Chapter One Little Girl

  It was deep into the night, and a sliver of light shone through the gap under Li Lu's door, but all was quiet.

  The mobile phone was buzzing and vibrating loudly, unusually eye-catching.

  Li Lu answered the phone in a daze, but there was no voice on the other end.

  "Again with the wrong posture and pranks of getting out of bed to sleep again, after the holiday is over, I'll make sure you all maintain the same posture forever, no need to get out of bed to sleep again."

  Li Luyu was yawning threateningly, and when he had just moved out, Sun Yangqing liked to play this the most, calling in the middle of the night to harass him, trying to use this inferior tactic to force Li Luyu to move back into the dormitory.

  "Li Rouyou...... is me......"

  The voice was a little timid and weak, with a hint of embarrassment.

  "Who?"

  Li Luoyu didn't recall it for a moment.

  "Peaceful and quiet like still water."

  "Oh..." Li Luyu responded casually, then came to his senses and sat up straight: "Class Monitor?"

  Li Luyu did not expect An Zhi Shui would call him in the middle of the night. He looked at the time, it was past one o'clock.

  "Hmm, have you slept?" An Zhi asked, knowing it was a pointless question. She herself didn't know what she wanted to talk to Li Rouyu about over the phone.

  "Is anything wrong?" Li Luyu didn't answer. An Zhi Shui wouldn't call him for no reason, especially in the middle of the night, so he wanted to seize the opportunity.

  "No, I'm playing in Bhutan..."

  "Oh, when are you coming back? Don't forget to bring gifts for your classmates." Li Luyou lay down and closed his eyes as he talked on the phone with An Zhi Shui.

  "Okay, what to bring?" An Zhi Shui obviously hadn't thought of it. She still didn't understand how to win people's hearts. If it were an ordinary person, bringing gifts for the whole class would be a bit too exaggerated. But for someone with An Zhi Shui's economic strength, it was nothing. Spending a little money to improve interpersonal relationships was completely worth it, but she wouldn't think of that herself.

  "Whatever, just get something local, handmade crafts, small things, as long as they're characteristic. Ordinary things are too expensive and not necessary... Just those few yuan or ten plus yuan items." Li Luyou suggested to her.

  "What gift do you want?" An Zhishui hesitated for a moment before asking him.

  "Hmm... let me think, how about a photo with Snow Leopard?" An Nan Xiu's Mac Pro had the default Snow Leopard wallpaper, which Li Luoye thought was especially nice.

  "Ah!" An Zhi Shui felt that Li Luoyu's request was excessive. "What if I get eaten by the snow leopard?"

  "You just tell Snow Leopard that you are smelly and not good to eat."

  "You're the stinky one, Stinky Lee!" An Zhi didn't even notice that her tone had a hint of playfulness.

  "Then the photo of you and Snow Mountain, is it Mount Everest?" Li Luyu only heard her scolding herself, after all, international long-distance calls don't expect China Unicom to handle tone and attitude well.

  Bhutan is a good place to travel, but it's not a particularly attention-grabbing country. As people from China, a vast and populous nation, it's normal for Liu Luoye to feel that Bhutan doesn't have much presence. Mount Everest isn't small, and it's located in Nepal; maybe you can also see it from Bhutan.

  "I don't know." An Zhishui wasn't clear either, "The Tiger Cave Temple we're going to is in the Zhumulangri Mountains, which is lower than Mount Everest... why do you want me to take a photo with the snow mountain?"

  He actually asked himself for a photo, and An Zhi felt his face flush with heat as he stuck to the phone, fortunately, he couldn't see it, trying to make his voice sound normal.

  "Look at the scenery, look at whether you are happy or unhappy when taking pictures, and I will know if Norden is fun or not." Li Luyu felt that An Zhishui and Daxueshan should be a good match, both of which are out of reach for ordinary people.

  "Alright, I'm at the hotel where Tony Leung and Carina Lau got married. I couldn't sleep...I flipped through my phone book, I was afraid of calling someone else and making them angry, so I called you." An Zhishui felt it necessary to explain why he made the call, no other meaning intended.

  "You think I'm a good person in your heart, afraid that others will get angry, but not afraid that I'll get angry. Being a good person is really pointless." Li Luyou complained.

  An Zhi covered her mouth and laughed for a while, feeling that Li Ruyi was indeed somewhat different in her heart, because as he said, he was a good person.

  Actually, An Zhi Shui wasn't sure if Li Luoye was a truly good person because he would secretly look at her feet, but he definitely wasn't a bad person. An Zhi Shui thought that his greatest quality was being very pleasant to be around, having a good temper and personality, and not being overly nice.

  "Are you going out to play on National Day?" After a while, listening to the silence on the other end of the phone, An Zhi Shui asked him again. She felt that her relationship with Li Luoyu was not yet at the stage of being exceptionally good friends, and when the conversation paused during the call, she would feel awkward and unnatural.

  "My sister is on holiday, tomorrow I will take her back to our hometown to have a look, actually it's still work, cleaning the house." Li Luyou was not as lucky as An Zhi Shui, who could even travel abroad during National Day holidays.

