Passion Raga Novel (Completed) - Chapter 64

Outside the pool, not a few steps from the surface where the water had just risen, stood Xiao Qun in a sky-blue dress, holding a large bundle wrapped around a box.

“Xiao Qun. When did you get here?”

Yuri swam towards her, looking around. Most of the people who had been in the pool had already left; only one person was leisurely swimming in the distance. Ling Xinlu was nowhere to be seen, meaning he must have either gone back first or was still swimming submerged in the water.

Leaping out of the water, Yuri picked up the towel draped over a chair, then belatedly noticed the heavy package she was carrying. He quickly took it from her and placed it on the chair.

“It’s pine mushrooms. Grandma says to eat them while they’re fresh. You can eat them raw or cooked. They must be good. The whole car smelled of pine mushrooms on the way here.”

Xiao Qun bent over the bundle. Yuri smiled, watching her inhale deeply, as if saying, Ah, delicious.

“I thought you’d be late if you ate dinner before leaving, but you came earlier than expected. By the way, have you not eaten yet?”

“Yes, I haven’t eaten yet.”

Yuri looked at the clock, which indicated a time earlier than he expected Xiao Qun and too late for her not to have eaten. “Really? Then,” he said, turning back to her. There should be something to eat back home.

Or perhaps they could eat these pine mushrooms she brought—though he’d need Ling Xinlu’s permission—just as she said, raw.

However, as if anticipating Yuri’s words, Xiao Qun waved her hand first. “No, I have to leave right away. I’m going to see a late-night movie with a friend, and I don’t think I’ll have time, so I skipped a meal and rushed over.”

Xiao Qun glanced at her watch, chattering that her friend was incredibly strict, and if she was late, she’d have to buy both the movie ticket and the meal.

“You wouldn’t believe how fast I drove to avoid being late. Thanks to that, I have a little time to chat with Uncle, which is nice, but I wonder if I’ll get a speeding ticket later.”

“Isn’t that more expensive than the movie ticket and meal?”

Yuri chuckled, wiping himself with the towel. Since his home was just a few floors below, he usually just dried himself lightly and went home to shower, rather than using the communal showers.

“Just come in for a bit, even for a cup of tea.”

“I don’t have that much time. Only enough to wait for Uncle to dry off and take the elevator down together. Wow, I knew it, but Uncle Yuri has a great body—Can I touch it?”

Yuri flinched for a moment, looking at the beautiful young lady who was smiling brightly and reaching out her hand. A flicker of embarrassment crossed his usually placid face.

It wasn’t that Yuri was so shy that he’d shrink back if someone touched his body, but he was still flustered when an outsider, a pretty and innocent-looking young woman, suddenly reached out and asked to touch him.

“—Where?”

A faint tension seemed to be in Yuri’s blunt voice. Xiao Qun clapped her hands and laughed.

“Oh, Uncle, seriously! Where would I touch? Just your arm, or your shoulder, something like that. Wow. Our Uncle has an amazing body. He must be popular.”

Yuri gave a helpless laugh, looking down at Xiao Qun, who was playfully stretching out her words in admiration, poking his arm with her finger.

“Thank you. Alright, then, let’s head down. By the way,”

Yuri paused, looking back, wondering if Ling Xinlu had truly gone down first.

His eyes met Ling Xinlu’s, who was climbing up a ladder from the side of the pool. With an expressionless face, he looked at Yuri and Xiao Qun in turn, then wiped the water from his face without averting his cool gaze. He casually massaged his nape and walked towards them. Xiao Qun, following Yuri’s gaze, belatedly noticed him.

“Oh my, Uncle Ling? You were here too? What a surprise, Uncle Ling doesn’t swim, does he?”

Ling Xinlu, who had stopped a few steps away, silently looked down at her, who was cheerfully shouting and smiling broadly. His usually polite smiling face was cold.

His gaze flickered, resting for a moment on Xiao Qun’s hand, which was somehow placed on Yuri’s arm.

Soon, she turned back to Ling Xinlu nonchalantly, smiling brightly with surprise, and greeted him cheerfully.

“You always said you wouldn’t go into the water, neither the ocean nor the pool, but now you’re swimming? Then we can go to the beach together this summer! But what happened? You said you don’t like swimming? You always refused when I asked you to go play in the water.”

Xiao Qun grumbled regretfully, “If I knew this, we should have gone to Bora Bora together last year.”

“I’m not going. Not with you.” Ling Xinlu replied expressionlessly. He glanced at Yuri, then walked to a chair and picked up a dry towel. When Xiao Qun tilted her head and asked, “Why?”, he muttered without even looking back.

“I don’t want to get into the same water as a vulgar woman who touches just anyone’s body, calling it ‘good’. I don’t want my mind to get distracted in the water and drown.”

Xiao Qun’s mouth closed, and her eyes widened. Yuri, too, unconsciously stopped moving. Hearing the insult, which sounded like a joke, Xiao Qun stared at Ling Xinlu motionless for a moment.

Slowly, anger and a flush rose to her blinking face. She gritted her teeth, glared at Ling Xinlu, and then smiled sweetly.

