Chapter 16

The room fell quiet again. Once she’d gotten used to it, the two reading lamps were enough to keep the large bedroom from feeling dark.
Yu Qing slid back under the covers, still warm from before. This time, though, she couldn’t lounge there comfortably with a book.
Blanket pulled up to her chin, she lay flat on her back, outwardly peaceful, only the occasional flutter of lashes and uneven breath betraying the turmoil inside.
By the bed, Xiang Changge sat in the chair, holding the very book Yu Qing had been reading.
It was a collection of poems.
She didn’t understand poetry—but she could read.
Bedtime service, in her mind, meant telling a story or singing a lullaby. Once she had the book in hand, though, another idea occurred to her.
Stories took effort to make up or find. As for lullabies, she didn’t know a single one.
So she would just read poetry to her.
Besides, Yu Qing clearly liked the book. If Xiang Changge read it aloud, it would spare Yu Qing the trouble of reading it herself. From another angle, she was protecting her eyesight.
With that comforting thought, she cleared her throat softly. After another glance at the bed to make sure nothing looked wrong, she flipped to the page with the bookmark and began to read.
“The songs I like, I listen to quietly. The person I like, I watch from afar.”
“I entrust my drunken tomorrow to Pandora’s strings, and let my drifting life sing falsely of heaven and earth.”
“……”
“We carve our story into the weathered wall, and the passersby cry when they see it.”
“The dance that sways at the tip of my pen is the fiercest splash of red beneath the spotlight.”
“Your sunset, my face, whose single third of a year is it?”
To be honest, Xiang Changge read terribly.
The moment she started, Yu Qing felt an almost overwhelming urge to open her eyes and politely tell her to get out and sleep. She had no need of such “nutrient‑free bedtime service.”
Even a hint of emotion in the delivery might have helped. But there was none—no feeling, no rhythm. If you knew what this was, you could call it an attempt to lull someone to sleep; if you didn’t, you’d think it was noise pollution.
Right after threatening to fire her and then being threatened right back, Yu Qing had forced herself to accept this so‑called bedtime service.
From the name, she’d half expected… something else.
She hadn’t thought it would mean being tucked back into bed, told to find a comfortable position, and then subjected to a live, line‑by‑line recitation of her confiscated poetry collection.
So this was her “bedtime service.”
Truly, there were no words.
Listening, Yu Qing muttered her complaints silently.
Had this butler decided she was a child to be managed?
Making her eat on time and clean her plate, scheduling clothing fittings, insisting on regular bedtimes, and now reciting poetry at her bedside…
Unable to help herself, Yu Qing rolled over, turning her back. Staring down at the soft blanket, she let out a long breath.
Hadn’t she claimed to be a professional?
Was this what a professional butler was like?
Was this a “butler” or a “kindergarten teacher”?
No, this wouldn’t do. Who knew if her straight‑A transcript from the butler academy was even real? She would have to look into it.
And she was *so loud.* Couldn’t this walking noise‑machine go take her own advice and sleep?
With one cheek mashed into the pillow, Yu Qing yanked the blanket over her free ear and made an expression of quiet despair.
Xiang Changge only spared her a glance before going back to the page.
Compared to trying to sleep with one eye open for fear of zombies or thieves, providing bedtime service was downright easy—and even a little fun.
As for what the unwilling recipient thought about it—that was none of her concern.
Although really, what *was* this poem about?
Too lazy to ponder it, she simply read on in her flat, steady tone.
At some point, the rustling on the bed stopped. Xiang Changge herself started yawning.
It was, she had to admit, fairly soporific.
Checking the time, she realized she had been reading off and on for half an hour.
The figure on the bed had lain quietly for some time now, breathing slow and steady. Hopeful, Xiang Changge asked, “Is she asleep?”
System: “No.”
“……”
Two little syllables—and both of them slid neatly into a fresh hell.
Xiang Changge kept reading. Yu Qing kept listening.
When the reading paused, Yu Qing’s heart had lifted. Maybe the butler was tired. Maybe she thought Yu Qing was asleep and had decided to stop.
But no. She kept going.
