Chapter 33

Wen Jiu hadn’t expected that once the little “everyone loves her” young lady started expressing herself, every word out of her mouth would warm your heart.
She pressed a hand to her chest; her heart was thumping wildly.
It wasn’t the same flutter she’d felt the first time she saw Su Yaoyao and was stunned by how breathtakingly beautiful she was. This was a different kind of rush, friendship leveling up.
“Ah, my rod moved. Is that a fish?” Su Yaoyao suddenly exclaimed, dashing over a couple of steps to reel in the line. Sure enough, she’d hooked a big one.
Wen Jiu’s emotions evaporated in an instant. She ran over and poked at the fish. “We can steam it for dinner.”
“Mm, mm, mm.” Once food came up, Su Yaoyao squatted down, discussing seriously, “Steaming is best.”
“Wen Jiu, your phone is ringing.” Su Yaoyao pointed to the bag hanging by the cabin door.
Wen Jiu reached in to grab it.
Incoming call: Ji Yujing.
Wen Jiu: ???
Why was the young master calling her out of nowhere?
With the ocean wind and waves slapping against the hull, there was a lot of background noise, so Wen Jiu simply turned on speaker.
The moment Ji Yujing’s voice boomed out into the open air, Su Yaoyao’s eyes went round.
Silently, mouthing the words, she told Wen Jiu: I know him.
“You know him?”
One of them was from Beicheng, the other from Haishi, and Su Yaoyao rarely socialized. The fact that she knew Ji Yujing of all people, aside from the young lady, was pretty surprising.
Su Yaoyao continued silently shaping words without sound: He’s my fiance.
Under the blue sky and above the sparkling sea, it suddenly felt like thunder rolled overhead. Wen Jiu’s delayed memory finally kicked in: right, that was how it went in the book.
Ji Yujing was Su Yaoyao’s fiance, one of her three male leads.
She really didn’t want to picture their foolish, golden retriever of a little young master, who used to trail after the white moonlight young lady like a lovesick puppy, playing the “forcefully possessive” male lead in another novel.
Ranking-wise, even though he was the fiance, he wasn’t the main “official” one. That spot belonged to her big brother, Su Heng.
For a split second, Wen Jiu even felt a tiny bit sorry for the young master. Very tiny. And purely for the wages and tips he’d given her.
“Wen Jiu, hurry up and bring Su Yaoyao back,” he roared down the line, instantly smashing that sympathy to dust.
“What do you want?” Wen Jiu asked, voice already edged with wariness.
“I’m going to break off the engagement with her,” the young master announced. He had no idea Su Yaoyao could hear every word, and his tone even had a hint of glee. “Once we’re not engaged anymore, I can chase Lin Yu. You get her back here and I’ll reimburse your travel. I’ll give you a bonus too.”
“Hang on.” Wen Jiu cut him off without hesitation.
“Yaoyao, when was your engagement to Ji Yujing arranged?” she asked.
She also suddenly remembered, three months ago, Ji Yujing had still been chasing the white moonlight young lady all the way to the set.
He’d liked her desperately back then. Surely he wouldn’t have done that while secretly engaged, right?
“A month ago.”
“Dad and Mom set it up. My brother and my little brother only found out later. My little brother was furious and dragged me out of the country,” Su Yaoyao said.
Got it.
“He wants to break off the engagement. Are you going to be sad?” Wen Jiu asked, then muttered, “Ji Yujing really is trash.”
“No.” Su Yaoyao shook her head. “I wasn’t close to him in the first place. I think I only met him once.”
“Do you want to go back? If you do, we’ll go. If not, we’ll keep playing here.”
“I want to go.”
Wen Jiu nodded, then went to the bow to tell the young lady what was going on, and, in passing, to ask how much a trip on the private jet would cost.
Since young master Ji insisted on reimbursing their travel, it would be a waste not to use that.
“He said he’ll pay?” Qin Yao asked. She didn’t really care about fuel costs and such, but the chance to fleece Ji Yujing? That, she was very interested in.
