How Can Two People From Different Sides Ever Fall in Love? - Chapter 25

Chapter 25

◎ You ate grapefruit ◎

Raven resolutely refused to eat food given in pity; Hollis regretfully finished the remaining bread.

His moment of impulsive fun felt good at the time, but as the thrill faded, his low-nearsighted eyes slowly came into focus. Seeing Raven’s less-than-pleasant expression, he scrambled for a way to make amends: “What do you want to eat? I’ll make it for you.”

Raven’s thoughts were written all over his face: Make it with what? Air?

Hollis glanced at the double-door refrigerator embedded in the cabinets, thinking that such a massive fridge, when opened, would likely only greet him with cold air. He withdrew his gaze guiltily.

The kitchen layout had a very strong sense of being lived-in; the appliances and tools showed obvious signs of use, a world apart from Raven’s rental apartment. It made Hollis almost forget that in this entire house, the man in front of him was the one with the least “living” presence.

He was purely a living creature.

Hollis rubbed his nose, looking down, not daring to meet Raven’s eyes: “I’ll go buy some for you.”

Raven continued to use his face to express a question: Do you even know the way?

This time, it was Hollis’s turn to be speechless: “…”

Having witnessed Hollis’s god-tier operations, Raven gave up arguing with him. He silently pulled out his phone and skillfully opened a food delivery app.

Knowing he was in the wrong, Hollis didn’t dare trouble Raven further. He slunk out alone to carry in the items from the backseat of the car.

Raven watched him stand there with both hands full—large bags and small boxes—looking like he was hauling in spoils of war. For a moment, Raven was dumbfounded: “Are you trying to bribe someone?”

“Yes,” Hollis played along, “before we leave, remember to remind Laolao to definitely open the boxes and look, just in case something is hidden inside.”

Raven didn’t take the bait. He stood still for two seconds before walking over to take the smallest-looking box from Hollis’s hand, examining it closely: “Calcium tablets. For the middle-aged and elderly, hmm?”

“These are for Laolao, and some are for the two kittens,” Hollis explained. “I originally thought you lived together, but since you don’t, I haven’t found a chance to give them to her.”

“Who is your ‘Laolao’?” Raven complained, stuffing the box back. “We don’t live together because we aren’t blood-related.”

Hollis’s sapphire-like eyes revealed a crystal-clear sense of confusion and surprise.

Raven was also confused and surprised: “You aren’t surprised that biological relatives don’t live together, so why are you surprised that non-biological ones don’t?”

“Isn’t it normal for blood relatives not to live together?”

Due to differences in lifestyle and culture, it was common for children to move out after reaching adulthood and not live with their parents, let alone across two generations between a grandmother and grandson.

What surprised Hollis wasn’t whether Raven and Li Lan lived together, but the closeness Raven showed toward Li Lan in their several conversations; it wasn’t as simple as his relationship with an ordinary neighbor grandmother.

Hollis could understand general kinship in human society, but for it to be complex enough to be “closer than family,” he truly couldn’t figure out any other relationship unless it was adoption.

But was Raven…?

A flash of somber pain crossed Hollis’s eyes.

“What are you thinking!” Raven regretted returning the box so soon; otherwise, he should have smashed it against Hollis’s head just now to knock all those messy thoughts out of it. “A neighbor nearby is better than a relative far away, understand?”

Hollis nodded sheepishly, and under Raven’s increasingly dangerous glare, he hurriedly nodded again.

He tried to keep Raven’s face from looking even worse: “I’ve only ever interacted with my own grandmother, who is of a similar age, but she didn’t like my mother, so she didn’t like me. Even though we are blood-related, we aren’t close far less so than you and your non-biological grandmother. So…”

Unfortunately, it went against his wishes.

This sentence triggered unpleasant associations for Raven because his relationship with You Junyu wasn’t close either perhaps for the exact opposite reason of Hollis: You Junyu didn’t like his father.

Hollis perceptively shut his mouth, then lifted the items in his hands to change the subject: “Are you going to deliver these with me after breakfast, or go now?”

In front of the similar-looking small villas, Hollis easily lifted a hand, extended his index finger, and pressed the doorbell.

Not long ago, of the two choices Hollis gave, Raven chose a third—directly packing him and the large and small bags together and throwing them out the door.

Hollis watched the door close in front of him, then turned to the house next door.

The doorbell at the entryway rang, and Li Lan came out. Looking through the gaps in the fence, she saw Hollis standing upright like a poplar tree. Her smile was just about to bloom, but when she saw the things in his hands, it only bloomed halfway.

