Lin Liuxia rushed out of that high-end hotel.
He dove into his old secondhand car and slammed the door, as if that could shut out everything about the little demon behind him.
The air in the car was somewhat stuffy in summer.
He pressed the air-conditioning button, and cold air whooshed out, making him shiver.
The shiver reminded him that gas prices had gone up recently, so he hurriedly fumbled to turn it off. ‘Better save some money.’
He rolled down the window, and hot wind poured in, carrying the city’s noise.
It was even worse than running the AC.
In the end, he simply pushed the car door open.
Fresh air rushed in, and he stuck his head out, like a drowning man finally breathing oxygen.
Then he could no longer hold it in.
‘What am I doing?!’
‘I’m almost forty, so why am I still this useless after becoming a Magical Girl!’
‘I can’t even handle a high schooler!’
‘A few words from her and I’m completely under her thumb!’
The more Lin Liuxia thought, the angrier he got.
He slammed his fist on the steering wheel.
The horn didn’t honk, but his own hand throbbed with pain.
He sighed, dejectedly closed the car door, and casually pulled the rearview mirror over.
A face was reflected in the mirror.
Ever since he first transformed into a Magical Girl, his height had never grown again, forever stuck at 1.6 meters.
Over the years, thanks to the influence of magic, the lines of this face had grown softer and softer, and the skin fairer and fairer.
Even though he hadn’t transformed for many years, weathering wind and rain as an Office Worker, his face had only gained a few traces of fatigue, not a single wrinkle.
Today, forced to transform and washed anew by magic, the face in the mirror looked even younger than before.
‘How could this look like a 36-year-old man?’
Lin Liuxia looked at himself in the mirror, and a huge sense of helplessness surged up.
His daughter’s dream, the threat from that little demon Gong Yuedai, and the piles of work and clients’ scowling faces he would have to face at work tomorrow.
The stressed Lin Liuxia was starting to crack.
He instinctively reached into his pocket, imitating those bosses, wanting to pull out a cigarette to calm down.
His fingertips fumbled around in the empty pocket for a long while, only touching a hard plastic stick.
He pulled it out and saw it was a strawberry-flavored lollipop, which his daughter had stuffed into his pocket before leaving in the morning.
Only then did he remember that, in order to set a good example for his daughter, he had never smoked.
Lin Liuxia stared at the lollipop, then helplessly placed it on the center console.
‘No cigarettes. Then a little alcohol should be fine, right?’
He bent over to rummage through the glove compartment, which was crammed messily with all kinds of receipts and expired coupons.
He searched for a long time, didn’t see even a shadow of a liquor bottle, and only pulled out a large unopened bottle of mineral water.
Right, he didn’t drink alcohol either.
When a middle-aged man wants to vent his stress, but he neither smokes nor drinks, and doesn’t even have a decent bad habit, the scene becomes very awkward.
Lin Liuxia held the bottle of mineral water and fell silent.
A few seconds later, as if resigning himself to his fate, he twisted open the cap.
On the road under the night sky, the broken-down car started up again and merged into traffic.
In the driver’s seat, Lin Liuxia held the steering wheel with his right hand, a bottle of mineral water in his left, and a silly lollipop clamped in his mouth.
He drove with a blank expression.
Whenever something troublesome crossed his mind, he raised the mineral water bottle and took a fierce gulp.
The car swayed and rattled up to an intersection as the red light came on.
Lin Liuxia stepped on the brake a bit too hard, and the car lurched forward before stopping in front of the crosswalk.
Irritated, he gulped another mouthful of water, only to choke, coughing earth-shatteringly until tears came out.
In a duty booth by the roadside, a young traffic police officer noticed the strangely behaving vehicle.
“Sir, look at that car.”
The young traffic police officer pointed.
“Is that driver drunk?”
As he spoke, he was about to get up and go over to investigate.
“Wait.”
The older traffic police officer beside him stopped him and squinted toward that direction.
“Look more carefully.”
