Chapter Four: Sleep With Me

After dinner, Huo Chengyuan watched the boy take his medicine and saw that he was feeling a bit sleepy, so he led him to the guest room.

When he came back with the blanket and pillow, he saw the boy sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands obediently placed on his knees, his hair slightly curled, and his small face, the size of a palm, delicate and beautiful like a doll.

Huo Chengyuan couldn’t help but reach out and rub the boy’s hair, smiling and saying, “There’s warm water by the bedside, remember to drink some when you wake up.”

Jiang Nian obediently nodded, but as the man was about to turn and leave, he silently reddened his eyes.

Huo Chengyuan paused in his footsteps.

“What’s wrong?” he asked warmly.

Jiang Nian pursed his lips and reached out to tug on the man’s clothes, gently shaking him.

“Husband, won’t you sleep with me?”

The boy’s voice was soft, like a little kitten who was begging for cuddles from its owner.

Huo Chengyuan’s fingers, which had been hanging by his side, unconsciously curled up.

“I still have work to do. How about I have Ningguo come over to keep you company?” he patiently coaxed the boy.

Jiang Nian shook his head. He didn’t want to sleep with any other man.

“Then remember to come and keep me company after you finish your work.”

In order not to add any burden to his husband, he raised his head and obediently said.

“Okay,” Huo Chengyuan smiled and agreed.

After the man left, Jiang Nian tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep, but was also very drowsy due to the medication. After lying in bed for about ten minutes, feeling uncomfortable, he slipped out of bed and ran to his husband’s room to steal a pillow.

There were two pillows on his husband’s bed, so taking one secretly should not be noticed.

He tiptoed into the bedroom barefoot and saw that no one was inside. He ran to the bed, quickly grabbed a pillow, and was about to run away when he suddenly remembered a question – why was he running?

He and his husband slept on the same bed, so even if he took a pillow or the entire bed, his husband would still sleep!

So the question was, why did his husband want to sleep in a separate room from him?

Thinking of the “Husband Observation Diary” in his notebook, Jiang Nian pinched his butt.

Could it be because his butt wasn’t perky enough? He wondered with a frown.

An hour later, Huo Chengyuan finished his work and decided to go to the guest room to check on the boy.

The guest room door was open, he pushed it open and saw that no one was inside. He hesitated for a moment before turning back to his own bedroom.

Ten seconds later, he found the boy sleeping soundly with a pillow in his arms on the big bed in the bedroom.

Huo Chengyuan chuckled, went to the guest room to retrieve a glass of water, raised the air conditioning temperature two degrees for the boy, then closed the door and returned to his study to continue working.

Jiang Nian slept until after three o’clock, cuddling the pillow and smelling the lingering scent of grapefruit on it, which made him smile contentedly.

Feeling very thirsty, he sat up and was about to get out of bed to find some water. But just as he sat up, he saw a glass of water on the bedside table.

Jiang Nian blinked, reached for the glass and found that it was warm. He couldn’t help but smile sweetly.

After drinking the water, he went to the kitchen to cut some fruit, knocked on the study door, and brought it to the man.

“Husband, have some fruit when you’re busy.” He smiled sweetly.

“Are you awake?” Huo Chengyuan put down his work and smiled at the boy.

Jiang Nian nodded, walked around the desk and approached the man. After placing the fruit plate on the table, he picked up a small piece of apple with a fork and offered it to the man’s mouth.

Huo Chengyuan had already mentally prepared himself for the boy’s approach, but he still hesitated slightly.

Seeing his husband not speaking, Jiang Nian blushed slowly as he was stared at with his pitch-black and profound eyes.

“D-do you want me to sit down?” he asked.

After a moment of hesitation, before the man could say anything, the boy burrowed into his arms, blushing shyly as he sat on the man’s thigh.

“Husband, eat the apple,” Jiang Nian said, holding the fork with his cheeks and neck blushing.

Huo Chengyuan was speechless at the boy’s actions.

After a moment of silence, he called the boy’s name gently and helplessly.

“Nian Nian.”

“Yes?” Jiang Nian looked up at the man. They were too close, and they could hear each other’s breaths clearly. Jiang Nian even felt a warm current passing by his ear, as if he had been burned. He quickly lowered his head.

Seeing the boy’s state, Huo Chengyuan felt that this could not continue. He needed to talk to the boy, but not now. He would wait until the boy’s head injury was better.

“Nian Nian,” he rubbed the boy’s hair and said warmly, “why don’t you go play outside for a while? I’ll accompany you after I finish my work.”

Upon hearing this, Jiang Nian obediently nodded his chin.

Her husband’s voice was so gentle and the way he rubbed his head was also very gentle. He liked being touched like that by his husband, it felt so comfortable.

“Well, then I won’t bother you. Remember to eat some fruit,” his husband said in a crisp voice.

Jiang Nian lifted his head and blinked his clear, bright apricot eyes as he replied, “Okay.”

Leaving the bedroom, Jiang Nian leaned against the door panel to calm down his excited emotions.

Ah, ah, ah, his husband was so handsome. Such a handsome, gentle, and mature man was his own husband. He was really, really, really lucky!

What did some little quirks matter? As long as it made his husband happy, he could do anything!

The door to Huo Nianning’s room was not tightly closed, and as Jiang Nian passed by, he glanced inside. The air conditioning was turned down to sixteen degrees, and Huo Nianning was buried in the quilt, sound asleep.

