Xia Qingyi peered at him and stayed unmoving on the spot.

“Why are you still standing there like a fool, don’t you want to go upstairs and sleep!”

Only then did Xia Qingyi climb on his back and curled herself up into a ball, her eyes staring fixedly at the whorl on his head.

It was only after Mo Han stood up with her on his back that he realized how light she was. His hands felt how bony her legs were. She did not put her arms down around his neck, but had carefully placed them on his shoulders in a cross. He could even feel the bones in her thin arms.

“I left work too late today,” Mo Han said.

“I know.”

“Don’t wait for me next time, watch some television if you’re bored and you’ll fall asleep after a while.”

“Yes.”

Mo Han reached a hand out to press for the lift button, and the two of them entered the lift. Xia Qingyi said, “My legs aren’t numb anymore, you can put me down now.”

Mo Han released her and placed her on the ground. Hugging the rug close to herself, Xia Qingyi leaned against the back wall and kept silent, watching the number on the lift increase.

“I will try to come back early next time,” Mo Han spoke slowly.

Xia Qingyi watched him out of the corner of her eyes and nodded. “Okay.”

Mo Han had never thought that there would be a day when someone would sit at his house downstairs and wait for him to the point of falling asleep. Never had anyone done this before. Even for the years together with Shen Rou, they had only gone out to restaurants. Both Shen Rou’s and his sense of time had always been rather accurate, so they never had to wait for each other.

When he was in university, he would see girls sitting at the dorm downstairs doing nothing as they wait for their boyfriends, and he had always thought that it was something foolish. They would continue waiting aimlessly despite not knowing when their boyfriends would return. Why bother wasting their time on something so trivial and meaningless?

Except that, today, after seeing Xia Qingyi wait for him downstairs until she fell asleep, a complicated mix of emotions stirred within him.

He did not like it and he was not happy about it, which was why he had lost his temper.

He did not know why, but he felt his heart soften when Xia Qingyi looked at him as she said that she was waiting for him. He could almost understand how the boys from the dorms had felt at that time when they ran happily towards their girlfriends knowing that the girls had waited for them.

Just thinking that there was someone who would wait for you made him feel happy.

Xia Qingyi no longer felt sleepy the moment she reached home, likely because she had slept outside for so long. Now that she felt more awake, the memory of her telling Mo Han to help her take a look at the tattoo on her back this morning resurfaced in her mind.

“Help me take a photo,” Xia Qingyi ran to Mo Han’s side.

“Take what photo?” Mo Han had just taken off his suit and was sitting on the sofa resting.

“Didn’t you say that you’d help me take a photo of the tattoo on my back this morning?” She passed her phone to him.

It was only then Mo Han remembered. He took her phone, stood up and waved for her to come closer so that he could take a clearer photo.

Xia Qingyi moved over with her back facing him. He held onto her waist, pulled up her shirt with one hand and looked at the tattoo again. The back view of a man’s upper body.

The tattoo was actually a picture of an outline. Even if the outline was drawn using a few simple strokes, you could tell that the back view belonged to a capable man. The tattoo was simple yet clear without much embellishments, it was likely that it was by a rather skilled tattooist.