Chapter 46 Lu

"Drip, drop..."
What is that sound? Liu Miaomiao thought.
As this thought surfaced, Liu Miaomiao's consciousness gradually began to clear, as if waking up from a deep and distant dream, though she could no longer recall what the dream was about.
Liu Miaomiao forced her eyes open, and the first thing she saw was a calm darkness, with dim, yellowish lights scattered intermittently, spilling across her face in waves.
"Drip, drop..."
The pattering sound still echoed in her ears. Is it raining? Or is someone crying?
"Liu Miaomiao, Liu Miaomiao, are you awake?"
The voice came from her right side. Liu Miaomiao sleepily closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the scenery in her field of vision slowly became clear.
A clear night sky, with street lamps flashing past one by one outside the car window, and colorful umbrellas blooming open on the street. It turned out that it had started raining at some point.
Raindrops played crisp notes on the glass window, and an iron-grill-like mesh enclosed the driver sitting in the driver's seat. The boy's face was close at hand, casting a concerned gaze.
"Ming, Mingfei?" Liu Miaomiao supported her forehead and gently lifted her head from Lu Mingfei's shoulder. "What happened to me?"
Liu Miaomiao only remembered that she and Lu Mingfei had agreed to meet at Wangfujing Avenue, then walked side by side, took a stroll for a while, and were about to take the subway back.
She remembered it was still very early when they were getting ready to return, so how had it turned dark in the blink of an eye? And instead of sitting on the subway, she was in a taxi.
"Didn't we talk things out and get ready to come back earlier? Then you suddenly sprained your ankle, so I gave you some simple first aid and accompanied you to rest on a bench by the road for a while," Lu Mingfei said, spreading his hands to recount. "Then, I don't know if you were too tired or what, but after resting for a bit you fell asleep and wouldn't wake up no matter how I called you. I had no choice but to hail a cab to take us both back to the hotel."
Looking down, Liu Miaomiao indeed saw something fixing her ankle in place.
Liu Miaomiao tried to move it, and a sore, swollen sensation immediately arose from her ankle.
"Is that really what happened?" For some reason, she couldn't remember any of the relevant memories at all. "Why don't I remember any of this?"
"Maybe it's because you just woke up. People are prone to being dazed right after waking up. Once we get back to the hotel and you sleep again, you'll be fine tomorrow morning."
"Oh." Liu Miaomiao nodded, feeling as though she had forgotten a very, very important matter.
What could it be?
Right!
As if suddenly thinking of something, Liu Miaomiao sat straight up from the seat with a jolt, gently grabbing Lu Mingfei's arm, which startled him into thinking she had remembered something.
"What time is it now?" Liu Miaomiao asked somewhat anxiously.
"What time is it?" Lu Mingfei hadn't expected Liu Miaomiao to ask this. He glanced at the taxi's meter and replied, "Nine-fifteen in the evening."
"Then it's still early." Liu Miaomiao let out a long sigh of relief, relaxing her body back into the seat while her eyes scanned left and right outside the window, seemingly searching for something.

