Missing Pet - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

From then on, I climbed over the wall every day to keep Liu Yu company during his meals.

After the servants delivered his food each day, they would lock him in the courtyard. It was a pitiful sight. Because of that, I didn’t just stay for the meal; I would linger afterward to chat with him for a while.

The Young Master used a different handkerchief every day to wipe my mouth. Once he was finished, he would habitually reach out and pat my head.

I felt a bit embarrassed. “My hair is like dry grass. Yours is much prettier-it’s like silk.”

Liu Yu stared at me, his beautiful phoenix eyes devoid of emotion. He simply continued to stroke my hair until the stray strands sticking up on my crown were smoothed down. Then, his hand slid down to cup my chin.

“Young Master, why don’t you touch your own hair? I’m sure it feels much better than mine!”

I had grabbed a prayer mat and sat beside him. Being quite a bit shorter than him, I was at the perfect height for his hand to reach.

“I want to,” Liu Yu said, his voice very soft.

Fine, fine. Whatever makes you happy. After all, I was relying on him to keep my stomach full.

This continued until a few days later, when Liu Yu requested that I sit in his lap.

I looked at him in shock. “Young Master, do you… do you not understand what that means?”

Having grown up in poverty, I had worked many jobs and seen a lot of the world. Hugging and cuddling like that was something only husbands and wives did!

Of course, sometimes when passing through back alleys, I’d seen people doing things far more scandalous than that on the sly.

Liu Yu stared at me calmly, that gloomy aura of his not fading in the slightest.

*Sigh.*

I eventually took the two steps forward and sat in his lap. As I held him, I said earnestly, “I know you don’t mean anything by it. We’re just two poor, lonely souls, aren’t we?”

The Young Master was clearly just cooped up in this courtyard all day, feeling depressed and lonely. He just wanted someone nearby for comfort.

From that point on, cuddling became a daily routine between Liu Yu and me. Whenever those beautiful phoenix eyes looked my way, I would instinctively walk over and curl up in his arms.

He would often bury his face in the crook of my neck and inhale deeply for a long time. The first time he did it, my face turned bright red. After that, I made sure to scrub myself clean with a bucket of water every time before I came over.

Regarding the hugging, I originally thought I should be the one holding him, rather than him holding me. But every time I climbed over the wall, I would see Liu Yu sitting all alone in the middle of the courtyard. It was such a massive place, yet it was barren-not even a blade of grass grew there. He couldn’t leave, and he had no company. It was truly too pitiful.

So, I decided to just go along with whatever he wanted. At the very least, compared to the eerie, somber gloom he had when we first met, he occasionally smiled now.

One day, I excitedly climbed over the wall carrying a pot of flowers.

“Young Master, look what I brought!”

I held the small wild flowers out to him like a precious treasure. They were just a bunch of little white flowers I’d dug up from the roadside. The pot was something I’d scavenged from a junk pile outside a wealthy person’s estate. Grouped together in a single pot, they actually looked quite pleasant to the eye.

“When I’m not here and you’re bored, you can look at these flowers! You can count the petals and then the leaves. It’s better than nothing.”

Liu Yu only spared the wild flowers a single glance before his gaze fell back on me.

“I heard the bookstores have storybooks that can help pass the time,” I mused. “It’s a pity I don’t have any money, otherwise I’d get one for you!”

Liu Yu reached out, pulling me into his arms, and habitually began to stroke my hair.