Xu Qingfan knew the girl was inside playing games, seeing as her computer status on QQ was still online just moments ago.
He originally wanted to knock on the door directly, but considering Xia Xiaoxiao might be gaming, he decided to return to his own home first, took her spare key, and then went out again.
The door was not double locked, and the key turned easily in the lock, opening the door. Xu Qingfan took off his shoes and walked barefoot around the living room.
When he reached the doorway of Xia Xiaoxiao’s bedroom, the girl was indeed wearing headphones and racing in QQ Speed on her computer.
He sat down next to the girl without making a sound, waiting until she crossed the finish line before tapping her shoulder and asking, "I’m going to buy groceries, do you want to come with me?"
Xia Xiaoxiao clearly didn’t expect someone to suddenly appear beside her, and that person was Xu Qingfan, whom she had been too embarrassed to face these past few days!
"Ah~" Her body jolted from fright, then, like warding off a bad guy, she rolled over on the bed, lifted a cushion, and hid far away, "Don’t come any closer!"
This scene looked all too much like the one in movies where the heroine is about to be defiled by a minotaur, and Xu Qingfan’s crappy sense of humor found it inexplicably funny.
"Hohoho~ You can scream your lungs out, but no one will come to save you!" He advanced toward the girl with a wicked smile, raising his "claws."
"Get away, I won’t play with you!" However, Xia Xiaoxiao didn’t take this as a joke. She thought Xu Qingfan was going to use an immobilization spell to bully her like he had done before, angrily throwing the pillow at him, then storming out of the bedroom with her slippers on.
Xu Qingfan was stunned on the spot, having spent almost thirty years in close company with the girl in two lifetimes, he knew Xia Xiaoxiao was genuinely angry, but he didn’t understand why.
Xu Qingfan suddenly remembered that it seemed like Xia Xiaoxiao started to distance herself from him during middle school in her previous life. He originally thought it was a misunderstanding that wasn’t cleared up and that was why they drifted apart.
Now it seemed it wasn’t so simple, or maybe Xia Xiaoxiao was going through puberty and deliberately distancing herself from him due to the differences between boys and girls.
Even though he had long decided to only think of Xia Xiaoxiao as his daughter or sister this lifetime, he couldn’t help feeling lost when he was truly disliked by her.
He didn’t want to watch their relationship slowly fade like in their past life, but he couldn’t see through the girl’s thoughts, uncertain of what Xia Xiaoxiao was really thinking.
"Maybe I’m too lacking in boundaries?" Xu Qingfan sighed and left Xia Xiaoxiao’s room.
He didn’t see the girl in the living room so he guessed she was hiding in the bathroom.
"So you’re that unwilling to see me?" he muttered to himself, originally planning to leave directly, but he thought better of it and went to the bathroom door, knocking and saying, "I’m off to buy groceries."
Xia Xiaoxiao in the bathroom wasn’t angry as he had imagined; instead, she was blushing and daydreaming while looking in the mirror.
The girl certainly didn’t expect Xu Qingfan to misunderstand, and, proud as she was, she didn’t reply to him.
Seeing that there was no response from the bathroom for a long time, Xu Qingfan shrugged helplessly and left Xia Xiaoxiao’s house feeling somewhat desolate.
It wasn’t until she heard the door being closed again that Xia Xiaoxiao came out from the bathroom, ran to the door, and waited in the corridor for Xu Qingfan’s departing figure to appear.
Only when his figure had completely vanished did she purse her lips and head back inside.
[I hate it, I keep dreaming about him these days...] Xia Xiaoxiao picked up her Dragon Cat stuffed toy and zoned out.
Clearly, that was the real reason she had been avoiding Xu Qingfan these days.
After leaving Lianhua Courtyard, Xu Qingfan the more he thought about it, the angrier he got.
Why do you have to be so special about your teenage years? Lin Wanning is still just as clingy as when she was a child, hugging his arm and cooing, "Brother Qingfan, Brother Qingfan."
[And besides, Wu Lingyu, Zhang Yiyi, and Xiao Ruawen didn’t say anything like that either!]
Fortunately, in this life, he hadn’t hung himself on a crooked tree, so Xu Qingfan immediately took out his phone and called Lin Wanning.
The phone was answered quickly after a few rings.
"Brother Qingfan~" Lin Wanning’s sweet, crisp voice came from the other end.
