Chapter 28

Just before they pulled into the 4S shop’s lot, Wen Jiu checked her balance again.
She was certain she’d be able to drive a car home today.
But when she saw the giant logo on the building outside the window, she instantly slammed on the mental brakes. “Shen Xingzhou, don’t you think this brand is a bit too expensive for a humble plebeian like me?”
Shen Xingzhou: “…”
His cool, clear voice floated over. “I wanted to buy one for you.”
In Wen Jiu’s head, two little cartoon versions of herself started brawling. After three solid minutes of inner struggle, she said, “Put in ‘Nuoyumi’ in the GPS.”
“I want to buy it myself.”
“I know you mean well, but I can’t accept a car from you right now.”
In her own mental plan, she would earn her own money, then keep a beautiful, delicate partner, or just live comfortably on her own. Shen Xingzhou showing up had been an accident, and she was only with him because she genuinely liked his sincerity.
Using his money to buy a luxury car was way beyond anything she’d pictured for her future.
If it were from her Young Lady, she’d probably have accepted it. But coming from Shen Xingzhou, it was different.
Being turned down made him a little sad. He forced himself to perk up, then froze for a second when he saw the navigation, “Nuoyumi… what is that?”
Wen Jiu: !
“Nuoyumi is what can go head-to-head with big rigs on the national highway,” she explained solemnly, pulling up videos to show him. Unfortunately, Shen Xingzhou couldn’t watch while driving.
In the end, though, they safely arrived at the Nuoyumi dealership, and Wen Jiu paid in full for a pink Nuoyumi mini-EV.
The license plate would take some time to get, and the plate itself cost nearly three times what the little car did.
She’d marched in full of confidence. On the way back, after seeing that she’d just burned through 250,000 yuan, her eyes almost watered in spite of herself.
To her, this really was money flowing away like water.
Just this morning she’d been happily thinking that her 2.14 million in savings would be enough to retire on.
Now she’d finally discovered that the more money you had, the more you’d end up spending.
Clearly, the road to making money was long.
Her determination to work hard for her Young Ladies solidified once more.
Thinking of that, she suddenly realized she still hadn’t told her boyfriend that she was about to go traveling.
Wen Jiu cleared her throat. “Shen Xingzhou, I’m going abroad with my young lady. You stay home and wait for me to come back, okay?”
“Ah?”
He’d wanted to go with her.
But Wen Jiu said couples needed to give each other space.
So he reluctantly saw her onto the plane.
Through the window, Wen Jiu’s gaze met his in the distance. She could faintly see the glimmer of tears in his eyes.
Qin Yao leaned in as well, resting her head against the window just like Wen Jiu, and commented, “Didn’t expect Shen Xingzhou to be such a crybaby.
In the end, my Chu Yan is still the best.”
In her Young Lady’s eyes, Male Lead Chu Yan was perfect at everything.
On a private jet, you could basically do whatever you wanted.
After lunch, Wen Jiu got sleepy.
The sunlight outside was blinding, so she pulled the shade down and lay down to sleep.
The bed here was huge and soft, all fluffy and springy, even more comfortable than the hotel’s.
Her Young Lady lay down beside her, connected to the Wi-Fi, watching TV. When she saw Wen Jiu was going to sleep, she put on headphones.
The plane cut through the clouds high above, and Wen Jiu slowly drifted into dreams.
“Yaoyao, you’re still young. When you go to school, you absolutely cannot date early!”
“I know, older brother.”
“Su Yaoyao, you’re not even the Su family’s biological daughter. If you hadn’t been switched into the Su family at birth, you’d be a village girl. You’d never have set foot in Beicheng in your lifetime.”
“Older sister, I won’t let Lin Yu step into this house. The Su family has only one daughter, and I have only one older sister.”
“Older sister, how can you have a boyfriend? How can you have a fiance? I’m going to lock you up.”
“Su Tan, what are you doing?!”
“Older brother, don’t you want to lock Older sister up too?”
Dreams are chaotic things; Wen Jiu found herself opening a book called Everyone Loves the Popular Female Supporting Character from the heroine’s point of view.
It was an “elevated supporting role” story. But the original “supporting role”, the book’s heroine, Su Yaoyao, hadn’t transmigrated or been reborn. She’d simply had a dream. When she woke up, she suddenly had a scent on her body that she herself couldn’t smell, but everyone else could. That scent made people like her against their will, care for her, even go so far as to imprison her.
In short: a walking “everyone falls for me” aura.
Even with this strange ability, Su Yaoyao was still soft and easily bullied. Anyone could pinch or knead her, a complete pushover. The scent made her even more unable to hide, unable to escape the cage she lived in.
The Su family had two sons and one daughter: eldest brother Su Heng, daughter Su Yaoyao, and younger brother Su Tan. Father and Mother Su were busy with work; the younger siblings were both left to Su Heng to raise.
Su Heng was seven years older than Su Yaoyao, ten years older than Su Tan.
On the day Su Yaoyao turned eighteen, her true identity was revealed. She was surrounded and verbally abused by a crowd, and it was Su Tan who stepped in and pulled her out.
That day also happened to be the day Lin Yu came to the Su house.
Su Tan immediately decided Lin Yu must have been the one to instigate them into bullying Su Yaoyao.
Su Yaoyao was a soft bun; no one wanted to listen to her attempts to explain.
In the end, the Su family used five million to completely cut ties with Lin Yu, and Su Yaoyao remained the esteemed Young Lady of the Su family.
But from that year on, Su Heng and Su Tan’s feelings for her only grew heavier. Even when she went to college, they wanted to micromanage her love life.
