Chapter 3285

"You were in there for a long time?" Liu Shuai asked, seemingly very casually.

"My stomach was a bit uncomfortable. You haven't come over these past few days, is everything okay?" Yang Liu said, but her gaze couldn't help but fall on the cat in Liu Shuai's arms, her tone of voice very gentle.

"Everything is fine. Just now when I came back, I heard a commotion upstairs and thought it came from your apartment, which scared the cat away."

"It's good that everything is fine..." Hearing Liu Shuai say this, Yang Liu felt a bit uneasy, so she deliberately didn't answer his words but swept her gaze toward the cat in his arms, shifting the topic to the cat, saying: "Can you get rid of this cat... Those eyes are green, if one saw them at night, it would be terrifying..."

Liu Shuai stared blankly at the bedroom door as it slammed shut, sitting on the sofa for a long time without moving. Get rid of the cat? Green eyes?

Liu Shuai couldn't help but look down at the eyes of the cat in his arms. They were indeed green, but he thought they were very cute, like green gemstones. Clearly, this cat must have scared her upstairs just now, and scared her quite a bit.

"You said get rid of it, then I'll get rid of it. Wait for me to fully clean up you, this little wild cat..." Liu Shuai muttered to himself, looking down.

Just as Zhao Desan was slipping out of Sister Yang Liu's home, still feeling the lingering fear, and had just caught his breath after sitting in his car, his cell phone rang. Zhao Desan instinctively thought it might be Sister Yang Liu calling, so he hurriedly took out his phone without thinking. Subconsciously glancing at the phone number on the screen, he realized he was being narcissistic and overly sentimental. It wasn't Sister Yang Liu at all, but a strange phone number. This made him feel a bit confused. While pondering whose call this was, he hesitated and pressed the answer button, politely saying "Hello!"

"Desan, it's me." A familiar woman's voice came from the phone.

Zhao Desan tried hard in his mind to recall whose familiar voice this was, but after racking his brains for a moment, he still couldn't figure it out. Because he knew too many women, he couldn't distinguish different women by voice over the phone now. Because through the phone line, people's voices become distorted and aren't the real auditory experience. So, Zhao Desan smiled awkwardly and said tactfully: "I'm sorry, I haven't saved your phone number, I can't quite tell who you are. May I ask who this is?"

"You can't even recognize your sister's voice anymore?" The woman on the other end of the phone asked with a slightly surprised tone, then answered her own question: "It's your Sister Lan."

Sister Lan? Zhao Desan immediately understood. He thought to himself, no wonder the voice sounded so familiar; it was Sister Lan. He was immediately overjoyed: "Sister Lan, it's you. I was just saying why it sounded so familiar. Why did you change your number?"

"This number is more convenient to use." Ma Lan explained with a faint smile on the phone.

Zhao Desan nodded, a happy expression on his face, and said: "Sister Lan, how have you been lately?"

"Can't say good, can't say bad. How about you? Are you in the district or in the city now? I heard you're organizing training in the city lately?" Ma Lan seemed to know everything Zhao Desan did like the back of her hand.

"It's a system-wide training organized by the Construction Commission, it just ended this morning." Zhao Desan said, then asked with curiosity: "Sister Lan, how did you know?"

Ma Lan laughed softly on the phone: "Don't worry about how I know. Anyway, I have a general understanding of your work dynamics."

No way? Could it be that she even knows which woman I'm involved with? Hearing Ma Lan's words, Zhao Desan couldn't help but exclaim in his heart, then said with a grin: "Then Sister Lan, could it be that you even know clearly which woman I'm with?" He asked this deliberately with a cheeky face, so he could say this.

However, Zhao Desan was overthinking it. Ma Lan's answer made him breathe a sigh of relief. She laughed softly: "I really don't know that. How would I have the ability to keep an eye on your every move? I'm not the roundworm in your stomach. Besides, it's normal for a young man to be looking for a partner." Although since meeting Zhao Desan, Ma Lan had always placed her emotional sustenance on this young man, from beginning to end, she had never demanded that Zhao Desan had to be a certain way with her. On one hand, Ma Lan felt that there was a significant difference in their status and position, and on the other hand, the age gap between the two was too large. She was already a forty-year-old woman, facing the turning point of aging, while Zhao Desan was not yet thirty, in the prime of a man's charm. More importantly, the two might be involved in the same line of relationships because of her business affairs. Her rich experience in dealing with officialdom made Ma Lan understand better than anyone what officialdom was all about. If her competition with the Lin family in the business world was a commercial war, then the competition in officialdom was an even more brutal war. This kind of war without smoke was the most terrifying. She didn't want to affect Zhao Desan's future because of her dealings with certain officials for business.

Ma Lan's attitude made Zhao Desan feel very relieved, but at the same time, a faint sense of loss arose. What was gratifying was that she had clearly defined the relationship between the two, and she wouldn't pester him like those other women, which could save him from future worries. What was disappointing was that her attitude of taking things as they come when dealing with emotions made Zhao Desan feel that he didn't seem to carry much weight in her heart.

Zhao Desan smiled and asked, getting to the point: "Sister Lan, is there something wrong with calling me so late?"

"What's wrong? Can't I call you if I don't have anything?" Hearing Zhao Desan's words, Ma Lan seemed a bit unhappy.

Zhao Desan hurriedly explained with a smile: "No, I'm just concerned about you, afraid that something might be wrong with you now. I'm only at ease if there's nothing wrong."

A simple sweet word was something Ma Lan lacked the most. She smiled faintly and said: "I'm eating alone in a Western restaurant now. Since you're in the city, come over if it's convenient. I miss you quite a bit."

"Okay." Zhao Desan agreed almost without thinking, then asked: "Where?" He hadn't seen Ma Lan for such a long time, and suddenly receiving her call stirred up memories of the past. Ma Lan could be said to be the dividing line for him from a boy who hadn't lost his childhood innocence to a man. In the changes of his mentality over these years, she had left an indelible impression.

Ma Lan smiled and told Zhao Desan the location.

At this moment, Ma Lan had finished the call and placed her Nokia Vertu phone, worth hundreds of thousands, gently by her side. She sat elegantly on the terrace of an Italian restaurant, having been drinking a mango juice for quite a while. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, one could see the starlight in the sky flickering. Under the scorching light of the restaurant, a faint blush appeared on the woman's fair face, and fine beads of fragrant sweat seeped out on her straight little nose. She couldn't help but raise her wrist to look at her watch, her face full of anticipation.

"Hey! Baby! Alone?"