“I was wrong earlier, it’s not five hundred thousand, it’s a million,” she declared majestically.
She hadn’t caught a single fish, but the moment she had a pretext, she immediately jumped to her feet, patting the sides of her pants and stepping over to block Wen Jiu’s view of the bucket. “Fish in Australia are no good. Let’s just go back tonight.”
“Okay,” Wen Jiu said, covering her mouth to stifle a laugh.
“You’re laughing at me!” the young lady snapped, glaring at her. “I heard that.”
“Hmph. I’ve already had them set the nets. We’ll definitely get fish later.”
“Young lady, your foresight is incredible,” Wen Jiu said, laying it on thick.
“That’s enough, don’t say another word. So fake.” The young lady stuck out her lower lip, face stiff as she tossed that line over her shoulder.
Only when Wen Jiu went to find Su Yaoyao and confirmed the latter really couldn’t see her expression did she finally let herself smile, like a little blade of grass poking through the soil, shooting up the moment it broke ground.
With the nets the young lady had ordered laid in advance, the three of them ended up feasting on a lavish seafood dinner that night.
They had boarded empty-handed and left empty-handed.
Wen Jiu had originally wanted to bring back a few souvenirs; the young lady took one look, called the butler, and ordered, “Pack everything up.”
“We’ll help Yaoyao break off the engagement first. The butler can send everything back to my place. When we return to Beicheng together, you can slowly pick through it. You can take it all if you want.”
“If the mood’s bad, we’ll just come back after the engagement’s canceled and play then.”
In Wen Jiu’s mind: All this flying back and forth must be so expensive… I can’t bear the thought of the money.
That was how she saw it back when she had to buy her own plane ticket. Once she learned a single private jet trip could run close to half a million, she even started feeling sorry for the young lady’s bank account.
Not that she had any illusion of claiming the young lady’s money as her own. She was just pure, simple painfully aware of how much money that was.
But for the young lady, flying back and forth was just her normal. She’d bought the plane to use it. It wasn’t some decorative antique.
“Isn’t the point to break off the engagement?” Su Yaoyao interjected in a tiny voice.
The moment she spoke, the young lady and Wen Jiu instantly aligned, answering in perfect chorus, “It’s you dumping him.”
“Ji Yujing doesn’t get to decide, ‘Oh, I feel like getting engaged’ and then ‘Oops, I feel like breaking it off now.’ Who does he think he is?” the young lady huffed. “If anyone’s breaking it off, it’s you. He doesn’t get to say he doesn’t want you.”
She said it all in one breath and ended up a bit thirsty.
Wen Jiu grabbed the coconut on the table and passed it over.
Not playing favorites, she handed another coconut to Su Yaoyao.
The big coconut sat in both of Su Yaoyao’s small hands. For a second, she couldn’t quite process what was happening.
After two days of diligently working through the reading list Wen Jiu had assigned, she suddenly lit up, eyes shining. “I get it! Yao Yao and Jiujiu are here to help me unlock ‘protagonist mode’!”
Wen Jiu: “…”
The rate at which this girl picked up tropes was terrifying, faster than a runaway horse, and just as impossible to rein in.
Still… she wasn’t wrong.
The young lady covered her face. “Wen Jiu, what exactly have you been teaching her?”
Head held high, the little creeper-vine beauty suddenly wore the wild, domineering ambition of a “Long Aotian” male lead. “Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west, I, Su Yaoyao, am going back to rule Haishi’s high society.”
The young lady stared, stunned, turning to gape at Wen Jiu.
Wen Jiu frantically waved her hands. “That one’s not from my reading list. She picked that up on her own.”
Flustered, Su Yaoyao quickly dropped the exaggerated expression and shrank back into her well-behaved self. “Was that… not good?”
She was like a chick that had just pecked its way out of the shell, stretching its fragile claws outside the cracked eggshell, testing the world. At the slightest rustle, it yanked them back in again.
The young lady swallowed down a sigh and shoved Wen Jiu forward. “You explain it.”
“It was perfect,” Wen Jiu praised boldly.
