My wife is a witch princess

Chapter 43 Xia Li... Even if she can read minds

Xia Li felt something was off. Song Che's reaction was strange, and so was her own. She hadn't intentionally taken the wrong item, so why was her first reaction to hide it? Her body seemed to be acting on its own, as if she didn't want Song Che to discover she'd taken the little dress… as if that would make her seem particularly improper.

She calmed down for a while and prepared to take a shower when Song Che's voice came from the doorway.

"Press the button and the water will come out. I've already adjusted the water temperature. Do you remember where the button is?"

The door was pushed open a crack, and a clean sweatshirt and a towel were slipped in. "Change into this after you shower. Just put the dirty clothes in the basket by the door."

The sound of rushing water came from outside the door, then stopped.

"The shower gel and shampoo are on the windowsill. I'll put them back when I'm done. I'm going back inside."

The footsteps faded into the distance.

Xia Li turned on the faucet and was drenched in water. She turned off the shower and peeked out through a crack in the door—Song Che's room door was closed; he was really gone.

Only then did she feel relieved enough to close the door and begin to undress. The bathroom was still filled with the steam left by Song Che after his shower; a misty white vapor rose and clung to her straight legs. Her silver hair clung to her waist, and her skin was as white as fine porcelain; water droplets rolled over, leaving glistening marks.

After taking a shower and drying myself off, I put on that oversized hoodie.

She recited the starting gesture of the drying spell in front of the mirror—no response.

With her long hair dripping wet, she had no choice but to open the door and go find Song Che.

Song Che had been waiting for a long time, and he wrapped a towel around Xia Li's head to start wiping her hair.

"Why……"

When the towel was removed, Xia Li, with her messy silver hair, stared blankly, as if she had been dazed by the towel.

Song Che was a little embarrassed; it was his first time drying a girl's hair, and he wasn't very careful with his hands. He kicked over a small stool: "Sit here, I'll dry it for you."

The hairdryer hummed, blowing warm air towards her. Even though she had seen it twice before, Xia Li couldn't resist turning her head to look at the vent out of curiosity, only to have her face splattered with hot air, causing her to squint and her long eyelashes to flutter.

"Science...it's so strange," she muttered to herself.

"There'll be even stranger things to come." Song Che chuckled, brushing aside her soft hair as he moved the hairdryer around in one hand. Xia Li sat quietly, her back ramrod straight.

"Dinner's ready, go eat." Song Che turned off the hairdryer, patted her half-dry hair, and said, "You can blow-dry it yourself from now on. Just comb it with your hands while you blow-dry. Of course, you can ask me for help too..."

"Um."

Xia Li tossed her fluffy silver hair, stood up, her long, straight legs shuffling as she shuffled towards the kitchen in her slippers.

Song Che followed behind her, wrinkling his nose.

A very faint fragrance lingered in the air, not the overt scent of shampoo, but a lighter, more subtle one, mixed with a hint of moisture. So girls really do...have a special scent?

Song Che shook his head and followed Xia Li, who was standing in the living room looking for food, but found that the table was gone.

"Xia Li, I moved the table to the balcony; it's not in the living room."

"oh."

Xia Li walked to the balcony. There were several half-dead green plants on the ground. Her gaze fell on the small square table: two bowls of white porridge and a plate of golden scrambled eggs.

Her eyes lit up, and she pulled out a chair and sat down. Song Che sat down next to her as well. She suddenly turned around, quickly grabbed the plate of scrambled eggs in front of her, and held it loosely in front of her with her arms, looking up at him: "I'm hungry."

The child's obvious possessiveness of food startled Song Che. Who taught him this?

"I'm not hungry, you eat." He turned his phone sideways, found the playback page for "A Chinese Odyssey," and propped it against a book. "Watch it while you eat. I remember you got to the part where the Bull Demon King gets married..."

As the video was scrolled to the middle, Xia Li quieted down and watched the movie attentively. She forgot to eat while watching the movie, and it wasn't until the end of the story that she suddenly remembered and scooped up a spoonful of the now-cold porridge and put it in her mouth.

"The food...it's cold." She swallowed, picked up another piece of egg with her chopsticks, her eyes still fixed on the receding figure of Sun Wukong on the screen, and whispered, "That liar. He kept lying to people, and in the end, he even lied to himself. He broke his promise."

"Yes." Song Che took a sip of porridge. "Sometimes, even you don't understand what you're thinking. If she could really see through someone's heart at a glance, she probably wouldn't have knowingly been deceived and still willingly... But then again, even if she had mind-reading abilities, it might not be useful. The premise is that the heart only holds her."

Song Che made a few comments and then turned off the movie.

