Chapter 2

When Si Yuming saw clearly what kind of pets his daughter had, he couldn’t help laughing helplessly.

Lin Ke washed her hands and walked over first. “Have you eaten yet?”

“Not yet.”

She crouched down and spoke to her daughter gently. “Can Xiaotie walk Xiao Huang and Xiao Qing by herself for now? Let Daddy eat first.”

“Okay then. Daddy, eat first. After dinner you have to play with Xiaotie.”

The woman headed back toward the kitchen, her voice soft and gentle. “Aunt Chen already went home. I’ll heat the dishes for you.”

Si Yuming watched her back for a moment before shifting his gaze away and looking around the apartment.

The place wasn’t large. One master bedroom, one children’s room, a room for the housekeeper, and a study. Compared to their previous villa, it was much smaller.

They had indeed only recently moved in. There were still unpacked boxes in the living room, probably filled with Si Xiaotie’s toys.

The sofa was covered with dinosaur plushies his daughter loved. A bouquet of fresh flowers sat on the coffee table, and a faint floral fragrance lingered in the air.

The small space felt crowded, yet neat and cozy.

He followed her into the kitchen and leaned against the doorway. “Why not move somewhere better?”

“This place is pretty good. The kindergarten is right across from the neighborhood, and the apartment itself is nice too. Xiaotie liked it the moment she walked in.” Lin Ke turned on the stove and looked back at him. “It may not be as spacious as before, but it’s enough for Xiaotie and me. I moved some of your things over too. If you want to stay here, you can.”

A faint crease slowly formed between Si Yuming’s brows as his gaze darkened.

Oil crackled loudly in the pan, and Lin Ke quickly turned back to stir-fry the food.

When she looked back again, the man had already walked toward the bedroom. In the living room, the little girl was leading two crabs around with strings tied to them. The crabs’ many legs couldn’t even keep up with her short little legs.

The man pushed open the master bedroom door, and his brows furrowed again.

The room was barely over ten square meters. A bed, a vanity table, and a row of gray wardrobes occupied nearly all the space, leaving nowhere extra to stand.

Unfamiliar, yet familiar at the same time.

The vanity table was still crowded with all kinds of her cosmetics. The bedding was still the pale blue she liked, decorated with simple lace patterns—elegant and understated.

Her rotating globe nightlight sat by the bedside, its warm yellow glow softly illuminating one corner of the room.

There was some kind of fragrance in the room, perhaps mugwort. It wasn’t strong, but it smelled comforting.

Si Yuming opened the wardrobe and took out his loungewear from between several of her nightgowns before changing.

Even the bathroom seemed transplanted from their old home. The toiletries, towels, and skincare products were all placed in the same positions as before. Even the toothbrushes still faced inward in the exact same way.

He touched his toothbrush lightly, a faint smile appearing at the corner of his lips, before tossing the facial towel she hadn’t had time to throw away that morning into the trash.

After changing clothes, he placed the suit he had worn into the laundry basket, covering the beige outfit she had worn today.

Si Xiaotie walked in while dragging the crabs behind her. “Daddy, Mommy said the food’s getting cold. Hurry up.”

“Coming.”

Lin Ke’s cooking was very good. Tonight’s dishes were probably all made by her. The stir-fried shrimp had sugar added to it—made according to Si Xiaotie’s tastes.

The little girl who had been walking crabs around was eventually dragged off to bathe. At first she refused and tried negotiating with her mother endlessly, but once she soaked herself into the bathtub, she became a completely different person and refused to come out.

The fragmented conversation between mother and daughter drifted out intermittently.

“Mommy, do I still have to go to school tomorrow?”

“Of course you do. Does Xiaotie like school?”

“No. The kids are too noisy. I don’t like naughty children. Yuan Yuan and Gu Yiyi weren’t noisy, so I played with them.”

“Is Yuan Yuan a boy or a girl? What about Gu Yiyi?”

“Yuan Yuan is a girl. Gu Yiyi is a boy.”

“Mommy, can you be the first one to pick me up tomorrow?”

After a pause, the woman’s gentle apologetic voice answered softly.

“Mommy has work tomorrow, so Grandma Chen will pick you up.”

“Okay then…”

The person eating outside slowly set down his chopsticks and checked tomorrow’s schedule on his phone. There was an online meeting with Moscow at three in the afternoon. It probably wouldn’t end by four-thirty.

About ten minutes later, the freshly bathed little girl came out wearing dinosaur pajamas. Her fluffy hair bounced softly with her movements. She first went over to the box to say goodnight to the crabs, then walked to the table and looked up.

“Daddy, Mommy said you’re putting me to sleep tonight.”

