Love O2O- Beyond a Beautiful Smile

Chapter 53- The Lull before the Storm

A/N: Guess who has officially submitted her last assignment for her undergraduate degree????? Yeeeeeeee-ah bishes. *cough* sorry. I'm a little bit excited. It's been 50 hours since I submitted and my original plan was to have updated twice in that time but I may, or may not, have fallen asleep yesterday afternoon after a post-semester adrenaline crash. And I'm currently writing this chapter in the waiting room for my youngest to see the doctor (just because the fairy dress has wings, does not mean you can fly). This is chapter 53... and we only have 58 chapters total (unless I split one of the other ones into two. But they'll be updated at the same time)... My reward (and yours for waiting patiently for me) is an update a day until the conclusion! Yay! I will be leaving this story in such a way that a) it can be a complete story in and of itself and b) it still has the option for a sequel. I have future plans for HoK but have other ideas I want to write before I start a sequel.

Lunch was relatively uneventful. When they'd all gathered on the patio near their rooms, Mei fully expected some teasing from at least Yu Ban Shan and Qui Yong Hou, but the pair were surprisingly silent. There was the remark Ban Shan made about Mei eyeing off the cook the way you usually eye off the food you're eating, but Mei was confident he'd got him back for that by feeding KO the lamb skewer he'd pretended to offer to his oldest bro.  Then there was the comment Wang Wei made, when they were all swapping accounts to battle each other for food, about Mei being so successful on the Lu Wei Wei Wei account because they were both wives. But Wang Wei had taken it back when Mei trounced him so emphatically he wasn't able to make a single hit on the Red Xia character. He'd lost almost as badly as Ban Shan and Mei couldn't help feeling proud of himself for giving as good as he got.

    He was feeding the chef lamb skewers (couldn't have the cook go hungry after all- then who would feed the rest of the horde?) when Xiao Nai took Wei Wei off for a walk. Whistles and jeers followed them before barbecue and beer proved too enticing to ignore.

     "Eh... so good. This is why I told laosan he should hire you." Ban Shan licked marinade off his fingers.

    "Who told laosan to hire him?" Mei waggled his finger at the bald faced liar. "You were pacing in the foyer determined that laosan was hiring a thug who was going to murder us at our desks."

"You weren't any better," Yong Hou grabbed a fresh beer, twisting the cap off with a satisfying hiss. "As I recall, you were armed with the toilet mop."

"Toilet mop?"

"What were you going to do with that?"

"I was going to stink him out. If he tried anything I was going to chase him with the mop and the smell would make him faint."

"Good plan."

"Didn't work though."

"Well, when I saw KO I didn't think he was going to murder us at our desks."

"He saves the stabbing for underneath the desk huh?" Ban Shan's mumble was only heard clearly by Mei who immediately took offence.

"Ya! What did you say! I'll murder you." The chair toppled over when Ban Shan scrabbled out of it, scuttling away from Mei's grasping fingers. The pair chased each other around the tables, knocking over empty bottles that had been left on the ground and sending their friends into a panic as everyone tried to save their plates of food. An impasse was briefly reached when Ban Shan and Mei found themselves on opposite sides of the largest table.

"You can't win this, Mr Beauty," Ban Shan's laughter was raspy as he tried not to pant. "Truce?"

"Truce my arse."