Carrying Her Upstairs, Coaxing Her to Sleep

Bo Yan was thinking about how Wen Ning had actually not told Bo Xubai that this kidnapping had happened because of him.

He had no idea what was wrong with him. If she did not want to tell him, so be it. Why did he care so much?

Yet he felt deeply uncomfortable.

Why hadn't she said anything? Her wrists had nearly been rubbed raw, the right side of her face was a little swollen from being hit, and her scalp had bled. Someone who could barely stand pain had suffered so much. Why hadn't she said anything?

Was she unwilling, or could she not bear to blame Bo Xubai, thinking he was a victim in all this too?

Wasn't she pretty smart? She had understood his signals and worked with him, so why did she start acting stupid whenever Bo Xubai was involved?

But soon, Bo Yan calmed down again.

Perhaps the one acting stupid was not Wen Ning, but him...

He lifted his eyelids and looked at his reflection in the car window.

The emotion in his eyes was intense and unfamiliar.

Was Wen Ning blaming Bo Xubai really all he wanted to see?

Perhaps he wanted something more final than blame?

A clean break? Never having anything to do with each other again? Ideally, not even hatred left between them?

Ideally, Bo Xubai would disappear completely...

Realizing his emotions were going awry again, Bo Yan closed his eyes and knocked his head against the window to clear his mind.

Just then, he suddenly heard Wen Ning ask, "Do you think those kidnappers really just grabbed the wrong person this time?"

Bo Yan froze slightly, opened his eyes, and turned to her, raising an eyebrow to signal for her to continue.

Wen Ning was not certain about her suspicions, but she felt there was definitely more to this.

She and the female lead looked nothing alike. How could they have grabbed the wrong person? Were all kidnappers in novels this stupid?

Besides, her best friend had never mentioned a plot where the supporting female character got kidnapped.

The supporting female character had stirred up endless trouble, devoting herself to charging down the road of courting death without looking back. But aside from being killed by the villain before her in the finale, no one had dared do anything to her in the early or middle parts of the story!

Given the Wen Family's standing in Yanjing, someone would have to be sick in the head to make an enemy of them!

"They wanted to kidnap Jiang Tingwan and use her to threaten Bo Xubai. We were purely taking the fall for someone else, part of their play..." Wen Ning spilled out her analysis like beans pouring from a sack, observing Bo Yan's expression midway through.

Jiang Tingwan and Bo Yan had a delicate relationship, and her words did more or less cast suspicion on Jiang Tingwan.

But Bo Yan's expression did not change. His eyelids had not even twitched when he heard Jiang Tingwan's name.

He nodded. "So, you want to investigate?"

Wen Ning hummed in agreement. "I'm the kind of person who can't swallow even the slightest grievance. If someone really was plotting against me behind the scenes..."

Wen Ning narrowed her eyes. She would settle the score with them, no matter what!

"Otherwise, I'll be waking up furious in the middle of the night!" Wen Ning said indignantly, folding her arms.

Seeing her stern expression reminded Bo Yan of her jamming her high heel into the muscular man's nostril, and he could not help finding it funny.

"Mm." He leaned back against the seat, closed his eyes, and said, "Tell me if you need anything."

"Oho!" Wen Ning's eyes brightened.

She stared at his perfect profile for a few seconds, then reached out and tentatively touched his arm.

Bo Yan's muscles instantly tensed, but that was all.

Hmm? He didn't move away?

Wen Ning tried slipping her hand beneath his arm and linking hers through it.

Bo Yan clenched his hands where his arms were folded across his chest, but still did not move away.

Seeing this, Wen Ning tilted her head and rested it straight on his shoulder.

This time, Bo Yan finally reacted.

Pressing his lips together, he glanced at her awkwardly and said her name in warning. "Wen Ning."

Wen Ning squeezed her eyes shut and snuggled closer to his shoulder, mumbling, "Already asleep. Do not disturb."

Bo Yan: "..."

Bo Yan's thin lips moved as he tried to say something. After working up to it for nearly half a minute, he finally turned to look out the window, his lips pressed into a straight line, and said nothing.

