"Dad, did I scare you just now?"

The pink, dreamy girl was at home, while Zhen Hu sat stiffly on the study chair beside her, barely touching it with his backside. He almost screamed when Mona suddenly spoke, startling him out of his thoughts.

How could he! How could he have been so absentminded as to bring milk and knock on her door!

Zhen Hu remembered that he had been thinking of drinking the milk himself to avoid wasting it. But somehow, he felt as if he were drunk, staggering towards her room, knocking on the unlocked door, and walking right in.

Heaven knows how shocked Zhen Hu was when he realized he had entered Mona's room!

Help!

Could he just turn around and run?

The answer, of course, was a resounding "No."

Zhen Hu awkwardly handed Mona the milk and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank goodness he had the milk.

But before he could fully relax, Mona pointed to the chair next to her and asked him to sit down.

And so it came to this—sitting on pins and needles, feeling like he had hemorrhoids _(：3」∠)_

"No… were you having a nightmare?" Zhen Hu shook his head repeatedly, then cautiously asked her what had happened.

"Sort of…"

Mona didn't explain what she had been doing, but simply agreed with Zhen Hu that she had had a nightmare.

"Oh, it's okay then. Drink this warm milk and get a good night's sleep."

Zhen Hu nodded perfunctorily, glanced at the bottom of her nearly empty glass, stood up, took the glass back from Mona, and said, "You should lie down and get some sleep. I'll go back now."

"Wait, Dad." Mona quickly called out, trying to keep him there, "Mona had a nightmare and can't sleep. Can you read me a story?"

Zhen Hu turned and looked at Mona, who was already lying obediently in bed, her big, watery blue eyes fixed on him. Zhen Hu could never refuse her.

"What kind of story should I read?"

Resigned, he plopped back down on the chair, staring intently at the lace trim of Mona's bed, not wanting to meet her gaze again.

He wasn't stupid; he was beginning to suspect that Mona was the reason he had felt so strange just now.

Therefore, Zhen Hu, who had played so many games, immediately began to avoid Mona's gaze.

In fact, he simply stopped looking at her face altogether, and instead started counting the pleats in the lace trim.

"It's on the desk. I've already read it, but I don't mind if you read it again, Dad."

Following Mona's direction, Zhen Hu saw a pink book—*A Girl's Crush*.

Ho, so little girls like this sort of thing?

Zhen Hu picked up the book and flipped through it. He had originally intended to read it to her if it seemed harmless, but after taking a look, he couldn't help but read it more closely. Then, he slammed the book shut.

"What's wrong, Dad?"

"This book isn't suitable for you. Don't you ever learn anything from what's inside."

Zhen Hu looked at Mona seriously and added, "If you ever meet a man like the male lead in this book, stay away from him!"

"But isn't he very good? He's gentle, mature, handsome, and talented to the female lead…"

Mona didn't understand, but as she spoke, her gaze remained fixed on the man before her who didn't dare to look her in the eye.

"If he were really that good, he wouldn't be seducing a naive, underage girl with an immature worldview."

As Zhen Hu said this, he couldn't help but look up at Mona, but Mona withdrew her burning gaze from him the moment he looked up.

Mona buried half of her face in the blanket, her eyelashes fluttering, and said, "Dad, the male lead in the book knows, too. He restrained himself and rejected the female lead, but emotions can really get out of control. This kind of mutual love…"

"What? A forty-year-old man and a sixteen-year-old girl, mutual love?" Zhen Hu scoffed. "Does he take two steps and become ten years younger, or does the girl take two steps forward and gain twenty years of life experience?

Little girls are in puberty, a time of great emotional swings. Many of their ideas are immature, and they desperately need recognition.

What makes girls' hearts flutter in this book is that the man treats her like an adult, not a useless little kid? What is that? He also says he likes the girl's purity and beauty. Could it be that he likes brainless adult women, and when he finds that adults all have brains, he looks downward?"

Zhen Hu was very forceful when he mentioned this, which was thanks to the fact that, of the four members of his family, besides his brainless younger brother, his mother and sister needed his care and attention.

If someone tried to sweet-talk and deceive his sister, he could beat the guy to death.

"That's how it is. Adults always think we're still young and don't let us do this or that."

Mona's attention was caught by Zhen Hu's last sentence, and she took the opportunity to complain.

"In your parents' eyes, you'll always be children." Zhen Hu sighed, and when he became sentimental, he suddenly thought of his own mother. He reached out and stroked Mona's head and said, "If you feel that Mom and Dad are restricting you too much, you can talk to us. Don't… refer to some strange books."

"Does Dad think the book is strange, or does he think it's strange that I'm reading it?"

Suddenly, Mona, perhaps misfiring on some circuit, sprang up from the bed. Before Zhen Hu could react, she threw herself into his arms, hugging him tightly.

Zhen Hu was so startled that he jumped up from the chair, letting out a long string of screams.

"Ahhh! Let go, let go! Don't do anything!"

Ah!

The Boss couldn't take it anymore, could she?

Was she going to kill him!

Zhen Hu's mind was filled with images of the "Black Tiger Clawing at the Heart," and the hair on his body stood on end.

So, before Mona could react, Zhen Hu performed a judo wrestling move, lifting her by the small of her back and tossing her onto the single sofa on the other side of the bed!

Mona: ???

Lilian, who had just opened the door and saw Mona flying out: ???

…

"Pfft—!"

Early in the morning, Zhen Hu, with an ostrich-like mentality of avoidance, ran straight to Lu Xiaoyao's house for breakfast.

Lu Xiaoyao had just sorted out her thoughts with Julian last night, suspecting that Mona had "ulterior motives" towards her father, Zhen Hu, when she heard Zhen Hu describing in horror Mona's desire to kill him when he wasn't prepared.

"You mean she pounced on you, ready to dig out your heart?"

Lu Xiaoyao took the tissue Julian handed her, wiped her mouth, and listened to Julian continue to ask Zhen Hu about what he had just said.

"Yes! What else could it be? You don't know how scary it was! One second I was telling her a story, and the next she suddenly sat up and pounced on me. The momentum! Like a ferocious insect emerging from its star!"

Zhen Hu's tone was full of ups and downs as he described the scene, making an ordinary event sound strangely thrilling.

And he completely failed to notice Lu Xiaoyao's twitching eyes.

"Maybe… she just wanted a hug?"

Having already guessed that Mona had different feelings for Zhen Hu's character, Lu Xiaoyao felt guilty when she said this to him.

But then again, given Zhen Hu's thought process, Lu Xiaoyao couldn't bear to interrupt his train of thought.

Zhen Hu was clearly the kind of person who was particularly upright, including his way of thinking.

If she told him now that Mona had those kinds of thoughts, Zhen Hu would probably log off immediately.

"I don't think so."

Although his mind couldn't figure it out, his intuition told him that Mona's behavior towards him was terrifying.

"And then? She hugged you, and what did you do?"

Seeing Zhen Hu getting hung up on it, Julian simply asked how he had managed to escape unscathed.

"Well… I just picked her up and threw her out."

The word "picked" was very evocative.

"And then?"

Lu Xiaoyao and Mu Chen both looked at him with their beady eyes, not knowing what to say. .oγg

They couldn't imagine how he had managed to remain safe and sound after "picking" up the Boss and throwing her out.

"Oh, then Lilian came in. She said it wasn't early, and told me to leave." Zhen Hu scratched his head. "I guess the mother and daughter wanted to chat. I saw her come in with a plate of sliced fruit."