Tenant's Secret Love

Chapter 41: You have no shame

In the night, I went to the apartment complex where I had lived for more than two years. Renee's fuchsia Q7 was parked downstairs, and she had already arrived before me.

I whistled as I walked upstairs, and the sensor lights came on along the way. The hallway looked even more dilapidated in the light, and this dilapidation made me even more puzzled. I always wondered why Renee wanted to live here, leaving me nowhere to go but to stay in Robben's den of iniquity.

I knocked on the door, and Renee, fully dressed, opened the door for me. I immediately complained, "I'm exhausted!"

"Then go get it done and come back to rest," Renee said in a tone that showed she really cared about me.

I gave her an unhappy look and said, "You're very pretty, but you really lack emotional intelligence. When I said I was tired, I meant I wanted you to pour me a cup of hot water."

"I haven't lived here for a few days, so where's the hot water?"

"There's an electric kettle and a gas stove at home. If there's no hot water, just boil some. By the way, I like wolfberry and lemon tea. I didn't take any wolfberries or lemons with me when I moved last time, so go make some for me now." I sat down on the sofa, crossed my legs, and took out a mandarin orange from the fruit bowl and started eating it.

Renee's face was very red, but she went to the kitchen and fetched some water, plugged in the electric kettle and started boiling the water. She stood opposite the sofa, looking at me with some resentment.

I was pleased with myself. If I didn't take advantage of her at this time, after she had used me up, she would probably use vicious words to choke me to death.

"These mandarins are really good. Where did you buy them?" I said, peeling open another orange.

"If you like them, take them home and eat them, but first could you please help me with the real business?"

I replied without any hurry, "Last time I thought your cherries were good and you let me take them home, and this time I think the tangerines are good and you let me take them home too. Is it that I can take everything in this house if I like it?"

"In principle, I can't afford to argue with someone like you because you have an incredibly thick skin," Renee said to me with patience.

I smiled and continued, "Then I really like you, and you should come with me tonight."

Renee's face suddenly turned from gloomy to thunderstorm, and she glared at me and said, "Please don't say things to me that you can say to every woman. I will think you are shameless!"

I remained calm and said, "I'm just following your logic. How is that shameless? If you don't want to, I'll just not like you."

Renee looked at the water, which was almost boiling, and her expression was as if she wanted to stuff me into the electric kettle.

I felt so good inside. In all the many verbal disputes between Renee and me, this was the first time I had the upper hand. It was a really cool feeling to have retaken the initiative, and I was so pleased that I couldn't help humming Faye Wong's song "The New Tenant".

"Waiting for the night, welcoming the day, cleaning in the day, praying at night, leaving the hustle and bustle, searching for trouble, the ends of the earth, a whim, is there someone, is someone looking for me, I say hello, you say disturb, not too early, not too late, thousands of miles away..."

Renee glared at me as I listened to me finish singing, but there was nothing she could do. Of course she couldn't do anything, because she didn't dare to be as shameless as I was.

I said to Renee again, "Do you know what song I just sang?"

Without waiting for Renee to answer, I answered for myself, saying, "It's Faye Wong's song 'New Tenant'. Do you feel like the lyrics are about our relationship?"

Still waiting for Renee to respond, I rushed to analyze it again, saying, "Every day in this house, I wait for the night and welcome the day. I clean during the day and pray at night. One day, you moved in here on a whim, and I, the landlord, said to you, the new tenant, 'Hello,' but you said to me, 'Excuse me...' and then...you kicked me out of this house!"

Renee sighed for a long time and said, "You really can associate things!"

"This is not a fantasy, it's a real, tragic story that happened not long ago!" I stood up from the sofa in protest, glaring at Renee.

Renee didn't respond to my words, but looked at the boiling water and said, 'I'm going to make tea. Where did you put the lemon slices and wolfberries?"

"Next to the toilet in the bathroom,' I said in a bad mood, but it was to disgust Renee. After I had analysed it myself, I also felt that I had suffered a great injustice.

Renee did indeed look disgusted, but she knew I was doing it on purpose, so she said with a stern face, "If you don't want to tell me, just go make the tea yourself."

"You're so principled, you promised to make me tea, so you'll definitely make it," I took the opportunity to mock Renee's principles again.

Renee's words finally angered her, "But did you really put the lemon and wolfberries next to the toilet in the bathroom?"

"You can ask the cockroaches in the bathroom, they live there and know for sure if they've been put there or not."

Renee was so angry that she said, "If you don't want to drink it, just throw it away," and then walked into her room, unwilling to say another word to me.

I sang the song "The New Tenant" to Renee's room like a villain who had achieved his goal.

...

Finally, I went to the room where I used to live and found the lemons and medlar berries. I brewed a cup with boiling water, sat comfortably on the sofa and drank it. Life was suddenly so good.

After finishing the cup of tea, I wanted to go to the bathroom to help Micai clean up the roach corpse, but the phone suddenly rang. I looked at the number and saw that Robben was calling me.

I answered the phone, but it was a woman's voice. She said to me, "You are Lucas, right?"

"Who are you and why are you using Robben's phone?" I asked in confusion.

"Lily, the last Lily."

"Oh, is there something wrong?"

Lily said to me in a tone of negotiation, "Robben went downstairs to buy cigarettes. I'm calling you to tell you not to come back tonight. I want to spend the night here with Robben."

I was a bit embarrassed, but I had already let Lily down once before, so it would be a bit hard to do it again. After a while, I finally said to Lily, "Okay, I won't go back tonight."

Lily's tone immediately became happy, and she reminded me, 'Then you should call Robben later and tell him you're not coming back."

"No problem."

"Remember, don't tell Robben that I called you and told you not to come back,' Lily reminded me again.

"Well, I'll just say that I have something to do tonight and won't be going back."

"Lucas, you're really great, I'll treat you to dinner some time." Lily hung up the phone with joy, but I forgot to remind her to return the 100 yuan she took from me last time.

After hanging up with Lily, I was at a loss again. If I didn't go back to Robben's place tonight, where else could I go to spend the night!

...

With the worry of having nowhere to go, I went to the bathroom to help Renee clean up the roach corpses. There weren't actually many because the last time the insecticide didn't have much effect. After searching for a while, I found a roach that wasn't quite dead behind the toilet. But this one was enough to let me hand in Renee with a clear conscience.

I wrapped the cockroach in toilet paper and stuffed some cigarette butts inside to act as a corpse. I then went to Renee's room, knocked on the door and said, "I've already cleaned up the cockroach corpses. I've wrapped them in toilet paper. Do you want to come out and check? That insecticide really works."