When Su Tan discovered that she had a first boyfriend at school, he went berserk and tore them apart. Father and Mother Su, hearing about it, arranged a fiance for Su Yaoyao and sent Su Tan overseas, hoping he’d calm down.
They never expected Su Heng had long since developed feelings for Su Yaoyao too. Once Su Tan found out, he went from crazy to completely unhinged. Blocked from returning home by his big brother for several years, he spent all that time thinking about what to do. On the day Su Yaoyao was invited overseas, he had her kidnapped and hidden away in a foreign manor.
As soon as Su Heng found out, he wanted to fly out immediately. But their parents, who still didn’t know he liked Su Yaoyao, insisted he stay and handle Lin Yu and the fiance.
Turns out Lin Yu and Su Yaoyao’s fiance had gotten together.
Lin Yu was the original heroine, the book’s “supporting character” under this new script. Everyone thought she was up to no good, including the fiance who’d once liked Su Yaoyao.
Su Heng didn’t want to see Yaoyao marry, nor did he want her to come back and find out her fiance had been stolen. So he stayed behind and “took care” of Lin Yu.
In the grand finale, Su Yaoyao married her fiance, but their wedding night was shared by four people. And they kept living that way afterward.
Wen Jiu woke up in fright.
A queen who commands three husbands? That was idol material.
A soft bun with zero sense of self who gets locked up and toyed with every day? That was nightmare fuel.
Reading it as fiction, Wen Jiu could still go “hiss hiss” and enjoy the drama. In real life, she’d be the first to grab a bucket and run.
As the viewpoint shifted, she not only saw how much Su Yaoyao had helped the original Wen Jiu, but also how much Lin Yu had done for her.
In this real-vs-fake young lady novel, both the true young lady and the swapped fake young lady were her Young Ladies.
Before Lin Yu went back to her wealthy family, she lived next door to the original Wen Jiu. The two households were alike in one thing: both were male-favoring families.
Back then, Lin Yu’s mother had switched the babies not for her daughter’s sake, but because she wanted to see a rich man’s child suffer in her own home, some twisted fantasy that satisfied a perverse desire.
If she’d given birth to a son, she would’ve happily wished for him to live well in the rich family.
Because of their home lives, Lin Yu and the original Wen Jiu became close friends.
The original Wen Jiu got into Beicheng University, but her family wouldn’t allow it; they wanted her to work in a factory and earn money for her younger brother.
That same year, Lin Yu got five million from the Su family to cut ties. She used it to escape her own family and study abroad. Half of it she gave her parents to sever all relations; the rest she took with her overseas.
Two and a half million was a lot for Lin Yu, but once she went abroad, it quickly became not enough. She had to work part-time on top of school.
Before leaving, she paid four years of tuition for Wen Jiu and bought her a one-way ticket to the north. That was the root reason Wen Jiu had been able to attend university.
Once she got to Beicheng University, Wen Jiu quickly realized that a degree could not guarantee good character. She was not only bullied; someone with bad intentions even dragged her to a club intending to “pawn” her there.
That day, the soft-bun Young Lady Su Yaoyao had been led there by a classmate by mistake. Su Tan smashed up the place, and in the process, the soft-bun Young Lady rescued Wen Jiu, getting her to a hospital.
True young lady, fake young lady, one had made it possible for Wen Jiu to attend college; the other had saved her from falling into a predator’s hands. Both had completely changed Wen Jiu’s fate.
From inside the book, you couldn’t really tell which of the two was “good” or “bad.” What you could see clearly was how much the Su brothers resented their biological sister, and their supposed adoptive one.
It seemed what she had to do this time was:
First, teach her soft-bun Young Lady what love actually is. If she wants three husbands, fine, future sister-in-law will send her blessings, but she has to be the one in control, not some locked-up canary.
Second, protect the overlooked gem of a Young Lady, Lin Yu, and make sure she isn’t ruined by her own brother and adoptive brother.
Right now Wen Jiu only had one wish: please, please don’t let these two Ladies turn hostile toward each other.
“Wen Jiu, did you have a nightmare?” Qin Yao took off her headphones and waved a hand in front of her eyes. “You screamed, bolted upright, then didn’t say a word and just stared into space. Doctor, doctor!”
“I’m fine, miss, no need to call the doctor.” Wen Jiu snapped back to herself and hurried to stop her.
Her Young Lady’s private jet once again shattered her perception of wealth: she actually had a family doctor on board at all times.
“As long as you’re okay. You woke up at just the right time, come have afternoon tea with me.”
Her Young Lady led Wen Jiu to the “living room” area of the plane.
The sofa was plush and comfortable, turned slightly toward the windows. They sat one on the left, one on the right, with a square table covered in lace between them. Laid out on it was an afternoon tea that could rival any high-end influencer cafe spread.
Even putting the food aside, just taking photos with that table in frame and the blue sky and white clouds outside the window was a luxury in itself.
Her Young Lady took photos and sent them to the husband she’d married three months ago. Seeing this, Wen Jiu thought for a moment and sent one to Shen Xingzhou too.
Shen Xingzhou replied almost instantly.
Thirty seconds later, he posted to his Moments, bragging that his girlfriend was on a plane sending him messages about drinking afternoon tea.
Wen Jiu never checked Moments, so she had no idea.
What she was thinking about was whether she could see Su Yaoyao, her soft-bun Young Lady locked away in that manor, the moment they landed.
“Miss, will we get to see Young Lady Yaoyao as soon as we land?” Wen Jiu asked.
At this point, calling her “Young Lady” came as naturally as calling a boss “Director So-and-so.”
Qin Yao: “We’re going to rescue her!
Rescue, by definition, means we won’t see her right away.”