Lu Mingran was stunned.
He saw Chu Feng pushing Chu Anran, followed by Xiao Jiu, who was trying to suppress her laughter and was about to burst out laughing. Next to Xiao Jiu was a boy with a cold face, wearing a high school uniform.
Gu He looked at them: "You are..."
The boy in the school uniform spoke up; it was the same voice from the phone: "We're all Xiao Tao's friends, we've come to have dinner with him."
This boy is very young, but he speaks without any fear of people; he's very mature.
Oh? Gu He looked at it and realized that he had seen Xiao Jiu before.
A few minutes later, with Lu Mingran and Gu He joining them, the six of them filled a round table.
Although it was a dinner with friends, the atmosphere was quite awkward. Lu Mingran, who had been smug about having "brothers all over the world" not long ago, sat up straight and didn't want to say a word.
Gu He also felt uncomfortable with the atmosphere and sighed:
"The last time I ate like this was when those seniors and peers came to visit me."
Just like last time, there was an undercurrent of tension beneath the peaceful atmosphere, and there was always a slight sense of disharmony in the joyful mood.
Now that so many people claiming to be Xiao Tao's friends have arrived, what should he say?
Gu He picked up his chopsticks, his gaze hesitantly sweeping over the faces of these people:
"Shall we eat?"
Author's Note: Truly, a table full of brothers.
I have to work on the clips tomorrow, so the update will be a little late, after 11 PM~ Hey, I'm a little nervous.
And regarding the pairing issue, I haven't written any BL (Boys' Love) stories in a long time, so this one doesn't have any pairings.
I also hope you won't make things too difficult for readers who ship the characters. Enjoy reading! Thank you.
Chapter 36 Want to take care of your brother? No way (7)
In terms of age, Gu He is the oldest among these people, and his status is also different, so he can completely control the situation.
The boys held their chopsticks and ate slowly and deliberately, their elegant manner resembling that of someone embroidering.
Gu He glanced at Lu Mingran and whispered:
"When did you get so many younger brothers in S City?"
"Um, I mean..."
Gu He picked up a piece of food with his chopsticks and looked at these young faces:
"You're getting younger and younger."
Lu Mingran, an elderly person living alone: "..."
He remained noncommittal, lowering his head to eat. Just then, the orange cat strolled over again. It crawled under the table, sat down at Lu Mingran's feet, and stared at him, letting out a low meow.
Lu Mingran's gaze fell directly on the cat. Looking at the cat, he recalled a ghost story he had read before.
The story goes that a woman received a cat skin, but it wasn't a bloody cat skin; it was warm and soft to the touch.
When you touch it, it feels like you're touching a live cat, except there won't be a kitten arching its back and rubbing against your hand, meowing.
Logically speaking, who would dare to accept such a thing? But the woman loved it so much that she laid it out in front of her small sofa as a rug and often lay on it.
Lu Mingran remembered that the story was told in the first person, and the woman's tone throughout the story was cryptic and unsettling; the woman herself was frightening enough.
"At noon, I slept on this cat skin again and fell asleep very quickly."
"I had a dream in which I was lying lazily on a soft wool carpet, stretching out my limbs. I turned my head and saw a pair of women's fair and delicate legs, with the straps of my favorite pair of purple sandals tied around their ankles."
At the very end of the story, the woman and the cat skin swapped souls. Later, when the man returned home to try and reconcile with the woman, he saw "her" napping on a cat skin and disgustedly told "her" to throw the cat skin in the trash can.
Cats have always been considered malevolent creatures in ghost stories. Lu Mingran had even heard tales of old men and women who kept cats only to have their bodies stolen. Looking at this cat now, Lu Mingran subconsciously thought of these stories, her right hand trembled slightly, and her chopsticks tapped against the rim of her cup.
Gu He was sitting next to him and turned to look at him when he heard the sound.
Lu Mingran came to her senses and stood up to introduce the people to Gu He. As for the content of the introduction, it was all made up. For example, she said that she met Chu Feng because the two of them worked together to catch a charlatan who was swindling people, and they ran across three streets together.
Gu He listened and smiled as he spoke to these people:
"Xiao Tao is a very nice person. If you need anything, just come to him. Don't be shy."
So Xiao Jiu, who had been banging the gong for Lu Mingran all morning, picked up her fruit beer and silently took a sip.
The Chu brothers, who had gone to great lengths to help Lu Mingran with the spirit mediumship, exchanged a glance and clinked their Sprites together.
Boss, you might not know this, but your brothers are all under our care.
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After finishing her meal, Lu Mingran rushed out with the cat in her arms and stopped the boy in the school uniform.
"Chen Yiqing, right?" Lu Mingran waved the cat in front of his eyes. "I should have passed the assessment, right?"
Chen Yiqing glanced at the cat, then at him, and said:
"I can't take it away. Someone must have used your blood essence as a catalyst, so this cat will only follow you."
Lu Mingran remembered that her arm was very painful when she was robbed... It seemed that her blood had been drawn.
