Love O2O- Beyond a Beautiful Smile

Chapter 57- Happily Ever After and all that Sap.

The air was thick and oppressive; stepping outside the house was like stepping into a sauna. With no official office to go to, Mei had stopped dressing up for work and as summer drew closer he spent more and more time in a singlet and shorts. Their house was airy but by the end of the day the second level was like an oven and the pair had started sleeping on the lounge room floor with all the windows open. Not for the first time, Mei wished he'd listed air-conditioning as a condition for the house. Winter had been hard enough without heated floors, but thick socks and house slippers had helped and there was the added benefit of snuggling closer. To share body heat, of course.

    At the moment, it was so hot and sticky that they were sleeping next to each other on the floor... an arm's length apart.

"KO?"

"Hmm?"

"You awake?"

"No."

Mei thought about that for a minute before shrugging.

"Eh. It's not like you'd say much anyway so I guess I don't need you to be awake."

"Hmmm."

"Next month is the Dragon Boat festival. I thought we could go and have a look around."

"Hmm."

"And we haven't been out for a date since we got here. We've been so busy with work that we've forgotten to do something just for us."

"Hmm?"

"No. Dates at home don't count. I mean a real date. We couldn't really do anything as a couple in Beijing but it's different here. We could actually go out together."

"Hmm?"

"I want to do things that couples do on dates. I want to go out for coffee and share a cake. I want to go shopping and hold hands in the mall." He stared up at the roof, gleaming white in the darkness. Outside, the night life rustled leaves in the garden and the bones of the house creaked as they cooled down in the night air. He could hear KO's deep, even breathing next to him and rolled towards the sound. They'd been living together for nearly nine months and in Taipei for eight of those months, but he still struggled sometimes to believe that this, that they, were happening.

Sometimes he wondered if they'd made the right decision.

If being together was the best thing for them.

He missed Beijing with its familiar streets and sounds and smells.

He missed Drunk Monkey and Old Man Yu. Playing with them online wasn't the same as playing altogether. He even missed Li Qiang, Wang Wei and the rest of the Zhi Yi family.

In the relatively short time that Wei Wei had been with Xiao Nai, she and Mei had grown close and he missed being able to chat to someone who understood him. Not that KO didn't understand him- that man could read him like a book and wasn't that annoying sometimes. But his relationship with Wei Wei was different. Sisterly.

Then there was laosan. Despite talking on a daily basis, Mei desperately missed his brother. The phone calls lately were always about work- both filling Mei in on what was happening with his family, and hearing what Mei and KO were up to with their programming. That was particularly interesting as Xiao Nai and KO had started arguing lately. The programming had reached the stage where they needed to start testing it- Xiao Nai wanted them to build a secondary system and test their program within that, while KO wanted to test it against real-world systems to see how the program compared to the current programs available. The problem with KO's suggestion was small... just a minor issue of legality. Or lack thereof. Lately, phone calls between the two ended with Mei reassuring Xiao Nai that they wouldn't do anything too stupid, and reminding KO that he was no longer a hacker. Or, at least, he was a white hacker trying to design a security program to stop a hacker of his capability.