After blow-drying her hair, Cheng Lele made instant noodles and continued watching the edited compilation of the male and female leads from “Love at the Time of Parting” at double speed.

Just as she was about to finish the noodles, the plot finally reached the kissing scene. Taking advantage of when the female lead was sick with a high fever and unconscious, the male lead kissed her.

The plot progressed. The day after being kissed, the female lead could let her imagination run wild and blush just from looking at the male lead’s ankle.

This…

No words to complain.

Just then, Chen An came to the table to pour himself some water. Cheng Lele ate her noodles while secretly looking at Chen An’s ankle.

She recalled that when little brother played soccer, he was like Beckham with his golden left foot. She stretched her head in that direction and glanced at his left foot again.

Quite pale, very clean.

What was there to fantasize about? Was the female lead a foot fetishist?

She irritably locked her phone screen.

Cheng Lele felt that her situation was completely different from the female lead in the TV series. This plot had no reference value.

Facing Chen An was like facing Cheng Dong—they were family. Just like how Huang Wei could comment that Chen An was handsome, but she herself had no awareness of little brother’s handsomeness, because their emotional relationship transcended gender and aesthetics.

Her phone dinged. A junior schoolmate from university sent her a link, saying it was a survey questionnaire designed for the elective course “Marriage and Love,” aimed at understanding different age groups’ views on marriage.

She spent a few minutes filling it out and asked: [Did this course teach you how to like someone?]

Junior: [You mean methods to keep love fresh?]

Cheng Lele: [I mean how to make yourself fall for someone.]

Junior: [Senior, I’ve only heard of making others fall for you. Did adults arrange a marriage for you?]

Then the junior sent a Baidu Cloud file package named “Marriage First, Love Later”: [It’s all in these novels, take your time reading.]

Cheng Lele rolled her eyes: [Are there any tutorials on developing a family member into a lover?]

Junior: [Isn’t that illegal?]

Cheng Lele rolled her eyes again and continued typing: “Like the kind where you grew up together from childhood—”

A lightbulb went off in her head, and she thought of that childhood sweethearts couple whose wedding she had attended before.

Thinking of this, Cheng Lele immediately went to knock on Chen An’s bedroom door.

Chen An wouldn’t be able to finish this book tonight. He thought with annoyance—what was a subordinate doing knocking on her superior’s door in the middle of the night?

He shouted through the door: “What?”

“Are you asleep?”

Chen An didn’t respond.

Cheng Lele replied to herself: “Oh, then you sleep.”

After turning one page, Chen An felt restless and irritable. He stood up to open the door and saw Cheng Lele sitting cross-legged on the sofa. Her cotton pajamas clung to her collarbone, her shoulder blades protruding, her hair black, lustrous, and thick.

Hearing the door open, Cheng Lele’s face showed guilt: “Did I wake you up?”

“What do you want from me?”

Cheng Lele scratched her head: “Do you still remember that great-uncle-in-law who grew grapes?”

Chen An said impatiently, “I bought you grapes.”

Cheng Lele was completely confused.

Chen An calmed his tone: “Great-uncle-in-law’s health isn’t good. He stopped growing them a few years ago.” He also wanted to say: Who told you not to come back to eat them? Now you can’t have them and it hurts, doesn’t it?

But the resentment was too concentrated—he couldn’t say it out loud.

Cheng Lele said “oh”: “What I wanted to ask was, do you have the WeChat of great-uncle-in-law’s second daughter-in-law?”

Chen An: “…”

Chen An didn’t want to talk to Cheng Lele anymore. With a long stride, he flashed into the room and “bang”—shut the door.

Cheng Lele hadn’t even added him on WeChat, so how could it be great-uncle-in-law’s second daughter-in-law’s turn?! Who even was that??

Until the clothes finished drying, Cheng Lele didn’t see Chen An come out of his room again.

Little brother’s emotions were like an active volcano, erupting from time to time. She sighed and went downstairs, entered her own place, and as soon as she opened the door, she saw something extra on the dining table.

A bowl of peeled grape flesh!

Going to the bathroom to look, it was cleaned up spotlessly, everything repaired—it was like Mr. Snail had entered the door.

She sat on the sofa thinking with both melancholy and sweetness: What would I do without little brother?

Yet clearly, during these seven years without little brother, she had gritted her teeth and endured through it all.