noffsinger Chapter 889: Xiao Chong Extra 9_3
Chapter 889: Xiao Chong Extra 9_3
Xiao Chong’s lips curved slightly. "You’re welcome."
"How come you can do everything? You’re amazing. How many years of drawing does it take to be able to draw like this?"
"A lifetime," Xiao Chong said.
"Alright then." Lin Wanwan smiled, taking it as a joke.
Lin Wanwan admired it for quite a while longer before reluctantly putting it away in the tube.
Xiao Chong pushed the sliced cake in front of her and said, "Have some cake."
"Thanks." Lin Wanwan took it. "I made you spend money. You gave me a present, I should be the one treating you to cake."
Xiao Chong smiled, his eyes crinkling. "Then treat me on my birthday."
Lin Wanwan agreed without hesitation. "Okay. When’s your birthday? Tell me first so I can remember."
She’d eat White Elephant hot and sour vermicelli for another two months, save up the money for cake and a birthday present.
"The twentieth of the first lunar month."
"Eh, you celebrate your lunar birthday too?" Lin Wanwan scraped the cake while asking in surprise.
"Mm, I too am very traditional," Xiao Chong said with a perfectly straight face.
"Pfft." Lin Wanwan burst into laughter, her smile as white and sweet as if it were smeared with cream.
Xiao Chong’s gaze tightened; he couldn’t help swallowing.
After finishing a piece of cake, Lin Wanwan carried the poster tube and flew back to her little villa like a happy little bird.
Not long after she left, Xiao Chong called a car and had Lin Wanwan’s old washing machine loaded up and taken away.
He had no intention of getting it repaired; instead, he directly told the shop owner to give it a complete overhaul inside.
Having eaten a big piece of cream cake, Lin Wanwan skipped dinner. She took a hammer and nails and headed straight for her room, hammered a nail into the empty wall, then carefully hung the painting up.
Under the soft white light, the sense of time and space in the painting rushed toward her, so vivid and clear.
Lin Wanwan stood in front of it and admired it for a long, long time, every now and then stepping forward to adjust the angle of the hanging cord, practically like she’d developed OCD.
While doing exercises that night, she would turn her head now and then to glance at the painting; her smile felt as if it had grown wings, and some secret emotion was wildly growing in her heart, only she herself hadn’t realized it yet.
Three meters away from her, Xiao Chong held a glass of liquor with ice, hidden behind the white curtain, silently watching her.
With his eyesight, he could clearly see the painting hanging on Lin Wanwan’s wall, and the way she kept turning her head to look at it.
He raised his glass and took a sip of liquor, feeling in a very good mood.
Just then, the watery sound of the electronic lock on the front door downstairs being activated rang out.
Xiao Chong tipped his head back and drained the rest of the liquor in one gulp, then went into the en-suite bathroom to dump out the ice spheres, rinsed the glass, and unhurriedly took out mouthwash to rinse his mouth.
After he’d covered all traces, he walked out of the room.
Looking over the railing on the second floor, he could see Father Xiao and Mother Xiao in the high-ceilinged living room below, changing their shoes, with several supermarket plastic bags full of things by their feet.
"Father, Mother," Xiao Chong called, then turned and quickly went downstairs.
Xiao Ding saw his son coming down the stairs, steady and carrying an air of natural nobility. He nodded in quiet satisfaction and asked, "Chong’er, I heard you joined the school basketball team and even led them into the national tournament?"
Xiao’s dad was a die-hard basketball fan; when Xiao Chong was little, his basketball was taught by him. Back when the two of them lived in the Yongda family compound, they would go to the school’s outdoor court to play for a while every day.
If his son’s academic performance weren’t so strong, he would have supported Xiao Chong in going down the path of a professional basketball player.
After all, at fifteen, with a height of one meter eighty-seven, Xiao Chong had a real shot at chasing that dream.
"Mm." Xiao Chong nodded politely in response.
"Not bad, not bad," Father Xiao praised. "Play hard and bring back a national championship."
Mother Xiao shot him a glare. "His main energy still has to go into studying. Don’t keep leading him astray. He still has competitions to prepare for!"
Xiao Chong smiled faintly. He was already used to these little disagreements between his adoptive parents about how to raise him, so he changed the subject and said, "Have Father and Mother had dinner yet?"
"No, there was something at school today, so we got off work late. We bought some groceries to come cook. Chong’er, have you eaten?" Mother Xiao asked.
Xiao Chong replied, "I have."
"What did you eat?" Mother Xiao said as she walked toward the kitchen with the bags. "Don’t tell me it was instant noodles again?"
There was a period when Xiao Chong was little that he was obsessed with instant noodle broth.
"No, takeout."
"Takeout’s not good enough." Mother Xiao glanced at the trash can, emptied out spotless. "Then when Mom’s done cooking, come have a bit with us as a late-night snack."
"Mm, thank you, Mother."
"Say Mom. What are you being so polite with your mom for?" Mother Xiao chided.
"Oh. Mom."
This son of hers was always excessively proper and polite.
When they’d just adopted him, it was one thing that he was embarrassed to sleep in the same room with them, but he’d even come to their room morning and night to offer formal greetings. She had no idea what kind of family he’d lived in before age three to instill this kind of upbringing in his bones.
She always felt he could remember things from before he was three; he just didn’t talk about them.