Chapter 145: Ch 145: Let’s Go Home

As the sun slipped lower, the sky shifted into a long stretch of gold that softened at the edges into pink and muted orange. Shadows lengthened across the packed earth outside the restaurant. One by one the group began to stand, gathering junks, bottles, and the last scraps of conversation that did not need to travel with them.

Mo Xingxue took the handle of the stroller, then looked at the tiny figure in it. Mo Yan was wide awake now, small hands fretting at the edge of the blanket, phoenix eyes tracking the changing color of the horizon with open curiosity. Mo Xingxue laughed under her breath at the baby’s serious inspection of the sky, then looked across the thinning cluster of people.

Su Wanyan was still speaking with PD Xu Cui, Shen Guoxing dead asleep in her arms. The child had locked both arms around Su Wanyan’s neck and kept them there even in sleep, lips occasionally smacking as a wide, unconscious grin flickered across her face. The contrast—solemn professional conversation on one side, a clinging, dreaming child on the other—was enough to pull another quiet chuckle from Mo Xingxue.

Su Wanyan finished with a slight bow of her head toward PD Xu Cui, then turned. She found Mo Xingxue was already watching her. The smile that opened on Su Wanyan’s face was immediate and unguarded, the kind that arrived before thought could shape it.

"Xuexue."

She crossed the short distance carefully, adjusting her hold so Shen Guoxing’s head stayed settled against her shoulder. When she stopped in front of Mo Xingxue the smile gentled further, stripped of any performance for the table.

"Let’s go home," Su Wanyan said as she offered her free hand.

Mo Xingxue’s answering smile matched hers. She took the hand without hesitation. "Un. Let’s go home."

She pushed the stroller forward, leading. Their joined hands swung once between them and then simply stayed linked as they started along the path that would take them to the house assigned for the next two weeks.

They had nearly cleared the edge of the gathering when Zhao Yichen’s voice caught them.

"Guys!"

Both turned. Confusion sat lightly on their faces. Zhao Yichen jogged a few steps closer, grinning.

"What direction is the house that was assigned to you?"

"Straight ahead," Su Wanyan said. "When you see a slightly larger house, that’s it."

Zhao Yichen tilted his head. "The one with the spacious porch?"

"Yeah." Su Wanyan shifted Shen Guoxing a fraction higher against her shoulder. "Why?"

His grin widened. "We live close to each other!" He hooked a thumb toward Qin Yuran, who was still lingering near Song Meiyu. "Theirs too!"

Understanding landed, then warmth. Su Wanyan’s eyes brightened. She dipped her head in exaggerated formality.

"Hello, neighbors!"

Zhao Yichen laughed and waved her off. "Okay, okay. I won’t disturb you anymore."

Su Wanyan nodded, still smiling, and turned back to the path. She and Mo Xingxue continued on, hands still tightly clasped, the stroller rolling ahead of them and the sleeping weight of Shen Guoxing secure against Su Wanyan’s chest. Their house with the wide porch waited somewhere beyond the next stretch of road—temporary, borrowed for a fortnight, but already beginning to feel like a place they were walking toward together rather than merely assigned.

Behind them, at what remained of the table, Zhao Yichen stepped in behind Han Jiho and wrapped both arms around him, chin settling on the top of Han Jiho’s head. Han Jiho did not shove him away this time, he simply stood and allowed it. Encouraged, Zhao Yichen began a slow, idle sway, the motion small enough to pass for stillness if no one looked closely.

After a quiet stretch he exhaled. "Let’s go home too."

Han Jiho nodded and patted the hands locked around his middle—permission and request in the same gesture. Zhao Yichen let go. Han Jiho turned, and the smile he offered was softer than the one he usually wore in public, stripped of the dry edge that kept most people at a measured distance.

"Are you tired?"

Zhao Yichen pouted and nodded, arranging his face into pure wronged exhaustion. Han Jiho’s chuckle was quiet.

"Fine, fine." He caught Zhao Yichen’s wrist. "Let’s go home."

Zhao Yichen’s pout broke into a real smile. He nodded, and the two of them moved off in their own direction—hot and cold in the same step, leaving the restaurant’s outdoor tables to the last of the gold-pink sky and the thinning sound of other goodbyes.

While Zhao Yichen and Han Jiho departed away, Song Meiyu remained where the tables were being abandoned, both of Leilei’s small hands held carefully and gently in hers.

"Let us take you there," she said.

Leilei managed a wry smile and shook her head. "Au-aunt—" The title still sat awkwardly on her tongue, new enough that she had to think before saying it. "I can really go home myself." The offer of company from people she had only just met left her slightly off-balance. Care this direct was not something she had practiced receiving, and the muscles for refusing it politely were stronger than the ones for accepting.

Song Meiyu’s sigh was soft and immediate. Worry etching into her delicate features. "Haiya, it’s already so dark. What if you get lost?"

