How Can Two People From Different Sides Ever Fall in Love? - Chapter 24

Chapter 24

◎ Chomp just one bite ◎

“Navigation complete. Wishing you a smooth journey.”

The factory-default AI voice of the navigation app ended, and the phone screen switched to show the route map from the starting point to the destination.

A winding green line connected the two places, simultaneously hinting at the convoluted complexity of this route.

Hollis reduced his speed, slowed to a stop, pressed the window button, and looked out at the buildings gradually drawing closer.

Two adjacent small villas came into view, similar in style and close in distance. No house numbers were visible; it seemed it wouldn’t be easy to find Raven without disturbing him.

Hollis took the phone off the mount, exited the navigation, and prepared to give Raven another call.

Suddenly, his ears caught a creak. Looking toward the sound, the door of the small villa closer to the direction he came from slowly opened to both sides. In the blink of an eye, a head poked out from the gap, eyes fixed directly on the vehicle outside.

Hollis wasn’t wearing his glasses, so he habitually squinted his eyes to observe for a moment before seeing clearly that it was an Asian elderly lady.

With greying, ear-length short hair and a sharp gaze, she stared guardedly at his position.

Linking this to information Raven had previously revealed, he immediately realized that the old lady surreptitiously poking her head out nearby was likely the “Laolao” Raven had spoken of.

Faster than thought, he didn’t even make the call; he hurriedly opened the door to get out, but forgot to unbuckle his seatbelt. He was snapped back into the seat and his head slammed hard against the headrest.

Action and reaction are equal; stars immediately drifted across his vision.

The old lady surreptitiously poking her head out nearby was indeed the “Laolao” Raven mentioned Li Lan.

Li Lan was getting on in years; she slept little and kept a schedule of early to bed, early to rise.

After consuming a breakfast prepared by her granddaughter that could only be described as “maintaining vital signs,” she couldn’t stay idle even with one arm in a sling, searching everywhere for things within her power to do.

She fed the cats, watered the flowers, and rested on the sofa for a moment. Then her “diligence gene” began to act up, and she stood up gingerly to see where else she was needed. That was when she heard what sounded like a car stopping outside.

So, she padded out the door in her slippers and saw a strange car and a strange person.

To her, Hollis also looked surreptitious.

When the two surreptitious people met, the one who recognized the other first hurried out of the car.

He stood with feet together, hands formally clasped in front of him, upper body slightly bowed, and greeted her respectfully: “Hello, my name is Hollis Lancelot. I am a colleague of Raven Griffith. May I ask if he is home right now?”

Upon hearing this, a flash of bewilderment crossed Li Lan’s expression; it was unclear which of the two names confused her more. Seeing this, Hollis suspected he might have found the wrong place.

Which step could have been wrong?

The navigation? Or the address on the original delivery slip?

“Oh!” Li Lan was stunned for several seconds. “You’re looking for Xiao Gu. He’s here, he’s here. He’s at home.”

Having said that, a kindly smile appeared on her face.

“Xiao Gu?” Now it was Hollis’s turn to be dazed.

“That’s the Raven you mentioned.” After explaining, the smile on Li Lan’s face grew more sincere. “Your Chinese pronunciation is very standard. You speak Chinese?”

Hollis replied modestly in Chinese: “A little bit.”

Knowing that the young man before her was Raven’s colleague, Li Lan was no longer on guard. Hearing that the young man could speak Chinese, she automatically categorized him as one of her own.

She opened the door wide, walked out with a face full of smiles, signaled Hollis to follow, and took the initiative to lead him next door to find Raven: “Xiao Gu is his Chinese name. He lives next door. This is the first time I’ve seen someone run all the way here to find him.”

Hollis kept up a polite smile, not daring to explain how exactly he had found his way here.

The two villas were so close that Li Lan was filled with novelty and talked the whole way. Until they entered the house next door, Hollis couldn’t manage to get a single word in to show concern for the old lady’s arm swinging in the sling across her chest.

“You sit for a bit. The kitchen is over there.” Li Lan led him to the living room, first pointing at the sofa and then at the kitchen nearby. “It’s not convenient for me right now; take whatever you want to drink. Don’t be polite, treat it like your own home. I’ll go upstairs and call him for you.”

Hollis still couldn’t get a word in, watching helplessly as the “disabled but determined” high-energy old lady went upstairs like a whirlwind, pounding on the door panels with a thunderous sound.

In the next second, the shouting upstairs seemed to explode by his ear; even someone with the sleep quality of a dead person would likely find it hard to sleep peacefully.

“Xiao Gu, get up quickly! Someone is looking for you!”

Due to the layout, Hollis couldn’t see the situation upstairs. He could only judge from the sounds that Raven had opened the bedroom door, exchanged a few words with Li Lan in a moderate volume, and then closed the door again. Li Lan came pitter-pattering back downstairs.

Hollis’s brow twitched. He almost ran over like a launched rocket to support this overly lively one-armed old lady.

“I told him. He’s already up; he’ll be down once he’s finished getting ready.”

Li Lan didn’t go to the living room after coming downstairs; instead, she headed straight for the door. “I heard him say you two have work matters to be busy with, so I won’t disturb you. Remember to come over for lunch!”

Hollis still hadn’t managed to get a word in before watching the old lady disappear.

When Raven appeared, he saw Hollis staring at the door, motionless.

“What are you looking at?” He walked quietly to Hollis’s side and spoke out of the blue.

Hollis wasn’t startled as Raven had hoped. Instead, he turned his head calmly to look at the head poking out from behind him.