Calling her a little pest wasn't wrong at all, he thought.

Not having been pushed away, Wen Ning curled her lips into a smile!

Folks, the first battle is won!

Wen Ning really was a little tired.

Her emotions had fluctuated too wildly. Even teasing Bo Yan just now had been the lingering warmth of the excitement she had felt while beating the kidnappers' dog heads.

Now that this "lingering warmth" had passed, Wen Ning fell asleep, exhausted.

Bo Yan kept staring out the window, leaving it impossible to tell whether he was looking at the streets outside or using the reflection to watch Wen Ning sleeping on his shoulder.

The atmosphere in the car was inexplicably warm.

Watching the young lady through the rearview mirror, her arm intimately linked with her husband's and her head resting on his shoulder as she slept, the Wen Family's driver could not help smiling.

The young lady was so much better now. That clearheaded way she lived was endearing just to watch.

And her husband, too-his sinister smile on their wedding day had sent chills down people's spines.

Seeing him again today, he seemed like a different person as well. He even had some human warmth about him now.

It was nearly five in the afternoon when the car reached the Wen home.

Wen Ning was sound asleep. When Bo Yan carried her out of the car, she only opened her eyes groggily and murmured his name before falling asleep again in his arms.

Knowing how much she had suffered that day, Wen Ning's parents did not wake her for dinner and told Bo Yan to carry her straight upstairs.

Bo Yan had thought that after that day, he would never return to this bedroom plastered with wanted posters of him. He had not expected reality to slap him in the face so quickly.

He carried her to the bed and laid her down very carefully.

Wen Ning showed faint signs of waking. Bo Yan's hand moved faster than his mind, settling on her back and patting her gently a few times before she opened her eyes.

As a child, he had seen mothers coax their children to sleep like this. Bo Yan had tried soothing himself this way too, but it had not done much good.

Perhaps only a mother's gentle touch offered the most effective comfort.

To his surprise, however, Wen Ning really did settle back into sleep under his soothing pats.

Bo Yan crouched beside the bed, staring at her sleeping form in a slight daze.

So it was not that his attempts to soothe someone to sleep were useless. It was that he could not fool himself. No one in this world loved him...

When Bo Yan went downstairs, Wen Ning's parents called him over for dinner.

Auntie Zhao had already prepared the evening meal.

Bo Yan felt that the Wen home seemed to possess a kind of magic. He disliked eating food elsewhere, but the food here tasted good.

He was just about to walk over when his phone suddenly rang.

Seeing the caller ID, Bo Yan's expression changed.

"Mom, Dad, I still have something to take care of, so I won't stay for dinner." Only after the call ended on its own did Bo Yan look up and speak to Wen Ning's parents with a faint smile.

Wen Ning's mother did not insist that he stay. She asked Auntie Zhao to pack him a meal. "You seemed quite fond of Sister Zhao's sweet-and-sour ribs last time. You must eat properly when you get home, child. Look how thin you are. No wonder Ningning says your bones poke her when she hugs you."

Her teasing warmed Bo Yan's sinking heart a little.

"Thank you, Mom," he said.

Wen Ning's father also came over to see him off. "It's thanks to you that Ningning came through this safely. Thank you, Xiao Yan."

Wen Jing said sincerely as well, "Brother-in-law, from now on, you're my one and only brother-in-law!"

Tian Xin felt something was strange about this atmosphere. She kept feeling as though she had missed a great deal of the plot. Hadn't everyone hated Bo Yan before?!

Forget it. If you can't beat them, join them.

Tian Xin was not unreasonable, and she immediately thanked Bo Yan too.

At least in this matter, Bo Yan had behaved more like a human being than Bo Xubai.

Bo Yan was not good at dealing with situations like this, and his whole body grew somewhat stiff. "Actually, Wen-Ningning was very clever too. Without the hints she gave me, I couldn't have slipped inside so smoothly..."

Bo Yan shut his mouth as soon as he finished.

What was he even saying?!