Xia Li probably understood the story, but she didn't truly feel the emotional entanglements that belonged to humanity. Song Che felt a strange emptiness in his heart. Xia Li's emotions had always been like this; if you said she didn't feel anything, she would sulk; if you said she did, it was like being separated by a layer of glass, vague and confused. Even if she really had mind-reading abilities, she probably couldn't understand those complex and nuanced emotions.

He looked out the balcony window. He had originally planned to eat on the balcony, watch a movie, and look up to see the stars, but the stars refused to come out today. He treated Xia Li as a girl, but Xia Li still seemed to be that witch princess.

He took a sip of porridge, feeling depressed. After finishing his meal, he cleared the table, turned off the light, and went to bed.

……

The next day, Song Che curled up in bed for several minutes before struggling to pull out his phone. Song Che had always felt that not sleeping until he naturally woke up was an anti-human behavior.

The bed is so warm in winter, I don't want to get up at all.

I put on my coat and went to wash up.

Xia Li got up even earlier than him and was already sitting at the small table in the living room, staring blankly at a piece of draft paper with a calculation error.

After Song Che finished washing up, he bought breakfast as usual. The two of them sat facing each other and ate, then each occupied one side of the table.

Xia Li flipped through the few remaining magazines, occasionally scribbling and doing calculations on scrap paper. Song Che reviewed his high school studies from the beginning. The two of them would sit for an entire morning, playing blues when they got tired of studying. Xia Li would rest her head on the table, sometimes peeking over to see what Song Che was doing. Seeing that string of formulas, she would leave dejectedly and continue reading the magazine, or drawing some conceptual diagrams of magic circles, mimicking their movements with a practiced air.

On Thursday, the school held a test review session, but Song Che didn't go and continued studying at home. This routine continued until the weekend. Song Che felt like his brain was about to be emptied out, but Xia Li was still full of energy, getting up early to read magazines—the stack that Song Che had bought was almost finished by her.

Song Che slumped on the sofa, his mind blank, taking stock of the week's progress: he had picked up some theoretical knowledge, but things that required rote memorization were simply too much to learn in a week. He roughly estimated his scores: Chinese might be okay, math was a close call, science... he could probably give up on physics, and he'd be lucky to get even a passing grade in chemistry and biology.

Beep beep—

Song Che's phone vibrated, and he opened it to take a look.

[Bro, wanna go to the internet cafe to play games? Jiang Shuo's coming too.]

Song Che replied.

[Didn't we say there would be a short play performance today? Aren't you going to see it?]

[The little troupe has stopped performing. Sigh, they said the lead actor was poached. There's nothing we can do about it.]

[Oh, when are we playing games?]

[Are you coming tonight?]

[OK]

After replying to the message, Song Che lay back down and casually opened his shopping app to check the logistics. The telescope showed it was still en route. It wasn't until Friday, when he was thinking of checking the weekend weather to decide when to take Xia Li to the stargazing aquarium, that he suddenly realized a problem—even the stargazing aquarium required real-name reservations and entry via ID card.

Xia Li's identity is a ticking time bomb; it cannot be exposed.

But this girl takes the promise very seriously and will definitely remember to look at the stars.

Left with no other option, Song Che gritted his teeth and ordered an entry-level astronomical telescope at his own expense. He even crammed for the last minute, searching for user manuals for ages. The tracking information showed it wouldn't arrive until midnight, so he couldn't pick it up until the next morning before his exam.

Turning off his phone, Song Che observed Xia Li as usual. She had finished reading the last magazine and was now sitting upright with her brows furrowed, seemingly deep in thought. But Song Che had a feeling that she was completely bewildered.

"Song Che, ask me a question," Xia Li called out.

"What's wrong?"

"If aliens came to colonize Earth and stipulated that we only work five hours a day, with overtime only paid at double wages..." She paused, her expression unusually serious, "then, would we still be able to celebrate the New Year peacefully?"

Song Che: "..."

Well, she actually took that weird joke she found in some scrap of magazine.

"Don't worry." Song Che rubbed his temples. "Even if aliens came, we'd have to figure out if they were edible first. I'll deep-fry them for you to try."

"Food?" Xia Li's eyes widened slightly.

"Well, theoretically, everything is edible," Song Che replied casually, then suddenly a thought struck him. Looking at her profile, he asked, "Xia Li, what do you want to do in the future?"

Xia Li turned her face and answered in a matter-of-fact tone:

"I want to be a scientist when I grow up!"

Song Che was stunned for a moment, then felt a mix of amusement and indescribable emotion.

Well, I was right after all, but very few people who aspired to be scientists as children actually succeed.

—Because ideals couldn't fill their stomachs, they all starved to death.