The Ties That Bind Adrian Ling and Lucas Qi Chapter 4

He was afraid that Lucas Qi would forget, so he reminded him in a gentle voice: "You stole my cigarettes yesterday."

What he hated most was children pretending to be mature, just like a young girl wearing a black short skirt and fishnet stockings, pretending to be mature but hiding a hint of youth. The words that Qi Xiao had used to tease him earlier suddenly exploded in his mind. Lucas Qi rushed over, pushed down the back of Adrian Ling's chair, half pressed on him, and met his clear eyes.

Adrian Ling was caught off guard by this sudden change. He forced himself to remain calm and looked up at Lucas Qi. The carriage was not spacious enough, and the two were very close. He could even smell the pleasant aftershave on Lucas Qi's neck, which, along with the remaining tobacco smell, was carried by the evening breeze, causing his heart to beat faster.

A car deliberately honked when passing by them. Seeing that the child was frightened, Lucas Qi's mood improved. He smiled, snatched the cigarette between his fingers and threw it out of the car window, then returned to the driver's seat and fastened his seat belt: "Children are not allowed to smoke."

The car started and slid into traffic. Ethan Ling remained stiff, his fingers tightly gripping the leather seat of the car, his knuckles turning white.

The two sat down at the booth. Lucas Qi ordered shrimp wonton noodles and pineapple buns for Ethan Ling and a cup of frozen shaved ice for himself. He then showed the bill to Ethan Ling, and when he saw that he had no objection, he called the waiter to place the order.

Seeing Adrian Ling with his eyes downcast, not knowing what he was thinking, Lucas Qi turned the cigarette box upside down and knocked it on the table to tighten the tobacco. The anti-smoking slogan and warning picture on the cigarette box were facing the child sitting opposite. He didn't like the warning pictures of rotten feet, rotten lungs and impotence, and every time he bought cigarettes, he asked the boss to change the box to the one with the picture of wrinkles on the face.

He's not afraid of getting wrinkles anyway.

Adrian Ling was brought back to her senses by Lucas Qi's knocking on the cigarette box. She glanced at the slogan on the cigarette box with disgust and looked at him unhappily: "Is it fun to be an anti-smoking guard?"

"Don't you always mock me for being a gigolo?" Lucas Qi provoked him, "Is it fun to be a moral role model?"

After being reminded, Ethan Ling remembered the relationship between this man and Clara Jiang. His face remained expressionless, but the sarcastic arc at the corner of his mouth was gone: "Don't tell Clara Jiang." After a pause, he looked away and added reluctantly, "Smoking and fighting."

Only then did he finally act like a normal child, who was afraid of being discovered by his family when doing bad things and was proud and stubborn, instead of that cold, mature look.

Seeing the waiter bringing the drinks over, Lucas Qi put away his cigarette box and looked puzzled: "Why should I tell Clara Jiang?"

"You climbed into her bed." Ethan Ling reminded him kindly.

"Do we have to tell you everything in bed?" Lucas Qi smiled. Thanks to the Qi family's excellent genes, he smiled and several waiters standing nearby looked at him secretly. "That's right, you have never been to bed, so you don't know the rules."

Ethan Ling did not deny this fact. She thanked the waiter who served the food, took the chili powder on the table and sprinkled some into the bowl of noodles. Then she looked disdainful and said to him lightly: "You use Clara Jiang's money to act cool, and you still call others nouveau riche."

"I made my own money." Lucas Qi explained ambiguously, drank his icy sweet Yuanyang, and choked back slowly, "Are you starting to feel sorry for that upstart now? Am I ruining your good fortune?"

"Disgusting." Adrian Ling commented, "Whether it's your personality, the way you make money, or your speculation."

"But thanks, at least they won't bother me again in the near future." He added, using chopsticks to pick up the alkaline noodles into a spoon, adding some soup and slowly putting it into his mouth.

There are always some people who can make the most ordinary actions look beautiful. Lucas Qi watched the child eating in a gentle manner and was curious about his choice of words: "Why only recently?"

Ethan Ling looked at him, as if wondering why he was asking a question that he already knew the answer for: "Do you think you can stay in Clara Jiang's bed for a long time?"

He said it as a matter of course, but he didn't realize that his words seemed to imply that as long as Lucas Qi was around, he would not have any trouble.

"How come you are so young, but your mind is full of bed climbing?" Lucas Qi interrupted him and asked, "Why did you follow them to that alley?"

Using chopsticks to poke the plump wonton, Adrian Ling picked up the whole shrimp inside and put it on the bone plate, eating only the wonton skin and a little bit of meat: "Otherwise, wouldn't it be more beautiful to be beaten on the street?"