Lu Mingfei was about to ask what Liu Miaomiao was looking for when she suddenly waved her hand and said, "Driver, please pull over by the side of the road."
The taxi waded through the accumulated water on the road and pulled over to the side. Liu Miaomiao pushed the door open, cupped her hand over her forehead, and hopped out into the rain.
There were pedestrians with umbrellas everywhere on the road, so Lu Mingfei's gaze quickly lost track of Liu Miaomiao, leaving only a hazy mist of rain pervading his field of vision.
"Aren't you going to chase after her?"
Lu Mingze said with a provocative smile, revealing the tip of a canine tooth at the corner of his mouth as he swung his crossed legs.
Lu Mingfei rolled his eyes. "Chase after her for what? Is she going to get lost or something?"
"You never know. The imperial capital is as small as it is big. On average, a person in this city travels 26.4 kilometers a day, rides 17.3 subway stations, and brushes shoulders with 397 people. If you let a girl walk away by herself today, tomorrow she might get completely lost in this labyrinth. Do you know, big brother? People are actually very easily lost in a sea of humanity."
"I know, I know," Lu Mingfei said impatiently. "I have my own calculations. I've been watching the clock ever since she went out. If she hasn't come back after ten minutes, I'll go out and look for her."
"Isn't ten minutes a bit too long?"
"Fine, fine, then five minutes."
Lu Mingfei glanced at the paused meter. "It's 9:18 right now. If Liu Miaomiao hasn't returned by 9:20, I'll go out to find her—did you suddenly pop up just to talk about this?"
"Of course not," Lu Mingze shrugged. "Coming out at this hour is, of course, to have a midnight snack."
"Midnight snack?" Lu Mingfei was stunned. "What midnight snack is there for you to eat?"
"There will be one in a moment. Just remember to save some for me," Lu Mingze smiled mysteriously, then suddenly changed the subject. "Speaking of which, I'm still quite curious why you chose to let Xia Mi cover up this memory for Liu Miaomiao. I thought you would refuse."
Lu Mingfei let out a soft sigh.
"You think I wanted to?" Lu Mingfei said. "But just like Xia Mi said, it's not a good thing for Liu Miaomiao to remember these things. Most of the people I know who are involved with dragons have pretty bad luck, so I don't want to drag Liu Miaomiao into it as well."
Lu Mingze smiled and nodded. "Big brother, you've really grown up, you've even learned to have your own opinions. But by the way, I'm also more in favor of you temporarily erasing Liu Miaomiao's memory."
Lu Mingfei was taken aback; the little devil had actually agreed with him for once.
"Why?" Lu Mingfei asked.
"It's just like playing a galgame. If you boost a certain heroine's favorability too high all at once, you'll only enter that single heroine's pure love route. Only by intentionally controlling each heroine's progression and maintaining a delicate balance between them can you achieve a harem ending."
Lu Mingze spread his hands. "If you win over Liu Miaomiao right now, the other girls won't be so easy to conquer."
"Peh, peh, peh. You only ever think of filthy things!"
"I'm considering it for your sake, big brother."
Lu Mingze curled his lips. "Even Zhao Menghua could manage between Chen Wenwen and Liu Miaomiao, why can't you? Is Zhao Menghua better than you? Have you never thought about the emperor's life with three palaces, six compounds, and seventy-two concubines..."
Lu Mingfei suddenly stopped talking because he realized that no matter what he said, the little devil could always come up with a set of crooked theories to refute him.

"Look, look, big brother, you've already been persuaded by me and are already fantasizing about a life with someone in each arm."
Lu Mingze smiled mischievously and uncrossed his legs. "Alright, alright, no more joking, I should be going pretty soon. Go on and chase after your girl. Even if she won't get lost, letting a girl stand in the rain isn't something a gentleman would do."
In an instant, Lu Mingze vanished as abruptly as the words he left behind. The meter resumed ticking, displaying the time as 9:18:43. Lu Mingfei hesitated for a moment.
Before the time on the meter could tick to 9:19, Lu Mingfei gritted his teeth, pushed open the car door, and charged into the rain.
He had to find Liu Miaomiao.
The moment he pushed the door open, Lu Mingfei almost collided straight into Liu Miaomiao.
"What are you coming out for?" Liu Miaomiao blinked gently, holding a bag in her hands. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead by the rain, and even her eyelashes were stained with droplets of water.
"I saw you hadn't come back for so long, so I came out to check."
Liu Miaomiao let out a chuckle and pushed Lu Mingfei back into the car.
"Get in quickly, get in quickly, look at how soaked you are. I'm not a child anymore, did you really think I'd get lost?"
With that, Liu Miaomiao climbed into the car herself and pulled the door shut with a snap. Her rain-drenched clothes clung tightly to her body, outlining the graceful curves of a young girl.
Lu Mingfei stood straight as an arrow, quickly averting his gaze from her in a display of propriety.
"Weren't you drenched too?" Lu Mingfei retorted. "What did you go buy?"
"You mean this? Here."
Liu Miaomiao said with a beaming smile, shoving the bag in her hands into Lu Mingfei's embrace.
Lu Mingfei caught it and froze. "For me?"
"Yeah, open it and see."
Lu Mingfei opened it to find an exquisitely packaged box inside, tied with a blue ribbon.
Through the plastic casing, a small, delicate cake could be seen resting inside. Above the "Happy Birthday" blessing, the pinyin "Lu" was crudely squeezed out in icing.
"I actually wanted to get back to the hotel earlier and prepare a bigger cake for you, but I accidentally ended up sleeping until now. I had no choice but to find a random cake shop on the street to buy one. I squeezed the 'Lu' on top myself, so you're not allowed to say it looks ugly!"
Liu Miaomiao blinked as she spoke, letting a raindrop fall from her eyelash, tilting her head with a radiant smile:
"Mingfei, happy birthday."