Reversed Life: Chapter 2 - Reach a Cooperation Agreement
Chapter 2: Reach a Cooperation Agreement
When they opened their eyes the next day and realized that the absurd reality before them was not a nightmare, the two young people finally fell into despair.
Qiao Nan, with a head full of messy, frustrating hair, stared blankly as Mu Xiangxiang kept scribbling nonstop on some paper she had somehow found. He was already completely crushed by the situation, reduced to muttering to himself: “What are you even writing… You’re a girl—how do you have no sense of modesty at all…”He was referring to what had happened that morning. Earlier, he had crouched miserably outside the bathroom for half an hour, unable to bring himself to go in—until Mu Xiangxiang saw him and kicked him straight inside, saving his bladder.
When he came out, Qiao Nan’s face was bright red. Watching Mu Xiangxiang calmly walk past him into the bathroom, he hadn’t recovered from the shock the entire morning.
Mu Xiangxiang, however, paid no attention to his awkwardness. Accepting reality, she turned on the computer, pulled up a map of the city, located the pond in the park, and recorded its coordinates, timeline, and precise timing down to the minute. Then she opened various fortune-telling apps, input the data, and ran analyses. “Yesterday afternoon,” she said, “about twenty seconds after I jumped into the water, I suddenly felt my body become very strong. What about you?”
Qiao Nan didn’t really understand what she was doing, but seeing how serious she was, he quickly recalled his own experience: “…Same here. My body suddenly felt like trash—I could barely swim. I made it to the shore purely on willpower.”
The owner of that “trash body”: “……”
At that moment, the fortune-telling website—complete with a spinning feng shui diagram—returned its result: [Great Luck]
Mu Xiangxiang immediately closed the page, opened another one, and typed into a search engine: “What happens if soul-swapping is discovered in real life?” Then she raised her arm and turned the screen toward him, displaying answers filled with keywords like “dissection,” “research institute,” “mental hospital.”
“Qiao Nan,” she said, her tone so rational it was almost cold, “I want to hear your thoughts.”
******
They quickly reached an agreement. Mu Xiangxiang then easily lifted the backpack that had once been so heavy it threw off her balance, and followed Qiao Nan to his home.
To her surprise, his house was actually very close to hers—on the other side of the park, in a luxurious residential area completely unlike her urban village.
It was the first time Mu Xiangxiang realized that the city even had high-rise apartments as spacious as villas. But she had no mind to admire the interior: “No one’s home?”
A lonely stillness greeted them as the door opened. Qiao Nan glanced at the living room, now spotless with no trace of the destruction from before. He gave a curt response, unwilling to elaborate: “Yeah. The password is ******. Memorize it.”
Back home, Qiao Nan grew even more silent. After entering the study, he lay on the sofa, staring blankly. In the end, Mu Xiangxiang took the initiative and pulled out her notebook. “Let’s exchange information. I’ll go first.”
******
Half an hour later, Qiao Nan, finally snapping out of his daze, interrupted her narration of her daily routine with clear dissatisfaction: “You spend your entire day studying? You never exercise?”
Mu Xiangxiang frowned. “Is that really necessary?”
“Good grief.” Qiao Nan finally understood how she had ended up so weak; She could barely carry her own bag. “No way. From now on, you have to spend at least an hour a day on strength training. Protect the abs I worked so hard to build!”
Mu Xiangxiang, who detested exercise, rejected him immediately: “Impossible.”
Another ten minutes passed—
Mu Xiangxiang stared in disbelief at the final exam papers Qiao Nan had tossed to her: “What is wrong with these scores?”
Qiao Nan casually flipped a pack of cigarettes in his hand. “What’s wrong? They’re not bad. At least I passed English this time.”
“………………” After a long pause, Mu Xiangxiang spoke: “Qiao Nan, you need tutoring.”
With a cigarette hanging from his lips, bobbing as he spoke, Qiao Nan scoffed: “In your dreams.”
Just imagining the future—his body being used to fail every single subject—made Mu Xiangxiang feel like she couldn’t breathe. “Qiao Nan, I’m begging you,” she said. “You know how Yingcheng’s system works. I’m not asking for a scholarship, but at least don’t get me expelled.”