Just that simple greeting, even in ten plus years, one might not hear it on Bilibili despite donating to countless admirals.
"What are you doing, Wanning?" Xu Qingfan’s previously stern face instantly brightened with a smile.
"Uh... um... I haven’t been playing games all the time!" Thinking about how Xu Qingfan always nagged her like an old father to not play games for too long, Lin Wanning felt somewhat guilty as she responded.
Xu Qingfan inwardly chuckled at Lin Wanning’s inability to lie but didn’t expose her, "Being so good, right now I’m at the market buying groceries. They’ve got strawberries for sale at the fruit store, Wanning, do you want some?"
He picked up a polyembryonic strawberry that still had a bit of a green tint and asked the seller, "How much?"
"Handsome, this is fifty dollars!"
"I want to eat, I want to eat, Brother Qing Fan, buy it quickly!" The technology for greenhouse cultivation hasn’t been widely popularized yet, so it’s pretty hard to get strawberries in January. Lin Wanning hasn’t eaten them for a long time.
"Okay~ I’ll buy it now." Even though the price was outrageous, if Lin Wanning wanted to eat them, then of course he would buy them for her!
While picking strawberries and talking on the phone with Lin Wanning, Xu Qingfan only gave the bag to the owner to weigh after selecting a big bag.
Worried that the other party might use a rigged scale, he took out his portable electronic scale from his reusable bag and lifted it as a sign to the owner not to play tricks.
"Handsome, you can be completely at ease, I’ve been running my business with integrity for over twenty years!"
Xu Qingfan nodded and continued talking to Lin Wanning, "You only got a thirty-day ’A’ car, huh? Old Ma is so wicked to deceive people like that!"
"Exactly, the event promised a permanent ’A’ car for just being online for two hours, but when you go to the official website you find out it’s only a chance!" Lin Wanning said, huffing with indignation.
"Haha~ No worries, thirty days is enough. Isn’t there another chance during the Spring Festival?" After paying two hundred yuan, Xu Qingfan left the fruit shop with four jin of strawberries.
After he went out, he weighed them with his own scale, and found the owner had given him a little extra, confirming the owner was indeed a good and honest person.
"I know, I’ll eat them in a bit!" Lin Wanning suddenly said out of the blue.
"What’s up?" Xu Qingfan asked, puzzled.
"My mom is calling me to eat, I’m telling her I’ll eat in a little while," Lin Wanning didn’t hide anything and explained to him.
"Then go and eat quickly, a good child can’t skip meals!" Xu Qingfan knew she didn’t want to hang up and smiled helplessly.
"Okay~ So after dinner, will Brother Qing Fan call me again?" The girl let out a whimper of grievance.
"After dinner, aren’t we all supposed to gather at the secret base? I’ve already promised I’ll call you then!"
"Hehe~ Bye, Brother Qing Fan!"
"Hmm." Xu Qingfan hung up the phone.
After hanging up the phone with Lin Wanning, he did feel much better. To be fair to everyone, he then dialed Zhang Yiyi, Wu Lingyu, and Xiao Ruawen one after the other.
"You’re craving my cooking? I’ll make it for you this afternoon!"
"I want more, big prawns, braised in oil!"
"Sure, making it for our Yiyi!"
"Your aunt made a lot of chili sauce again? And fried eggplant turnovers too, huh? Looks like I’m in for a treat tonight!"
"I also made some buns, not sure if you, Brother Fan, would like them."
"Of course, I’ll definitely like Yu’s special buns!"
"A new song? The new song is already written, just say ’Brother Fan is the most handsome guy in the whole world, I admire Brother Fan the most’ and I’ll send it to you."
"Ei, Brother Fan, you’re so annoying~ ’Brother Fan is the most handsome guy in the whole world, I admire Brother Fan the most’..."
"Hahaha.... Say it again!"
After going through the phone calls with everyone, Xu Qingfan felt truly at ease.
[Is this what it feels like to be a playboy?] he thought to himself.
Xu Qingfan picked up the groceries he had bought and took them home. Eggs shouldn’t all be put in one basket, the old saying surely didn’t deceive me!
[Stupid tsundere, let’s see how long you can keep it up!] he couldn’t help but think smugly to himself.
At this moment, still at home, engrossed in her online addiction, Xia Xiaoxiao was completely unaware that, in just this short period of time, her "home" had already been "stolen" several times over.