with one leg and reached out to touch Lu Qiujin’s forehead.
He clearly wanted to check his temperature.
Lu Qiujin’s slender fingers gripped the quilt until they turned white. He sat motionless, as if afraid that moving would startle the other person.
Just as Luo Shizhen’s fingertips were about to touch his forehead, he stopped abruptly.
“I forgot.”
He smiled sheepishly and retracted his hand.
“Last time you told me that using a thermometer is more accurate.”
Luo Shizhen remembered that when he wanted to check Chu Xiao’s forehead temperature with his hand last time, Lu Qiujin had said exactly that.
Lu Qiujin: “…”
Luo Shizhen got off the bed, found a thermometer in the medical kit, and handed it to him.
“Here, take your temperature. If you have a fever, you need to take medicine quickly.”
Lu Qiujin looked at the thermometer in front of him: “…”
He silently accepted it.
Luo Shizhen began to make the bed diligently again.
He was a very clean person. Not only did he shower and change clothes every day, but he also had high standards for the tidiness of his bed.
When he was at No. 3 High School, his bed was so clean that even the teachers praised it.
After Luo Shizhen tidied the bed thoroughly, the time for the thermometer was about up. He asked for it back from Lu Qiujin and gave a small, happy smile.
“You don’t have a fever.”
“But since you got injured today, you still need to drink plenty of water.”
He went to get water for Lu Qiujin. Lu Qiujin tried to get out of bed. “I’ll do it myself.”
“It’s fine. Getting water isn’t trouble. Just rest well since you’re injured. I’ll help you with these small things.”
As Luo Shizhen spoke, he filled a glass of water and placed it on the bedside table on Lu Qiujin’s side.
Lu Qiujin whispered a thank you, and Luo Shizhen smiled at him.
He thought Luo Shizhen would go to bed next, but Luo Shizhen didn’t stay idle. He moved his own bedside table over as well, then tidied up the various study materials, notes, and stationery on top of it.
Once everything was more or less done, he went to shower and wash his hair, then washed the dirty clothes he had changed out of. He threw the outer clothes into the washing machine, but the inner wear had to be hand-washed.
Luo Shizhen still remembered that he wanted to build a good relationship with Lu Qiujin. Since Lu Qiujin had an injured arm and wasn’t mobile, he specifically came out to ask:
“Have you washed the clothes you changed out of? If not, I’ll wash them for you.”
He had just finished showering and was wearing pajamas with a childish black bear pattern. Lu Qiujin vaguely remembered Xiao Shan asking why he bought such childish clothes before, and Luo Shizhen said his grandmother bought them for him.
Grandma Luo actually didn’t have the habit of wearing pajamas; in her eyes, thermal underwear was pajamas. But because Luo Shizhen was going to a boarding school, she was afraid he would be looked down upon, so she specially bought two sets of pajamas.
However, as soon as Luo Shizhen started his first year of high school, he found that his dorm mates didn’t wear pajamas either—they also wore thermal underwear.
But he still liked these two sets of pajamas very much, especially the black bear on them. His grandmother had said she bought them because she thought the little bear looked like Luo Shizhen.
Having worn them from his first year of high school until now, the pajamas were naturally old. Even after treatment, they still had pilling, but they looked very soft. Worn on Luo Shizhen, they appeared especially soft.
He only felt comfortable wearing them, but in Lu Qiujin’s eyes, it was a different matter.
In Lu Qiujin’s eyes, Luo Shizhen stood at the door, his fingertips flushed from the steam holding a towel, wiping earnestly. His dark, bright eyes looked even moister than usual, and his gaze appeared exceptionally focused.
A drop of water escaped before the towel could catch it. It slid down the tips of his hair, dropped onto his chin, and then fell deep into his collar.
One could almost imagine how that water drop would slide down the valley of his chest and where it would end up.
Lu Qiujin’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
Luo Shizhen didn’t pay attention to the little water drop. While drying his hair, he looked confusedly at Lu Qiujin, who was staring straight at him but not speaking.
“Lu Qiujin?”
He waved his hand. “Do you have clothes to wash?”
“No, I don’t.”
Only after speaking did Lu Qiujin realize how dry his voice was. He quickly drank a mouthful of water to cover it up.
“Oh, then I’ll go wash my own clothes. If you want to sleep, turn off the light first; don’t wait for me.”
Luo Shizhen responded and closed the bathroom door.
Lu Qiujin drank several mouthfuls of water before suppressing the heat on his face.
He thought the weather must indeed be a bit hot, especially with the steam drifting out when Luo Shizhen opened the door after showering, making it seem even hotter.
No wonder Xiao Shan and Chu Xiao liked Luo Shizhen. If they saw this scene… that would be disastrous.