“Tch.” Qiao Nan dismissed it with disdain. “What does it have to do with me whether you get expelled or not?”
After a pause, he added, “You seem to know quite a bit about me. You even know I studied at Yingcheng?”
“Oh, that.” Mu Xiangxiang sounded completely calm. “Mainly because I had a crush on you in my first year.”
As soon as she said it, she was met with a face full of shock—he couldn’t even keep the cigarette in his mouth. After thinking about it, she realized her answer might be misleading, so she added: “—But I don’t anymore.”
********
Qiao Nan clearly didn’t hear the second half of her sentence.
They arrived at the urban village before it got completely dark. When he saw the dilapidated building, Qiao Nan stopped, still avoiding Mu Xiangxiang’s gaze. “You go on back. If anything comes up, we’ll contact each other by phone.”
On the way, Qiao Nan had bought himself a new phone and inserted Mu Xiangxiang’s SIM card. Their cooperation had officially begun.
Mu Xiangxiang gazed into the distance. For a brief moment, she almost impulsively wanted to abandon the plan—but that impulse was firmly pulled back by her rational mind. Her parents’ physical and mental health hadn’t been good in recent years; they might not be able to handle such a shock.
Since childhood, Mu Xiangxiang had been used to taking on as much as she could for her fragile family. She sighed, handed over the backpack she had been carrying, and said seriously: “Thank you. I’ll keep my promise and exercise every day.”
Qiao Nan’s body tilted under the weight of the heavy bag. Hearing that, he scoffed irritably, full of hostility: “What does that have to do with me?”
He was still bothered by the fact that, after being “confessed to” face-to-face (which it wasn’t!), he had been thrown off balance and ended up agreeing to study properly in exchange for making her exercise.
Mu Xiangxiang didn’t mind his lack of candor. Before leaving, she made one last request: “I know this might be asking too much, but if possible, please try not to smoke or drink in front of my parents.”
For a well-behaved, top student to suddenly become someone indulging in every vice overnight would be quite a shock to her traditional-minded parents. Mu Xiangxiang felt somewhat worried, but she was also prepared to take the blame one day if needed. After all, Qiao Nan’s way of doing things—ever since his time at Yingcheng—had always been famously willful and unconstrained.
As expected, Qiao Nan responded with a cold laugh, then hoisted the backpack and walked off without looking back.
Mu Xiangxiang had no choice but to give up. She stood there, watching him leave, and sighed at the sight before her.
Back then, she had thought Qiao Nan’s powerful presence came partly from his height, build, and striking appearance. But now, even in her frail, slender body, his back still looked unstoppable. Presence, it seemed, was truly something intangible.
She could only hope that when life eventually returned to normal, he wouldn’t cause her any irreparable trouble.
******
Carrying the unbearably heavy backpack, Qiao Nan couldn’t remember the last time he had struggled so much under a load. As he angrily planned out future physical training in his head, he approached his destination.
After a moment, he stopped and silently observed the man sitting at the entrance of the building, using the fading light of the sunset to tie together a bundle of bamboo branches. Before coming, he had looked through the photos on the memory card that hadn’t been ruined by water. This was Mu Xiangxiang’s father—a middle-aged man who looked just as harmless as she did.
Qiao Nan couldn’t help comparing him to his own father. The more he compared, the deeper his frown became. He remembered that the last time he saw his own dad, the man had still been full of energy and ambition, constantly thinking about how to make a big success in his career. But at the same age—both in their forties—Mu Xiangxiang’s father looked like an old tree waiting to wither. His temples were streaked with gray, his back hunched in a shrinking curve, and his once-delicate features were now etched with exhaustion.
At his feet lay piles of various bamboo products. The thing he was weaving in his hands looked like the head of a broom. Right—Mu Xiangxiang had mentioned it before. Her father had been left disabled by an accident many years ago. Because of his limited mobility, he could only make handicrafts to help support the family.
At that moment, a woman wearing a thick pajama set outdoors stood in front of him, picking through the items. “Old Mu, my house happens to need a pot scrubber. It’s not worth much anyway, I’ll just take one.”
Qiao Nan frowned. His mind worked quickly—he immediately realized this was probably the landlady aunt Mu Xiangxiang had specifically warned him about.
