Chen Zilong was lounging comfortably, wrapped in a towel, enjoying a self-served BBQ, and sneakily had a glass of wine while Qian wasn’t around.
Qian and Yu Minglang finally finished watching—or rather, had their fill of kissing—and ca to find him, only to see Chen Zilong sprawled out like a starfish on a chair in the hot spring rest area.
He was even humming to himself.
"Oh, the agony... can’t move at all..."
Yu Minglang looked at his bloated belly and asked Qian worriedly, "Is this kid okay? Can’t have him getting overstuffed, right? Should we buy him so digestion tablets?"
Qian gave him a kick, and Chen Zilong, that idiot, who knows how much he drank, was already tipsy.
"I ate so much I’m sick, sis, I feel sick, I want to puke... ugh!" Chen Zilong covered his mouth, looking for a trash can.
Qian rubbed her forehead, inexplicably ashad to have such a brother.
After Yu Minglang helped Chen Zilong finish vomiting, he tidily returned, with Chen Zilong looking deflated.
"This kid, could he have bulimia?" Yu Minglang asked Qian while dressing Chen Zilong.
"No way he’d have bulimia, bulimia and anorexia are both eating disorders requiring similar treatnts, mostly seen in females. Do you know the difference between the two?"
"Testing ?" Yu Minglang chuckled; his dear Qian always perked up when talking about her field.
"Yeah." Qian winked.
"Well, I actually know. Bulimia is eating nonstop, then vomiting, forcing it out with fingers after eating, while anorexia entails hardly eating anything. Both often lead to parent-child conflicts. Am I right?"
Huh, how does he know this so clearly?
Qian originally asked casually.
Anorexia is common, but bulimia, very few laypersons can articulate it so well. Bulimia involves forced vomiting after eating, unlike Teng Shuixian’s case; bulimics use fingers to gag themselves or take laxatives after eating.
Both show an intense focus on weight, though bulimia and anorexia differ greatly in many aspects.
"I just know, I’m the all-knowing Lang." Yu Minglang propped up the pitiful Chen Zilong with one hand, and ruffled Qian’s hair with the other.
Qian thought for a mont and suddenly realized.
"Xiaoqiang, you’ve read quite a bit on psychology, haven’t you?"
"Call Lang, and I’ll tell you." Yu Minglang teased her as usual.
"Big brother, please tell , dear brother."
Upon her calling him that, Yu Minglang felt a tingly current flow upward from his tailbone, and his arm went soft, causing poor Chen to be dropped unceremoniously to the ground.
With a thud, he landed on the wooden floor. Thankfully, it was wood, so it didn’t hurt much. Chen Zilong mumbled a few words, sitting up abruptly on the floor.
His drunken eyes still bewildered, what happened, why does his head feel like it’s been hamred?
From his angle, Yu Minglang and Qian were staring at each other with sugary gazes that could suffocate soone. Chen Zilong felt so lofty, so grand, an ultra-genius who could tackle elite problems and solve physics questions, even blushing.
"Yeah, I’ve read quite a bit." To understand her hand-washing compulsion, Yu Minglang read up a lot on related books, inadvertently learning about simple psychological disorders too.
"Silly..." Qian blushed at his earnest answer. Though calling him silly, her expression didn’t quite match her words.
"I must be dreaming, I must be dreaming. My sister, that anemic woman, has never blushed in her life, as if missing so female cells, how could she possibly blush? My brother-in-law too, uh, I’m dreaming, I must be half-awake." Chen Zilong’s words shattered the sweet eye contact between the two.
Qian shot a fierce glare at the gluttonous, scene-ruining light bulb, and Chen Zilong sensibly slouched back to the floor.
"I understand now, you two are Schrodinger’s couple. Maybe the blushing sister and the future brother-in-law co from a parallel space, so when I open my eyes, the blushing you two will vanish, leaving behind the two monsters of this space. Yes, you look down on relying on being good at studies, always saying things I can’t understand. Ah, Schrodinger, why didn’t you focus on keeping cats instead of inventing such a chaotic experint?"
Qian found it both amusing and irritating, while Yu Minglang helplessly lifted the drunkard, hoisting him onto his shoulder.
"Did you teach him that?" Qian was sowhat impressed with Yu Minglang, explaining Schrodinger to soone with zero high school physics knowledge.
"He kept pestering , so I offhandedly explained it." Being caught blushing by his future brother-in-law wasn’t glamorous, so the clever Yu Minglang switched topics.
"Qian, why are both bulimia and anorexia psychological disorders, and why do they relate to parent-child imbalance? I thought such illnesses could be treated by visiting a traditional Chinese doctor for so digestive dicine."
"What you see is only the symptoms, what you don’t see is a heart that has lost its balance. Treating the stomach is only addressing symptoms, not the root. Of course, Traditional Chinese dicine has a role, but it requires reshaping worldviews and balancing disrupted parent-child relationships, which is the best way psychologists treat such conditions."
"Does eating relate to parents?"
"Of course. Why would soone beco anorexic? It’s seeking a slender physique, desiring more acceptance. If parents don’t teach their children how to manage emotions, they have nowhere to vent and resort to extre behaviors to fill an inner void. Many psychological disorders form that way."
"So... you’re planning to take the rich girl with a Bentley to work, also as a way to fill her inner void?"
Qian had ntioned it to Teng Shuixian only once, yet Yu Minglang connected the dots, surprising Qian.
Seeing her rare wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression, Yu Minglang felt accomplished and pinched her little nose, "Don’t forget what your big brother does. She’s so skinny and refuses to eat, with stomach aids and anti-nausea pills on the table. If they’re not yours, they’re hers, and you said you’d take her to work."
"Amazing, my brother... whether hard or soft, it’s all you..."
Qian thought of the frozen pear theory. At 20, he was more mischievous than steady, at 30, the opposite, but no matter which, his mind was sharp.
Yu Minglang, hearing the words "hard or soft" again, his hand slipped, almost throwing Chen Zilong out.
"i, if you don’t want to turn your brother into a dolt, stop provoking ."
"Drop him then, he’s not too bright anyway."
Qian chuckled lightly; he was himself, the sa in past lives and this one.
Yu Minglang escorted Qian ho, and only at departure did he reveal the secret he’d hidden all night.
"Qian, I can’t spend the New Year with you."
"Hmm?" Qian, having enjoyed the night, suddenly felt doused in cold water upon hearing this.
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