Lu Qiujin drank another large gulp of water.
By the time he came back to his senses, he had finished the glass of water.
Lu Qiujin got out of bed to refill it. Thinking Luo Shizhen might want to drink later when he came out, he poured another glass for him too.
Seeing Luo Shizhen come out busily to hang clothes, his hair still half-dry, Lu Qiujin couldn’t help saying:
“Aren’t you going to blow-dry your hair?”
Luo Shizhen chuckled and waved his hand. “It’s fine. The weather is hot now; it will dry by itself.”
“The air conditioner is on in the room. You’ll catch a cold if you don’t dry it.”
Lu Qiujin got out of bed again and naturally picked up his own hairdryer. “Let me help you dry it.”
How could Luo Shizhen let an injured person help him dry his hair?
“No, your arm is still injured.”
“One hand is enough to dry hair,” Lu Qiujin said with a straight face. “Besides, aren’t we supposed to be bonding? Me helping you dry your hair can help us bond.”
Luo Shizhen thought about it and agreed. He glanced hesitantly at the bandaged arm but still sat over.
“Then if you feel tired, tell me, and I can dry it myself.”
Lu Qiujin: “My health is very good. I won’t get tired.”
Luo Shizhen sat obediently, letting him dry his hair.
Lu Qiujin lowered his eyes. From his perspective, he could see Luo Shizhen’s fair nape.
Luo Shizhen was very pale; he had noticed this before.
This whiteness wasn’t pallor, but a healthy, lustrous white. Compared to his face, the parts of Luo Shizhen that rarely saw the sun seemed even whiter.
A small mole on the side of his neck, usually hidden by clothes, appeared indistinctly with the blowing of the hairdryer.
Lu Qiujin was entranced as he watched.
Until Luo Shizhen suddenly turned to look at him. “Why is your hand on my neck?”
Only then did Lu Qiujin realize that his injured hand had unwittingly landed gently on the side of the person’s neck.
He retracted his hand abruptly as if electrocuted, feeling that with the heat from the hairdryer, it seemed to be getting hot again.
“There’s a mole on the back of your neck. It looks quite nice.”
Lu Qiujin regretted it as soon as he spoke. What kind of talk was that?
Someone who didn’t know better would think he was the same kind of person as Chu Xiao and Xiao Shan.
Luo Shizhen, however, didn’t notice the strangeness in his words. Being praised made him quite happy, and he enthusiastically told Lu Qiujin the origin of this small mole.
“I didn’t have a single mole on my body since I was little. This mole came from when I fell as a child and a pencil stabbed into the back of my neck. After taking it out, there was a mole.”
A pencil stabbed into the back of the neck?
Lu Qiujin didn’t even notice that his brows furrowed almost immediately.
“That’s too dangerous. Did you not go to the hospital to check?”
“No. I was fine. It didn’t hurt or itch, and didn’t even bleed. Going to the hospital for such a small thing costs so much money.”
Luo Shizhen didn’t think much of it. There weren’t many rich families in their town, and children were raised roughly. He wasn’t the only one with pencil lead stuck in his flesh.
Kids, after all, wanted to play with everything around them.
Luo Shizhen’s pencil lead was picked out by his grandmother. There were two classmates in his class who didn’t even pick theirs out; it didn’t hurt or itch and had no effect.
Lu Qiujin, however, felt a pang in his heart listening to this.
Instantly, the image of a tiny Luo Shizhen appeared in his mind—hurt but unable to go to the hospital because his family had no money.
“You need money? I have money.”
He took out the card prepared earlier with twenty million in it, and also took out another card of his own.
This card was originally intended by Lu Qiujin to hire people.
Before he alienated, he definitely wanted to get rid of his family. But just that wouldn’t satisfy Lu Qiujin’s hatred.
So he had decided to pay someone to dance on the Lu family’s graves in shifts—Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
On Sundays, he would hire someone who could curse to scream abuse at the graves for the whole day.
Since Luo Shizhen needed money, he should give this money to him first. If he wanted to hire people to dance on graves, he could just earn more.
Lu Qiujin thought this subconsciously, then added another reason in his mind.
After all, he relied on Luo Shizhen for purification. No amount of fawning was too much.
Luo Shizhen had the purification ability. Being purified couldn’t be bought even with a thousand gold pieces. The money he gave was actually too little.
Thinking this way, Lu Qiujin felt even more justified.
He placed the two cards into Luo Shizhen’s hands.
“There is a total of fifty million here. Take it and use it first. If it’s not enough, I’ll give you more later.”
Luo Shizhen stared blankly at the two cards in front of him.
“Huh?”
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