Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

An Lan was about to go to a meeting when she saw Su Run calling. After some hesitation, she picked up.

“Lawyer An, this is bad,” Su Run’s nervous voice came through the phone. “I feel like there is something wrong with the chief judge today. He’s late.”

“…”

An LAN rubbed the space between her brows. “Um…. I’m late this morning too. Not only this morning, but I’m also late for half a month. There’s nothing strange about being late.”

Could she please find a better excuse for being soft-hearted towards Xu Bo Han?

“But the chief judge is never late,” Su Run said, “I’ve been working at the court for a few years, but I’ve never seen him late once. Even when he had flu a few days ago, he always dragged himself to work and wasn’t late for a minute. When he came over this morning, he looked terrible.”

An Lan wondered if she had tortured him too much in the past few days. It was true. It was very tiring to go to work every day. At night, he still had to go over to her place to cook dinner, clean up, warm the bed, and only go to bed after one o’clock. It was indeed quite miserable… However, he was a tall and strong man, so he shouldn’t collapse so easily, right? Could it be that the previous fever was too severe that his body had suffered too much damage?

It was possible. After all, he was so old, he couldn’t be compared to a young man in his twenties.

Perhaps it was better not to be too ruthless tonight.

……

That night, after An Lan returned home from her social gathering, she just walked out of the house when the lights in the corridor were lit up by the sound of footsteps. She looked up and saw Xu Baohan leaning against the door. The orange lights lingered around him, giving off a lonely aura.

An Lan thought that there was something wrong with him today. Although he didn’t treat her well in the past, he always had a smile on his face when he saw her.

“You’re back.” When he saw her, Xu Baohan stood up straight and smiled at her, but that smile didn’t reach his eyes.

An Lan looked at him strangely. “Have you eaten?”

“No.”

An Lan frowned. She had replied to him on WeChat that she had a business meeting with a client at night, so why didn’t he eat before coming up? “Do you want to starve to death?”

“An Lan, you still care about me, right?” Xu Baohan’s pale lips curved slightly, wanting to hug her gently.

But before he could get close, he was blocked by An Lan with her bag.

Seeing him like this, she suspected that Su Run had called her earlier in the morning to soften her heart. In fact, both of them were just using a trick to get to her.

Xu Baohan stared at her for a while, lowering his long eyelashes. “An Lan, my grandfather…passed away last night.”

An Lan was stunned, probably because she rarely heard him mention his family, but in any case, they didn’t interact with each other anymore. When she suddenly heard that his grandfather had died, her mind went blank for a while.

So he had a grandfather.

She had always thought that he might have died long ago.

The corridor lamp above her head was switched off, and through the moonlight, the sadness on his body overflowed.

This was the first time she had seen Xu Baohan so lonely, like a homeless child.

She wanted to harden her heart, but she felt sympathy for him.

“How did he die?” She asked softly. “I’ve never heard you mentioning him before.”

“After my uncle’s accident, he suffered a stroke and was traumatized.” Xu Baohan raised his head, his throat was slightly hoarse. “It’s good that he’s dead. The old man suffered a stroke and was paralyzed. It’s quite boring to live.”

An Lan sighed. She knew that he wasn’t that cold in his heart. If he was, he wouldn’t be so abnormal. “Had you offer incense to him?”