On and on and on. Might as well just poison her and get it over with.
After another five minutes, Yu Qing couldn’t take it. Giving up the pretense of sleep, she turned and glared at the woman by her bed. “How long are you planning to read?”
Wasn’t she tired? Because Yu Qing certainly was.
Glancing up from the book, Xiang Changge answered, lashes drooping, “Until you fall asleep.”
She was already here. Her job was to get Yu Qing onto a healthy sleep schedule. She wasn’t about to abandon the mission halfway. Tonight, like it or not, she was going to sleep.
Yu Qing: “……”
She rolled over again, turning her back once more.
That one glance had seared a new image into her mind.
The woman in the chair, who had started out sitting upright, now slouched like a boneless cat, weariness in her eyes as she read.
Yu Qing didn’t understand.
She could see that Xiang Changge was tired and bored. Why, then, keep forcing herself to read?
If Yu Qing didn’t want to listen and she didn’t enjoy it either, why not just retire to their own rooms and sleep in peace?
Why did she insist?
The Yu residence was empty but for Yu Qing herself. Whether the butler did her job well or not, whether she was conscientious or lazy—who would know? She could have coasted along like the old butler, doing only what the role strictly required. Why go out of her way to impose rules and expectations?
Was it a sense of responsibility? Some promise made to her parents that she felt bound to uphold?
Yu Qing didn’t know. Any more than she understood why her own heart felt so heavy.
The voice, low and hoarse, went on, line after line, neither the reader nor the listener really taking in the words.
Outside, the rain thickened, thunder muttering overhead. Inside, neither woman paid it any mind.
The storm couldn’t touch them here.
Yu Qing had been convinced she wasn’t tired. But the relentless monotony finally wore her down. At some point, she drifted off without realizing it.
When her even breaths lengthened into true sleep, Xiang Changge didn’t need the system to tell her.
She closed the book without a sound and placed it on the nightstand.
Stretching with both arms over her head, she checked the time. It was twenty past eleven.
She had read for nearly an hour.
Still, she’d taken it slowly, with frequent pauses. It hadn’t been that tiring.
One last look at the quiet figure wrapped in the blanket, and she slipped out of the room.
Back in the main house foyer, she made a mental note to requisition a camp bed or fold‑out lounge chair tomorrow. Sitting on a hard chair was murder on the tailbone; if she was going to keep offering bedtime services, she might as well do it lying down.
The system, listening in: “…Why not just stretch out on the young miss’s bed to read?”
Settling into the driver’s seat of the shuttle, Xiang Changge was scandalized. “That wouldn’t be right.”
It was her employer’s bed. Even if she didn’t mind, Yu Qing probably would.
And besides, Yu Qing wasn’t a child. Surely her bedtime service didn’t need to involve cradling her in her arms and patting her back to sleep.
The system, which had only meant to be snarky: “!”
“You actually *thought* of that?!”
Rain battered the windshield in a steady hiss as Xiang Changge started the engine. “Why not? It’s not impossible…”
The book had called Yu Qing a girl who had never known true warmth, someone who had mistaken the male lead’s occasional visits for the glow of family.
Why not find her a few “sisters,” then—people to eat, chat, play, and sleep beside her—until she truly understood what thirty‑seven degrees of warmth felt like?
She tucked the idea away, planning to add a few candidates to the recruitment list tomorrow.
The system, which had just been fretting over shared beds, found itself oddly soothed. In fact, “thirty‑seven degrees of warmth” sounded… surprisingly viable.
At two‑thirty in the morning, the room was so quiet that only the soft hum of the central air‑conditioning could be heard.
When Yu Qing woke, she lay staring at the ceiling for a long moment before everything came back to her.
She turned.
The chair by the bed was empty. The poetry collection lay on the nightstand. The chair itself had been put away.
It was as if no one had ever barged in to provide an unwanted “bedtime service.”
She stared at the ceiling for a long time, then reached for her phone.
Two‑thirty.
Suddenly, she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing.
What did she normally do at this hour?
Read? Play the piano? Or just lie there and stare at nothing?
Probably all of the above.