Chapter 11

Qin Yao: I’m not going to dinner with Chu Yan tonight. You were right, distance makes the heart grow fonder.
Just as Wen Jiu was getting off work, that message popped up in the elevator.
“…”
She blinked at her own reflection in the elevator’s mirror and realized the boomerang had just smacked her in the face.
She’d only said that earlier because she couldn’t get ahold of the male lead’s schedule.
Still… the Young Lady hadn’t exactly misunderstood.
Qin Yao: Let’s go look at dresses tonight!
Wen Jiu: Miss Qin, the fortune-teller said I should be out and about tonight. Want to tag along with me?
Qin Yao: ???
Qin Yao: What fortune-teller?
Wen Jiu replied with a cautious, overly cute sticker.
Dress shopping was important, yes, but so was helping the heroine catch a cheater.
Wen Jiu: Tomorrow I’ll take the day off and go dress shopping with you, Miss Qin.
On the other end, after a moment of thought,
Qin Yao: Fine. I’ll go out with you tonight then.
The Young Lady really did spoil Wen Jiu.
Seeing that reply, Wen Jiu’s head tipped to one side, the corners of her mouth curving up. Her smile bloomed in the mirrored elevator wall, bright as a flower.
She just didn’t expect that before Qin Yao even arrived, the night, without Chu Yan, would already be this exciting.
She watched her little lackey take on two people at once and not fall behind in the slightest.
“My boyfriend says he’s free whenever. It just depends on your time,” Lan Mingyan said, instantly softening as soon as she mentioned him; her voice turned syrupy without her noticing.
She was from the Jiangnan water towns, and her naturally lilting, Wu-accented speech was already as soft as a ripe honey peach. Lowering her voice made it even sweeter, enough to turn a person’s ears to jelly.
“I didn’t think you’d be free tonight. We can go straight to him.”
“I don’t know if you’ll mind this, Wen Jiu. In my head, it was supposed to be my boyfriend and me formally coming to pick you up.”
“What’s there to mind? We don’t have to be that polite with each other,” Wen Jiu said, following her onto the subway.
The heroine really was a good girl, and over this whole dinner invitation thing, she felt genuinely guilty toward Wen Jiu.
“Miss Qin’s coming later too. Is that okay?” Wen Jiu asked.
The sudden question broke through Lan Mingyan’s guilt and yanked her back to reality. “You mean Miss Qin from the Qin family?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Of course it’s okay,” Lan Mingyan said at once.
“When we show up, my boyfriend’s probably going to be shocked.”
Thanks to Wen Jiu’s little interruption, her good mood came back full force.
After a twenty-minute subway ride plus a transfer and another ten minutes, the two of them arrived downstairs at Lan Mingyan’s rental building.
“Is this really okay? I should’ve taken you straight to dinner, but I’m dragging you home just so I can change.”
“In front of friends, don’t keep putting yourself in the lower position. Lan Mingyan, I came back with you to see where you live, not because I’m doing you a favor by waiting while you change.”
Wen Jiu had noticed this about the heroine: once she considered someone a friend, she practically put them on a shrine and lowered herself in everything. It was the exact opposite of her brave, forward attitude at work.
Purely from an emotional-logic standpoint, Wen Jiu worried that in relationships, Lan Mingyan was the type to get trampled.
Lan Mingyan listened to everyone seriously, and when she heard that, her eyes almost filled with tears. “Wen Jiu, you’re so nice.”
“My boyfriend gets off work later than me. I already messaged him. He’ll go to the restaurant first and order for us; I’ll meet him after I change.”
“He hasn’t replied yet, though. Maybe he’s swamped with work right before clocking out.”
“He definitely won’t expect me to come home and change. Every other time I’ve gone on a date with him, I’ve gone straight there.”
Wen Jiu nodded. “Which means you value me more.”
Lan Mingyan rubbed at the back of her head and gave an embarrassed smile.
The door used a keypad lock, so it didn’t make the clatter of a key in the lock, if you weren’t paying attention inside, you wouldn’t hear it.
Lan Mingyan stepped aside and let Wen Jiu in first, delighted to be showing off her little place. It was just a rental, but she’d decorated it extremely cozy.
“Wen Jiu, this is-”
She turned as she spoke. The moment her eyes fell on the chaos in the living room, her words got stuck in her throat.
The warm, yellow-tinted space should have looked soft and welcoming, but it was a mess, nothing like the neat, tidy room she’d left behind. Clothes were scattered everywhere, especially a couple of items that definitely weren’t hers: one piece of clothing and a bra, one crushed beneath a throw pillow on the sofa, the other tossed carelessly on the floor.
From the state of the room, it wasn’t hard to guess how intense the “battle” had been, or how hurried the combatants had been to achieve total bodily fusion.
Lan Mingyan’s face went white and then whiter, her chest tight, the world tilting.
Once she’d guessed the only possible answer, she forced herself to stand up straight and walked to the bedroom door.
She and her boyfriend had always slept in the same bed. From freshman year until now, they’d been together nearly five years. They’d held hands, hugged, kissed, but had never gone further.
She might not have done it, but that didn’t mean she didn’t understand what was happening.
When she pushed the bedroom door open, the low groans and husky coaxing inside poured into her ears. What met her eyes were two bare bodies, pale flesh everywhere, an obscene tangle.
Lan Mingyan felt physically sick.
The two were still joined, just finishing their final movements and about to separate.
The man on top said, “My girlfriend’s coming back soon. Pack up and I’ll take you out. Tonight I’ll tell her I have to work late and stay with you instead.”