"besides……"
Chen Yiqing looked at him in disbelief: "You really helped those two from the Chu family get rid of that evil spirit?"
"In the end, it was Gu He who helped."
Chen Yiqing fell silent, staring at him in shock.
Afterwards, Lu Mingran wanted to take the cat to Chen Yiqing's house for the night, but Chen Yiqing wasn't that nice. Lu Mingran couldn't go home with him at all, nor did she have the courage to deal with his fifty-six godfathers and godmothers. So she had to take the cat and go upstairs by herself.
Just then, Gu He came out of the room, and the two met face to face.
As they passed each other, Gu He called out to him and suddenly smiled:
"I feel like you're a little different than before."
Gu He and Xiao Tao grew up together; their families were neighbors. They often played together and would sometimes end up fighting. Once, during the Qingming Festival, Xiao Tao returned from visiting the graves with his family. Gu He saw him and started hitting him hard. Xiao Tao thought he was just playing around like before, so he punched him back.
The punch missed, leaving Gu He's left eye swollen shut. With a black eye, he muttered:
"You've been scared out of your wits, let me help you get your soul back."
Yesterday, Xiao Tao was indeed craving something sweet. He took some jelly that someone had left on a grave and ate it. Afterward, he saw an aunt sticking out her tongue and laughing at him.
It was then that Xiao Tao realized that his friend was different from others.
When they got a little older and went to school, Xiao Tao stopped hitting Gu He with her fists and used them to deal with people who bothered Gu He. Often at sunset, the two of them would sit on the playground with bruises on their faces, copying each other's homework.
Later, when he was fourteen, Gu He met his future master because of a water ghost incident. His master said, "You'd better finish your studies. Come back after you graduate from junior high and tell me if you'd like to come with me."
Gu He decided to leave.
Gu He's parents cursed and swore at home for three days straight. One night, Xiao Tao secretly picked him up and took him to the station. Before they parted, Xiao Tao smiled happily.
"Ever since I became friends with you, you weirdo, no one wants to hang out with me. Now that you're gone, I can finally be a normal person again."
Now that they meet again, Xiao Tao is truly a normal person, and their relationship is no longer one of one person protecting the other.
Gu He said, "They used to look down on me when they saw me, but that's not the case now. Xiao Tao, I can protect you now."
Protecting?
Lu Mingran turned around. Just then, the wiring in the room shortened, and the lights in the hallway flickered on and off.
In that brief moment of alternating light and darkness, Lu Mingran's eyes remained unfathomable:
"If one day you were to die tragically protecting me, would you be willing?"
"I……"
Lu Mingran carried the cat straight back to her room, and before going in, she took a few red ropes from Gu He's room and tied the cat up tightly.
"I don't want to."
————————————————
The next day, Chen Yiqing's assessment report was delivered in a proper manner. It was proper because he actually wrote a letter asking him to go to his seventh aunt's house that evening.
At that moment, Lu Mingran was stroking the cat's belly while earnestly asking Guoguo for advice:
"If you really want to keep a cat, for the sake of the cat's health, shouldn't you send it to a vet..."
"Castrated?"
Thanks to Chen Yiqing's letter, at least the kitten's eggs were saved for now.
On the way to Aunt Qi's house, the kitten refused to show its belly again. Lu Mingran didn't mind, and walked into the winding alley, stopping in front of a dilapidated courtyard.
In the center of the courtyard stood a large water vat, filled with exceptionally beautiful lotus flowers. Looking at this, Lu Mingran thought of someone.
Yun Gu.
In the novel, Gu He clashes with Sima Cheng over Xiao Tao's matter. After a series of upgrades, reversals, and face-slapping moments, Gu He returns to S City to borrow things from several senior figures. To enhance the plot, the author depicts how these senior figures make things difficult for Gu He, and in the end, Gu He calmly takes all the ancestral belongings of these elders.
Yun Gu was one of the older women there. Before Gu He left, he smashed her water vat, spilling water all over the ground, where a piece of white bone lay.
Gu He said this was an evil thing and it would be best to get rid of it.
Looking at the alluring lotus flower, Lu Mingran walked around it with mixed feelings, trying to avoid it as much as possible. Before she could even knock, the sound of a woman scolding a child came from the west room:
"Who gave you the right to introduce yourself like that to your classmates?"
"Hello everyone, my name is Chen Yiqing. I always get first place in exams, and the tough guy at our school is my older brother..."
Every time you transfer schools, the first thing you do is find out who the best fighter is, eager to become their henchman. You think you're so capable? Do you have connections in both the legitimate and criminal worlds?
After the woman finished scolding him, she opened the door and told the child to go outside and do his homework.
And so, Lu Mingran unexpectedly met Chen Yiqing, who always had a cold face.
The mature Chen Yiqing held a workbook in his hand, his face still bearing traces of feather duster dust.
Lu Mingran couldn't help but burst into a loud, booming laugh.
At that moment, the woman in the blue cheongsam appeared gracefully behind him: