Lu Mingfei, why are you slaying dragons if you're not involved!

Chapter 76 When the Piano Girl Sees Her White-Haired Fiancée

Have you chosen a room yet?

Once he came to his senses, Lu Mingfei quickly changed the subject, putting aside the awkward feeling in his heart of "a cheating husband opening the door and bumping into his obedient and virtuous wife waiting for him to come home".

He changed his shoes, put on his black wool slippers, and took off his coat and hung it on the hanger.

There is a reason for doing so—after all, they have made such preparations, wouldn't it be too much to deliberately not use them?

That familiar feeling of a husband coming home from get off work and chatting with his wife has resurfaced...

"The master bedroom on the second floor."

Zero placed the peeled hazelnuts into a small, gilded dish. "Would you like something to eat?"

The sense of déjà vu is getting stronger and stronger!

"No, no, no."

Lu Mingfei, feeling somewhat guilty, swallowed the words "I've already eaten out" that were on the tip of his tongue and changed the subject again.

"Did you clean up those things, and the mess...?"

“I hired a housekeeper.”

Zero replied.

"call……"

Lu Mingfei breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this. Thank goodness! He knew that a beautiful and wealthy girl like Ling, who was like an ice queen, wouldn't go to such lengths for him. Hiring a housekeeper would be the reasonable thing to do!
And thinking about it carefully, Queen Zero is a clean freak, right? Maybe she hired a housekeeper just because she couldn't stand her own messiness and wanted to live in a cleaner environment...

"I packed your clothes in the suitcase."

"puff!"

"I also tidied up your wardrobe for you."

"Cough, cough, cough..."

Zero's tone remained calm, as if he had only done two extremely ordinary things, as natural as saying, "I had vinegar-braised duck for lunch."

But to Lu Mingfei, it was like a bolt from the blue!
As a guy who doesn't care much about his appearance even when he goes out, Lu Mingfei naturally knows what his wardrobe looks like.

I basically just stuff any clothes in and close the door, without distinguishing between different types. It's already good enough if they're clean when I put them in.

As for the clothes in the box, since moving here, Lu Mingfei has been constantly following his schedule and has no free time at all. Many clothes that he doesn't wear for the time being are simply piled up in the junk box.

Since I live alone, I can do whatever is convenient for me. What does it matter if I'm sloppy or not?
Lu Mingfei never imagined that a girl would suddenly move in with him, so much so that even after handing the key to Ling, he still didn't expect this!

"Your reaction was very strong."

Ling said casually, as she poured herself another cup of milk tea, the aroma of milk filling the air.

"If you were Saint Seiya, and you opened your bedroom door to find Athena sitting on your bed folding your underwear, your reaction would be just as strong as mine..."

Lu Mingfei finally stopped coughing and said with a blank face, he really didn't know which expression to use at this moment.

"I was just fulfilling my responsibilities as a tenant," Zero said.

"Do tenants really have this kind of responsibility? It sounds like something out of an adult comic..."

Lu Mingfei realized halfway through his sentence that he couldn't make inappropriate jokes because he was talking to a girl, so he quickly stopped.

Ke Ling had already finished her milk tea, put down her cup, stood up, and walked straight toward him.

Lu Mingfei was a little nervous. Was Zero... angry?
But in his emotional perception, this beautiful girl, as cold as an ice sculpture, remained unchanged inside, just like her perpetually expressionless face, as still as a deep well.

"I'm done eating."

Ling stood still in front of him, at a distance that was neither too close nor too far, just right between ambiguity and intimacy.

The girl wasn't very tall, only about 1.55 meters, which wouldn't seem out of place among middle school students. At this distance, she even needed to tilt her head slightly to make eye contact with Lu Mingfei.

With just her aura, she easily erased the 23-centimeter difference. In fact, Lu Mingfei felt a head shorter because of some unspeakable guilt.

"I wish you... a smooth digestion?"

Lu Mingfei replied with a statement that even he himself thought was utterly awful.

But these kinds of lame words, which would have even surprised Senior Brother Chu, had absolutely no effect on Ling. Even though they had only known each other for a short time, she acted as if she knew Lu Mingfei intimately, as if nothing he said would surprise her.

"Don't you need tutoring?" she asked casually.

"Yes." Lu Mingfei's body language gave an honest answer.

A method that could potentially increase the efficiency of gaining proficiency... I simply can't resist it!