“The air conditioning is so low, aren’t you afraid of catching a cold?” Jiang Nian muttered softly while wrinkling his brows, and then he entered the room and adjusted the temperature to twenty-six degrees.

It was still early, so there was no need to rush to make dinner. He went to the kitchen first and took out the ingredients he would need for dinner. Then he sat cross-legged on the sofa with his tablet and started drawing his unfinished sketches.

It was strange, but even though he had amnesia, he remembered clearly that drawing and his own husband were the most important things to him. He even remembered the location of hidden files.

“Maybe for myself, drawing and my husband are the most important things that cannot be cut off,” he said with a smile.

Jiang Nian studied finance, but he didn’t like it. He liked drawing, but his parents had already planned his future path for him, and all the interest classes they signed him up for were the ones he hated.

As a child, he had envied other children who went to drawing classes, and he had argued with his parents about it, but it always ended in failure.

His mother pointed at his nose and said that only children without prospects learned to draw.

He was going to be a big money earner, and drawing only sold for a few coins. If he wanted to become famous by drawing, he might as well hope that a sow could climb a tree.

Later on, he stopped mentioning it and learned from free online tutorials. As he got older, he used his saved Lunar New Year money to buy courses and art supplies.

He has come a long way and has made a name for himself, with almost two hundred thousand followers on Weibo. A customized artwork can sell for several thousand or even tens of thousands of yuan.

Jiang Nian remembered some things from the past intermittently, and felt sad when he thought about his parents’ negativity and indifference towards him. He remembered that he had a younger brother who should be ten years old this year.

His brother’s name was Jiang Chenxing, and the name clearly showed how precious he was to their parents. Unlike him, his name was just randomly chosen without any meaning.

He pursed his lips, and his phone lit up the next second. He saw the man on the lock screen and smiled again.

It’s okay, with his husband here, his husband will always be with him.

The pillow in his arms was taken from the man’s bedroom and still faintly smelled of grapefruit. He buried his cheeks in the pillow, lightly twitched his nose, and instantly felt much more at ease from the pleasant smell.

He couldn’t remember whose job this manuscript was for, but luckily, he had a habit of taking notes and it was placed conspicuously on his desk.

He opened the spreadsheet, found the owner of this job, searched for their contact information, sent the draft to them, and asked them to confirm it.

After finishing his work, he sat idle holding the pillow for a while, then stretched lazily and perked up to make dinner.

In the study upstairs, Huo Chengyuan finished an online meeting. It was already after six in the evening, and the fragrance of the food kept wafting in from the door.

He silently laughed at the boy who had been insisting on cooking for him since he got home.

“What are you doing?”

Jiang Nian was frying fish when the man’s voice suddenly sounded in his ear, startling him. He accidentally got some hot oil on the back of his hand, causing him to hiss in pain.

Seeing the boy being burned by the oil, Huo Chengyuan felt guilty and furrowed his brow.

He immediately grabbed the boy’s wrist and rinsed it under the tap.

“I’m sorry you got burned.”

Jiang Nian shook his head, and seeing how much his husband cared about him, he looked up with a smile and said, “It’s okay, it’s just a little burn.”

Huo Chengyuan still frowned as he looked at the boy’s reddened hand and asked gently, “Does it still hurt?”

Jiang Nian replied, “No, it doesn’t hurt.”

Huo Chengyuan looked at the boy and his tone became slightly stern, “Be honest.”

“Uh, a little bit,” Jiang Nian’s guilty eyes wandered around.

It was impossible to only feel a little bit of pain. The burned area had been immediately rinsed with cold water, but a small blister had still quickly formed.

Huo Chengyuan felt very guilty. He held the boy’s wrist and rinsed it with cold water again, then found the burn ointment and gently applied it to the burned area.

Jiang Nian sat on the sofa and could see the man’s handsome and charming face with just a glance.

With this medicine, the place that had just felt a strong burning sensation was gradually being replaced by a cool feeling.

“Okay, be careful not to touch water.”

After applying the ointment, Huo Chengyuan retracted his hand and reminded the boy.

Jiang Nian nodded reluctantly as he watched the man’s long fingers move away.

Huo Chengyuan didn’t want the boy to cook in the first place, and now that his hand was injured, he strictly forbade him from setting foot in the kitchen.

Jiang Nian knew that his husband was doing it for his own good, so he sat on the sofa and obediently watched TV.

When it was almost time for dinner, Huo Nianning finally came downstairs.

He had been awakened by the heat and was sweating all over, looking as if he had just been pulled out of the water. At first, he thought the air conditioning was broken, but when he opened his eyes, he saw that the temperature had been set to 26 degrees, which almost made him vomit blood.

There were only three people in the house, and it wasn’t something his dad did. It must have been his stepmother. He couldn’t afford to offend either of them, so he could only sulk upstairs.

“What’s wrong, did you not sleep well?” Jiang Nian asked with concern as she saw his gloomy expression.

Huo Nianning said mournfully, “Yeah, I dreamed of the Flame Mountain and almost got roasted to death.”

Jiang Nian nodded sympathetically, “That must have been annoying.”

Huo Nianning: “…”
 

Author’s note:

Huo Nianning: You’re so arrogant, you’re dating my dad in a room with a 20-degree air conditioner, and you make me sleep in the Flame Mountain with 26 degrees (smiling.jpg)

My roommate is gone, and I’m temporarily safe (praying.jpg)