How Can Two People From Different Sides Ever Fall in Love? - Chapter 16

Chapter 16

◎ Raven is widely acclaimed ◎

One of the forced melons Hollis arrived at the parking lot.

After getting out of the car, he took a detour to another parking space to confirm that the familiar vehicle was parked there. The heart that had been suspended fell back into his chest, and he lifted his legs to tread up the five-story concrete staircase.

His leather shoes made crisp thumping sounds on the stairs. Upon reaching the door, the sound stopped. After a moment’s thought, he retracted the hand reaching for his keys and knocked on the door instead.

A rhythmic knock-knock-knock. He waited for a few seconds; the security door showed no movement.

Didn’t hear it?

He knocked three more times, increasing the force this time, and even pressed his ear against the door.

The knocking ceased, but not even the sound of footsteps came from inside.

It’s over, Hollis couldn’t help but panic internally. This time he seems truly angry.

His brows shot up as he paced back and forth at the doorway. In his panic, he wanted to find a solution immediately. However, his behavior in the eyes of an onlooker looked exactly like a criminal specifically scouting the place while the owner wasn’t home.

“What are you doing?” The owner, who in Hollis’s imagination was truly angry, was currently standing in the hallway, looking up with a dazed gaze at the suspected criminal at his door.

Immediately, he thought of something, and his expression turned solemn: “Did you forget your keys again?”

Hollis wasn’t so devoid of social awareness that he would press Raven right now on whether he was angry. But he was more worried that Raven held a grudge and was hiding it. After a moment of silence, he held out one hand: “My hand hurts a bit.”

Raven tilted his head and nudged his lips toward the other hand: “The other one.”

“Ah?” Hollis retracted his hand in confusion. “Is it?”

“Fooled you. It’s this one.” Raven stepped forward to nudge aside the tall figure blocking the doorway. The moment the key slid into the lock, he whispered, “I’m not angry.”

His little trick seen through, Hollis sniffed, as if trying to find an excuse for himself: “Being angry too much is bad for the health.”

Raven was almost moved to angry laughter: “Now you’re offering critiques.”

Hollis followed behind him, step by step: “I wouldn’t dare.”

He chose to swallow the word “Master” that had surged to the tip of his tongue.

“Is there anything you don’t dare do?” The apartment wasn’t large, and both men had long limbs. As soon as Raven turned around, he bumped straight into Hollis’s chest. “Give me some space, will you?”

Like a puppy, following wherever he went.

“Sorry.” Hollis raised both hands as if to prove his innocence. “By the way, I saw your car when I got back. You arrived before me, so why were you behind me?”

Raven’s footsteps faltered for a second before returning to normal: “I went to a fruit stand. There wasn’t anything I wanted to buy, so I came back.”

In truth, that wasn’t the case. He had gone to a restaurant that served afternoon tea, but upon reaching the door, he had never opened it to go in.

Passing his own door without entering was certainly because he didn’t want to see Hollis again for a short while.

But he couldn’t say for sure whether at that moment he truly didn’t want to see Hollis, or if he was afraid that once he got home, he wouldn’t see Hollis for a long time.

They were all adults; they had been at each other’s throats during the day, so they had to adjust their mindsets to share a room at night. There was no reason for one party to infinitely accommodate the other.

But seeing Hollis’s pacing figure at the door, Raven’s mood became even more complex.

Hollis seemed to always be accommodating him.

And the person being accommodated seemed unable to control his fear and worry, yet acted with total impunity.

Raven didn’t want to continue this topic and shooed Hollis into the kitchen: “I’m hungry. Go cook.”

After the meal, Raven took the initiative to clear the dishes: “I’ll do it. You go shower.”

How could Hollis let him do it: “Master, why don’t you think of your several-thousand-dollar dishwasher? For just these few bowls, is it worth it making its move?”

Raven turned his body to avoid Hollis’s help and emphasized: “I’ll wash them by hand.”

“Can you even get them clean?”

Raven’s hand paused, and he glared fiercely at him.

Hollis didn’t do it on purpose, but it was hard to say if those were his true inner thoughts.

It was evident that in terms of manual labor, Raven was widely acclaimed.

“Alright, alright,” Hollis snatched the dishes from Raven’s hands and bypassed him to enter the kitchen. “Let’s not argue. I’ve always washed them; just let me do it. I like washing dishes.”

Raven accepted the kindness, but his expression wasn’t great. He sat at the dining table with his arms crossed, looking like a child who had kindly offered to share his parents’ burdens only to be mocked by them in the end.

After adjusting his mindset in the chair, Raven suddenly got up and stood by the sink, watching Hollis wash the dishes.

Hollis gave him a confused sideways glance, not understanding why he had developed such a great passion for dishwashing today: “What is it, Master? Acting as an overseer?”

Raven said expressionlessly: “Just do your washing.”

Subsequently, Hollis noticed that Raven’s gaze remained fixed on his hand.

The mist finally cleared a bit, and the light shone through.

“How much force could an elevator have? I couldn’t even feel it at the time.” Even though he said that, the curve at the corner of his mouth couldn’t be suppressed no matter what.

“Is that so.” Raven looked indifferent. After saying that, he turned and walked out of the kitchen.

“Leaving already? No more overseeing, Master?”