He was just thinking that this grandmother and grandson didn’t seem to have much in common, but now it seemed he had spoken too soon; the habit of surreptitiously poking their heads out was exactly the same.

“Laolao,” Hollis answered truthfully, adding a candid evaluation, “is very energetic.”

“Startled?” Raven quirked an eyebrow and laughed.

Having an energetic Laolao at home is a blessing, but sometimes it’s quite a bother.

Because energetic people often find it hard to understand why non-energetic people are the way they are, just as non-energetic people find it hard to understand energetic ones.

Clearly, Hollis wasn’t the latter; his eyes were full of chores.

He shook his head and said solemnly: “No.”

He just hadn’t been able to get a word in.

“By the way,” before Raven could ask, Hollis volunteered an explanation, “I called you, but you were likely still sleeping and didn’t answer. So I looked for you based on the address on this.”

Saying that, he pulled out the crumpled delivery slip.

When Raven got up, he had checked his phone immediately. There were indeed missed calls from Hollis, which didn’t surprise him.

Add to that the fact that he had just woken up and his brain wasn’t fully clear, he hadn’t engaged in divergent thinking to consider how Hollis had found this place, given that he had never told him the detailed address.

He took the delivery slip in surprise, smoothing a small curled corner. Fading memories came rushing back.

“I remember now.” Raven had only bought something for this place once recently. “A guide I scrolled past online. I bought cassava sand for that father-daughter pair to mix with tofu sand for scooping.”

Ever since becoming a “poop scooper,” Raven searched for cat-related terms more and more frequently. Over time, the internet pushed more and more cat-related information to him.

Occasionally unable to control himself, he would buy things for the house even more diligently than he bought things for himself.

“This slip is quite old, isn’t it? Where did you get it?” Raven’s eyes ached just looking at it. He kept smoothing the wrinkles on the slip, one after another like continuous mountain ridges, but in the end, all his efforts were in vain.

Hollis rescued the slip from his hand. “The dry cleaner owner gave it to me. You sent clothes to be dry cleaned and forgot to check the pockets again.”

One previous time it was earphones; it was only because the owner felt the pocket was a bit bulged and wrong that he reached in, pulled out a pair of earphones, and returned them to Raven on the spot.

Otherwise, who knows how many more pairs of earphones he would have had to buy.

Raven had a germaphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but when it came to becoming diligent, he always just offered perfunctory effort: “Got it. Next time for sure.”

In terms of speech, Hollis was as lazy as Raven. He just gave him a look, too lazy to even speak.

Next time he definitely wouldn’t check his pockets either.

“Coming all this way just holding a delivery slip… weren’t you afraid I wouldn’t be here and you’d have traveled all this way for nothing?”

Raven gazed at Hollis without blinking, asking curiously: “So, coming over even when the call wasn’t answered just how important was this matter?”

“Give me back the keys when we get back.” Raven followed behind Hollis, opening the courtyard gate and waiting for him to park the car from the roadside inside.

He had racked his brain but never imagined that the answer Hollis gave was—

“I didn’t bring my keys. Once I’m out, I can’t get back in.”

Given Hollis’s verifiable past track record, Raven believed him implicitly. He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and grumbled internally.

He could bring along a long-forgotten delivery slip, yet he was always scatterbrained about the keys he needed daily. If he didn’t like carrying them, he could give them back; Raven could use them as spares.

“Here.”

Hollis handed a paper bag out of the car window. The packaging was somewhat familiar, but Raven was thinking about how to reclaim ownership of the keys and failed to remember it.

“What is it?”

“Breakfast.”

Raven took it. Arriving before the visual was a familiar sweet scent.

Opening it, sure enough, it was the pineapple buns from the bakery he often patronized.

He decided not to reclaim ownership of the keys for the time being.

“Don’t go yet, there’s more.” Hollis called out to Raven, who had taken the item and was heading back into the house, without directing him on where to park the car or caring if he still needed help.

Raven turned in a circle on the spot and came back. “More? Do you want a Manchu Han Imperial Feast for breakfast?”

Clearly, he was still holding a grudge over the keys.

“I’ve already eaten.” Hollis got out of the car and opened the rear door, signaling Raven to come and take the items.

“Oh,” Raven said in a cool tone, “so these are your leftovers.”

Hollis: “…”

In a sense, it seemed that was exactly the case.

Hollis turned his head and gave two dry coughs, explaining very stiffly: “They’ve just gone cold.”

Raven exposed him mercilessly: “It just so happens you ate a hot one, and this remaining hot one went cold.”

Hollis was silent for an instant, then closed the car door, grabbed Raven’s wrist to head back inside, walked briskly into the kitchen, and asked: “Where’s the microwave?”

Raven stayed here occasionally, and the microwave was the kitchen appliance he used most frequently. He didn’t even need to look, pointing out the microwave’s location casually.

Ding—

As the microwave started, the aroma of the pineapple buns began to spread bit by bit in the kitchen. Once heating was finished, the moment the door was opened, a rich fragrance wafted to the nose. Raven couldn’t help but start salivating.

This time, without Hollis having to do anything, Raven became diligent on his own.

He brought out the plate carrying the pineapple buns. His fingers tested the temperature, then he gripped the edge of a bun and found the right spot. Just as he was about to taste it, a head poked out beside him, and chomp—just one bite.

Raven saw the large gap in the pineapple bun and heard the shortcrust turn to powder with a crunch under the teeth. He looked at the person beside him in disbelief.

This person beside him was very well-bred, only speaking after swallowing: “There, now it’s leftovers.”

His brows, however, were knit together, as if he found the sweetness of the pineapple bun unbearable.

Raven: “…”

Brute.

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