YA Ch21: Thunder

Lu Yu ran to the company lobby with the note, waving the row of little bald heads in front of Ming Yan: “I got it back. How will you reward me?”

Ming Yan looked at the drizzling rain outside, “Your reward is to hold an umbrella for me.”

“Sure! I love that reward!” Lu Yu’s eyes lit up. He turned to the reception desk to get an umbrella and eagerly ran back to hold it over Ming Yan’s head.

On rainy days, Ming Yan didn’t trust Lu Yu’s driving skills and insisted on driving himself.

They walked to the car with the umbrella, Lu Yu diligently shielding Ming Yan from the rain until the car door was closed. Then he quickly got into the passenger seat.

Seeing Lu Yu happily shaking the water off the umbrella, Ming Yan asked, “You’re happy even doing chores.”

Lu Yu grinned, “Yeah, it’s my honor to do things for you. I read that choosing a husband is like choosing a working animal. You pick one that’s obedient, works well, and can earn money to do chores at home. If you can order me around, it means you chose me.”

Ming Yan: “…” He had never seen anyone take pride in being a working animal.

On the way home, Lu Yu continued to listen to his book. He had been busy with various tasks and hadn’t even completed half of his reading.

[As the ten thousand horses galloped… this part is over ten thousand words of battle scenes, skipping…]

Lu Dongdong automatically identified the plot and skipped all the irrelevant sections, making it much easier for Lu Yu.

“Dongdong, what would I do without you?” Lu Yu was grateful for the highly intelligent AI that had saved him during the meeting, “I wish I could ingest books into my brain like you.”

The stream of light on the AI’s display fluctuated, and Lu Dongdong spoke, “Father, you can take me with you during the live broadcast. I can clear the world with one ultimate move, making the third prince the emperor directly.”

Lu Yu: “…The third prince might not be willing.”

Once integrated into the simulator, Lu Dongdong would be like any other character without AI attributes. All the complex knowledge would be irrelevant in the simulator, leaving only the pure character of Lu Dongdong. Bringing him along wouldn’t help much, except to destroy Hua Wenyuan’s world with one ultimate move, leaving him to rule an empty planet.

After playing with Lu Dongdong for a while, Lu Yu looked up and realized their car hadn’t gone far. They were still near the company, stuck in traffic.

Rainy days caused severe traffic jams. Ming Yan opened the window, one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the window frame, his eyes somberly gazing at the leaden sky.

The scene was so beautiful that Lu Yu couldn’t help but watch for a while. Not wanting Ming Yan to dwell in bad moods, he broke the silence: “You don’t like rainy days?”

Ming Yan came back to his senses and glanced at the road ahead, “When I was studying abroad, it often rained. Every important event seemed to coincide with rain. It was annoying.”

The rain in European cities with their gray, ancient buildings was bleak and lonely. Seeing it often made life feel muddy.

Lu Yu touched his pounding heart, finding Ming Yan utterly captivating. Even when expressing annoyance, he used the gentle and tender word “annoying”: “Have I ever told you, you’re like a poem?”

Ming Yan turned his head and met Lu Yu’s infatuated gaze. He was dazed for a moment and blurted out, “What poem?”

Lu Yu smiled, his eyes curving, and said in a drifting tone, “The kind of poem written in a rose garden illuminated by the evening sun.”

Ming Yan smiled slightly. Although the words were highly abstract, he immediately grasped the romantic imagery.

Their souls were always in sync. He could imagine what Lu Yu was writing, and Lu Yu could understand what he was drawing.

But so what?

Ming Yan looked out the window, forcing himself not to think further.

Lu Yu pulled out a pen: “If you’re still unhappy, I’ll write you a poem to dispel the rainy-day blues. Bald head, bald head, no worries in the rain, others have umbrellas, but I have a bald head!”

He swiftly wrote the poem on the back of the little bald-head cartoon and clipped the row of bald heads to the sun visor of the passenger seat.

Ming Yan: “…”

Alright, maybe they weren’t that in sync.

Lu Yu was still pleased with himself: “Let’s order some hotpot takeout. Hotpot goes best with rainy days!”

Back home, the two of them sat at the dining table, looking at the rain outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, cooking hotpot in the steaming pot, their mood indeed lifted.

Lu Yu took a big bite of the hot beef slices and followed it with a sip of cool soda, sighing contentedly, “This is the meaning of marriage. It’s so wonderful.”

Every day, eating with the one he loved, sharing an umbrella in the rain, chatting during traffic jams, drinking cold drinks in the heat, eating hotpot in the cold, cuddling to sleep at night and noon. For Lu Yu, there was no better life than this!

Ming Yan didn’t correct his fantasy about cuddling at night, letting him boast as he ate.

Lu Yu joyfully planned, “When I get back, I’ll move in with you as soon as possible, aiming to live a married life by the time I’m eighteen.”

