Chapter 10 (1/2)
Part 1: The Rival’s Retreat and the Grocery Run
She did not call him Dr Liu. She called him directly by name—Liu Qianxiu.
Xiao Yun glanced at Mu Wan and found her faintly familiar. Beautiful women were always hard to forget, and after only a moment, she remembered exactly who Mu Wan was.
The woman who had slipped in the bathroom, injured her chest, escaped the hospital that same night to go drinking, and was later brought back by Liu Qianxiu.
She had been drunk then, hanging off him like some seductress. To this day, some of the hospital staff still talked about what a scene it had been.
Everyone assumed she was obviously pursuing Liu Qianxiu. Yet nothing much had seemed to come of it when she was discharged. Xiao Yun had not expected her to chase him all the way to the hospital now.
Xiao Yun disliked women who were too forward. To her, a woman who relied on getting drunk, throwing herself at a man, and refusing to let go seemed far too loose with her self-respect.
The smile at the corners of her mouth faded slightly, and she withdrew her gaze from Mu Wan.
Mu Wan stood one step lower than Liu Qianxiu. She was not short—she was a meter sixty-eight—but next to Liu Qianxiu, who stood nearly a meter ninety, she still came up short by a fair margin. Especially now, standing on the lower step, she had to tip her face up just to look at him.
“What time do you get off?” Mu Wan asked, after only the briefest glance at Xiao Yun.
She lifted her chin as she spoke, showing the fine line of her pale throat. It was tiring to hold her head up so high, but Liu Qianxiu answered simply, “Very soon.”
Mu Wan’s smile deepened. “I’ll wait for you,” she said lightly.
At those words, the female doctor’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly. Mu Wan caught it from the corner of her eye.
The smile that had just faded returned to Xiao Yun’s face, though this time it was more restrained, more proper. “In that case, another time,” she said.
Liu Qianxiu gave a slight nod and offered an apology in a tone that was both polite and unmistakably distant.
If Xiao Yun had not said it first, he would still have refused her. She was simply cutting her losses.
She smiled faintly, turned her gaze toward Mu Wan. Mu Wan, out of courtesy, gave her a small nod. Xiao Yun returned it with equal politeness before turning and heading back into the emergency hall.
Mu Wan watched her leave.
In that brief exchange of glances, she had felt the woman’s disdain. Xiao Yun clearly wanted something from Liu Qianxiu. If so, the sight of Mu Wan should have provoked hostility. Instead, Mu Wan saw a kind of blind, effortless superiority.
Wanting something but refusing to make a move, choosing instead to stand on dignity and wait with restrained grace—no matter how close you stood to the moon, you still wouldn’t catch it.
Mu Wan gave a quiet laugh.
By the time Liu Qianxiu had changed clothes, Mu Wan had followed him into the car and fastened her seat belt. She glanced once toward the emergency building. The female doctor had come back out again, her gaze directed toward their car.
The seat belt clicked into place. Mu Wan turned and looked at Liu Qianxiu. “What did that doctor want with you just now?”
Liu Qianxiu did not look toward the building. He drove out through the hospital gate after swiping his card and said only, “Work-related. She was thanking me. Nothing important.”
From what Xiao Yun had said before leaving, she had probably wanted to invite him to dinner. He must have been about to refuse her, but before he could, she had gracefully created a way out for herself in front of Mu Wan.
After sorting through that much in her mind, Mu Wan suddenly thought of something else. Even the female doctor knew to thank Liu Qianxiu for helping her. Yet Liu Qianxiu had done much more for Mu Wan, and apart from a bouquet of flowers, she still had not properly repaid him in any practical way.
Mu Wan rested one arm against the car window. The glass was cool. Ahead, the sign for Jinze Tower came into view, and she remembered the vegetarian restaurant there that she and Lin Wei had once gone to. It had been quite good.
Before she could say anything, the car rolled over a speed bump, dipped once, and came to a stop. Beside her, Liu Qianxiu undid his seat belt and asked, “What do you want to eat?”
Mu Wan came back to herself and looked up to see the supermarket sign. They had stopped in front of a mart.
She laughed in disbelief. “I get to order?”
“You can,” Liu Qianxiu said. “Though I don’t know many dishes.”
Whether he knew many or not was beside the point. The sentence itself already made her happy, because it meant they would be eating together again tonight, and Liu Qianxiu had accepted that as something natural. Without either of them noticing, the distance between them had closed quite a bit.
That growing ease pleased Mu Wan most.
She smiled, but did not actually name a dish. Instead, thinking back to what she had just been considering, she turned to him and said, “How about I treat you to dinner tonight instead? You keep feeding me, and I really should treat you at least once. There’s a vegetarian restaurant in Jinze Tower that’s quite good.”
Courtesy ought to go both ways. She could not keep taking advantage of him forever.
At her sudden proposal, Liu Qianxiu only looked at her once and said, “I don’t eat out.”
In truth, that answer did not surprise Mu Wan. He was a Taoist. He valued discipline, quiet living, and self-cultivation. The food he cooked himself was light, clean, and careful. No matter how a restaurant advertised itself, its dishes still relied on processed seasonings and hidden additives. To someone like Liu Qianxiu, cooking for himself would always feel more reliable.
And gratitude, if it was sincere, should be tailored to the person receiving it. Mu Wan did not insist.
She lifted her eyes to the supermarket sign, then turned back to Liu Qianxiu, her gaze clear and bright. “In that case... what if I cook for you?”
Liu Qianxiu looked back at her, his eyes dropping slightly.
“All right.”
He agreed.
There were no ingredients Liu Qianxiu especially disliked, which gave Mu Wan plenty of room to work with. She picked up several vegetables, and when they passed the seafood section, she added a fish at the last minute.
Once they got back to Liu Qianxiu’s apartment and checked on the kittens, Mu Wan slipped away to the kitchen while he was mixing formula.
He came in afterwards carrying the bags and set the ingredients in the sink beneath the kitchen window. Mu Wan stepped up, tied her long hair into a low ponytail, and got to work washing the vegetables.
Two vegetable dishes: tomato and egg stir-fry, and stir-fried lotus root.
And one meat dish: braised fish.
The supermarket staff had already cleaned the fish. Mu Wan put it on a plate, washed the tomatoes and lotus root, and arranged them separately.
Red tomatoes. Tender pale lotus root. One whole fish.
All laid out in order on the counter. Mu Wan looked over the ingredients and took out her phone to look up a recipe.
By the time Liu Qianxiu came into the kitchen after feeding the three little ones, Mu Wan had already completed the prep work. Well, at least the ingredients were washed.
At the moment, she was holding a pale, freshly cut lotus root and trying to slice it.
Several pieces already lay on the chopping board. They were uneven, some thick, some thin. Then—
Thunk.
The knife came down through the lotus root and struck the board with a heavy thud, sounding more like chopping through bone than slicing vegetables.
The woman’s back was slim and fine. Liu Qianxiu looked at the bright knife in her hand, then at the large remaining half of the lotus root. His mouth tightened slightly before he stepped forward.
man, I feel like they're already a couple hahaha
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