Her soft voice carried a damp warmth from the bath.

Si Yuming glanced at the woman carrying clothes toward the balcony while deliberately avoiding his gaze. Lowering his eyes, he smiled. “Okay. Daddy will put you to sleep.”

Putting Si Xiaotie to bed was never easy.

Rather than telling her bedtime stories, it was more like creating stories together with her. She was never satisfied with how stories developed and always insisted on inventing her own versions. Combined with the endless energy she’d had since childhood, putting her to sleep could take at least an hour and sometimes two or three.

After the father and daughter entered the room, Lin Ke silently let out a sigh of relief on the balcony.

She adjusted the washing machine settings before returning to the bedroom to shower.

The clothes the man had changed out of were left in a mess in the bathroom. Lin Ke casually picked them up to tidy them.

The clothes for the three people in the household were usually washed separately. Si Xiaotie even had her own washing machine. Lin Ke didn’t care much about her own clothes, but this man’s suits, dress pants, and shirts couldn’t be machine washed. Aunt Chen would specially send them for dry cleaning the next day.

But today seemed a little different.

Her movements paused. She lifted the suit closer and sniffed it lightly.

A faint scent of roses.

Si Yuming never wore perfume, and she herself never used rose-scented products either.

Lin Ke frowned slightly. After several seconds, she calmly folded the clothes and placed them into another laundry basket.

She had worked for about an hour after showering before the bedroom door finally opened.

The exhaustion beneath the man’s eyes was impossible to hide.

Si Yuming headed toward the bathroom and said helplessly, “Is Xiaotie really our daughter? I don’t think her personality resembles yours at all.”

Si Xiaotie—her great-grandfather had given her the formal name Si Lezhen. Her nickname had originally been Zhenzhen, but after only a few months, the family discovered this little girl was unbelievably fearless. She grabbed anything and touched everything. Back when she had just learned to crawl, she had crawled out into the courtyard by herself, causing the entire family to search frantically for over an hour. They had even called the police. In the end, they discovered her fast asleep alone in the flowerbed.

From then on, Zhenzhen became Xiaotie. Every time the family called “Xiaotie,” she would laugh happily, showing off her two tiny baby teeth.

Now at three and a half years old, the little demon king powers of Si Xiaotie had fully erupted. If people weren’t careful, nobody knew what she might do next. Her energy levels were also far beyond those of ordinary little girls. She was like a spinning top, running and spinning nonstop every day, refusing to sleep until every last drop of energy was depleted.

Only after the bathroom door closed did Lin Ke pout and mutter quietly, “Whether she’s your daughter or not, she’s definitely mine.”

And besides, how were they not alike? Her grandmother had always said Xiaotie looked exactly like Lin Ke when she was little—constantly mischievous and giving her mother headaches.

Lin Ke didn’t remember much from when she was two or three years old, but Si Yuming, who had already been five or six back then, clearly seemed to have long forgotten the child version of her.

The moment the sound of running water stopped, she quickly closed her laptop and put it away before turning off the main light and slipping into bed.

The bathroom door opened and closed. The final nightlight went dark as well.

The man, still carrying heavy moisture from his shower, lifted the blanket and climbed into bed.

From behind, he wrapped his arms around her, kissing her neck and behind her ear. His breathing gradually deepened.

They had been married for years now, and their child was already three and a half. They had done everything a married couple should and shouldn’t do. Though there was no love between them, physical desire alone was enough for them to complete such things together.

But tonight, she didn’t really want to.

She shifted forward slightly to avoid him, softening her voice. “I’m tired…”

The man stopped moving, simply holding her quietly, though the hand around her waist remained somewhat restless.

Lin Ke opened her eyes and pressed her lips together before asking softly, “How many days are you staying this time?”

“The branch office is basically stable now. I won’t need to stay there anymore in the future.”

“Huh?”

Si Yuming laughed softly. “What kind of reaction is that? You’re unhappy?”

Lin Ke stayed silent for a long while before finally asking quietly, “Then… where are you planning to live after coming back?”

When Si Yuming heard that, genuine displeasure slowly surfaced inside him.

“My wife and daughter are here. Where else could I go?”

“…You can stay back at Qingyun Road.” Her voice was tiny, barely louder than a mosquito.

“Hm?”

His deep voice carried a trace of anger.

Lin Ke immediately didn’t dare say another word.

The villa on Qingyun Road was too large. Whether day or night, it always felt empty and cold. Si Xiaotie feared nothing, but Lin Ke often couldn’t sleep at night and would run into her daughter’s room to squeeze into bed with her.