Ming Yan paused, looking through the steam of the hotpot, “You still think about going back?”

This guy still believed he would switch back with Lu Dayu and return to his eighteen-year-old college life.

Lu Yu thought for a moment, “I don’t have to go back. Actually, it doesn’t matter to me whether I go back or not. Besides you, there’s nothing and no one else in this world that I care about. It doesn’t make a difference where I am.”

Ming Yan was stunned. Nothing else he cared about? Eighteen-year-old Lu Yu, in his rebellious youth, had fallen out with the Lu family and still thought about repaying them. He thought that Lu Yu cared about the Lu family then.

Lu Yu took a sip of his cold drink and cleared his throat, “Cough, if I don’t go back, can I court you?”

“Huh?” Ming Yan didn’t understand; the topic jumped too quickly.

Lu Yu stretched out his arm and dramatically grabbed Ming Yan’s hand holding the drink cup.

“Forget about Lu Dayu, be with me. I promise to treat you well.”

Saying this, he eagerly put a piece of meat in Ming Yan’s bowl, his tone and actions resembling an old bachelor trying to seduce a young widow. He also pointed to the president ball floating behind Ming Yan, “I will treat your child as my own.”

“Pfft—” Ming Yan was amused, covering his mouth to avoid spraying the drink.

The suddenly provoked President Shen flew to Lu Yu, hugging his head and yelling loudly, “Whose child?! It’s not enough to be my dad; now you want to be my stepdad? How can you be so greedy?!”

“Hahahahaha…” Ming Yan swallowed the drink and couldn’t stop laughing.

Outside, the rain poured down, and the city of steel and concrete was cold and lonely. Inside, the house was filled with laughter, warm as spring.

The rain intensified, transforming the autumn rain into a summer downpour. As night fell, it was accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Ming Yan, having taken a shower and dried his hair, walked into the living room to see Lu Yu curled up on the sofa with a pillow, bravely reading.

“Why not read in the study?” Ming Yan walked over and poured him a cup of hot water. The living room was too large, and the heating was insufficient. Sitting in thin pajamas in the living room was a bit cold.

Lu Yu patted the seat next to him, signaling Ming Yan to sit down: “Actually, I don’t like rainy days either, especially when it thunders.”

Lu Yu took a sip of the hot water his wife poured for him, sighed contentedly, and began to tell a story from his childhood.

He was very good at storytelling, and Ming Yan couldn’t help but sit down to listen. Lu Yu pulled over a blanket covered in gold coins and wrapped it around both of them.

“When I was very young, about four or five years old, there was a time it rained heavily, and no one was home. My parents, well, my adoptive parents, were out, and the nanny was nowhere to be found. I was actually quite brave then, not feeling scared at all, and decided to go upstairs to sleep alone.

That house was an old mansion they had bought, and the light switches were very high, out of my reach, so I had to walk in the dark. As a child, I really thought that house was huge, with identical doors. I followed the wall, turned here and there, and ended up in the wrong room, entering my adoptive parents’ bedroom.

To match the old mansion, the bedroom furniture was all vintage Republic of China style, and the bed was one of those high-legged iron beds, with space underneath.

Just as I walked into the room, a flash of lightning lit up the entire room through the six-pane bay window.

Accompanied by a clap of thunder, I saw a pale face under the bed!”

“Hiss—” Ming Yan gasped, looking up to see the two smart balls perched on the back of the sofa, and shivered.

Lu Yu hugged him, continuing in a low voice, “I shivered, thinking maybe I saw it wrong, and took another step forward, squatting down to look.

Crack, boom—

Another clap of thunder, following the flash of lightning, illuminating under the bed like daylight.

I saw clearly under the bed; it wasn’t just a pale face, but a woman lying on her side!”

Ming Yan’s eyes widened, “Was it your missing nanny?”

At this point, he had imagined all sorts of murder scenes: the master of the house not returning on a rainy night, the nanny missing for half a day appearing under the bed, and the empty old mansion with only a five-year-old child…

“That’s right,” Lu Yu nodded gravely, then changed his tone, “The nanny wanted to steal things from the master bedroom while no one was home, but she didn’t expect me to run in, so she hid under the bed.”

Ming Yan: “…And then?”

Lu Yu laughed, “Then I pretended to be scared to death, so she wouldn’t panic and come out to kill me to silence me. When I opened my eyes again, she was gone, but since then, I’ve been afraid of thunder and lightning.”

Although Lu Yu spoke lightly afterward, Ming Yan still felt heartache. Sure enough, adoptive parents just don’t care as much; biological parents would never leave their child alone at home on a rainy day.

Unable to help himself, Ming Yan raised his hand and patted Lu Yu’s head.

Lu Yu enjoyed the touch and leaned in closer, patting the pillow in his arms, “So, can I sleep with you tonight?”

Ming Yan: “…”