Back when Mu Xiangxiang’s father had his accident, the family couldn’t scrape together the medical fees and had to borrow money from relatives and friends. Her eldest uncle, who usually had a good relationship with their family, immediately stepped forward and offered to buy their house. He could pay in full on the spot—but the condition was that the price would be one-third lower than the market value.
Mu Xiangxiang’s mother had cried bitterly before agreeing. Thanks to her decisive choice, Mu’s father managed to survive—but because of it, the family became homeless. In those days, rental housing was still scarce in the city, and they drifted around for quite some time just to find a place to stay.
Later, under pressure and criticism from relatives and friends, the uncle agreed to rent out the first floor of the house to them long-term. Only then did Mu Xiangxiang and her younger brother stop their constant moving and finally live and attend school like normal children.
The uncle’s family believed they had offered help in a time of need, and from then on carried themselves with a sense of superiority, often doing strange things in front of Mu Xiangxiang’s family.
Mu Xiangxiang was a very straightforward person. She didn’t feel ashamed of her disabled father or her poor family at all, so she explained everything in detail—also to prevent Qiao Nan from reacting too aggressively to her uncle’s family’s odd behavior later on, like directly hitting them. The Mu family had no ability to deal with trouble of that level.
Qiao Nan, listening to the story, was indeed furious—he even smashed a desk lamp on the spot. Yet Mu Xiangxiang, the one involved, remained calm and reassured him: no matter what, trading a house for her father’s life was still worth it in their eyes. As for the daily frictions, they were no different from Fang Lingli and her group at school—before you have the ability to fight back, endurance is the only option.
But Qiao Nan had grown up getting whatever he wanted. Aside from a lack of family affection, he had never truly suffered any hardship. How could he understand the helplessness of ordinary people? So even after repeated reminders, when he saw the “protagonist” of that story in person, waves of irritation still rose within him.
Before he could rein in his emotions, the two people over there had already noticed him.
When Mu Xiangxiang’s father saw his daughter come home, a warm smile immediately appeared on his tired face. He shook off what he was holding, stood up, and greeted Qiao Nan: “You’re back?”
The anger Qiao Nan had been brewing was suddenly scattered by that affectionate greeting. He had little experience interacting with family, and for once seemed at a loss. “…Mm.”
Perhaps because Mu Xiangxiang was usually quiet, her father didn’t notice anything unusual. He patted his apron and limped toward Qiao Nan, then reached out to take the backpack off his shoulder. “Oh! Looks like you’ve got even more books this semester than last.”
Qiao Nan hadn’t been treated like this in years. He hadn’t even anticipated it. Then he remembered how heavy the bag was and reached out to take it back. “I’ll carry it myself—”
But the back of his head was suddenly patted by the man’s thin, rough hand. “With those little shoulders of yours, don’t push yourself. It’s only a few steps—Dad will carry it home for you. Did you have fun hanging out with your classmates yesterday?”
Mu Xiangxiang’s excuse for not coming home the night before had been that she was staying out all night with classmates.
Qiao Nan felt a little dazed. Many, many years ago—before his mother passed away—he and the father he was now estranged from had seemed to interact like this, too.
He couldn’t quite tell whether it was nostalgia or something else, but the resistance he had felt earlier about living with a group of strangers suddenly faded quite a bit. He quickened his pace to catch up, but, unaccustomed to anything but bluntness, didn’t know what to say. He could only answer stiffly: “It was pretty good—”
“Hahaha!” A voice drifting in from the side cut him off before he could finish. The aunt, holding the pot scrubber she clearly didn’t intend to pay for, stepped forward laughing exaggeratedly. “Well, look at that, Old Mu! You’re so crippled you can barely walk, and you’re still carrying your daughter’s schoolbag? Aren’t you pampering her a bit too much?”
The moment this oddball spoke, her unpleasantness was unmistakable. Mu Xiangxiang’s father’s expression changed immediately. He felt even more ashamed in front of his daughter, but remembering the woman’s sharp, relentless tongue, he knew he couldn’t handle her. He could only force a bitter smile, preparing—like before—to make a self-deprecating joke first, hoping she would be satisfied and leave on her own.
But unexpectedly, before he could speak, an arm suddenly reached out from the side and pulled him back.
