Chapter 146: Ch 146: Good Night, Xuexue

While PD Xu Cui remained stranded with his housing problem, Su Wanyan, Mo Xingxue, and the children finally reached the borrowed house that would be theirs for the next two weeks.

The door closed behind them in a space that was still mostly empty. As they had left it earlier in the day, the only furniture waiting was a sofa facing a wooden television cabinet and a low coffee table centered on the floor—pieces the original owners had left behind, practical and impersonal.

Their luggage sat in a neat cluster near the wall where the staff had deposited it. Mo Yan’s crib had been brought in and assembled, the one deliberate soft structure in a room that otherwise offered nothing to sleep on.

"Oh right—I’ll just settle Xing’er on her be—" Su Wanyan started, the sentence already reaching for a bed that existed only in the plan she had failed to complete. Then the word died.

Mo Xingxue glanced over, curious at the sudden quiet. Su Wanyan did not explain. She adjusted her hold on Shen Guoxing—still deeply asleep, still faintly smiling at whatever the dream had offered—and carried her to the sofa.

She laid the child down with small, precise adjustments: head angled against the armrest, limbs arranged so nothing would go numb, the last of the clinging fingers coaxed open until they released Su Wanyan’s collar and curled loosely against the cushion instead.

Only then did Su Wanyan straighten. She sighed, long and defeated, and pressed a palm over her face.

"I forgot to ask the staff from my family to bring mattresses and furniture."

The admission landed heavy with self-reproach. A simple request. One message. She had coordinated hospital teams and survived the variety show’s chaos and somehow, had let the most basic requirement of a house slip through. She sighed again and dropped her hand to look at Mo Xingxue with open apology.

"I’m sorry, Xuexue."

Mo Xingxue raised an eyebrow. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, already reading the scale of the reaction against the scale of the problem. "What are you sorry for?"

"Well—you might have to sleep on a hard surface." The thought alone seemed to cause her physical discomfort. She said it as if she had personally arranged the hardship.

Mo Xingxue laughed, the sound quiet in the underfurnished room. "You’re reacting like that over something this simple?"

Su Wanyan nodded without hesitation. "Un. Your back will hurt tomorrow if you sleep on a hard surface."

Mo Xingxue’s laughter softened into something quieter and more affectionate. She studied the alpha who could face down violence for her and then come undone over the prospect of a sore back. "Why are you worrying about me when you’ll suffer the same fate?"

Su Wanyan’s cheeks puffed. "That’s different!" The protest was righteous and absolute, as if the distinction were written in a law only she could see. "I can handle all hardships. But you and the children must not suffer a single one." By the end the volume had dropped, conviction undimmed even as the words grew smaller and more stubborn.

Mo Xingxue laughed again—fond, helpless—and pushed the stroller closer to the sofa. Mo Yan had fallen back asleep on the walk home, one fist still loosely curled, the day’s stimulation finally spent. The stroller settled beside Shen Guoxing’s borrowed berth. Then Mo Xingxue stepped in, cupped Su Wanyan’s face in both hands, and gave both cheeks a firm pinch.

"Ouch!"

The complaint was theatrical.. the pinch had not truly hurt. Mo Xingxue knew the difference. She only sighed, shook her head at the performance, and cradled Su Wanyan’s face again with gentler hands, thumbs resting lightly along the line of her jaw.

"Yanyan. Thank you for worrying about us."

Su Wanyan’s gaze slid away, lips pressed together, as if receiving gratitude for a failure were its own small punishment. Mo Xingxue shook her head once more and, with her right hand, lightly pinched the tip of Su Wanyan’s nose—correction and affection in the same small gesture.

"But there’s no need for you to beat yourself up over this."

She knew this particular alpha too well. Su Wanyan was thorough with everyone else’s comfort and careless with her own. She arranged other people’s ease the way some people arranged breathing—automatically, as a baseline requirement of existing around her.

When a plan fell short, when she believed she had failed to make someone else’s night softer, she returned to the failure again and again, collecting guilt no one had issued and no one required. Mo Xingxue did not need the confession spoken aloud to recognize the spiral forming in the empty room.

