You are nice, I want to be friends with you

As they spent more time together, Yun Ruo realized that Ji Yueci, aside from not liking to talk, was actually a good roommate.

Sometimes, she felt that she was like a cat, able to entertain herself by curling up in her own corner.

She didn’t like to pay attention to others, but she would never cause trouble for them.

At most, she was straightforward in her words and actions, saying whatever was on her mind.

She was also very venomous.

Also, Ji Yueci liked to drink at night, which Yun Ruo discovered one day.

That day, she was working hard in Bai Liye’s room, selecting materials, because Lin Wang had found out that there were several towns with markets in the south, and they had to rush there to sell things.

So, those few days, the three of them were working late into the night, every day.

When she came out of the room, it was almost midnight.

After staying up for several nights, Lin Wang almost bumped his head into the door frame, and was taken away by Jiang Beishan.

Yun Ruo tiptoed to open the door and entered, trying not to make any noise.

Suddenly, Ji Yueci’s voice sounded by the window.

“Are you helping Ah Ye make things in his room?”

Yun Ruo was startled.

The room was not lit, and when she walked in, she saw that Ji Yueci had opened the window.

The pear tree right next to the window had long since passed its flowering season, and was filled with dense shade and leaves, rustling with the wind.

The shadow was printed on her body by the moonlight, as if painting patterns on her white clothes.

On the windowsill was a pot of wine and a light gold wine cup.

The light of the wine flowed in the cup, reflecting the moonlight, making it very beautiful.

“Mm,” Yun Ruo nodded.

“Can’t you sleep?”

“The moonlight is very good tonight,” Ji Yueci picked up the small wine cup and took a sip.

“I like the night, it’s very quiet, it’s too noisy during the day.”

“Then I’ll go to sleep first,” Yun Ruo didn’t want to disturb her.

But Ji Yueci raised her wine cup at her: “Want to drink? I brewed it myself.”

She got up to find a wine cup for Yun Ruo, a soft pink one, like a blooming peach petal, which was even more beautiful when filled with wine.

“Try it,” Ji Yueci handed the wine cup to Yun Ruo.

“Is this the one you brewed a few days ago?” Yun Ruo was reluctant to drink it, and held it for a long time, the wine seemed to have flickering fine lights in it.

“That one can’t be drunk yet. This was brewed three years ago, and I just asked Beishan to dig it out today,” Ji Yueci shook the wine pot.

“There’s only this small pot.”

“Thank you for inviting me to drink,” Yun Ruo said sincerely.

It took three years to brew such a small pot, it should be very precious, but Ji Yueci invited her to drink it together.

Ji Yueci suddenly frowned and said fiercely: “Drink it quickly!”

After she finished drinking, Ji Yueci immediately filled it for her, and continued to urge her to drink quickly.

This wine was fragrant when it entered the throat, and didn’t burn the throat at all.

The sweetness was also light, and the aroma was mellow and gentle.

Yun Ruo drank three cups in one breath.

According to her alcohol tolerance, which would make her dizzy with just one glass of beer, this homemade, fruit wine-like thing should be even more intoxicating, but she didn’t feel any discomfort or heat on her cheeks.

Instead, she felt refreshed, and the fatigue of staying up late was gone.

Could it be mixed with ginseng? It was so potent.

Ji Yueci watched her finish drinking, poured out the last bit of wine from the wine pot, half a cup for each of them, and didn’t urge Yun Ruo to drink, letting her sip slowly.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I was fierce to you just now?” she asked Yun Ruo.

Yun Ruo couldn’t help but laugh when she heard this.

So you knew you were fierce to me just now?

I thought you thought I was drinking too slowly and disrespecting your wine.

“Why?” Yun Ruo asked obediently.

“Because you’re too polite,” Ji Yueci said.

Yun Ruo was stunned.

Ji Yueci took a sip of wine and leaned against the windowsill.

“Jiang Beishan was saved by you. No, the entire sect was saved by you, and so was I. If you weren’t there that day, that kid who loves to work would have died. Lin Wang couldn’t save me either, and Bai Liye even more so. Maybe everyone would have died at the hands of the Spirit-Devouring Beasts, and Big Yellow, Big White, Second White, Third White, and dūn dūn, pàng pàng, xiǎo xiǎo, dà huā,  èr huā … all would have died!”