The two of them threw questions back and forth, never getting tired of it.

Lucas Qi couldn't bear to see people wasting food, so he took the shrimp meat and ate it: "I mean, why don't you fight back?"

There was not even a scratch on the child's exposed skin, it was smooth and delicate enough to be used in a shower gel commercial. If he had done it again, it would not have looked like this.

rry, my manners won't let me fight with barbarians." Adrian Ling rolled his eyes very restrainedly, and then calmly explained: "They always have the advantage of numbers, and fighting back will only make us suffer more."

After eating five of his shrimps, Lucas Qi still helped him finish the remaining half with no guilt, since he was the one who paid for it: "You are so stupid, and you still think you are so smart."

Ethan Ling didn't respond abnormally, and there was no look of dissatisfaction on her face. She continued to drink the soup and eat noodles as usual, as if she agreed with what he said.

Lucas Qi knocked on the table. Adrian Ling looked over and saw his neatly trimmed fingernails and waxed nails. She heard him say, "---No matter what, you can't take the loss for nothing. Either you rely on yourself or your family. You can either fight back, even if you have to pay someone to beat you up, until they dare not touch you, or let the adults handle it---Sir, are you in the second year of high school or the kindergarten class this year?"

He had just put a spoonful of noodle soup into his mouth and missed the best opportunity to make a sarcastic remark. Ethan Ling thought about it, nodded indifferently, and motioned him to continue.

Lucas Qi paused, looking at the child's well-proportioned but slightly thin body, and his white fingertips without a trace of calluses, realizing that he couldn't put his own situation on him, he sighed and replaced the rhetoric of instigating the child to fight: "Don't feel disdainful, you are the child of the Ling Jiang family, since you have this condition, why don't you use it, you think it's noble not to complain, what do others lose to you, but they still feel good about beating you. There is no such thing as taking a step back and having a broader horizon, and there will never be a good result if you suffer a loss in silence."

After listening to him patiently, Adrian Ling responded nonchalantly: "You talk too much nonsense and you can't learn to be refined."

"Yes, you know how to speak concisely, and you still let me beat you obediently." Lucas Qi glanced at him unhappily, wanting to say that he could talk to him about anything in the future, but then he realized that he had no right to say so, so he could only knock on the table irritably, "...No matter what, Clara Jiang will not ignore you."

The spoon gently hit the wall of the bowl. Adrian Ling jumped out of the fight and stated an objective fact: "She never controlled me."

His voice was very soft and his speech was very slow. The sentence itself gave Lucas Qi a headache, but the tone of the sentence made him feel soft-hearted. After a moment of silence, he asked Adrian Ling without any context: "Do you like pomegranates?"

Ethan Ling didn't understand and simply said "hmm".

Lucas Qi asked, "Then did you know that the bowl of pomegranates yesterday was peeled by Clara Jiang for you?"

Seeing Adrian Ling's blank expression, he rubbed his forehead as usual and sighed that he was really heartbroken for this mother and son: "It's very troublesome to peel the pomegranate. She could have asked the maid to do it, but she peeled it for you herself. She didn't dare to use a knife, so she must have only peeled it with her hands. She also picked the end of each pomegranate cleanly, and even the tips of her fingers were stained yellow."

He felt strange when he pinched Clara Jiang's fingertips yesterday. She loved to be a rich and idle person, her fingers never touched water, and she loved cleanliness so much, so how could there be an indelible dark yellow color on her fingertips? It was not until he saw the bowl of pomegranates that he understood the reason.

"It's not that she doesn't want to be a good mother, but she doesn't know how to be a good mother. She herself hasn't grown up yet, how can she take care of a teenage child." Thinking that he was also responsible for Clara Jiang being spoiled, Lucas Qi felt more and more headache and felt sorry for the child in front of him, "She didn't deliberately ignore you, but..."

In fact, Ethan Ling is smart enough and knows Clara Jiang's personality very well. He only needs to say these words. He can figure out the rest by himself. But knowing does not mean understanding. It is too inhumane and unreasonable to ask a 17-year-old boy who has not even formed his own world view to understand and reason with another person's behavior.

The person who should be sensible is extremely naive, and the person who should be naive is very thoughtful. Lucas Qi feels sorry for the child, and even his words to excuse Clara Jiang sound awkward.

Looking at the chopped green onions in the bowl that were constantly floating up and down due to the stirring of the spoon, Ethan Ling supported her face with one part of her mind digesting what Lucas Qi said, while the other part was envious of Clara Jiang for having someone who understood her so well, protected her, and would gently make excuses for her.