“This is?” She walked over to open the gate for Hollis, clearly asking an unnecessary question, yet she still hoped the answer wasn’t the one she suspected.

Hollis replied in fluent Chinese: “Laolao, these are some supplements I brought for you, and others are for the kittens. Since I didn’t know what brand of cat food they usually eat, I brought some nutritional supplements and small toys.”

Li Lan’s expression softened slightly upon hearing the perfectly pronounced Chinese, but she still didn’t approve of Hollis’s behavior: “Oh dear, you should have just come as you are, why bring things! In this economy, it’s not easy for you young people to earn money!”

Hollis smiled shyly, not answering her: “It’s not convenient for you, so I’ll carry them in for you. You tell me where is appropriate to put them.”

Li Lan felt they should be returned to the store. Hollis, as if knowing what she was going to say, spoke first to preempt her: “I don’t have the receipt anymore; they can’t be returned even if we wanted to.”

Under Li Lan’s suspicious gaze, Hollis maintained his appearance of a youth not yet deeply immersed in the world: “Really, we throw away the receipts as soon as we finish buying things.”

This was something Raven and Annie Li would do. Li Lan nodded half-believingly and stepped aside to leave space for Hollis to carry the items in like a “home invasion.”

The internal layout of this villa wasn’t much different from the one next door, but the decoration style was worlds apart. If the one next door was elegant Chinese retro, this one was a cozy American country style.

At this moment, the “non-blood relationship” Raven mentioned suddenly took physical form in Hollis’s eyes.

The decoration style of the house next door was clearly identical to Raven’s aesthetic.

However, the traces of life and the marks of time didn’t look like they were recently started; another elder must have lived with Raven for a long time in the past, and these were likely from her hand.

Hollis stopped his thoughts there and did not probe further.

Raven had no intention of mentioning it, and the result might be far heavier than imagined.

Seeing the gifts neatly piled up in the corner of the living room, Li Lan felt quite uneasy. But since they had been delivered, anything else she said would only spoil the mood.

“By the way,” she remembered belatedly that this tall man was here to find someone, and her tone suddenly grew strict, “where is Xiao Gu? Why didn’t he come over? With so many things, he just let you carry them over all by yourself?”

Li Lan didn’t know how close they were, but for him to visit here, it likely wasn’t too bad.

But whether good or bad, it didn’t seem like something Raven would do. That little scholar was practically a carbon copy of You Junyu; sometimes he was so fastidious she found it annoying.

As usual, Hollis took two seconds to react before realizing “Xiao Gu” was a name for “Raven.”

With a strange, unfamiliar emotion, he answered with the reason he had prepared on the way: “We’re going on a business trip tomorrow, so he’s packing his luggage.”

Li Lan was non-committal. Raven never brought his office supplies home; what kind of luggage could he be packing? It was more like getting ready for a vacation.

But in front of an outsider, she chose to defend the junior’s face: “A business trip? How come I didn’t hear him mention it? If I’d known, I wouldn’t have let him come back and waste these two days!”

Perhaps they are so close they can overlook everything.

Li Lan suppressed the strange emotion rising in her heart.

“The time was only confirmed recently, and besides, he wasn’t at ease without coming back to take a look.”

The logic made sense, but Li Lan still didn’t want her own affairs to affect Raven. She thought it over and asked tentatively: “Are you in a hurry?”

If they were, she wouldn’t keep them for lunch.

“Not in a hurry.”

This was the truth.

From the time the news of the business trip broke to the formal departure, quite a bit of time had been cleared for them.

Yesterday, under Raven’s instructions, Hollis had helped him pack his clothes. Going back would just be checking the luggage items so he could pick up the bag and leave the next day.

Hollis making this trip was less about “forgetting” his keys and more of a sudden impulse.

As for what kind of impulse exactly, even he couldn’t say for sure, as long as Raven didn’t pursue it.

“Fine then…” Li Lan swallowed the urge to ask more. She wanted to say something else but didn’t know what.

At that moment, her eyes swept over the eyesore of the gifts. Amidst a bunch of serious and solemn packaging, a few bright and lively colors suddenly jumped out.

She blinked, finally knowing what to say: “You’ve been here so long and haven’t seen the kittens yet. Come, come, Laolao will take you to see the kittens.”

Li Lan was as excited as if she were leading Hollis to see newborn babies: “You even brought them gifts; they need to come out and recognize people so they can thank you properly.”

Hollis felt a strange sensation.

