In fact, the boy didn’t like sweet sodas in the morning, but the girl liked toasting with him.
After taking a sip, the girl put down the Jianlibao, reached out, and grabbed Li Zhiyuan’s right hand, pulling it open again.
The wound had scabbed over. After bathing last night, Li Zhiyuan was too lazy to bandage it again, and now the scald mark on his palm had faded, but the blood traces pierced by the five nails around it were still clear.
The girl ignored the wound she caused and caressed the scald mark on the palm with her forefinger.
"Don’t worry, there won’t be a next time."
After that phone call, he had stopped referring to her as ’mom’ in his heart.
He didn’t want to ponder whether it was Li Lan’s last hysterics or a final, warped tenderness during a bout of her illness; he was tired.
She said he was not the son she wanted, but was she ever the mother he desired?
Indeed, two mentally ill people, both wanting real affection and reliance from the other, would that not just result in mutual torment?
The boy had decided he would no longer wear a mask in front of Li Lan.
When you literally have nothing, you subconsciously cherish whatever you can grasp. Now, he was willing to let go.
The girl looked at the boy and opened her own right hand.
On her palm were five clear nail puncture marks, which had also scabbed over.
That meant, after pinching herself that night, she had also pinched Li Zhiyuan.
Li Zhiyuan lowered his gaze, grabbed the girl’s hand, and said solemnly, "You won’t have a next time either."
Li Zhiyuan’s fingers touched the wound on the girl’s palm. He knew that using terms like ’childhood sweethearts,’ ’playmates,’ ’partners,’ or even the so-called ’affections’ or ’liking’ among adults, to describe the two of them, would all be inappropriate.
Because both he and she were gamblers.
Having tasted victory, they felt unwilling to accept loss after defeat and chose to sit back at the gambling table.
At their core, they could not bear to lose.
Both wanted to be normal and refused to settle for less, which was why he went to find her, and why she came back.
Li Zhiyuan felt that Li Lan probably hated this kind of thinking, but it didn’t matter, because Alii didn’t care either.
Sometimes, thinking of things too simply and directly could seem callous and ruthless, but often, the pain between two struggling people came from thinking too much.
Hand in hand, the two went downstairs.
Alii was happy, Li Zhiyuan could feel the little hand in his palm moving, especially when they turned on the stairs, as if she wanted to tiptoe and turn, although she didn’t do so, Li Zhiyuan had already imagined it.
On the dam, Liu Yumei was wiping tears from the corners of her eyes with a cloth.
She had secretly watched from behind the window last night, anxious about the words the boy had said, and even more worried that her granddaughter showed no reaction before turning back to the house...to wake up with eyes wide open.
But, the granddaughter soon closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
Liu Yumei felt increasingly that she was getting old and did not understand the thoughts of young people. When her grandfather had pursued her, it had been a loud and fiery affair, almost leading to a brawl between the Qin and Liu families.
Who would have thought that this generation of young people would become so reserved.
But regardless, the granddaughter was getting better again, this time, she didn’t want any mishaps and hoped the illness wouldn’t reoccur until the granddaughter was fully healed.
Well, he wanted to do the rune carving, didn’t he? In the afternoon, she would personally take an ax to all the ancestral tablets in the house and give them to them to make wooden flower rolls.
Perhaps because of her intense joy, Liu Yumei didn’t even begin to suspect how the boy managed to deal with the corpse.
Of course, she might have suspected already but simply didn’t want to deal with it. To put it bluntly, if not for the concern about the backlash from Luck, even if the boy were to commit arson or murder now, she would choose to secretly help him erase all traces.
Because she had tasted the clue, the key to her granddaughter’s recovery lay with the boy.
It wasn’t that Li Sanjiang’s Luck was useless; it was precisely because they lived at Li Sanjiang’s house that they met this boy.
Li Sanjiang came down for breakfast, seeing the two children sitting together again, he couldn’t help but remark:
"Indeed, the feelings between children are pure."
Then he looked up at Liu Yumei wiping her tears in the distance and hummed softly:
"Keep trying to stop them, you calculating old crone."
Li Sanjiang’s opinion of Liu Yumei had always been poor because he disliked the airs of a fallen aristocratic young mistress she carried, especially since he, Li Sanjiang, had also contributed to the liberation!
After breakfast, Li Zhiyuan checked the workshop he had set up; all kinds of tools and materials had already been placed there. Aunt Liu, the housekeeper, was truly impeccable.
Li Zhiyuan left Run Sheng in the workshop, having him start work on initial material processing and preparation, which was not too difficult but rather time-consuming.
Run Sheng was very enthusiastic because this work was for creating a new set of tools for him.
Taking into account Run Sheng’s strength, Li Zhiyuan planned to change the materials and dimensions of the equipment, which also meant that Run Sheng would need to handle even more raw materials.
In summary, Run Sheng spent the entire day in the workshop, apart from coming out for lunch, and didn’t even watch TV.
Li Zhiyuan finished the new set of blueprints early and then sat on the terrace to read a book.
There was no need to rush progress this time; he was afraid of the feeling of overextension and how a few more such occurrences might lead to him collapsing, not to mention dealing with corpses; he might turn into a corpse himself.