Su Wanyan exhaled. "I know. But I made you suffer some grievances today." The expression that accompanied the confession was openly pitiful—eyes lowered, mouth drawn, the full weight of a day that had included far worse than furniture somehow collapsing onto this one manageable mistake.

Mo Xingxue shook her head. "You didn’t make me suffer any grievances, silly." The tease was light; the tenderness underneath it was not. She held Su Wanyan’s eyes and did not let them escape again.

"Look." Her voice stayed even, practical, meant to land where reassurance alone might slide off. "I’m used to these kinds of things. There are times during filming when I slept on surfaces harder than this—boards, cold floors, whatever the location gave us. There were even nights we slept on the grass just to catch a little rest between shoots. So I’m really okay."

Su Wanyan’s lips pressed into a thinner line as the stories landed. The pictures they built were too clear: Mo Xingxue on grass damp with evening, on unfinished sets, on the thin margin of sleep the industry allowed, enduring it without complaint because endurance was simply part of the job. Her eyes began to water despite the effort to hold them steady.

"That sounds tough, Xuexue."

The tears she was fighting had nothing useful to do with mattresses. They belonged to every hard surface Mo Xingxue had already survived without her, and to the helpless wish that none of them had been necessary.

Mo Xingxue sighed, a helpless smile curling at her lips.

"Such a crybaby."

Inwardly, without permission or ceremony, the correction arrived on its own: my crybaby.

She pinched Su Wanyan’s cheeks again, firmer this time, as if pressure alone could press the tears back where they belonged. "Stop crying." She tried for stern. What came out was pure doting—the edge sanded off by affection before the words finished forming, leaving only warmth and a faint, exasperated fondness.

"Look—let’s just go to sleep early today." She listed the evidence with practical calm, ticking each point off as if building a case the worrywart in front of her could not overturn. "We already ate. They’re already asleep. And you have to wake up early. So let’s sleep and think of solutions tomorrow, okay?"

She drew Su Wanyan’s face a fraction closer and left a small, light peck on her forehead.

Su Wanyan nodded, still dejected, the fight drained out of her without the worry fully leaving. "Fine."

Mo Xingxue laughed under her breath and shook her head at the lingering pout. Then the practical mind that had survived years of unpredictable sets clicked into place.

"Oh—Yanyan. Do you have any packed blankets?"

Su Wanyan blinked at the sudden turn. "I have plenty. Why?"

"Pull some out. We’ll lay them here on the floor so we’re close to the children." Mo Xingxue was already clearing a path beside the sofa—nudging the low coffee table aside with her foot, sweeping dust and imaginary obstacles out of a rectangle of floor large enough for two adults to stretch without colliding with the crib or the sofa legs. The borrowed house offered little, but it offered this: proximity.

"Eh?" Su Wanyan’s protest rose on pure instinct. "But—that’ll be hard on your back."

Mo Xingxue turned and smiled, unbothered. "We’re already dealing with hard places to sleep. We might as well take the chance to stay near the children."

Su Wanyan’s mouth tightened. When the comfort argument failed, she reached for the medical one. "That’ll give us pneumonia."

Mo Xingxue crossed her arms and smirked, the expression of someone who had already mapped the counter and found it empty. "We’re not going to do this every day, so... She dragged the last word, looking at Su Wanyan with calm, absolute certainty.

She had won. They both knew it.

Su Wanyan sighed—the long, defeated sound of an alpha outmaneuvered by logic and affection in equal measure—and went to the luggage. She opened the largest suitcase, dug past folded clothes, sealed toiletry bags, and the over-prepared layers of someone who packed for temperature and forgot furniture. Four thick blankets came free in a soft, heavy stack. She held them up.

"Is this enough?" The worry had not left her voice. It had only changed targets.

Mo Xingxue smiled and nodded. "More than enough." She took the stack, the weight familiar in a way she did not bother explaining yet.

She laid the blankets with care. Edges aligned. Layers doubled where hips and shoulders would take the most pressure. The top edge positioned so that Shen Guoxing’s sleeping head on the sofa pointed the same direction they would face—close enough that a restless child would not wake to an empty room.