  "Want to help? We've hired a maid at home, and we won't be home for National Day. She doesn't have anything to do either." An Zhishui felt that helping others didn't need many reasons, let alone she thought Li Luyu was quite pitiful having to work on National Day.

  "Thanks, but forget it. Your maid also needs a holiday, you can't deprive her of her normal vacation time, otherwise be careful that she'll ask for overtime pay and sue you as a black-hearted boss." An Zhishui was definitely the type who relied on others to do everything for him, probably never having done any household chores before. Li Luyu looked at his small rented house and felt depressed.

  An Zhi smiled and felt that Li Luyu's emotions were a bit low, so she decided to hang up the phone.

  "How about going to Bhutan?" Li Lu had actually fully woken up by now, seeing that she couldn't sleep either, decided to chat with her for a while.

  "My dad and I came together, he has a friend who is the richest man in Bhutan... This friend was known to my dad since childhood." An Zhishui added that this means it's not a business friend, so whether her dad's friend is rich or not has no direct connection with her dad's wealth. "His friend is even richer than the real king of Bhutan, he has a huge factory here with tens of thousands of people, my dad thought it would be safe to come and play here, so we came."

  "Richer than the Emperor of Bhutan, that's impressive." Li Lu sighed in admiration. Bhutan may be small, but it's a country after all, with factories employing tens of thousands of people, so its industry can't be underestimated.

  "It's actually nothing, Bhutan's GDP is only around $10 billion." An Zhishui said casually, "But his factory is very powerful in Bhutan, because there are only 700,000 people in Bhutan."

  That is indeed the case with Bhutan's monarch, where one-seventh of the country's population works for him. Unlike China, which is gradually becoming a society dominated by three-member households, Bhutan has at least one-tenth of its families directly influenced by the monarch, not to mention others who rely on his factories for business.

  Tens of billions of dollars are nothing, An Zhi Shui obviously didn't think that her normal evaluation would make her family background rise to another level in Li Luoyu's heart. Li Luoyu wouldn't be as foolish as she thought, thinking that just because his dad's friend is so rich, it doesn't mean his dad is also that rich. Childhood friends indeed have a good emotional connection, but the most realistic thing is that everyone must still have a similar social status and circle of friends to continue being close, otherwise they will eventually drift apart or not interact with each other.

  This is a self-evident question for Li Luyu, but An Zhi Shui obviously doesn't understand.

  Is there a wealthy person with the surname An in China? Should I search online? Li Ruyou gave up on this idea, if she gets to know An Zhi Shui more in the future, she will eventually find out. She doesn't want to say it now, and she thinks it's not necessary for her to deliberately inquire about someone else's family background, that would feel very bad.

  Anqi Shui started telling Li Luyu about the interesting things in Bhutan, such as how safe Bhutan is. For example, a staff member's wallet was lost and had been walked over for half a mile, but when the staff member went back to pick it up, a monk drew a circle around the wallet and no one dared to touch it until the owner came back to take it. Also, Bhutan only got TV in 1999, and since then the original Shangri-La has been polluted by the outside world, resulting in a higher crime rate than before. Moreover, she didn't want to go to the residential areas of Bhutan because some residents actually painted very large hooligan paintings on their own houses.

  Li Luyu didn't know what kind of painting a hooligan would create, but he vaguely guessed that it might be some sort of fertility worship symbol.

  As they chatted, Li Luyu only then realized that An Zhi Shui was not only good at theoretical guidance and criticizing educational work, but also very skilled at making phone porridge. For the vast majority of the time, he was listening while she talked nonstop. As they chatted, he had already fallen asleep, and it wasn't until a while later that An Zhi Shui realized this, then secretly hung up the phone.

  Li Luoyu slept more soundly, but when the morning light filled the sky and began to spill into the room, he still opened his eyes dazedly. Then he felt the quilt being lifted, and a warm body snuggled into his bed.

  "Lizi, you're so big now, not allowed to get into bed anymore." Li Luyu said with his eyes closed, then felt his arm being pulled open, and the light, pleasant scent of hair filled his nostrils, his arm became a pillow.

  When Li Tzu was little, she slept in the same bed as her brother Li Lu-yu for a long time. As Li Lu-yu grew older and became curious about the opposite sex like other boys his age, he started sleeping separately from Li Tzu. However, Li Tzu continued to insist on bathing and sleeping with her brother, and Li Lu-yu eventually got used to it and didn't mind, remaining intimate with his sister until she herself began to feel shy and started bathing and sleeping alone.

  However, the two siblings relied on each other for survival. In the end, only her brother was her last resort, the most trustworthy person, and her sense of security also came from him. When Li Zi felt sad or pitied herself, or when she was scared of thunderstorms and lightning at night after watching horror stories, she would still run to Li Luoyu's arms for comfort. This is a very normal thing, after all, she couldn't be like other children who could always find their father and mother to coax them, letting them protect her by her bedside.

  She has only an elder brother.