Who knew that the moment the Wen family heard this, they would declare proudly-

"Of course! Just look at whose daughter she is!"

"My daughter is sharp as a tack. Now you know what a treasure you've found, boy!"

"That's my sister! My one and only sister!"

Even Tian Xin said proudly, "As if we need you to tell us our Ningbao is smart. Hmph!"

Bo Yan: "..."

Bo Yan was speechless.

The Wen family's habit of never letting a remark fall to the ground really was exactly like the current Wen Ning's.

Compared with that Wen Ning, this Wen Ning seemed more like a member of the Wen family instead.

After saying goodbye to Wen Ning's parents, Bo Yan returned alone to that dragon's pool and tiger's den.

His father had called just now.

Originally due to return to the country tomorrow, his father had come back early.

The first thing he wanted upon returning was to see him. Naturally, Bo Yan did not think this was anything good.

Would he go straight to the Bo Family's punishment this time, or throw him into the mountain out back?

The farther he got from the Wen home, the more the smile on Bo Yan's lips faded...

Wen Ning slept very restlessly.

She had all sorts of jumbled dreams.

She dreamed of fighting the kidnappers, only for one of them to plunge a knife into her chest. She thought she had died, but when she looked down, the blood covering her hands was not her own.

Just as she tried to see whose it was, she was dragged into the next dream.

She dreamed of her parents fighting and demanding a divorce, of running away from home, and of that temple in town.

There was a very old tree in the temple, hung with all sorts of red silk ribbons.

A girl who looked fourteen or fifteen stood beneath the tree, making a wish.

The girl seemed to know her. When she saw her, she came over and took her hand. "Ningning, let's go listen to the abbot's stories again today!"

The abbot? Stories?

What kind of stories? Once upon a time, there was a mountain, and on the mountain stood a temple?

And so Wen Ning was led by the hand into a meditation room.

The moment she entered, she saw an old monk gnawing on a chicken drumstick.

Wen Ning was speechless. Dreams really did have everything!

Seeing them arrive, the old monk invited them to eat with him.

As Wen Ning ran over, she noticed that the Buddhist prayer beads around his wrist were actually identical to the ones on her own!

Halfway through her drumstick, the fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl asked the old monk, "So what happened to that boy afterward? Didn't you say yesterday that his mother poisoned him on the day of the college entrance exam? Did he die? If he didn't, did he take the exam? He absolutely had to take it, or I'm giving your story a bad review!"

Wiping his mouth, the old monk said with a smile, "He didn't die, he didn't die. As for the college entrance exam, of course he took it. Not only that, he was the top scorer in the sciences!"

"Wow! That's amazing!" Wen Ning heard herself say, clapping.

The old monk wiped her mouth for her. "Yes. Growing up all alone, he had already done remarkably well..."

"And then? What happened to him afterward?" Wen Ning asked.

"Afterward, he became someone very, very capable!" the old monk said. "So, Xiao Ningning, there's nothing in this world you can't get through. At least compared with this boy, you still have grandparents who love you, don't you?"

Wen Ning heard herself wave her drumstick and say, "Right! I'm going to become someone very, very capable, just like him!"

The scene in the dream shifted again.

Rain poured outside. Wen Ning saw her little self secretly crouching against the door of the old monk's meditation room, eavesdropping.

The girl's voice came from inside. "You can fool Ningning, but don't think you can fool me. I'm a big kid!"

The old monk smiled and shook his head.

The girl pressed him. "So what really happened to him afterward? Please tell me. I want to hear..."

Wen Ning heard the old monk let out a long sigh inside the meditation room.

The rain came rushing down, and the old monk's voice mingled with its sound as it poured into Wen Ning's ears.

"Ah, he died..."

"He jumped off a building..."

The old monk said more afterward, but Wen Ning could not hear it clearly. She only vaguely caught something about being twenty-eight, something about losing his sense of taste...

The old monk finished his story, and her young self, frightened by its ending, ran a high fever all night.

In the end, she forgot that boy, and forgot his brief life of just twenty-eight years...