The aunt looked at the girl who had stepped between her and Mu Xiangxiang’s father in surprise. She had been mocking the Mu family for over a decade, yet had never seen Mu Xiangxiang react. To be honest, she had always assumed Mu Xiangxiang didn’t have a good relationship with her parents.
But at this moment, that usually calm and expressionless face carried an edge so sharp it was hard to withstand.
Qiao Nan had been holding in frustration for days—now that he had a target, his pent-up aggression poured out freely. Under normal circumstances, if the person standing in front of him were a man, he would’ve already kicked him and started a fight. Even though he couldn’t use violence now, his gaze alone was fierce and bloodthirsty. Without saying a word, he stared the woman down as he stepped closer.
The arrogant, domineering aura he had cultivated over the years wasn’t something just anyone could handle. The aunt was so frightened by his almost demonic glare that she stumbled backward, lost her footing, and fell into the flowerbed.
Qiao Nan bent down and reached out—as if about to punch her—but instead grabbed her collar and yanked her up forcefully.
“Be careful,” he said, staring at her. After a moment, he let go, the corner of his mouth slowly curling into a malicious smile. “Got it?”
After saying that, his expression returned to calm. He turned back to Mu Xiangxiang’s father. “Let’s go.”
Mu Xiangxiang’s father glanced at his stunned sister-in-law, who remained frozen in place, then slowly turned his gaze back to his daughter. He opened his mouth but couldn’t say anything. Taking advantage of unlocking the door, he quickly wiped the corner of his eye.
Qiao Nan was sharp-eyed—he noticed it. That only made him feel even more uncomfortable, to the point he didn’t even know what expression to wear.
He sent Mu Xiangxiang a message on WeChat to tell her what had happened, originally just intending to report it. The chat showed “typing…” for quite a while—she seemed to have deleted and rewritten her reply many times. In the end, she only sent a few words—
“Thank you, Qiao Nan.”
Ahhh—!!!
Qiao Nan’s whole body went numb. He almost wanted to throw his phone straight out the window!
What is it with this father and daughter?! Why are they both so unbearably sentimental—confessing and tearing up at the drop of a hat!
When they opened their eyes the next day and realized that the absurd reality before them was not a nightmare, the two young people finally fell into despair.
Qiao Nan, with a head full of messy, frustrating hair, stared blankly as Mu Xiangxiang kept scribbling nonstop on some paper she had somehow found. He was already completely crushed by the situation, reduced to muttering to himself: “What are you even writing… You’re a girl—how do you have no sense of modesty at all…”He was referring to what had happened that morning. Earlier, he had crouched miserably outside the bathroom for half an hour, unable to bring himself to go in—until Mu Xiangxiang saw him and kicked him straight inside, saving his bladder.
When he came out, Qiao Nan’s face was bright red. Watching Mu Xiangxiang calmly walk past him into the bathroom, he hadn’t recovered from the shock the entire morning.
Mu Xiangxiang, however, paid no attention to his awkwardness. Accepting reality, she turned on the computer, pulled up a map of the city, located the pond in the park, and recorded its coordinates, timeline, and precise timing down to the minute. Then she opened various fortune-telling apps, input the data, and ran analyses. “Yesterday afternoon,” she said, “about twenty seconds after I jumped into the water, I suddenly felt my body become very strong. What about you?”
Qiao Nan didn’t really understand what she was doing, but seeing how serious she was, he quickly recalled his own experience: “…Same here. My body suddenly felt like trash—I could barely swim. I made it to the shore purely on willpower.”
The owner of that “trash body”: “……”
At that moment, the fortune-telling website—complete with a spinning feng shui diagram—returned its result: [Great Luck]
Mu Xiangxiang immediately closed the page, opened another one, and typed into a search engine: “What happens if soul-swapping is discovered in real life?” Then she raised her arm and turned the screen toward him, displaying answers filled with keywords like “dissection,” “research institute,” “mental hospital.”
“Qiao Nan,” she said, her tone so rational it was almost cold, “I want to hear your thoughts.”
******
They quickly reached an agreement. Mu Xiangxiang then easily lifted the backpack that had once been so heavy it threw off her balance, and followed Qiao Nan to his home.