Wait, Yun Ruo knew Big Yellow, Big White, Second White, and Third White, but who was this string of dūn dūn, pàng pàng,  xiǎo xiǎo, dà huā,  èr huā ?

Could it be the group of chickens that Bai Liye raised? After all, only this group of living things in the courtyard could be named.

“Do you think so?” Ji Yueci pointed at Yun Ruo, and unusually started talking a lot.

“You didn’t leave when it was so dangerous, but came to save us a few strangers. No wonder Ah Ye brought you to the sect, you… are very similar to him… You are very good, I want to be friends with you, sincerely, so don’t be so polite with us. Whatever you want to eat, whatever you want, tell Beishan and Ah Ye! Okay?”

Yun Ruo sat there without moving, blinking her eyes.

Ji Yueci lowered her eyes, revealing a touch of loneliness: “I don’t really know how to make friends. Before entering Idle Cloud Sect, no one was friends with me. They didn’t like me, and I didn’t like them. If… you don’t want to be friends with me, then forget it.”

Yun Ruo shook her head violently at her: “I want to be friends with you!”

Only then did Ji Yueci smile, and jumped onto the windowsill, facing the wind for a while, looking back at Yun Ruo: “It’s so comfortable, are you coming?”

“Okay,” Yun Ruo stood up, feeling that she seemed a little dizzy.

Bai Liye was woken up by the sound of knocking on the door.

He didn’t want to pay attention to it at first, but the knocking didn’t stop, so he had to get up and open the door.

“Do you know what time it is? Lin Wang, you better have something important…” Bai Liye was forced to silence halfway through his sentence.

Ji Yueci covered his mouth, and made a “shh” gesture at him: “Keep it down, and I’ll let you go.”

Bai Liye opened his eyes and found that Yun Ruo was also next to her, looking a little nervous.

He nodded, and Ji Yueci let him go, looking at him seriously: “Something big happened.”

“What’s wrong?” Bai Liye asked.

“Keep it down!” Yun Ruo frantically winked at him.

“Two-Flower is gone, we can’t find it, what should we do? Will you be angry?”

“Who?” Bai Liye was baffled.

What was Two-Flower?

What were these two doing in the middle of the night?

“Shh!” This time it was Yun Ruo who covered his mouth, pressing his face with both hands and covering his nose.

“I told you to keep your voice down. You’ll scare Two-Flower. It’ll be terrible if it runs away.”

Bai Liye twisted his face away.

Yun Ruo chased after him with both hands, a stubborn look that wouldn’t give up until she smothered him to death.

Her strength was quite strong.

He could only grab her wrist: “Who would be miserable? Who’s Two-Flower? Are you sleepwalking?”

Faced with his three consecutive questions, Ji Yueci calmly replied: “Yun Ruo and I would be miserable. Two-Flower is Ah Ye’s pet, and it’s gone.”

Only then did Bai Liye belatedly realize that something was wrong with them.

His sleepiness was gone.

“Did you drink?”

The two had no tacit understanding.

Yun Ruo nodded, and Ji Yueci shook her head.

Very well, so they drank it.

He guessed that they drank the pot that Ji Yueci had just dug out today.

No wonder he didn’t smell any alcohol.

Ji Yueci brewed all kinds of wine.

Some, after drinking, could dispel a thousand sorrows and make you fall asleep.

Some were concocted by her and Lin Wang together, and could be used as medicinal wine.

Some, according to her, had no taste of alcohol at all, but were very intoxicating.

The pot that had just been dug out was like that.

Ji Yueci looked at Yun Ruo disapprovingly: “You can’t tell him. What if he knows that it was you who wanted to see Two-Flower and them, and accidentally let it run away when you opened the door? What if he tells Ah Ye?”

“Oh, right, right, right,” Yun Ruo nodded, seriously turning to Bai Liye.

“You can’t tell Bai Liye, keep it a secret.”

“…Wait,” Bai Liye said.

“I’ll go find Lin Wang to get some sobering medicine.”

As soon as he left, Ji Yueci slipped away with Yun Ruo.