Seeing that the child didn't refute or talk back, and looked absent-minded, Lucas Qi couldn't help but reach out and rub his head. Adrian Ling was stunned and looked up at him.

Children's short hair is thick and soft, and it gives people an illusion of gentleness when touched in the hands.

Like a cat retracting its claws, the child's stunned expression looked extremely well-behaved. Lucas Qi raised the corners of his mouth and rubbed his hair again: "Are you really listening to me, Ayun---?"

Ethan Ling stared at Lucas Qi in a daze, listening to him calling her nickname in a soft tone. The warm yellow light reflected in his eyes, like the sea at sunset, so gentle that it was outrageous.

He hurriedly hid the ripples in his heart that were stirred by this tenderness, and disguised himself with an appearance of impatience: "...Have you said enough?"

Like a cat whose tail was stepped on. Lucas Qi laughed dully, took his hand back, pinched the remaining touch in his palm, and handed him a cigarette: "Since you are in a bad mood, I will make an exception and let you smoke."

Adrian Ling held the cigarette between her fingers and glanced at him: "Why do you care about me?"

Lucas Qi deliberately misinterpreted his provocation, smiled and nodded, and said softly, as if making a promise: "I take care of you."

His tone was so warm, and the hint of ambiguity filled her lungs like smoke, making her dizzy. Adrian Ling didn't understand how Lucas Qi could be so shameless, misinterpreting her words and responding with a solemn tone of "I'll support you". She just thought he was making fun of her and glared at him angrily: "Old-fashioned."

Shrugging, Lucas Qi looked at him with a smile in his eyes. It was not the first time that he sighed in his heart that the child's eyes were beautiful, as if there were stars scattered in them.

The second before he had the idea, he looked away and called the waiter next to him: "Excuse me, pay the bill."

-

This tea restaurant has been open for some years. Before Lucas Qi went abroad, he would often meet up with his classmates for supper here. Now, several years have passed, and the decoration has not improved at all. Cleaning supplies are piled up messily next to the sink, and a pot of half-dead green ivy hangs in front of the mirror.

He stepped on the metal bar under the sink, and ice water trickled out from the faucet. After washing his hands, he scooped up the water to wipe his face. When he opened his eyes, he saw Ethan Ling standing behind him in the mirror. The pot of green ivy seemed to be hanging on his head, making him look a little funny.

The bathroom was very small, so Lucas Qi moved aside and Ethan Ling walked over to wash her hands, rubbing against his side. She took the tissue he handed her, dried her hands, and thanked him politely.

"You're welcome," Lucas Qi dried his hands, "You also said that you won't be in trouble in the near future, so what will you do if you are surrounded later?"

Adrian Ling's clear and cold voice rang out amid the roar of the dryer: "Fight back."

... After saying so much, it was all in vain. Lucas Qi looked somewhat helpless: "That's fine, but if the injury is serious, you must notify your family immediately."

Ethan Ling frowned and looked at him without responding.

Lucas Qi gave in: "Then notify me as soon as possible, and I will take care of you."

Here it comes again, this annoying thing. Adrian Ling frowned even more tightly, and the words "Who do you think you are" rolled between his lips for several times, but he finally swallowed them back and hummed impatiently.

Seeing that he was just trying to deal with him, Lucas Qi smiled, moved closer to the boy who was half a head shorter than him, and whispered in his ear: "Okay, take off your clothes now."

It was almost midnight when they returned to the Ling family. Only the lights were on in front of the house. The housekeeper heard the noise and came out to greet them: "Do you want some midnight snacks?"

Lucas Qi waved his hand, indicating that there was packaged pineapple buns at hand, backed into the garage, and picked up the dark-faced boy in the passenger seat and walked into the hall.

It was not until he sat down in Adrian Ling's room that Lucas Qi could not help but hold his forehead and laugh out loud.

In the restroom of Xingfa, he teased Adrian Ling for the purpose of livening up the atmosphere and for some selfish reasons. As a result, the child suddenly stepped back and almost fell into the pile of cleaning supplies. He was so scared that he quickly hugged him back and explained in a gentle voice: "I want to see your injuries!"

They made so much noise in the bathroom that the broom and mop fell all over the floor and even the detergent was kicked over. Several waiters heard the noise and rushed over, and he had to apologize to each of them.

"Why didn't you react at all when that group of people said they wanted you? I asked you to take off your clothes, but you reacted so strongly?" Lucas Qi carefully read the instructions on the back of the active oil and asked Adrian Ling, who was standing next to him like a wooden stake, "Do you have an open wound?"

"No, just bruises." Adrian Ling sat back on the chair, chin on the back, not wanting to see Lucas Qi's face, "You kicked the man down before I could react."