To her surprise, his house was actually very close to hers—on the other side of the park, in a luxurious residential area completely unlike her urban village.
It was the first time Mu Xiangxiang realized that the city even had high-rise apartments as spacious as villas. But she had no mind to admire the interior: “No one’s home?”
A lonely stillness greeted them as the door opened. Qiao Nan glanced at the living room, now spotless with no trace of the destruction from before. He gave a curt response, unwilling to elaborate: “Yeah. The password is ******. Memorize it.”
Back home, Qiao Nan grew even more silent. After entering the study, he lay on the sofa, staring blankly. In the end, Mu Xiangxiang took the initiative and pulled out her notebook. “Let’s exchange information. I’ll go first.”
******
Half an hour later, Qiao Nan, finally snapping out of his daze, interrupted her narration of her daily routine with clear dissatisfaction: “You spend your entire day studying? You never exercise?”
Mu Xiangxiang frowned. “Is that really necessary?”
“Good grief.” Qiao Nan finally understood how she had ended up so weak; She could barely carry her own bag. “No way. From now on, you have to spend at least an hour a day on strength training. Protect the abs I worked so hard to build!”
Mu Xiangxiang, who detested exercise, rejected him immediately: “Impossible.”
Another ten minutes passed—
Mu Xiangxiang stared in disbelief at the final exam papers Qiao Nan had tossed to her: “What is wrong with these scores?”
Qiao Nan casually flipped a pack of cigarettes in his hand. “What’s wrong? They’re not bad. At least I passed English this time.”
“………………” After a long pause, Mu Xiangxiang spoke: “Qiao Nan, you need tutoring.”
With a cigarette hanging from his lips, bobbing as he spoke, Qiao Nan scoffed: “In your dreams.”
Just imagining the future—his body being used to fail every single subject—made Mu Xiangxiang feel like she couldn’t breathe. “Qiao Nan, I’m begging you,” she said. “You know how Yingcheng’s system works. I’m not asking for a scholarship, but at least don’t get me expelled.”
“Tch.” Qiao Nan dismissed it with disdain. “What does it have to do with me whether you get expelled or not?”
After a pause, he added, “You seem to know quite a bit about me. You even know I studied at Yingcheng?”
“Oh, that.” Mu Xiangxiang sounded completely calm. “Mainly because I had a crush on you in my first year.”
As soon as she said it, she was met with a face full of shock—he couldn’t even keep the cigarette in his mouth. After thinking about it, she realized her answer might be misleading, so she added: “—But I don’t anymore.”
********
Qiao Nan clearly didn’t hear the second half of her sentence.
They arrived at the urban village before it got completely dark. When he saw the dilapidated building, Qiao Nan stopped, still avoiding Mu Xiangxiang’s gaze. “You go on back. If anything comes up, we’ll contact each other by phone.”
On the way, Qiao Nan had bought himself a new phone and inserted Mu Xiangxiang’s SIM card. Their cooperation had officially begun.
Mu Xiangxiang gazed into the distance. For a brief moment, she almost impulsively wanted to abandon the plan—but that impulse was firmly pulled back by her rational mind. Her parents’ physical and mental health hadn’t been good in recent years; they might not be able to handle such a shock.
Since childhood, Mu Xiangxiang had been used to taking on as much as she could for her fragile family. She sighed, handed over the backpack she had been carrying, and said seriously: “Thank you. I’ll keep my promise and exercise every day.”
Qiao Nan’s body tilted under the weight of the heavy bag. Hearing that, he scoffed irritably, full of hostility: “What does that have to do with me?”
He was still bothered by the fact that, after being “confessed to” face-to-face (which it wasn’t!), he had been thrown off balance and ended up agreeing to study properly in exchange for making her exercise.
Mu Xiangxiang didn’t mind his lack of candor. Before leaving, she made one last request: “I know this might be asking too much, but if possible, please try not to smoke or drink in front of my parents.”
For a well-behaved, top student to suddenly become someone indulging in every vice overnight would be quite a shock to her traditional-minded parents. Mu Xiangxiang felt somewhat worried, but she was also prepared to take the blame one day if needed. After all, Qiao Nan’s way of doing things—ever since his time at Yingcheng—had always been famously willful and unconstrained.
