Damn it, I'm surrounded by childhood sweethearts-Chapter 382 - 278. Xia Xiaoxiao, Who Was Beaten Innocently_2

The white light quickly filled the room again, and what Xu Qingfan saw was Xia Xiaoxiao, looking like a rain-soaked pear blossom as she knelt on the bed with both hands covering her freshly struck right cheek. Her small, pitiful figure and her long black hair sprawled behind her head made her resemble the sympathetically beautiful women in ancient costumes from TV dramas.

Xu Qingfan hurriedly climbed onto the bed to check on her, "Let me see, stop covering it." He gently pried open the girl’s palms.

"Get away... whaa... I’m not playing with you anymore... waah!"

Xia Xiaoxiao sounded fierce with her words, but she didn’t use much strength to resist. After Xu Qingfan was pushed down and reseated, he easily took away the girl’s hands from her swollen cheek.

"Hiss~" Upon seeing her swollen half face, Xu Qingfan couldn’t help but gasp, "Shame on you, it’s swollen like a pig’s head now."

"Whaah... you’re still saying that... whaa... I’m not going to bother with you anymore!" Xia Xiaoxiao pushed him away and scurried to the mirror to examine the injuries on her face.

"Whaah, wow!" When she saw her face really swollen like a pig’s head, the girl finally lost control and burst into tears.

"Xu Qingfan, you’re just a dog... whaa... a stinky dog, a naughty dog, a slobbering dog... waah... How can I see anyone looking like this!"

The room echoed with wailing and howling, and it was the first time Xu Qingfan had seen Xia Xiaoxiao lose her composure like this. Fearing he might burst into laughter, he said with his head lowered, "I’ll go get some icy water for a cold compress."

After that annoying ghost disappeared from her sight, Xia Xiaoxiao’s crying gradually became quieter, sniffing as she examined her swollen cheek in the mirror.

Somehow, the first thought that crossed Xia Xiaoxiao’s mind was how ugly she looked, and that Xu Qingfan had seen her like this.

Thinking that her face was swollen precisely because of this stinking dog, yet she still couldn’t help thinking about him, the girl’s previously softened sobbing grew louder once more.

"Whaa... Lying cheater... Domestic abuser... whaa... So awful!"

Xu Qingfan quickly returned with a bowl of icy water, hearing Xia Xiaoxiao still cursing him, he shook his head and said, "Stop cursing already, I didn’t know someone was hiding in there, okay? When you suddenly pop up like a zombie, all dark and shadowy, of course I would slap without thinking."

"Lin Wanning can crawl into your blanket and you won’t hit her, but you hit me!" The more Xia Xiaoxiao thought from this angle, the more aggrieved she felt.

Xu Qingfan was somewhat speechless; he reasoned that Lin Wanning wouldn’t scare him by suddenly popping up like that, but worrying it might set off the girl’s defiant mood, he softened his tone saying, "All right, it’s my fault. Let’s apply a cold compress on your face, the swelling will go down quickly."

"I don’t need your fake kindness!" Xia Xiaoxiao glared at him fiercely, snatching the towel from his hands.

"Sorry, okay? Luckily I thought it was you and withheld some strength at the last moment, otherwise you’d probably need to go to the hospital." Xu Qingfan had to indulge her, waiting for her to be less hostile before taking back control of the towel.

He gently lifted Xia Xiaoxiao’s bangs, carefully applying ice to the swollen area.

"Even if you recognized it was me, you still hit me, Xu Qingfan, you’re just a domestic abuser... whaa..." The girl’s tears threatened to spill again as she complained through her bitten lower lip.

"That’s because of inertia, I’m not an alien. How could I possibly defy Newton’s first law?"

Xia Xiaoxiao knew he made sense, but she was still angry. Why should she get hit for crawling under the blanket, while Lin Wanning does the same and gets away with it? Hypocrisy! Unfair treatment!

"I don’t care... you’re just a domestic abuser... I’m going to tell Auntie you hit people!"

[I’m not even Xia Xiaoxiao’s husband, how did I become a domestic abuser?]

However, at this point Xu Qingfan didn’t want to correct the girl’s misconceptions. If his mother found out about this, given Yao Jiping’s fondness for Xia Xiaoxiao, he might indeed end up being smacked with a duster.

"Sorry, okay? It’s not all my fault, who asked you to try and scare me suddenly?" He tried to reason with her.

But the irritable girl wasn’t listening, and she brought up the most irritating question, "Then Lin Wanning crawls into your blanket and you don’t hit her, but when I do, you hit me. You must like Lin Wanning, so I deserve to be hit, right!"

As Xia Xiaoxiao spoke, her emotions were complex, filled with feelings of being wronged, anger, and jealousy.

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"She wha..." Xu Qingfan wanted to argue that Lin Wanning hadn’t crawled into his bed for a long time, but Xia Xiaoxiao’s next words blocked his retreat.

