I Became the Rich Family’s Stepfather and Couldn’t Stop Laughing - Chapter 18.1

He regretted it the moment he said it and immediately tried to make up for it: “No, no, I meant… aren’t you cold wearing so little?”

Even a warm winter is still winter, and temperatures had been dropping over the last few days of the New Year. Xi Ling was wearing a down jacket himself and felt a chill the moment he stepped out of the air-conditioned car.

Huo Siyi’s gaze grew even colder and sharper. Even if the last encounter was truly a coincidence, the person before him was acting strangely in every way… Was he up to some new trick again?

Xi Ling felt like he’d been sprayed with liquid nitrogen just from a single glance from the man, making him feel even more drafty and start to shiver.

He shouldn’t have opened his mouth. The “deeply in love” persona he’d inherited from the original host had been shattered into pieces by that “Ah-Wei” blunder. Asking this now just made it seem like he cared way too much about Huo Siyi.

“I’m just a bit shocked. My car swerved because of a momentary lapse in focus…” Xi Ling’s brain worked at top speed. Compared to being caught off guard by Huo Siyi’s sudden appearance, he felt this was a much better excuse. He didn’t forget to take the initiative and ask, “I had an appointment with a friend nearby, so I parked here. Why are you here too?”

Xi Ling let out a silent sigh of relief. Did you hear that? I have an appointment with a friend, and I’m just stopping by, this isn’t some ‘chance encounter’ that you dreamed up. You’re just an ATM, so know your place!

Not only did Xi Ling give himself a mental thumbs-up, but he also started performing a little mental stage play. Even though he could only shout these things inside his head, Xi Ling still couldn’t help but feel a bit smug.

Huo Siyi, as usual, was someone you couldn’t get a word out of a state commonly known as being taciturn.

He naturally wouldn’t explain his reasons to Xi Ling. Instead, he turned to his driver: “Tell Xiong Bin to bring the car over.”

Ever since he was kidnapped two years ago, Huo Siyi always traveled with a security team. However, for routine daily trips like attending a meeting at a branch office, he only brought one security vehicle.

The driver was a veteran who had been with Huo Siyi for a long time. He immediately understood his boss’s intentions and signaled Xiong Bin, the head of the security team, to come and pick them up, while he stayed behind to handle the aftermath.

Seeing this, Xi Ling took a look at his car’s injured rear. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the other victim was a Rolls-Royce Phantom. He immediately winced in pain, he hadn’t even had the chance to drive one of those yet!

The passenger door of the Phantom was ruined, and the rear of his Cullinan wasn’t in much better shape. They would definitely have to wait for the insurance company to haul them to the Rolls-Royce service center together.

Confirming that it couldn’t be driven anymore, he handed the car keys to the driver. Since Huo “Gongzi” (the young master/boss) was footing the bill anyway, having Huo Siyi’s driver handle everything was perfect.

Xi Ling took out his phone, checked the time, and realized he was about to be late for his appointment with Chu Xinnian. He turned to look at the black business car that was pulling up.

Xi Ling opened his chat with Chu Xinnian and showed the agreed-upon time to Huo Siyi: “We’re going to be late. Can you give us a ride? It’s just for the residential complex at the end of the street.”

Xi Ling was afraid that Huo Siyi wouldn’t believe him, start overthinking, and then just throw a fit and leave. However, what Huo Siyi noticed was Xi Ling’s chat background: a photo of two clay dolls a big one and a small one, hugging each other, both grinning with their teeth out, looking incredibly happy.

Xi Ling had just been trying his luck; if Huo Siyi refused, he would have just hugged the kid and left quickly. To his surprise, Huo Siyi nodded after looking at the phone. Xi Ling couldn’t help but reflect: Have I been misunderstanding Huo Siyi?

Huo Siyi is actually a normal person, too. It’s just that the original host did too much damage and exhausted all his trust, which is why he avoids him. If I talk to him reasonably, he can listen.

However, as he opened the rear car door, he was coldly stopped by Huo Siyi: “Sit in the front passenger seat.”

Xi Ling thought, Fine, whatever. He was bumming a ride, so he couldn’t be too picky. But when he sat in the passenger seat clutching the unusually well-behaved child, he heard a “zzzt” sound behind him. The partition between the front and back seats slowly rose, leaving Huo Siyi in a private, quiet space in the back.