As expected, Qiao Nan responded with a cold laugh, then hoisted the backpack and walked off without looking back.
Mu Xiangxiang had no choice but to give up. She stood there, watching him leave, and sighed at the sight before her.
Back then, she had thought Qiao Nan’s powerful presence came partly from his height, build, and striking appearance. But now, even in her frail, slender body, his back still looked unstoppable. Presence, it seemed, was truly something intangible.
She could only hope that when life eventually returned to normal, he wouldn’t cause her any irreparable trouble.
******
Carrying the unbearably heavy backpack, Qiao Nan couldn’t remember the last time he had struggled so much under a load. As he angrily planned out future physical training in his head, he approached his destination.
After a moment, he stopped and silently observed the man sitting at the entrance of the building, using the fading light of the sunset to tie together a bundle of bamboo branches. Before coming, he had looked through the photos on the memory card that hadn’t been ruined by water. This was Mu Xiangxiang’s father—a middle-aged man who looked just as harmless as she did.
Qiao Nan couldn’t help comparing him to his own father. The more he compared, the deeper his frown became. He remembered that the last time he saw his own dad, the man had still been full of energy and ambition, constantly thinking about how to make a big success in his career. But at the same age—both in their forties—Mu Xiangxiang’s father looked like an old tree waiting to wither. His temples were streaked with gray, his back hunched in a shrinking curve, and his once-delicate features were now etched with exhaustion.
At his feet lay piles of various bamboo products. The thing he was weaving in his hands looked like the head of a broom. Right—Mu Xiangxiang had mentioned it before. Her father had been left disabled by an accident many years ago. Because of his limited mobility, he could only make handicrafts to help support the family.
At that moment, a woman wearing a thick pajama set outdoors stood in front of him, picking through the items. “Old Mu, my house happens to need a pot scrubber. It’s not worth much anyway, I’ll just take one.”
Qiao Nan frowned. His mind worked quickly—he immediately realized this was probably the landlady aunt Mu Xiangxiang had specifically warned him about.
Back when Mu Xiangxiang’s father had his accident, the family couldn’t scrape together the medical fees and had to borrow money from relatives and friends. Her eldest uncle, who usually had a good relationship with their family, immediately stepped forward and offered to buy their house. He could pay in full on the spot—but the condition was that the price would be one-third lower than the market value.
Mu Xiangxiang’s mother had cried bitterly before agreeing. Thanks to her decisive choice, Mu’s father managed to survive—but because of it, the family became homeless. In those days, rental housing was still scarce in the city, and they drifted around for quite some time just to find a place to stay.
Later, under pressure and criticism from relatives and friends, the uncle agreed to rent out the first floor of the house to them long-term. Only then did Mu Xiangxiang and her younger brother stop their constant moving and finally live and attend school like normal children.
The uncle’s family believed they had offered help in a time of need, and from then on carried themselves with a sense of superiority, often doing strange things in front of Mu Xiangxiang’s family.
Mu Xiangxiang was a very straightforward person. She didn’t feel ashamed of her disabled father or her poor family at all, so she explained everything in detail—also to prevent Qiao Nan from reacting too aggressively to her uncle’s family’s odd behavior later on, like directly hitting them. The Mu family had no ability to deal with trouble of that level.
Qiao Nan, listening to the story, was indeed furious—he even smashed a desk lamp on the spot. Yet Mu Xiangxiang, the one involved, remained calm and reassured him: no matter what, trading a house for her father’s life was still worth it in their eyes. As for the daily frictions, they were no different from Fang Lingli and her group at school—before you have the ability to fight back, endurance is the only option.
But Qiao Nan had grown up getting whatever he wanted. Aside from a lack of family affection, he had never truly suffered any hardship. How could he understand the helplessness of ordinary people? So even after repeated reminders, when he saw the “protagonist” of that story in person, waves of irritation still rose within him.
Before he could rein in his emotions, the two people over there had already noticed him.
When Mu Xiangxiang’s father saw his daughter come home, a warm smile immediately appeared on his tired face. He shook off what he was holding, stood up, and greeted Qiao Nan: “You’re back?”