After a few minutes of quiet, efficient work, the makeshift bed was done: not elegant, not permanent, but intentional. A floor that had been only floor became something closer to a place.

Mo Xingxue sat on it at once and patted the space beside her. Su Wanyan sighed again, then obliged. The moment her weight settled, surprise flickered across her face. It was not a mattress. It was, however, decent—padded enough that the hardness of the boards became a distant suggestion rather than a fact pressing into bone.

"Ooh. How’d you learn this trick, Xuexue?"

Mo Xingxue laughed softly and lay down, eyes on the plain ceiling of the borrowed house. "When you’re in the entertainment industry, you prepare for things like this. In case something happens."

Her mind drifted, uninvited, along an old track: waiting rooms that never warmed, overlong shoot days that ate the night, casts worked until the only sleep available was the kind stolen on piled coats and production blankets in corridors between calls.

The memory carried a physical echo—exhaustion that sat in the joints, the particular sickness of never quite recovering before the next call time, the quiet agreement among actors that dignity was optional and rest was not. She shuddered once, the feeling passing through her before she could fully name it or push it away.

Su Wanyan watched her face and understood enough without needing the full inventory. "It must’ve been tough, huh?"

Mo Xingxue nodded. No embellishment. The nod was enough.

They sat in that shared quiet for a stretch—two people on a bed of blankets, two children already claimed by sleep, the empty rooms of the house holding their peace without comment. Then Su Wanyan stood and moved back toward the luggage. Mo Xingxue sat up at once, the question leaving her before she could sand down how it sounded.

"Where are you going?"

A beat later she almost cringed at the cling in it—the bare need of the words, the way they reached across the short distance as if the alpha’s absence for a shower required explanation. Su Wanyan only turned and smiled, gentle and uncomplicated, reading nothing into the tone except the question itself.

"I’ll just take a quick shower before sleeping."

Mo Xingxue nodded and lay back down, granting permission she had not needed to give. Su Wanyan disappeared toward the bathroom at a purposeful pace, the day’s dust and residual tension already marked for removal.

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A while later she emerged, hair already dried, skin clean, the particular lightness of someone who had washed the forest and the alcove and the long walk off her body. "Xuexue?"

No answer. She stepped into the living room and had to press her lips together against a silent laugh.

Mo Xingxue was already deeply asleep on the makeshift bed, body curled tight as if against a cold the blankets had not fully solved—knees drawn, shoulders tucked, the posture of someone who had learned to make herself small for warmth.

Meanwhile, Mo Yan’s crib now stood where the stroller had been; the baby slept inside it in a small, complete heap, one fist still loosely curled. On the sofa, Shen Guoxing had been properly wrapped. Someone—Mo Xingxue, before sleep took her—had tucked a blanket around the child with protective care, edges folded so shoulders and legs would stay covered through the night.

The children’s warmth and security stood in quiet contrast to the person who had arranged it all and then fallen asleep before receiving any of the same attention herself.

Su Wanyan went to the luggage again. She found another blanket and a small soft bag, the kind meant for folded clothes or extra padding, and returned to Mo Xingxue’s side. She settled down carefully, weight distributed so the floor-bed would not shift enough to wake anyone.

The extra blanket went over both of them, tucked at the edges. The soft bag she placed near the head as a possible pillow, then reconsidered. She lay down fully, lifted Mo Xingxue’s head with slow hands, stretched her own arm out along the blankets, and guided that head onto the muscle of her upper arm—making herself the pillow so the luggage could remain only a backup.

The bag might have been soft. It was still a bag. An arm was better.

When everything was arranged, Su Wanyan drew Mo Xingxue in close. The embrace was firm enough to share heat against the residual chill of the floor and the empty rooms beyond their small island of blankets—chin near dark hair, free hand resting at the curve of Mo Xingxue’s back, the whole of the day finally allowed to end.

"Good night, Xuexue."

The words were gentle and slow. The woman they belonged to was already gone—breathing even, face smoothed of the day’s weight, curled into the warmth that had arrived after she slept.

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HAHAHAHAHAHA I WAS SUPPOSED TO RELEASE THIS EARLIER, BUT I FELL ASLEEP MIDWAY TvT!