Watching the child suddenly press his head into his chest, Xi Ling couldn’t help but roll his eyes at Huo Siyi’s behavior. Oh, aren’t you just so high and mighty!

He cupped the child’s little face and gave him a mwah, then rubbed his fuzzy head to comfort him silently: It’s okay, we won’t lower ourselves to the level of your trashy biological father!

Ever since Huo Siyi appeared, the child had been exceptionally quiet, huddled in Xi Ling’s arms like a doll. It wasn’t until Xi Ling kissed and rubbed him that he hugged Xi Ling back tightly.

Father really does reject me. Although it was bad for the stepfather to use him as a human shield, compared to his father, the stepfather didn’t seem quite so bad after all. Forget it, I’ll stop wishing bad luck on him…

Meanwhile, in the back seat, Huo Siyi leaned back against the headrest and slowly closed his eyes.

The neuropathic headache that wrapped around his left eye to the back of his head had started painlessly, then intensified without warning a short while ago. Huo Siyi frowned and endured it for a moment, but the quiet environment provided no relief. He lowered the car window, trying to let the biting cold wind provide some numbing effect.

But this inevitably meant hearing the noise from outside. His senses were naturally sharp, and countless chaotic sounds, both loud and small, rang clearly in his ears, making him agitated and worsening his headache.

There was nothing urgent in the afternoon everything could be handled by Secretary Dong and Xi Ling and the child would be getting out soon. Thinking of this, Huo Siyi took out a specialized drug from the armrest box, knowing it had clear side effects.

Huo Siyi’s headache, much like his emotional deficit, was a rare genetic defect. It was not only difficult to cure at the root but even hard to manage symptomatically.

Fortunately, the medicine developed by the Huo family had excellent pain-relieving effects. However, while it reduced the pain, it inevitably made his thinking sluggish and slow, affecting his work and even his normal life.

Huo Siyi despised this loss of control, so whenever he was ill, he would endure it as much as possible.

Not long after taking the medicine, the car stopped at the mouth of the alley, facing an old residential complex.

Xi Ling hugged the child and got out. Although Huo Siyi’s behavior was rude and hurt the child, Xi Ling was a reasonable person. After his momentary flare of anger subsided, he didn’t forget that he was the one who started all this.

If he hadn’t messed up his parking, none of this would have happened. Besides, he knew the “ATM” had been difficult to get along with for a long time.

The “deeply in love but sick” persona he’d been pretending was now in shambles, so Xi Ling didn’t feel the need to keep acting. After getting out, he tapped the window behind the passenger seat.

Whether it was to thank him for the ride or to apologize for the car accident, he should say something polite. As for whether Huo Siyi would ignore him and drive off, that wasn’t his problem.

He pressed one hand against the back of the child’s head, pushing him into his chest to keep the kid from seeing Huo Siyi’s sour face and getting hurt again.

Xi Ling gave the rear window a perfect smile, already prepared for the car to zoom off and leave nothing but exhaust fumes. To his surprise, the window actually rolled down.

The smile in Xi Ling’s eyes became a bit more sincere: “Sorry for the trouble today. Thank you for bringing us over.”

He leaned down, just in time to meet the man’s brooding eyes.

Huo Siyi didn’t look at him, instead giving a slight nod to the air in front of him. His cold, slender fingers touched the control switch, preparing to close the window.

Xi Ling stood up and prepared to walk into the alley. But just as he turned around, he saw an incredibly panicked Chu Xinnian running out of the alley, holding a child who was wailing at the top of his lungs.

Xi Ling’s hands moved faster than his brain. He reached into the window and felt for the door handle. When he opened the door and pulled his hand back, he was unavoidably pinched by the rising window. He let out a sharp hiss, but ignored it, opening the car door and shoving the child in his arms into the seat: “President Huo! Wait a second!”

He turned and ran, shouting as he did: “What happened to Mingming?”

Chu Xinnian was completely blank. After agreeing on the time with Xi Ling, he’d taken a nap. When his alarm rang, he got up, dazed, to look for his child. He found no one in the playpen, but heard the child’s sharp screams coming from the small kitchen.

He ran over to find the child covered in blood and was scared to death. Seeing the knife on the side, he saw the child clutching his left hand and crying his heart out. Chu Xinnian scooped him up and ran.

He only knew he had to get the child to the hospital to stop the bleeding and get stitches; he’d forgotten his own coat and even forgotten that it was hard to hail a taxi near the complex.