He lacked experience in getting along with elders, and an elder with Li Lan’s personality was someone he was interacting with closely for the first time. She was so vivid and full of life, a stark contrast to Raven and to his own past experiences.

However, he didn’t dislike it; it was another expression of emotion between people.

They walked one after the other to the French window on the first floor. A half-height fence enclosed an activity area for the kittens. Across the fence, Li Lan pointed at the two kittens and said: “That’s You Si, you can call him Xiao Si, and the other is his daughter, Niannian.”

“Eh, that’s strange.” After introducing the kittens, Li Lan stared at the situation inside, scratching her head with her good arm. “Usually, this little girl Niannian is quite lively and isn’t shy around strangers. Why is she hiding in the cat nest the moment she sees you? I’ve only seen her do this when I take her to the hospital for a check-up and she sees the doctor.”

Fortunately, there was still You Si to hold down the fort. Li Lan gave a helpless smile: “What’s wrong with this father-daughter pair today? You Si has actually become lively; seeing a guest, he even knows to come over and say hello.”

This was the first time Hollis had seen the two kittens. Hearing this, he just gave a polite smile. Compared to the kittens, he was clearly more concerned with the humans: “Xiao Gu’s surname is You? Does it mean ‘the wanderer (Youzi) misses the hometown (Guxiang)’?”

The cultural resonance made Li Lan like Hollis even more. She immediately began pouring out Raven’s life history bit by bit, like beans from a jar: “His maternal grandmother’s surname was You. Because of the war back then, she left her home and fled here for refuge.”

A hometown one cannot return to, old friends one cannot see You Junyu wrote this longing obscurely into Raven’s name. Later, when she adopted the kitten, the simplest and purest dependence of the small animal made her stop hiding it and instead directly reveal this longing.

“Our two families have been neighbors for decades. I watched Xiao Gu being born and growing up; he’s no different from a biological grandson.”

“Oh, I also have photos of Xiao Gu from when he was little to now. This child was beautiful from the start; when he was little and his hair was a bit long, he’d even be mistaken for a girl.”

“Wait a moment, I’ll go find them for you.”

In the end, Hollis didn’t get to see the beautiful little Xiao Gu.

Because the grown-up Xiao Gu suddenly appeared, waved his phone, and expressed regretfully: “The Secretary-General just called; he wants me to go pick up a document. I think we have to go.”

Li Lan’s reaction was even stronger than Hollis’s: “In such a hurry? I wanted to keep Hollis for a meal. He called you, not him, right? How about he stays and you go yourself?”

Raven’s gaze swept back and forth across Li Lan’s arm in the sling. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out if she wanted to keep Hollis to eat a meal or to make a meal.

The relationship between this old and young pair was already so good that Li Lan even knew Hollis’s cooking was delicious.

Raven didn’t mind. Regardless of whether Hollis came or not, he had already contacted a Chinese restaurant and arranged for a meal to be delivered on time, so that Li Lan, who urgently needed nutrition, wouldn’t have to suffer Annie Li’s “vital-signs-only” cooking skills.

Since things had reached this point, he signaled Hollis with his eyes to let him make the decision.

Hollis hesitated for a moment but eventually decided to leave with Raven.

Seeing his mind was made up, Li Lan didn’t try to keep him further, only asking Raven: “Is it very urgent? If not, go and offer incense to the Lady Bodhisattva before you leave.”

“Okay.” Raven nodded and turned to go upstairs.

“I enshrined a Bodhisattva to protect Xiao Gu’s safety.” The voice explaining the situation soon rose. Hollis retracted his gaze and looked at the speaking Li Lan.

Earlier, Raven had entered speaking the language of the Olo Republic, but as soon as he left, Li Lan unconsciously switched back to Chinese: “As long as he is here, I will have him offer incense to the Bodhisattva. This child has a quiet heart and is smart; he can memorize the Heart Sutra after reading it a few times.”

Hollis was thoughtful. So the elder Raven mentioned was this one.

However, he was again surprised. Just how deep must the bond be to bring a Bodhisattva home to protect a child with no blood relation?

He still hadn’t grasped the meaning of “a neighbor nearby is better than a relative far away” until they sat in the car and left.

In the passenger seat, the other “neighbor” was using his phone to reply to messages. After a moment of operation, he suddenly sniffed the air in the car carefully: “You ate grapefruit?”

Hollis asked in confusion: “No, grapefruits aren’t in season yet.”

“Then why is there a scent of grapefruit?”

In the next second, Hollis’s hand tightened on the steering wheel.

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