Chapter 175: No title (1/2)

Chapter 175: [No title]

When Cheng Xi first entered Su Feng’s house, she was honestly and truly dejected. However, when she left, she felt rejuvenated once more.

When Lu Chenzhou returned home that night, he could sense that the entire house’s atmosphere had shifted as soon as he opened the door. Specifically, it felt particularly clean. Their house wasn’t originally dirty by any means, as Lu Chenzhou the neat-freak lived there and Cheng Xi wasn’t a naturally messy person either. However, the house was currently gleaming, as if every corner of the house had been polished to the point of shining.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, and wandered around until he finally found Cheng Xi in the study. She was kneeling down in a corner of the study and determinedly wiping away at the dust gathered there. When she heard him step into the room, she stopped, turned around, and smiled at him. “You’re back?” She waved the rag in her hand. “Isn’t the house clean?”

Lu Chenzhou nodded pleasantly. “Yes, it’s quite good.” Satisfied, he went to change and shower.

When he finished, Cheng Xi had moved on to watering her plants. She didn’t have many plants at home, just a few bunches of common hanging orchids. She cared much less for plants than she did for humans. With her orchids, she watered them when she remembered to. For the most part, they lived and died on their own. Surprisingly, these few surviving orchids were actually thriving under her care, and they had a particularly vibrant appearance.

When she saw Lu Chenzhou walk out, she waved at him, and Lu Chenzhou ambled over. Cheng Xi smiled at him. “Aren’t I taking good care of my plants?”

Lu Chenzhou repeated his praise. “It’s quite good.”

Cheng Xi wrinkled her nose in annoyance. “You could praise me with a couple different words, you know.”

Lu Chenzhou scrutinized her face. It was calm: her facial muscles were completely relaxed, much more so than in the morning, and she looked as if she had completely recovered from their argument.

Lu Chenzhou was very pleased as he didn’t like arguments. Additionally, he had felt terrible after their dispute in the morning. Because of this, he had chosen to go to a business function in the evening even though he disliked such business engagements and parties. In other words, he feared facing her wrath even more. Thankfully, she was back to normal, and he didn’t realize that a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He subconsciously took her advice and remarked, “It’s very good.”

Cheng Xi glared at him.

Her expression made Lu Chenzhou reminisce about their past. He instinctively reached out and touched her face. “Go wash up,” he said seriously, “You’re really dirty.”

Cheng Xi barely restrained her immediate impulse to throw the dirty rag at his face. However, this Lu Chenzhou that hated messes was the sort of Lu Chenzhou that she could relax around. Thus, Cheng Xi also secretly relaxed as she handed the rag over. “Alright, then I’ll leave the rest to you.”

She bowed jokingly and then went to take a shower.

That night, they rolled around in bed as usual; their previous disagreement about Lin Fan, and by extension Chen Jiaman, seemed to have evaporated away. Of course, it only seemed to have done so.

Cheng Xi found it unusually difficult to sleep afterwards, and she woke up in the middle of the night. The curtains were fluttering from the night breeze, and she could barely make out the hazy outline of the moon, clear and desolate.

Restless, she was unable to fall back asleep, so she got out of bed and rummaged around, looking for a book to read. This was the first time she had actually had any time to read in the study after its renovation. These days, it seemed like her life was always filled with either work or messing around with Lu Chenzhou.

That’s right, she really was a pig. She had completely forgotten about her original motivation for getting together with him; there was even a period of time where she’d almost completely forgotten about his mental illness.

By chance, she stumbled upon the book that she had been reading when she first met Lu Chenzhou. That book contained a formal record and introduction of emotional detachment within it. She reread the book from cover to cover, and when the new dawn was looming over the horizon, she ran into a sentimental quote from the confession of a patient suffering from emotional detachment. “I can treat everyone well, but I don’t care about their feelings.”

Her heart ached a little, but she didn’t know whether it was for herself or for Lu Chenzhou.

When she closed the book, she saw Lu Chenzhou standing by the doorway, dressed in just a light morning gown. In the dim light of the morning twilight, his presence felt unnaturally cold, as if he were a silent deity judging the world.

Cheng Xi stilled for a moment before putting on a smile. “I didn’t wake you up, did I? Perhaps I tired myself out too much, but I can’t seem to fall asleep.”

Lu Chenzhou didn’t say anything in response. He merely walked over and looked at the book in her hands: Light amidst the Darkness: A Psychiatrist’s Medical Records.

He looked away almost as soon as he read the title, and Cheng Xi exhaled. With a slight grumble in her tone, she continued, saying, “I’ve been feeling a bit out of shape lately. Let’s play tennis this weekend.” But playing tennis against Lu Chenzhou was just asking to be beaten, and Cheng Xi felt like she definitely couldn’t do it alone. Thus, she dragged two teammates along with her. “Call up Baldy and Tian Rou as well.”

“Alright.”

……

During the weekdays, when Cheng Xi was at work, she would secretly research and work on a treatment plan for Lu Chenzhou—currently, she was planning on investigating the origin of his illness and then having directed and guided therapy sessions with him.

Although everyone from the Lu family claimed that they didn’t know how he had developed his condition, Cheng Xi felt that there must be an underlying reason or event behind it, and she also felt that she had to discover this reason before she could actually earnestly start treating him.

At this point, she had asked everyone in the Lu family besides Lu Chenming. Cheng Xi had tried to ask him, but when Lu Chenming saw her, he had instantly become tongue-tied. And when she asked him to meet up, he wouldn’t come out. Cheng Yang, on the other hand, could always get a quick response. However, Cheng Yang was currently away for work, which meant that she could only wait for him to come back before setting up a chat with Lu Chenming.

Her only option left was therapy. If it were an official therapy session, then Lu Chenzhou wouldn’t be cooperative or take her words seriously at all. However, conducting an unofficial one surreptitiously was still possible. As for what it would do, Cheng Xi temporarily marked it down as a question mark in her work journal.