Bai Liye had no choice but to turn back and follow them, afraid that the two of them would fall into the water.

The two walked unsteadily all the way, but they still remembered to find Two-Flower.

While telling Bai Liye not to make a sound, they were shouting Two-Flower’s name throughout the courtyard.

Finally, they walked to the big tree in the courtyard.

Yun Ruo looked up at the treetops: “Could Two-Flower be up there?”

Ji Yueci: “Hard to say, maybe.”

Yun Ruo: “Want to go up and look?”

Ji Yueci: “Mm.”

The third victim tonight was woken up by the sound of knocking on the door, and opened the door while yawning: “Bai Liye, you better have something urgent to be banging on my door like this…”

Then he was almost supported the door, scared by the three pairs of clear black and white eyes staring straight at him in the moonlight.

Lin Wang didn’t take a breath, and got angry: “What are you doing…! Don’t you know that you can scare people to death?”

Yun Ruo and Ji Yueci made a silencing gesture at him at the same time, and asked Bai Liye with an interrogative attitude: “Is Two-Flower really inside?”

After getting Bai Liye’s affirmative answer, the two pushed Lin Wang aside and broke into his room, calling out Two-Flower’s name with deep affection in every corner.

Lin Wang was perplexed: “Who is Two-Flower?”

Bai Liye: “A chicken I raised.”

Lin Wang was even more perplexed: “Why would your chicken come to my room to find it? Wait, why are you looking for a chicken in the middle of the night? Are you hungry?”

Bai Liye quickly entered the room and closed the door, and then closed all the windows before finally taking a breath and explaining what had happened to Lin Wang, and told him to quickly find sobering medicine.

Lin Wang said that there was no need: “If they’re drunk, just let them sleep, they’ll be fine when they wake up tomorrow. What sobering medicine are you eating? The wine that Yueci brews won’t give you a hangover headache the next day.”

Bai Liye looked at him with a complicated expression: “Alright, then you take them back to sleep.”

“I’ll take them.”

A quarter of an hour later, Lin Wang still hadn’t dragged Yun Ruo and Ji Yueci out of his room.

If Bai Liye hadn’t had the foresight to close the door and windows, he would have had to catch people all over the courtyard.

After finally catching Yun Ruo and sending her back, as soon as he returned to the room to find Ji Yueci hiding behind the cabinet, Yun Ruo followed in, holding a long ladle for fetching wine as a weapon to save Ji Yueci.

Lin Wang was overwhelmed.

Lin Wang was exhausted physically and mentally.

He finally understood why Bai Liye wanted him to find sobering medicine, and also finally understood that the complicated emotion in his eyes just now was called sympathy.

He could be sure that Bai Liye must have been catching people outside for a long time, looking at the leaves stuck on his body, he probably even climbed a tree.

Thinking about this made him feel much better.

After finding sobering medicine and giving it to Yun Ruo and Ji Yueci to eat, they finally quieted down a lot, and went back to their rooms to sleep, procrastinating.

Before sleeping, Ji Yueci was still thinking about whether she had found Two-Flower.

Lin Wang lied to her, saying that she had found it, but she refused to believe it, insisting on confirming it with her own eyes before she felt at ease, forcing Lin Wang to catch a chicken and show it to her before she stopped making trouble.

Yun Ruo was much more obedient than Ji Yueci.

She lay down and covered herself with the quilt, but she grabbed Bai Liye’s sleeve and didn’t let go, and her shoulders were shaking slightly under the quilt.

Bai Liye thought of Yun Ruo’s appearance when she had a nightmare that night, didn’t leave with Lin Wang, and sat back on the bed.

He lifted a corner of the quilt and found that she was smiling, her cheeks flushed, and only then did he breathe a sigh of relief, unconsciously smiling at her.

“What’s wrong? So happy.”

Yun Ruo smiled with her eyes curved: “Yueci and I are friends now.”

“Is that so?” Bai Liye didn’t realize that his tone was very gentle now.

“She rarely makes friends. It seems she likes you very much.”

“Mm,” Yun Ruo finally released his sleeve, and her whole body curled up under the quilt, her muddled voice coming from under the quilt.

“I’m… very happy, although I can live very well alone, but I… also want to have friends…”