Chapter 16: Acting Dumb

Lu Chenzhou walked out of the bathroom, ignored Baldy, and directly say down in front of the mahjong table. He then rearranged the stools that had been somewhat out of place, chose one, and sat down.

Baldy couldn’t help but comment on his antics. “Why do you insist on arranging them so nicely if we’re just going to sit on them anyway?” But he too went over and sat down on a stool. Cheng Xi noticed that, despite his sloppiness, he didn’t dare to touch Lu Chenzhou directly. Instead, Baldy took a mahjong tile and lightly tapped it on the table in front of him. “Aren’t you going to introduce your partner?”

“Her name is Cheng Xi.” He rang the bell on the table and lifted his eyes up to look at Cheng Xi. “Do you need someone to carry you to a seat?”

Baldy jeered, “She probably wants you to carry her.”

Xu Po also sat down. “Zhou, the doctor says that she doesn’t have any money on her.”

With a leer, Baldy said, “Then why don’t you use your body as collateral? As a rational man, Zhou would definitely be in high spirits then.”

This man in front of her really couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut, and Cheng Xi had already formed a distinctly bad impression of him. At this point, an attendant came into the room, bringing a whole tray of poker chips with him that he neatly placed in front of the three people. Without looking, Lu Chenzhou took half of his stack and pushed it to the empty seat next to him. “Come here.”

His tone wasn’t particularly commanding, but it brooked no refusal. Patients suffering from emotional detachment generally didn’t have much patience—Cheng Xi thought for a moment before obediently sitting down without further ado.

Baldy rubbed his fingers together, clearly eager to get started. “Two on two. Po, do you think we can win?”

Xu Po, smiling, replied, “Take it easy. Our good doctor’s unfamiliar with this game.”

“Heh, really?” Baldy glanced at Cheng Xi disbelievingly.

Cheng Xi smiled and didn’t reply, but her awkward tile-handling spoke volumes by itself. Just as Baldy was about to say something to Lu Chenzhou, her phone rang.

It turned out to be from Lin Fan. “You drove off?”

His voice was concerned.

“Yes…” After saying just this one word, Cheng Xi was interrupted as Tian Rou’s voice suddenly rang out from the other end. “Why are you being so gentle with her?” She shouted toward the phone, “Hey, Dr. Cheng, why are you taking so long? Are you sending him to outer space?”

Cheng Xi didn’t want them to overthink anything, so she said, “Something urgent came up, so I won’t be able to make it back. Please let Weiwei know that I left the car with Fu Mingyi’s friend.”

Tian Rou immediately started jumping up and down. “Damn, you’re really leaving me halfway? What happened to staying up the entire night? Cheng Xi, you’re really disloyal! I don’t care, if you aren’t coming back, your crush is mine!

A hand crept over, picked up Cheng Xi’s phone that was resting against her neck, and forcefully terminated the call. A finger brushed against Cheng Xi’s ear, a cold sensation, cool but itchy.

She resisted the temptation to rub it with her hand, and accidentally knocked over some of her mahjong tiles instead, and ended up hastily trying to reorganize them. Baldy, seeing the situation, couldn’t help but ask, “Are you alright? Why don’t you just admit defeat and surrender your body?”

Cheng Xi ignored him, meticulously arranging her tiles and starting to focus on the game. However, her tiles were too crooked, her playstyle too untrained, and her hand movement unbearable to look at. Even Xu Po started worrying for her. “Do you need someone to teach you?”

“No.”

And then she threw out a pair of tiles, one of the pairs that she had picked up from the table previously. Xu Po and the others were speechless. “Chief Lu, you’ve really managed to find a woman who’ll lose your entire fortune,” said Baldy.

But before he could finish, Cheng Xi asked, “Seven pairs form a set, right?”

“Yes,” Xu Po answered, preparing to explain the rules and the combos to her in a detailed manner. “A set of seven pairs—”

Cheng Xi displayed her tiles one set at a time and flatly declared, “Then I’ve won.”

“……”

“……”