“Just wash your dishes.”

“As you command, Master.”

Raven’s departing footsteps grew even faster.

In the next second, accompanied by the sound of rushing water, Hollis hummed an unknown little tune.

But the warm moments were always fleeting.

Once they left the house and returned to their workstations, they turned back into Councilor Raven and Councilor Hollis with their different positions.

“I believe the People’s Rationality Party should improve its efficiency. It’s just a promotional activity, yet even today, you still haven’t given me a definite answer.”

“Just a promotional activity?” Raven sneered. “Does Councilor Hollis want to stick your party’s name onto the Light and Shadow Art Week and make it a Dawn Party exclusive from now on?”

“In cross-party cooperation, we aren’t holding on to it with a death grip and refusing to give other parties a chance to showcase themselves.”

“If your party were the primary person in charge this year, would the Councilor still be able to say those words so easily?”

Hollis didn’t refute him immediately because that was the reality.

The so-called cross-party cooperation was more about the gimmick.

They knew perfectly well in their hearts that the hosting party would eventually have to make some concessions; it was just a matter of how much.

Different parties of the same country were both opposed and unified in their positions. What Hollis had to do was try his best to make the People’s Rationality Party concede as much as possible.

Raven, of course, wouldn’t let him have his way, especially since he had signed a “military order” in front of Verdi.

“I don’t make hypotheses about things that haven’t happened.”

Raven didn’t back down an inch: “Is it that you won’t, or that you don’t dare?”

The battlefield without gunpowder was on the verge of erupting. At moments like these, a third person was needed to step in and act as a lubricant.

Silver played that role.

“Um,” she slowly raised her right hand. “It’s almost time to get off work. It looks like we haven’t finished the discussion. Do we need to stay and work overtime?”

Overtime required an advance application. When they were busy, they couldn’t always leave on time, but not tonight.

According to the plan, they were actually ahead of schedule.

Fortunately, the signal to get off work was more useful than any persuasion. The atmosphere of daggers drawn between Raven and Hollis instantly eased quite a bit.

While packing up his things, Hollis cracked a joke for the first time: “I hope when we’re waiting for the elevator in a bit, Councilor Raven doesn’t pinch my hand again.”

Raven hadn’t even reacted before Silver couldn’t sit still: “Pinch hand? What pinch hand?”

“Ask him. I don’t know if he wants to talk about it.”

Silver gazed earnestly at Raven: “What else did I miss?”

“Countless things.” Raven said neutrally, “Madam, which one are you referring to?”

“Tell me about the hand-pinching one first.”

Raven didn’t grant her wish: “Who said it? Ask them.”

Silver gazed earnestly at Hollis again.

Hollis explained the whole story in a few sentences, and Silver, for once, made no comment whatsoever.

Is he truly sure that four years ago, Raven was the one sewing his buttons and not the one tearing them off?

At the time to leave, Hollis’s hand was able to enter and exit the elevator smoothly.

After several days of arguing, Raven didn’t particularly want to see him. Taking advantage of the lack of a third person in the elevator, he gave a nod as a farewell and quickly slipped out.

Hollis curled his lip and drove off right after him.

Last night their relationship was still passable. This morning Hollis had parked his car next to Raven’s, and Raven hadn’t said anything. Seeing this man again before driving now, he only wished he could travel back in time.

Going back, they still had to take the same road.

Today was Friday, and the cars of San Loria seemed to have come out in full force.

Compared to the road that was stop-and-go, seeing the car behind him following like a piece of plaster in the rearview mirror, unable to be shaken off, made Raven even more irritable.

He finally managed to bypass the main road where cars were squeezed together and drove into an open one-way street. The car behind him suddenly accelerated, changing lanes to drive side-by-side with him.

Now, Raven’s peripheral vision was full of the car and the person lowering the window.

“Persistent as a ghost,” Raven muttered under his breath and pressed down on the gas.

The car body pulled ahead by a distance, but Hollis’s blurred voice drifted through the gap in the window: “Raven, there’s a speed limit on this stretch.”

Always law-abiding, Raven had no choice but to release the gas and silently tap the brake.

Back at the apartment, Hollis was the first to come over, reaching out to knock on the car window. Inside, Raven sat in the driver’s seat without saying a word.

The two seemed to be competing with each other. Finally, two beeps from the car alarm declared the end of this competition with Hollis as the winner.

Hollis held the car door with one hand and rested the other on the roof, leaning down to approach Raven: “Still angry? Your temper seems a bit large this time.”

Raven looked at the car keys hanging from the roof. Only then did he remember that he and Hollis hadn’t just exchanged house keys, but also car keys.

Once again, he wished he could travel back in time.

Having no intention of a confrontation in public, Raven took a deep breath, gently pushed Hollis away, and got out of the car: “Let’s go back first.”

Hollis thought this was a signal for peace and eagerly closed the car door for Raven. With another two beeps, he spun the car keys and strode to Raven’s side, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with him.

The sound of the keys being swung back and forth reached his ears. Raven’s thoughts were already in a mess; everything he heard was noise. But he neither spoke out nor moved, just kept a stiff face and walked ahead with his head down.

The breaking point was the moment the front door was closed. The keys landed on the entryway cabinet with a louder thud than usual.

Support