Meanwhile, the countdown to his "going home" plan has finally come to an end.

The schedule allocates time for each task in advance and will not be changed even if it is completed ahead of schedule. This time, however, Uncle Chen drove a little too fast.

[Warning, it's time for your [study] session...]

Lu Mingfei was taken aback. He suddenly realized a serious problem—when filling out the schedule, he had written "self-study"!
He did write about private tutoring, but that was after the school tutoring ended, during the actual winter break. Now…

Tutoring doesn't really count as self-study, does it?

I wonder if I'll be warned about the electric shock?
However, Lu Mingfei quickly came up with a solution.

"I need tutoring, but that's for later. I'm going to study on my own first."

Lu Mingfei walked towards the stairs, elaborating on his earlier statement, and continued.

"So, can you study next to me? I can ask you questions if I encounter any problems I don't understand."

Tutoring throughout the entire session certainly doesn't count as self-study, but if you encounter something you don't understand during self-study, it's perfectly reasonable to ask your deskmate, except this time your deskmate is at home... Plan complete!
In fact, Lu Mingfei had another option: to take this opportunity to postpone the tutoring session so that Liu Miaomiao would find out later that Ling was living in her house.

But Lu Mingfei, having heard Uncle Chen's plan, was not prepared to do so.

In Uncle Chen's own words, "The longer this kind of thing is delayed and concealed, the more it's like a bomb that's being constantly loaded with gunpowder... the explosive force will only get bigger and bigger!"
If we detonate it now, it's just a small firecracker at most, and it's easy to handle.

But if they exhaust all means to conceal and delay until later, what will be detonated then might be a nuclear bomb, capable of obliterating everyone inside.

Zero tilted her head slightly, a rare gesture when she seemed confused, but her tone remained calm as she spoke: "Okay."

……

Liu Miaomiao first chatted with her parents, who were waiting for her to return from her piano lesson, in the living room for a while before saying goodnight to each other and going upstairs to her room.

As she got closer to her room, her heart began to race, as if she were entering Lu Mingfei's room across the window, not her own.

After all, the distance isn't too far, and it's directly opposite, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows... As long as the curtains aren't drawn, everything is clearly visible!
"Liu Miaomiao, Liu Miaomiao, how could you think of such shameful things?"

"No, no, this is what Aunt Shanshan taught me... You have to feel it with your heart, imagine it, and completely immerse yourself in it. Otherwise, how could you create such a piano piece in such a short time?"

"The prelude is already done, but what about the main and supporting parts? Do you mean I have to..."

The girl's thoughts inevitably became chaotic, and even the musical notes that were gradually arranging themselves in her mind began to flutter around.

Just as everything was about to descend into chaos, she instinctively pushed open the door and went inside.

The light across the window also happened to turn on at that moment.

The only time a seventeen-year-old's heart skips a beat is the instant they see that person.

The notes that were wandering around suddenly found their place, and the musical staff gradually took shape and began to play, stroke by stroke, as it was drawn before our eyes.

This is the main section she wanted!

Liu Miaomiao reacted immediately, and it would be too strange to stand there and look at Lu Mingfei any longer. She walked a few steps to the desk, picked up paper and pen, and sketched out the musical notes.

The winding characters seemed to come alive on the paper, forming a series of moving images—

Lu Mingfei rejects Chen Wenwen, the unexpected meeting with Teacher Shan Shan, her superhuman piano talent, trusting his claim of being "the strongest and most awesome man in the world," the unexpected face-to-face meeting, the first curiosity...

Was that when everything began to sprout?
Thinking of this, Liu Miaomiao felt her cheeks burning, but she couldn't suppress the smile on her lips. She looked up, somewhat embarrassed and annoyed, wanting to glare fiercely at Lu Mingfei opposite her—

"boom!"

The little piano prodigy dropped her water-based pen onto the Persian velvet carpet with a barely audible sound, yet it felt like a thunderclap in her ears.

What I see... is zero?

The transfer student who came today.

Zero was just entering Lu Mingfei's room!
The stunningly beautiful, icy girl, dressed in cotton pajamas, walked over to Lu Mingfei, who was engrossed in writing at his desk. After glancing down at him, she seemed to sense a gaze from across the window and then moved to the French windows.

Expressionless, she reached out her hand—

The curtains were drawn.

(End of this chapter)