"You still want to argue, on the day we went to Disney, Lin Wanning ran off to sleep in your room. You can’t say it wasn’t so!" The girl loudly challenged him.

Facing her unyielding gaze, Xu Qingfan conceded, "I’ve hit her before."

"Huh?" This answer clearly took Xia Xiaoxiao by surprise. It took her a while to ask, "How did you hit her?"

Xu Qingfan blushed at the memory of that morning’s events—he couldn’t possibly speak of it!

"I just slapped her palm..." Avoiding Xia Xiaoxiao’s gaze, he spoke guiltily about what had happened, "Wanning said that it doesn’t count as crawling into bed if the blanket isn’t covering, so that night, I really didn’t cover with a blanket, which is why I caught a cold and had a fever the next day."

"Um..." Xia Xiaoxiao was at a loss for words for a moment, not knowing quite how to assess such a brazen train of thought.

"What about before? Before, when she crawled into bed, you didn’t slap her!" Unable to think of a rebuttal, she resorted to dredging up the past, a tactic that’s foolproof when girls argue with their boyfriends.

"Before, we were both still kids, weren’t we? When you were little, you used to sleep with me too." Xu Qingfan was equally skilled in this game, instantly silencing the girl with a swift switch in logic.

Seeing that Xia Xiaoxiao had nothing else to say, he continued, "Don’t talk for a while, let me properly apply the ice pack for you."

"Hmph!" The girl glared fiercely at him but didn’t refuse.

The room finally regained a moment of peace as the boy gently massaged the girl’s swollen face with a towel, a scene straight out of a romance drama featuring bickering leads—if only this damn dog wasn’t smiling.

"What are you smiling at?" Xia Xiaoxiao thought Xu Qingfan was laughing at her swollen face like a pig’s head, feeling a mix of embarrassment and an urge to beat up the boy in front of her.

"I was reminded of Zhou Xingchi’s movies ’Fist of Fury’ and ’Swollen Head and Bruised Feet.’" Xu Qingfan, not wanting her to misunderstand, told her the truth straightforwardly.

"Pfft~" Once Xia Xiaoxiao heard his explanation, she couldn’t help but picture the scene. But the thought that her face was the one that was swollen brought a fierce look to her eyes as she said, "You’re not allowed to laugh or even think about it!"

"Oh... cough cough..."

"You’re still laughing!"

"I’m not, you saw wrong!"

"You did!"

"Ouch~be gentle!!"

"Sorry, sorry..."

After nearly half an hour of applying the ice pack, Xia Xiaoxiao’s face had visibly deflated by a good amount.

In the end, Xu Qingfan applied an anti-swelling ointment to her face, and by the time he finished, it was nearly ten o’clock at night.

At this hour, his mom and Aunt Lin could return at any moment. Worried that Xia Xiaoxiao would tattle, Xu Qingfan prodded her arm with a sheepish grin, "Could you not tell my mom and Aunt Lin about tonight, please?"

"Hmph!" Xia Xiaoxiao turned her head away, "I’ll tell, I’ll let Aunt Lin beat you!"

"Give me a chance, I want to be a good person." After wringing the towel and hanging it on the basin, he scurried behind the girl to give her a shoulder massage.

"You want to be a good person, go be it for Lin Wanning. I don’t need it!" Xia Xiaoxiao was clearly still mad about the dog’s preferential treatment, speaking with a proud snarl.

"Then tell me what you want, and I will agree to anything." Seeing that time was running out, Xu Qingfan was prepared to sign an unfair treaty.

"If Lin Wanning ever crawls into your bed again, you...you just can’t let her crawl in!" Originally, Xia Xiaoxiao wanted to say to hit her like tonight, but that seemed too malicious, and besides, the bad dog would definitely not agree to such a demand.

"Just that?" Xu Qingfan couldn’t believe it was just this request, and immediately nodded in agreement, "I promise I will never let Lin Wanning crawl into my bed again, unless..."

"No unless!" Xia Xiaoxiao said fiercely.

"Alright, alright, no unless, happy now?" He sighed internally. If he ended up marrying Lin Wanning in the future, would he really not be able to share the covers with his wife?

"Hmph, pinky promise!" Xia Xiaoxiao extended her pinky, signaling him to hurry up.

"Okay~, pinky promise and hope to die, I, Xu Qingfan, promise not to let Lin Wanning crawl into my bed, not for the next hundred years!"

"Now that we’ve pinky promised, I guarantee I’ll lock the door before sleeping from now on. If Wanning still comes to crawl into my bed, then I’ll just sleep under the bed, okay?" Xu Qingfan said, resigning himself to the situation with a shrug.

"Hmph~ Easy for you to say, who knows what you’ll actually do when the time comes!" Xia Xiaoxiao flicked her long hair and got up to leave the room.