Using Si Xiaotie starting kindergarten as an opportunity, she had finally found a reason to move out. Though this apartment was small, it finally felt like a real home. During the week since moving here, she had felt at ease every single day.

She truly hadn’t considered him at all. When moving, she hadn’t even thought about leaving space for him. After all, every time he returned, he only came to see their daughter before leaving again. And honestly, the idea of this noble and untouchable man actually living here long-term with them felt almost impossible to imagine.

The Si family had enjoyed wealth and prestige for generations. From childhood, every aspect of Si Yuming’s food, clothing, housing, and transportation had been top-tier. One of his shirts alone could equal an ordinary family’s yearly income. Wealth and luxury weren’t goals to him—they existed as naturally as breathing itself.

So the sentence, “Where else could I go?” already sounded like an extremely reluctant compromise to her.

And besides…

“Si Yuming…”

The person behind her interrupted coldly, his tone dissatisfied. “You didn’t tell me Xiaotie started school. You didn’t tell me you moved either. Are you really that unhappy about me coming back?”

“No.” So now he was getting angry too? Thinking about the faint rose fragrance and all those messy rumors, Lin Ke also began feeling upset. She pulled his hand away and shifted farther forward while muttering unhappily, “What’s the point of telling you? Would you have come back early? Or helped us move? Weren’t you living perfectly well on your own outside? Or would you have come back just to stop us from moving?”

The accusation was soft, yet sharp.

The man suddenly fell silent.

Lin Ke felt there was no way she could continue sleeping tonight. She climbed out of bed, forcefully yanked her pillow out from beneath his head, and stared directly into his unclear eyes through the darkness.

“I’m going to sleep with our daughter.”

Then she warned coldly, “Don’t talk to me at work tomorrow. I don’t want anyone knowing about our relationship.”

After that, she circled around to his side barefoot, fumbled around in the dark until she found her slippers, then stormed out angrily, slamming the bedroom door loudly behind her.

Si Yuming felt a headache coming on.

He took back what he had said earlier.

How exactly was she not like Si Xiaotie?

Meanwhile, the woman slipped beneath the fragrant, soft blanket beside the little girl and hugged her equally soft and squishy little body.

Si Xiaotie murmured sleepily, “Mommy…”

Lin Ke planted a heavy kiss on her chubby little face. “Daddy turned into the Big Bad Wolf, so Mommy came to sleep with baby.”

“Mhm… sleep with baby…”

…

The next morning, the early autumn sunlight slanted across the balcony. Two tiny green dinosaur socks hanging on the drying rack swayed gently under the sun.

“Daddy! Did you turn into the Big Bad Wolf?!”

The freshly washed man stepping out of the room was greeted first thing in the morning by a question he couldn’t understand.

He guessed what had happened and glanced at the woman’s slender back as she fried eggs in the kitchen before smiling lightly. “Mm. Xiaotie better be careful then. Be good at school today.”

“I’m not scared!” Si Xiaotie raised the hand holding her children’s chopsticks above her head like a horn and giggled. “I’m a triceratops! I’m going to eat the Big Bad Wolf and protect Mommy!”

Si Yuming smiled and patted her face, playing along. “Okay. Protect Mommy.”

Lin Ke finished frying the last egg and poured a glass of warmed milk before bringing them both to the dining table.

She was busy with work, but over the past two years, she had personally handled everything related to Si Xiaotie. Cooking, putting her to sleep, playing with her—none of these things felt like pressure to her. Instead, they were ways for her to relax.

She liked waking up early to prepare a simple breakfast. Watching her daughter eat energetically was the source of motivation for her entire day. Coming home from work and hugging her daughter was what she looked forward to most every day.

In the past, she would wait for Aunt Chen to arrive before going to work. But now things were different. Her daughter went to school while she went to work, and the two of them could leave home together.

“Hurry and eat. Mommy will take you to kindergarten later.”

“What about Daddy?”

Lin Ke ignored the question. After placing the milk and fried eggs down, she turned and walked back into the kitchen.

Looking at the perfectly shaped dinosaur egg before him, Si Yuming smiled helplessly again and answered in her place.

“Daddy will take baby to school.”

“Yay!”

At eight o’clock, the family of three separated at the front door.

The little girl sitting in her father’s arms leaned over and kissed her mother sweetly on the cheek. “Bye-bye, Mommy.”

“Bye-bye, baby.”

After waiting two seconds, Si Xiaotie looked left and right before frowning unhappily.

“Daddy isn’t kissing Mommy goodbye?”

So Si Yuming bent down and kissed the woman lightly on the cheek as well.

“Bye-bye, wife.”

“Bye.”

Her tone was comparatively cold, without the slightest trace of emotion.