Only when he saw Xi Ling did he regain his composure, stuttering: “Mingming… his hand… is cut…”

Xi Ling told him to run a bit faster, opened the passenger door, and let Chu Xinnian climb in with the child: “There are too many blood vessels in the hand, squeeze the child’s wrist to stop the bleeding!”

After that, he turned to the burly man in the driver’s seat and said sweetly: “Brother Xiong, please find the nearest hospital. I’ll explain it to Huo Siyi.”

Seeing that neither the father nor the son had coats, Xi Ling took off his own down jacket and wrapped it around the child before turning and sitting in the back seat: “Sorry, President Huo, I’m going to have to trouble you to take us to the nearest hospital.”

Huo Siyi was resting with his eyes closed and didn’t speak, so Xi Ling took it as a yes.

Although he felt like he was being a bit of a burden, it was just one of those days where everything piled up at once. He couldn’t just let Chu Xinnian stand in the freezing snow with a bleeding child waiting for a taxi, could he?

The back of the business car was very spacious. Even with an armrest box in the middle, a single seat was big enough for him and the child to sit side-by-side.

However, once he sat down, Xi Ling realized that the temperature difference between the front and back of the car was ridiculously large, comparable to the difference between summer and winter.

Not only was the air conditioning not on in the back, but the window on Huo Siyi’s left side was half open, and the one on the right was a quarter open, forming a perfect little cross-breeze.

Having given his down jacket away, Xi Ling realized in the most agonizing way possible what a “vicious draft” felt like.

The purplish-gray sweater he was wearing looked fuzzy, like mohair, but it was actually loosely woven with larger gaps than a normal sweater. It was very warm when there was no wind or when worn under a jacket, but once worn alone, the wind could freeze you through in a second.

Xi Ling first hugged the doll-like child to share warmth. With the kid blocking his chest, it was a little better, so he reached out and rolled up the quarter-window on his side.

But he checked, and even without traffic, the nearest hospital was at least twenty minutes away. If he just held on like this, the injured child would be fine, but he would be frozen to death.

Xi Ling was shivering and chattering his teeth. He didn’t want to disturb Huo Siyi’s rest, but he really couldn’t take it anymore. Between “losing his life” and “losing his face,” Xi Ling chose the latter without hesitation.

When he turned toward Huo Siyi, his first thought was one of genuine admiration. Up close, he could see the tailored suit’s impeccable stitching and texture, but that didn’t change the fact that he was clearly only wearing spring/autumn clothing with no lining.

The dress pants were crisp and slim-fit; Xi Ling didn’t need to touch them to know there were no thermal leggings underneath. He curiously stretched his neck to look down pure black gentleman’s socks paired with Derby shoes. Just looking at it made Xi Ling’s feet feel cold.

But it was only up close that he confirmed that not only was Huo Siyi not shivering, but he was actually asleep despite wearing so little and sitting in the wind?

Xi Ling concluded that if Huo Siyi didn’t have hyperthyroidism, he was either the reincarnation of the Red Boy, or Disney’s runaway Ice Prince Elsa’s secret twin brother, A-Wei.

Otherwise, how could he be like this?

Xi Ling reached out and waved his hand in front of Huo Siyi’s eyes. Seeing that there was no reaction and his breathing was still steady, he didn’t want to disturb him and just planned to close the window himself.

However, just as he pressed his finger down, Huo Siyi suddenly reached out, grabbed his wrist, and easily moved his hand away from the controls.

“Don’t.”

The cold, deep voice sounded in Xi Ling’s ear. His first thought, however, was: Wow, Huo Siyi’s palm is so warm…

With his hopes dashed, Xi Ling was still unwilling to give up. He let his eyes droop into pitiful puppy eyes, and with his nose frozen red, he looked as pitiful as possible: “I gave my coat to someone else. Please, can you just close the window for a while?”

He didn’t even need the AC; as long as the window was closed and there was no wind, his sweater would warm up.

But Huo Siyi didn’t even open his eyes. He just frowned even tighter and coldly denied him: “No.”

Xi Ling sniffled. Fine. So you, kid, are just going to be cold-hearted to the end and freeze me to death, right?

After Huo Siyi refused to close the window, the wind outside began to howl even more fiercely. Xi Ling felt like if he struck a match right now, he’d have the same hallucination as the Little Match Girl.