The woman disentangled herself from him, ready to keep flirting, but as she turned her head she caught sight of Lan Mingyan standing at the door and shrieked, voice cracking: “Who are you? What are you doing in here?!”
The man jerked around, just as shocked. He scrambled off the bed barefoot. “Mingyan, I can explain.”
Once hurt reached a certain point, there were no tears, just eyes so bloodshot they looked ready to bleed.
Lan Mingyan grabbed the nearest thing, her bag, and hurled it at him.
Who was she? She was the owner of this bed.
Disgust rose like bile. They were doing this on her mattress.
“What are you doing? Why are you hitting my darling?” The woman on the bed immediately joined the fight, swinging back at Lan Mingyan.
Seeing her about to get overwhelmed, Wen Jiu rushed in.
Her palm came down before she’d even thought it through, smacking hard across the woman’s wrist just as the other girl was about to hit Lan Mingyan. The pain sent the woman toppling back onto the bed, tears springing to her eyes.
“Who even are you? Why are you getting involved? Why are you hitting her?” the man demanded, dodging Lan Mingyan’s attacks while glaring at Wen Jiu.
He knew he’d wronged Lan Mingyan and couldn’t bring himself to hit her back, but this stranger? Totally fair game.
He lifted his hand, a slap already aimed at Wen Jiu’s face, only for her to slip out of the way and crack one right back across his cheek.
Seeing him get smacked, the woman went completely berserk. She stopped crying and scrambled off the bed to join in again.
Wen Jiu, one against two, didn’t fall behind at all. A smack here, a kick there, she ignored all their questions and accusations, simply answering with a flurry of blows.
“You insane or what? Believe it or not, I’ll call the cops on you for breaking into my place!” the man finally roared, after who-knew-how-many slaps, realizing he actually couldn’t beat her.
Standing behind Wen Jiu and watching her shield her, punching the man and kicking the woman, something inside Lan Mingyan loosened. The pain of betrayal gave way to a strange, quiet calm.
She touched her cheek and found it wet. The tears she’d been holding back finally spilled over now that she had someone to stand in front of her. They traced two hot lines down her face.
“You’re the one trespassing, Ye Lin. Get out of my house!” Lan Mingyan snapped. “Ye Lin, we’re over. Pack your stuff and get out of here. The farther the better.”
Ye Lin, her boyfriend, the one who’d just been rolling around in bed with a stranger. His face was swollen from Wen Jiu’s slaps; when he opened his mouth, his lips looked like two sausages, words coming out thick and slurred.
“Mingyan, don’t say things you don’t mean. If I leave, how are you going to live here alone? You’ll be scared at night.”
Some people, even at this point, still tried to cling on under the banner of “doing it for your own good.”
Oh, so the cheater was actually his “other personality,” not him? Must be dissociative identity disorder. They should hospitalize him for evaluation.
Seeing Lan Mingyan choked speechless with rage, Wen Jiu took over, dripping sarcasm like acid. “Wow, still hiding behind ‘I’m doing this for you’ even now… So the one cheating is your split personality, not you? Sounds like a serious mental health issue, might wanna get that checked out.”
Those words, doing it for her own good, dropped into Lan Mingyan’s ears and scattered the dark clouds in her chest, everything suddenly clear.
She wasn’t stupid; emotionally, she was perfectly lucid.
She just hadn’t expected that the campus male god she’d dated all through university would turn out like this once he stepped into the real world. The more she stepped back, the more outrageous he became.
Their relationship had never been equal. She’d always felt unworthy of him. Aside from kissing and any “further” contact, everything revolved around him.
Seeing clearly was the beginning of letting go. She said, “Ye Lin, we’ve rented this place for over half a year and I’ve paid every month’s rent. You haven’t even chipped in for utilities, and you still brought someone here to do this disgusting thing!”
“You’re lucky I’m not calling the police. Get out now. If you don’t, I’m throwing all your stuff out the door. You know me, I look easygoing, but I’ll actually do it.”
They’d been together almost five years; naturally, Ye Lin knew she meant what she said.
Without waiting for his response, Lan Mingyan grabbed his most prized possession, his most expensive, most beloved, and only luxury watch, and smashed it.
“You’re crazy! That watch was a gift from you! It cost seventeen thousand!” Ye Lin shouted, voice cracking, as he watched her move on to his second favorite item, his laptop.
“Lan Mingyan, you really are insane!”
“To be honest, I’m sick of you too! We’ve been together five years and you won’t even let me touch you. You get all stiff when we kiss, won’t even use your tongue. What are you, a leftover from the Qing dynasty? I’m a normal man, I have needs.
You wouldn’t let me touch you, so I went and found someone else, what, that makes you mad too? If you’d just sleep with me, I’d never look at another woman.
The Qing dynasty’s long gone; who are you still keeping yourself ‘pure’ for?”
The man finally blurted out what had been sitting in his chest. The woman on the bed, still smarting from several slaps, kept yelping in pain but still had the energy to chime in, “Exactly. Your boyfriend’s amazing in bed and well-equipped. You don’t know how to enjoy him, so what’s wrong with handing him over to me?”
“You two are disgusting.” Lan Mingyan honestly didn’t even know how to respond; there was just no way to communicate.
Wen Jiu stepped forward and handed each of them a slap. “You are disgusting. Hitting you just makes my hands feel dirty.
And you, throwing yourself at someone’s boyfriend to play the mistress, you’re just as disgusting.”
Miss Qin followed the address Wen Jiu had sent and arrived just in time to see her little lackey doling out a slap apiece to the happy cheater couple.
“...Want me to have my lawyer send a letter?”