“Really?” Su Yaoyao looked utterly serious.
“Really. You just don’t have to yell some of those lines out loud,” Wen Jiu explained. “Think about it, aren’t the ones who talk the most in novels usually the villains? The more they talk, the faster they get written off.”
“It… kind of seems that way?” Su Yaoyao wasn’t entirely sure.
But she patted down the skirt of her dress and nodded solemnly. “I’ll keep studying hard.”
The young lady kept her hands over her face. In the end, she surrendered with a sigh. “Forget it. At least it’s a change in the right direction.”
“Was I like that with Chu Yan before?” she asked Wen Jiu, eyes shining, wanting a serious answer.
The question arrived together with a transfer notification.
On Alipay, so not only could you see the amount, you got the cheerful voice readout too.
Alipay: you’ve received 2,000 yuan.
“That was true love,” Wen Jiu said immediately, turning the flattery up to max. “You two are a match made in heaven. Your feelings for him took on physical form; what looks over the top on the surface is actually love so deep it spills over, ”
“All right, that’s enough.” The young lady cut her off.
“Give me the money back,” she said, holding out her hand.
Wen Jiu hugged her phone to her chest. “Okay, okay, you did chase him like a crazy woman.”
Young lady: ???
Young lady: !!!
“But Chu Yan is crazy about you,” Wen Jiu added smoothly.
The corners of the young lady’s lips shot up instantly, impossible to press back down. Her beautiful eyes lifted, and even with both hands clapped over her mouth she couldn’t hide the laugh that slipped out.
Su Yaoyao, meanwhile, was holding the brand-new phone the young lady had bought her, all the apps still logged out.
She watched quietly, taking mental notes, and decided that when she started publishing her own novels one day, she would send little red envelopes to her readers every day.
Before they flew home, Wen Jiu went to collect from Ji Yujing.
“What kind of plane ticket costs a million? Wen Jiu, are you insane? You’re straight-up robbing me.”
“You’re actually a decent person,” he grumbled. “You could’ve just robbed me outright, but you still insist on calling it fuel costs.”
On the other end, Young Master Ji knocked over his wine glass; Wen Jiu could clearly hear the crystal shatter against the floor through the speaker.
“We’re not buying tickets,” Wen Jiu explained. “We’re taking the young lady’s private jet back. Oh, by young lady, I mean Qin Yao.”
Ji Yujing knew who Qin Yao was.
A real young lady, one of those Beicheng young ladyes who walked sideways through the upper circles.
“Which jet is she using?” he asked.
Wen Jiu went to ask for the model and repeated it to him.
“That one doesn’t cost anywhere near a million for a single trip,” Ji Yujing said flatly.
Wen Jiu’s eyes darted. “So Young Master is going to go back on his word? In that case, I’ll just have to apologize to the young lady and tell her Young Master Ji can’t afford the fuel.”
“But don’t worry, Young Master. We’ll definitely still fly back,” she added sweetly. “After all, the young lady said ‘a million is nothing.’”
Listening to her tea-dripping tone drifting in from across the ocean, Ji Yujing actually laughed from sheer anger. He wasn’t the same impulsive kid from three months ago who could be goaded into anything on set by Wen Jiu; this Ji Yujing thought first.
“Anyway, the young lady already transferred me a million,” Wen Jiu said, sending him a screenshot.
It was that “matchmaker bonus” million the young lady had sent when she got her marriage certificate. She’d simply cropped out the timestamp. No Photoshop, the transfer really existed, so it looked exactly like it had just arrived.
“…Does she just have too much money lying around with nowhere to spend it?” Ji Yujing muttered.
He cursed under his breath, but his fingers were honest. He transferred 1,000,000 yuan to Wen Jiu as well.
“I must be out of my mind,” he said after hanging up. The longer he thought about it, the more wrong it felt. “Why did I obediently send her a million? I could’ve just flown over to them myself.”
Wen Jiu couldn’t care less what the young master was brooding over. She held up the transfer record on her phone and went skipping off to find the young lady.