Beautiful Fools Were Born to be Spoiled by Their Husbands - Chapter 6

Zhou Gangxun watched as Ruan Zhijuan’s eyes struggled to stay open. His head bobbed up and down, and a thin trail of drool escaped the corner of his mouth. He looked like he could roll over and fall into a death-like sleep at any moment.

He looked like a sow spirit who had just become human for the first time, only knowing how to eat and sleep while waiting to nurse her young.

Zhou Gangxun turned his head away. Looking at him for too long felt like it was polluting his eyes.

But Ruan Zhijuan didn’t know when to quit. Especially since he had just remembered the nightmare he’d had about Zhou Gangxun, he decided to take a hazy, half-asleep sort of revenge.

His fair, pale-pink feet began to cause trouble, kicking out randomly. However, given his lack of muscle strength, they landed on Zhou Gangxun with as much force as a cat kneading dough.

It wasn’t painful, but it was certainly annoying.

“Ow, it hurts!”

The person being stepped on didn’t make a sound, but the one doing the stepping was acting incredibly delicate.

Ruan Zhijuan clutched his foot with a pained expression, pulling it close to inspect it. He didn’t know what he had hit, but the soft flesh of his sole had suddenly throbbed with pain. It was probably one of Zhou Gangxun’s bones. Fortunately, it wasn’t bruised.

He curled his lip in displeasure, huffing as he glared at Zhou Gangxun, attempting to kill the culprit who had hurt his foot with a single look.

Seeing that Zhou Gangxun hadn’t rushed over to comfort him despite his cry of pain, Ruan Zhijuan got angry again. He shoved his foot right in front of Zhou Gangxun’s face, wiggling it for emphasis. “Look, isn’t the bottom of my foot red?”

Zhou Gangxun frowned. He had only just managed to settle the heavy breathing Ruan Zhijuan had single-handedly caused when he suddenly reached out and grabbed the restless foot. Those bottomless black eyes stared intensely at Ruan Zhijuan, his gaze lingering for a split second on the boy’s fragile neck.

Ruan Zhijuan was so startled by the scorching heat of Zhou Gangxun’s palm that he instinctively pulled his legs together. It was… burning hot.

He puffed out his chest, putting on a brave front as he stared back. “Have… have you seen enough?”

Satisfied that nothing was broken, Zhou Gangxun tossed the foot back onto the bed with a look of mild disgust. He turned his side to Ruan Zhijuan, cutting off the interaction, and warned in a low voice, “Behave yourself.”

Seeing that Zhou Gangxun had laid back down, Ruan Zhijuan, sensing victory, pushed his luck. He used the top of his foot to kick Zhou Gangxun’s shoulder and back, demanding triumphantly, “And make your breathing quieter, too.”

Zhou Gangxun’s chest rose and fell slowly. He didn’t want to deal with Ruan Zhijuan any further, so he buried his nose and mouth into the pillow to muffle his breathing.

Work at the construction site started around five in the morning to keep up with the schedule. He only had a few hours of sleep left.

Seeing Zhou Gangxun obediently go to sleep, Ruan Zhijuan finally lay back down, satisfied. However, his eyes remained open, monitoring Zhou Gangxun’s back like a supervisor.

It wasn’t until ten minutes later that Ruan Zhijuan slipped out of bed and crept toward the kitchen on his tiptoes.

He had heard Zhou Gangxun come home with a plastic bag, and there had been a faint, sweet scent of fruit. He must have bought something delicious. He climbed down quietly, went to the kitchen, and opened the transparent bag. Inside were three peaches.

“Why are they all bruised?” Ruan Zhijuan murmured regretfully.

Hmph, that pauper Zhou Gangxun must have only been able to afford the cheap, rotten peaches that go on sale at night.

But these cheap peaches smelled so good.

And they were so big.

Ruan Zhijuan quietly cupped one with both hands and stuck out his tongue to give it a lick. It was so sweet.

If a rotten peach tasted this good, how amazing must a good one be?

It was far better than any peach he had ever tasted.

In his past life, every peach Ruan Zhijuan had eaten was bitter. He had assumed that was just how they tasted, until a boy in the village who was friends with the village chief’s son told him that peaches were actually sweet.

The boy had even given him a taste.

Well, he hadn’t given him the actual fruit, he’d only let him lick the discarded skin.

The skin had been sweet, nothing like the bitter ones he usually ate.

Back then, Ruan Zhijuan had thought to himself: If even the skin is sweet, the flesh must be incredible.

But he had never had the chance to eat one before he died. There had been a peach sitting on the table at the old blind man’s house, and he had been so close, just a hair’s breadth away from tasting it.

The memories of his past poverty seemed to sharpen for a moment, which frightened him.

His little face was clouded with sorrow for only a few seconds before the sweetness of the peach interrupted his thoughts. He took a large bite of the flesh, sucking in the juice. He took a look at the peach after every bite, terrified of finding a bug. After all, the outside was rotten, so the inside might… might have been bitten by a worm.

Back in the village, the peaches he’d scavenged from the mountains—the ones people had picked over and left behind—usually had worms inside, even if they looked fine on the outside.

Every time he ate one, he’d end up shivering in fear and tossing the peach away.

Then he’d watch the peach roll through the dirt, picking up a muddy, fishy smell that made it taste even worse.

Ruan Zhijuan chewed the fruit, suddenly squeezing his eyes shut tight. Such a delicious peach… I’d better just eat it with my eyes closed. That way, even if there’s a bug, I won’t see it and feel forced to throw it away.

A few meters away, Zhou Gangxun, who had just fallen asleep on the floor, heard a faint rustling of a plastic bag and the sound of someone gnawing on something. Thinking it was a mouse, he sat up with a frown and looked over. He saw Ruan Zhijuan surreptitiously crouching in the kitchen, his back turned as his hands moved rhythmically with whatever he was holding.

The sound was definitely coming from him.

Zhou Gangxun’s dark eyes fixed on him. “What are you doing?”

Thump! Startled by the sudden noise, Ruan Zhijuan’s whole body jerked. Because his eyes had been closed and he was already on edge about potentially eating a worm, the double shock caused his head to slam right into the cabinet next to him.

“Ow…” Ruan Zhijuan whimpered like a kitten.

“I wasn’t doing anything…” He didn’t dare reach up to rub his throbbing head, instead carefully chewing the peach flesh in his mouth and speaking in a muffled voice, “I was just looking around, just looking…”

“Looking around?” The kitchen was barely the size of a postage stamp, you could see everything in a single glance. What was there to look at?

Idiot. Zhou Gangxun passed judgment on Ruan Zhijuan in his mind and lay back down, unwilling to waste another second on him.

Once he saw that Zhou Gangxun was asleep, Ruan Zhijuan finally allowed himself to feel the grievance of hitting his head. With tears in his eyes, he silently whimpered as he continued to gnaw on the peach. For the sake of the peach, he decided not to hold a grudge against Zhou Gangxun today.

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