“Oh, Uncle Ling. If your swimming is so terrible that you’d drown that easily, you shouldn’t even go into the pool. How can anyone go in without worrying? If you die practicing in the pool because you’re afraid of drowning, isn’t that even more pathetic?”

“…!”

Again, Yuri flinched and looked at Xiao Qun. Ling Xinlu, wiping his head with a towel, glanced at Xiao Qun expressionlessly. Ling Xinlu was not so thin-skinned as to be provoked by such words, but he seemed annoyed since he was already in a bad mood.

Ling Xinlu seemed to hesitate whether to reply to Xiao Qun, but then, annoyed by even that, he silently turned his back again.

Still fuming from an insult she’d never heard in her life, Xiao Qun’s eyes sparkled as she glared at Ling Xinlu’s back. She checked the clock once, signaling it was time to leave, then clicked her tongue and scoffed as spitefully as possible.

“Well, with Uncle Yuri around, even if Uncle Ling drowns, he’ll probably save him again before he dies. But back then, he was a child, so maybe he saved him. Now he’s a grown man, and if Uncle Yuri gets into danger trying to save him, what a nuisance that would be… If you have time to take out your anger on others after being slapped somewhere, Uncle, then use your hands and feet to practice harder.”

Emphasizing “practice harder, Uncle,” Xiao Qun snorted and turned away. Her eyes, burning with anger, met Yuri’s. Seeing Yuri, Xiao Qun’s eyes softened slightly.

“Then, see you later, Uncle Yuri. I’ll go first,” she said, leaving her farewell in a contrastingly sweet, melodious voice to Ling Xinlu, and then turned to leave.

The clacking sound of her shoes splashing on the wet floor still carried anger, but that sound did not reach Yuri’s ears.

He didn’t even notice the last person who had finished swimming entering the shower room after the sound faded outside the pool.

Yuri just stood there stiffly. Frozen, motionless, blinking only occasionally. Strange. He felt a little cold.

It was an indoor pool, he wasn’t particularly sensitive to cold, and he had dried off all the water from his body, yet he felt cold. His back, where Ling Xinlu was behind him.

He didn’t want to turn around.

Yuri absolutely did not want to turn around at this moment, but the profound silence behind him—so quiet he wondered if no one was there—bothered him greatly, so he finally turned his body little by little. And then.

Like a creaking, rusty machine, Yuri barely turned halfway around and saw Ling Xinlu standing there, looking at him.

He was tilting his head slightly. Huh? he seemed to be thinking, looking at Yuri with a puzzled expression, as if wondering why that woman had suddenly thrown out incomprehensible words and left.

His blinking eyes were like a child who had just woken from a nap and couldn’t tell what day it was or where he was. He seemed to have heard something incomprehensible.

However, Ling Xinlu, at that moment, seemed more focused on something other than the words she had spoken.

He stiffened suddenly, standing motionless, then awkwardly turned, glancing at Yuri’s expression as if assessing him.

Ling Xinlu looked at Yuri with bewilderment, as if asking, Why is this man suddenly looking at me with that face, like someone who has committed a sin, when he was perfectly fine a moment ago? His obliquely tilted head shifted in a different direction.

Ah, damn it.

Yuri realized his mistake at that moment.

He should have remained calm, regardless of whether Xiao Qun left or what she said. He should have blinked innocently, feigning ignorance of what she was suddenly saying, and simply blurted out whatever came to mind, like, She seems to be in a hurry, so she’ll probably have to buy her friend the movie tickets and dinner. Or, he should have just calmly turned to Ling Xinlu and said, ‘Shall we go back?’ and turned to leave first.

At the very least, he shouldn’t have frozen as if he had a nail in his foot, turning cautiously and glancing at him as if trying to gauge his mood.

See? Just as he thought. When Xiao Qun left, that man had only frowned, looking confused, ‘What is she talking about?’ But while he was looking at Yuri’s face for a long time, hadn’t his expression slowly begun to change?

“…Shall we go back?”

Yuri mumbled quietly, chastising himself for not saying this about 30 seconds earlier. And as expected, thinking he should have done this about 25 seconds earlier, he calmly turned and began to walk briskly.

But as expected, after only a few steps, a quiet voice came from behind him.

“Mr. Yuri Gable?”

Yuri wondered if that man had seen his shoulder instinctively flinch, then calmly turned around. And with his usual poker face plastered across his features, he replied, “Yes?”

Ling Xinlu was looking at Yuri with an expressionless face. He looked at Yuri with a serene expression, as if thinking nothing, and gestured with his chin towards the chair. On that chair lay the box Xiao Qun had brought a moment ago.

“You should take this with you.”

He didn’t seem to think for a moment that he could carry it himself.

Yuri silently turned back. He approached, focusing only on the box, trying to avoid meeting Ling Xinlu’s gaze as much as possible, eager to put distance between them again.

It looked like a large, heavy box, but it wasn’t as heavy as it looked. No, even if it had been heavy, he wouldn’t have felt its weight. Because Ling Xinlu was silently watching him from two steps away from the box.

Yuri casually picked up the bundled box with one hand and turned back. He hurried his steps, moving faster than before, wanting to quickly put distance between them, but that was as far as he got. Grab.