The young traffic police officer looked again more carefully.
Under the dim streetlights, they could see the man in the driver’s seat.
His face was very young, tear tracks still hung at the corners of his eyes, and he was coughing his lungs out.
He wasn’t holding a liquor bottle; he was holding a bottle of mineral water.
And in his mouth… was a lollipop?
?
“Sir, this…”
The old traffic police officer sighed, looking as if he had seen through life.
“Sigh, just looking at him, he must have just been dumped after a fight with his girlfriend.”
“Look at him. He doesn’t even dare smoke; he’s taking it out on a lollipop. He’s probably a young guy in his first relationship who can’t handle the blow.”
The old traffic police officer patted his apprentice’s shoulder: “Give him some face and let him cry by himself for a while.”
The young traffic police officer was stunned for a moment, then looked at Lin Liuxia’s “heartbroken” expression and sighed along with him.
“Sigh, he looks so pitiful.”
The green light came on.
Lin Liuxia stepped on the gas, and the broken-down car shot out with a puff of black smoke.
He didn’t know that in just a few minutes, he had been imagined as a poor young man who had just been dumped.
He only knew one thing: it turned out that if you drink too much water, you can taste bitterness. ðŸ˜
The car stopped steadily downstairs.
Lin Liuxia turned off the engine but didn’t get out immediately.
He leaned back against the seat, looking at the pitch-black window of his own apartment upstairs, and spaced out for a while.
‘How should I explain it?’
Lin Liuxia’s mind raced.
‘Got it.’
‘I’ll just say I found out in advance what Gong Yuedai likes, that she likes Liuli Xin.’
‘So today I specially brought a friend from work who likes cosplay to help put on a show.’
‘Anyway, my daughter doesn’t know anything about my coworkers, so I should be able to fool her.’
‘Yeah, that works.’
Lin Liuxia ran this explanation through his mind twice, felt there was no big problem, and only then pushed open the car door and got out.
He went upstairs quietly, took out his keys, and carefully opened the apartment door.
The living room light was off, pitch-black.
Lin Liuxia instinctively looked toward his daughter’s room.
The door was shut tight, and no light showed under the crack.
He felt relieved.
It seemed the explanation he had racked his brains to make up downstairs just now wouldn’t be needed.
His daughter was probably asleep.
‘Great.’
He didn’t want to turn on the light and wake his daughter.
By the faint moonlight coming through the window, he felt his way in the dark, quietly preparing to slip into the bathroom for a shower.
He had only taken two steps.
Click.
A crisp switch sound rang out, and the living room light turned on instantly.
The glaring white light made Lin Liuxia instinctively squint.
When his eyes adjusted to the light and he saw the scene before him, he was completely stunned.
On the sofa, Lin Liuxing was wearing pink pajamas and holding a shark plush pillow in her arms.
She just sat there, staring straight at him.
“Dad.”
His daughter’s voice came from the sofa with a slight nasal tone, as if she had been waiting a long time.
Lin Liuxia put his phone aside and walked over, pretending to be relaxed.
“Liuxing, it’s so late and you’re still not asleep…”
Before he could finish speaking, Lin Liuxing tossed the shark pillow aside, stood up, lowered herself, and threw herself into his arms.
“I was waiting for you.”
The girl rubbed her head against his chest, her voice muffled.
“Dad must have had a very hard day today, right?”
Lin Liuxia fell silent.
He had just escaped from a shameful farce, and the little demon’s laughter still echoed in his mind, while his own daughter’s embrace was so warm right now.
For a moment, he even considered confessing everything to his daughter.
But his daughter was still young and didn’t understand many things. Telling her would only add to her worries.
Especially since she was in the critical period of the Magical Girl Assessment, he didn’t want his daughter to be troubled because of his affairs.
He couldn’t let her know yet.
Thinking of this, Lin Liuxia’s body relaxed.
“No, Dad wasn’t tired today.”
He lied to his daughter for the first time, and planned to keep lying.