The anger Qiao Nan had been brewing was suddenly scattered by that affectionate greeting. He had little experience interacting with family, and for once seemed at a loss. “…Mm.”
Perhaps because Mu Xiangxiang was usually quiet, her father didn’t notice anything unusual. He patted his apron and limped toward Qiao Nan, then reached out to take the backpack off his shoulder. “Oh! Looks like you’ve got even more books this semester than last.”
Qiao Nan hadn’t been treated like this in years. He hadn’t even anticipated it. Then he remembered how heavy the bag was and reached out to take it back. “I’ll carry it myself—”
But the back of his head was suddenly patted by the man’s thin, rough hand. “With those little shoulders of yours, don’t push yourself. It’s only a few steps—Dad will carry it home for you. Did you have fun hanging out with your classmates yesterday?”
Mu Xiangxiang’s excuse for not coming home the night before had been that she was staying out all night with classmates.
Qiao Nan felt a little dazed. Many, many years ago—before his mother passed away—he and the father he was now estranged from had seemed to interact like this, too.
He couldn’t quite tell whether it was nostalgia or something else, but the resistance he had felt earlier about living with a group of strangers suddenly faded quite a bit. He quickened his pace to catch up, but, unaccustomed to anything but bluntness, didn’t know what to say. He could only answer stiffly: “It was pretty good—”
“Hahaha!” A voice drifting in from the side cut him off before he could finish. The aunt, holding the pot scrubber she clearly didn’t intend to pay for, stepped forward laughing exaggeratedly. “Well, look at that, Old Mu! You’re so crippled you can barely walk, and you’re still carrying your daughter’s schoolbag? Aren’t you pampering her a bit too much?”
The moment this oddball spoke, her unpleasantness was unmistakable. Mu Xiangxiang’s father’s expression changed immediately. He felt even more ashamed in front of his daughter, but remembering the woman’s sharp, relentless tongue, he knew he couldn’t handle her. He could only force a bitter smile, preparing—like before—to make a self-deprecating joke first, hoping she would be satisfied and leave on her own.
But unexpectedly, before he could speak, an arm suddenly reached out from the side and pulled him back.
The aunt looked at the girl who had stepped between her and Mu Xiangxiang’s father in surprise. She had been mocking the Mu family for over a decade, yet had never seen Mu Xiangxiang react. To be honest, she had always assumed Mu Xiangxiang didn’t have a good relationship with her parents.
But at this moment, that usually calm and expressionless face carried an edge so sharp it was hard to withstand.
Qiao Nan had been holding in frustration for days—now that he had a target, his pent-up aggression poured out freely. Under normal circumstances, if the person standing in front of him were a man, he would’ve already kicked him and started a fight. Even though he couldn’t use violence now, his gaze alone was fierce and bloodthirsty. Without saying a word, he stared the woman down as he stepped closer.
The arrogant, domineering aura he had cultivated over the years wasn’t something just anyone could handle. The aunt was so frightened by his almost demonic glare that she stumbled backward, lost her footing, and fell into the flowerbed.
Qiao Nan bent down and reached out—as if about to punch her—but instead grabbed her collar and yanked her up forcefully.
“Be careful,” he said, staring at her. After a moment, he let go, the corner of his mouth slowly curling into a malicious smile. “Got it?”
After saying that, his expression returned to calm. He turned back to Mu Xiangxiang’s father. “Let’s go.”
Mu Xiangxiang’s father glanced at his stunned sister-in-law, who remained frozen in place, then slowly turned his gaze back to his daughter. He opened his mouth but couldn’t say anything. Taking advantage of unlocking the door, he quickly wiped the corner of his eye.
Qiao Nan was sharp-eyed—he noticed it. That only made him feel even more uncomfortable, to the point he didn’t even know what expression to wear.
He sent Mu Xiangxiang a message on WeChat to tell her what had happened, originally just intending to report it. The chat showed “typing…” for quite a while—she seemed to have deleted and rewritten her reply many times. In the end, she only sent a few words—
“Thank you, Qiao Nan.”
Ahhh—!!!
Qiao Nan’s whole body went numb. He almost wanted to throw his phone straight out the window!
What is it with this father and daughter?! Why are they both so unbearably sentimental—confessing and tearing up at the drop of a hat!
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