She said it as if Leilei were the visitor and not the one who had grown up walking these routes after sunset. Leilei pressed her lips together, caught between the truthful answer—"I won’t get lost."—and the growing difficulty of turning down a concern that was being offered without calculation.

Song Meiyu did not wait for the internal debate to finish. "Besides, what if you get kidnapped, hm?" Her gaze dropped over Leilei’s thin frame and short stature, and the mental image that followed was vivid enough to age her on the spot. One pull, one moment of inattention, and the child would be gone before she finished processing the danger.

Song Meiyu shook her head hard, as if she could physically dislodge the scenario, then crouched so their eyes met on the same level.

"Let us accompany you there, okay?"

The silence that followed stretched. Leilei’s shoulders lowered a fraction. The weight of being the reason someone was still standing here after everyone else had left pressed on her from an unfamiliar angle. After a while, she sighed and nodded.

"Okay, Aunt."

The agreement came with a private weight she did not voice. I really am a burden, she thought. Old thoughts crowded in—familiar, practiced, ready to catalog every inconvenience she might cause. She had started to sink into them when a light, gentle touch landed on her cheek.

The contact was gentle enough to startle her out of the spiral rather than add to it. She blinked back into the present. Song Meiyu was still at her height, expression open and patient, the earlier spiral of worst cases set aside as she internally reasoned that the child was still in front of her.

"Okay. Let’s go?"

Leilei looked at that face for a long second. Something unnamed moved through her chest—warm, unfamiliar, difficult to sort into the categories she usually used for adults. She pressed her lips together once more, then nodded.

"Un. Let’s go."

Song Meiyu’s smile turned satisfied. She patted Leilei’s head, stood, and glanced at Qin Yuran. The alpha had been watching the entire exchange from a short distance away without interrupting—present, quiet, and waiting for the decision to finish forming.

"Let’s go," Song Meiyu said.

Qin Yuran nodded, smiled, and closed the short distance. Without announcement she bent and lifted Leilei into her arms.

"Wah—!"

The exclamation was pure startle. Leilei’s arms locked around Qin Yuran’s neck on instinct; small fists bunched in the fabric of Qin Yuran’s shirt hard enough to strain the cloth.

Both adults laughed—quiet, overlapping, free of mockery. Qin Yuran settled a steadying hand on the child’s back and began a slow, rhythmic pat, the tempo meant to provide calm rather than demand it.

"Easy there. Don’t worry—I won’t drop you."

Leilei gave a small "Un," then, a beat later, processed what she had done. Panic replaced the residual fear of height. She pulled back at once.

"I–I’m so sorry, Au-aunt! I didn’t mean to!"

The apology was for the hug—for the automatic grab, for the way her hands had treated someone else’s body as a fixed point. In her private accounting, holding on still required a permission.

Something in Qin Yuran’s chest shifted at the panicked face and the unnecessary guilt. She pressed her lips together, then guided Leilei’s head gently back to her left shoulder with one hand, undoing the retreat the child had forced on herself.

"You don’t need to say sorry, kid." The same hand resumed its patting, more firmer now. "You can hug me as long as you want, and as many times as you need."

Leilei’s breath caught. The permission sat in an empty place where refusal or conditions usually lived. After a moment she nodded, and the stiffness left her in stages—shoulders first, then the locked line of her spine—until she simply rested there, small and warm against Qin Yuran’s shoulder, no longer performing the work of being weightless.

Qin Yuran looked down at the child in her arms and smiled, the expression quieter than the ones she normally uses. A touch landed between her shoulder blades. She turned her head and found Song Meiyu watching them with a tenderness that needed no performance.

"Leilei," Song Meiyu said gently, "we kindly ask you to guide us."

Leilei lifted her head enough to look, then nodded. "Okay, Aunt." She pointed in the direction opposite the one the others had taken. "We first need to go there."

The voice was soft, milky, and certain of the route if not yet certain of her place in the company that had decided to walk it with her.

Qin Yuran and Song Meiyu exchanged a glance, then looked back at the child.

"Okay," they said together, and started in the direction she had indicated—three figures moving away from the restaurant’s outdoor tables into the dimming village paths, one of them carried, two of them newly responsible for a destination that was not their own.

Behind them, the last of the gathering had thinned to almost nothing.

PD Xu Cui remained where he stood, hands vaguely at his sides, surveying the empty chairs and the abandoned stretch of packed earth.

"So," he said to the unresponsive air, "where the hell am I going to stay now?"

No one answered. It was only him, the cooling evening, and the sudden practical problem of a producer who had arranged housing for everyone except himself.

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All budget went to Qin Yuran, Song Meiyu, and Leilei LMAO! Also, two updates because I wasn’t able to update yesterday ༎ຶ⁠‿⁠༎ຶ! (I informed the peeps in the Discord, but I forgot I haven’t told that to y’all yet LMAO!)