The Inconceivable Flame: A Fallen Angel's Disguise

However, Xiao Zhiren was quite familiar with it. So, he didn’t bother with her and continued to eat the noodles. All this time, her attention was still on him and she didn’t want to eat with him either. But she could say no to him, saying no to food was not possible. NOT AT ALL!

"Don’t you have to go to the office?" Ru asked as she took a bite of hot noodles without even blowing on it.

"I’ve decided to take a page out of your book," his words made Ru frown.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"Didn’t you say that we pay our employees to work? If we can’t even take a day off what’s the point in us working our asses off to make so much money. Right?" Ru looked at him impassively while inwardly, she was quite surprised. He remembered her words for such a long time. That felt weird. "What are you looking at now?" Xiao Zhiren asked again as he saw she had stopped eating again to stare at his face. He even touched his face to see what was catching her attention so much today.

"Nothing. I just didn’t expect you to remember my words after all this time." Ru answered plainly while shrugging her shoulders indifferently.

Xiao Zhiren lifted his hand and rubbed her head saying, "I remember everything about you. You’re not easy to forget."

Ru’s lips curled slightly upward in an almost unnoticeable smile as she continued to eat. After eating the beef noodles together, Xiao Zhiren took the cutlery and went in to wash the dishes at the sink. Ru followed after him saying, "I can do it myself. You should leave now."

Xiao Zhiren turned to give her a pointed look as she said, "Why? So you could blame me for running away again?"

"What?"

"What? Are you gonna deny it?" Ru didn’t get a chance to reply as he went on, "You asked me to leave and I did. But then I heard you say that I took advantage of you and ran away. Now, would you enlighten me how did I take advantage of you?"

"Didn’t you?" Ru spoke on instinct as if she didn’t even need to think at all. But she didn’t realize the effect of her words on him.

Xiao Zhiren could only smile bitterly as he mumbled, "So I was just taking advantage." With a deep breath, he calmed himself and turned to face her abruptly. "Fine. I did take advantage of you. What are you gonna do about it?"

Ru was left dumbstruck at his reply. She didn’t expect him to change his demeanor that easily. Wasn’t he suppose to feel guilty and keep some distance from her? But what she overlooked was the fact that she had become Xiao Zhiren’s stubbornness now. Once he was in love with her, then that love turned into an obsession which only intensified with her absence. However, now that he learned about the real her, she had become his stubbornness.

Since Ru didn’t know how to answer him, she decided to change the conversation. "If you’re taking a day off, why don’t you spend it with Yuan?"

"He’s planning his summer vacations with Zhang Han. He’s not home." Xiao Zhiren answered calmly and dried the cutlery before wiping the counter.

"Why are you here really?" Ru asked the question that was bugging her for a while now.

"Do you have coffee beans?" Xiao Zhiren asked his own question.

Ru walked by his side and opened the cabin. She passed him an airtight container of coffee beans. Xiao Zhiren checked the beans and smiled saying, "Didn’t expect to find the world’s finest coffee beans in a tea lover’s house."

"Shocked?" She inquired.

"Nope. Just surprised." He answered before busying himself with grinding the coffee beans. Ru watched his movements with intent as he slowly and yet swiftly brewed himself a cup of strong coffee. She could tell it was strong with the strong aroma that was engulfing her.

She always thought tea ceremony was the only sophisticated act. Who knew Coffee Brewing could be this satisfying. Also, who knew she wasn’t finding the coffee brewing satisfying and relaxing rather it was the person who was performing the brewing.

She saw him taking a whiff of the aroma from his mug and grew impatient. "You still haven’t answered my question."

Taking a sip of his coffee in contentment, Xiao Zhiren lifted his eyes to look at her and said, "If I said my reason for being here out loud, you’ll get frustrated. It’s better to let it go."

"I’m already frustrated seeing you roaming around in my kitchen like you own this place," Ru replied rather sharply.

"Hmm... I understand." Saying that he walked towards the chaise lounge that was placed right before the floor to ceiling glass walls.

Ru couldn’t tell what his words really meant. He understand? What did he understand? Someone should make her understand as well!

"I’d have offered you the coffee but you don’t like it at all." Xiao Zhiren voiced out languidly. Finding her silence odd, he looked at her to see her already gone from his side. He decided not to look for her. She’d push him further away otherwise. He needed her to come to him herself. For once, he wanted her to look for him.

It had been an hour since Ru vanished. He knew she was inside the apartment but why wasn’t she coming out. Just when he thought that she won’t come, he saw her walking towards him with a vacuum cleaner in tow.

"Mr. Xiao, enough dilly-dallying. You have to clean what you messed up. Take responsibility for your actions." Xiao Zhiren felt speechless at her speech of righteousness. She really wasn’t gonna let him off the hook. Sigh! It didn’t matter much so he took the vacuum cleaner from her and decided to clean silently.

But something in him wasn’t planning on acting in a civilized way. And that’s why when he was walking past her, he stopped to whisper, "Why don’t I take responsibility for that kiss as well?"

Ru’s back straightened up at his remark. "No need for that. As a sworn brother, I’ll let you go for that."

Xiao Zhiren replied with, "Sworn brothers don’t know what they taste like. But I certainly know what you taste like. So, stop calling me your so-called sworn brother."

Xiao Zhiren felt pleased to see her reaction and moved to clean up the apartment. In all honesty, there wasn’t a speck of dust in her apartment. He knew she was just messing with him but since it allowed him to stay with her, he didn’t mind at all.

While he got busy with vacuuming the first floor, Ru again left him alone.

Later he found her on the second floor’s balcony. She was watering the plants. The potted plants didn’t have a single flower but looked pleasing to the eye. He left her there and one by one cleaned the other rooms on the second floor. However, before he could enter the room at the end of the hallway, he stopped in his track.

He had noticed a weird thing already. Every room had a wooden alphabet carved on it. For instance, this room had a letter ’S’ on it and the other room on this floor had ’A’ engraved on the door. And the rooms downstairs had ’D’, ’O’ and ’W’ subsequently.

No matter how he thought about it, he felt like something was missing. These letters meant something but what? Trying to list the alphabets together, his mind worked like a machine as he came to a conclusion, the best possibility was the word, ’SHADOW’. But a letter was missing. He didn’t find the room with ’H’ letter. Where was that? Or was he overthinking again?

He traced back his steps and noted how the hallway looked bigger than the sizes of the rooms. That only meant one thing, there was a hidden room right here.

"Is it really shadow?" He voiced out while touching the wall.

"Access to Shadow Zone denied. Voice authorization failed." Raven’s systematic voice echoed in the hallway.

"What are you doing?" Ru’s voice came right after that from behind him taking him by surprise.