My Good Life - Chapter 4.2

He didn’t move.

I silently curse, “You neutered cat.” When I looked up, Li Weiwei’s slender eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses were on me.

We were so close that I could clearly see his eyelashes. With the streetlight passing through the umbrella, I saw his iris turn a shade of dark red then disappeared as if it was just a trick of the light. 

I reacted immediately and recoiled. Our posture was too ambiguous. I cleared my throat and, once again, tried to steady my racing heartbeat. “You…Take care of your cat! Not cute at all!” 

“So are you.” Li Weiwei crossed his arms and asked in his usual arrogant tone. “Do you think you can pay the rent?”

“Huh?”

“Give it up. You almost…”

Give up? Almost? Give up what? Almost what? Talking to this vampire was so…If I could beat him, I would’ve done it a long time ago!

I tugged at my sleeve, wondering if it’s worth risking my life for my dignity. At that moment, his phone rang. He answered the call no longer paying attention to me, and briefly responded with two sentences, then hung up the phone.

Li Weiwei’s expression was solemn.

“You go back first. Don’t go out these days as much as possible. If you do, don’t stay out this late.”

I tensed up. “Did something happen?” 

“Nothing. I just don’t want you to scare other people.” 

Me: “…”

“Take the umbrella and block your face on the way back.”

“…”

I wanted to slap that face so badly. I grabbed the handle of the umbrella and snatched it away as roughly as I could, resisting my violent urges. “Thank you so much!” 

Yes, I was pissed but I wouldn’t let myself suffer a loss by getting wet and cold and sick because of indignation—just because someone called me ugly. I’m well aware of two things.

First, I needed to update my comics.

Second, I didn’t have money.

Hence, I couldn’t afford to get sick.

I walked away angrily. Shaking the umbrella vigorously, Hei Gou was thrown off and jumped to the tree. After a few jumps, it landed on the ground and went back to the apartment without looking back. 

Climbing up the stairs, I remembered I haven’t collected the clothes I left to dry on the rooftop. As soon as I opened the door, I saw Meimei soaking in the pool, enjoying the rain shower of the cold spring night wearing two shell bras like Little Mermaid. She didn’t look cold though, even with the lack of cover on her body.  

“Don’t mess around in the pool too much.” While collecting my clothes, I reminded her, “I just got the leakage repaired. Don’t break it again.”

Yu Meimei looked at me. “Oh, there you are. Didn’t you say that the landlord didn’t like you? Yet he gave you an umbrella…again.”

“It’s raining, I’m not like you. If I get wet from the rain, I’ll get sick. If I get sick, I’ll miss work. If I miss work, I wouldn’t get paid to pay the rent.”

“Hmm.” Yu Meimei chuckled with a knowing expression on her face. “I didn’t see it before, but now I can. There’s a spell on that umbrella that keeps non-humans away. He gave it to you for protection. He must have liked you a lot if he went this far to protect you.”

“Huh?”

This logic…was kind of reasonable, wasn’t it?

Yu Meimei swung her tail. “However, that might also not be the case. I’ve heard from a rather reliable source that our landlord had a love story of his own in the past.”

She must have heard that from the old man on the third floor. No one knew exactly how long he had lived. All we knew was that he had the power to travel through time and space. He liked to wander around, so he wasn’t in the apartment often. Since he had lived for so long, he also must have known a lot of gossip.  

I didn’t have much contact with him. However, with Meimei living next door to him, we had an occasional encounter. 

The possibility that Li Weiwei had a love story caught my attention. I crouched down next to Meimei and asked, “Can someone like Li Weiwei really have a love story?”

“Yeah…but you stay away from me first. The spell on the umbrella is making me uncomfortable.” Only when I moved back did she continue. “I don’t know much, but apparently, Li Weiwei had a girl he liked before. She’s also a human like you, but then she fell ill and died.”

“What illness?”

“The girl got caught in the rain and got seriously sick. Her body’s too weak to get through it and so she died. I heard that Li Weiwei was depressed for a long time.” 

I was surprised. “Getting caught in the rain…at most you’d get a cold. How could she die from that? Was she born that weak?”

“That was many years ago…” Yu Meimei stretched out her finger to calculate but soon gave up. “It’s the time when there’s war going on and women are still wearing cheongsam.”

I thought about it. It seemed to be during the Republic of China. At that time, those who died from colds and common illnesses must have been a lot.

The Li Weiwei I knew looked young… But how old was he really?

“Now that I think about it, the reason he gave you the umbrella was either because he liked you, or due to compassion.”

“Doesn’t matter.” I stood up and hugged my clothes back to the room and said to Meimei, “Li Weiwei is just my material. He wouldn’t like an ordinary person like me so don’t think too much about it. Besides, it wouldn’t work out anyway.”

Yu Meimei flicked her fat tail and said slowly, “Just in case.”

I didn’t reply and quietly closed the door.

There wouldn’t be any “in case”. Living in this apartment was enough to exhaust all my luck in this life. 

I shouldn’t expect anything more. Expectations came with disappointment, and I didn’t have enough luck to get me away from disappointment.  

So, for my sake, I shouldn’t let my imaginations run wild in that direction and get caught up in them. That way, I wouldn’t be disappointed.

Especially when it came to romance. My experience in romance taught me that.