Chapter 8

When she woke, every breath felt a little tight. Pain lanced through her chest with every inhale.
The bullet had left a clean, arcing scar over her left breast.
The first person she saw when she opened her eyes was Ling Ze.
Meeting those shimmering peach blossom eyes, Jiang Wei felt her face heat. She had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, watching. Had she talked in her sleep? Said anything embarrassing?
“How are you feeling now?” he asked.
She’d been unconscious for days. Her lips were cracked and dry. For a moment, she didn’t quite know what to say.
Still weak, she whispered, “I’m fine now. You don’t have to worry, Senior.”
She immediately tried to sit up and insist on being discharged.
Ling Ze pressed her back down with one hand.
“Your wound hasn’t healed. Lie down.” His tone was cool but firm. “What are you getting up for?”
Maybe it was his breath so close to her, or the low edge in his voice, but Jiang Wei’s cheeks burned even hotter.
“I-I-I’m already better. I can leave the hospital,” she mumbled.
Seeing she was set on being difficult, he had no choice but to pin her gently but firmly by the shoulders, keeping her against the white hospital bed.
Catching her unease, his brows drew together slightly.
“Is it that you don’t want to stay here with me?” he asked, voice like chilled spring water.
“N-no, that’s not it. I just… I don’t have money for the hospital fees…”
The moment she said it, she wanted to slap herself.
Wasn’t she basically saying: I took a bullet for you, now hurry up and pay my bill, maybe throw in some extra while you’re at it?
He stared at her for a beat, then laughed.
“What are you even talking about?”
He was genuinely stunned by the way her mind worked.
She’d taken a bullet for him, and she still thought she should be the one paying for her own treatment?
With a wave of his hand, he covered all her medical bills for the duration of her recovery, and, on top of that, all of her future education expenses.
Exactly as he put it:
“As long as you want to keep studying, Europe, America, Australia, master’s, doctorate, don’t worry about the cost.”
Jiang Wei nearly leapt up right then and there to shout Senior Ling is amazing! like the fangirls at school.
“Just stay here and focus on recovering,” he said. “This hospital is funded by the Ling family. Don’t overthink it.”
When she returned to school, she found that the teachers and classmates who used to look down on her had all become… very polite.
She wasn’t stupid, she knew exactly why.
Even after being gone for two months, her desk was spotless.
On the board, the teacher was working through a brutal final physics problem. Jiang Wei leaned sideways, nudging her deskmate’s elbow, inching a little closer.
“Thank you, Wen Ji,” she whispered.
The handsome boy sat ramrod straight, eyes cold, not so much as glancing in her direction, gaze fixed on the blackboard.
But his notebook page was completely blank.
Clearly, he wasn’t listening to the lecture at all, his mind was somewhere else entirely.
All through physics class, Jiang Wei ran into a locked door, no matter how she tried to talk to him.
She couldn’t understand it.
If Wen Ji was so mad at her, why had he kept her desk spotless and tidy every single day she was gone?
And now that she was back… why wouldn’t he even look at her?
The bell rang, ding, ding, ding.
As the class dismissed, Jiang Wei lightly tugged on Wen Ji’s uniform sleeve, teasing, “Big Boss Wen, what’s wrong with you today? Who upset you? I’ll protect you, hehe.”
“You?” His voice was cool, almost icy, close to her ear. “How exactly are you going to protect me, by relying on Ling Ze?”
A chill slid down her spine for no reason.
He took in her fair, luminous oval face, the way her figure had subtly filled out. In just two short months, she’d gone from a scrawny little bean sprout to a slim, graceful girl.
Clearly, her time recovering had been… comfortable.
Word was, that day had been incredibly dangerous. In a hail of bullets, she’d taken a shot for Ling Ze, practically trading her life for his. No wonder he treated her differently now.
They said she’d always liked Senior Ling.
Well, she’d gotten her wish.
So why did it bother him so much?
It felt like a treasure he’d quietly watched over for years, watering it, sheltering it, had finally been about to bloom… only for some thief to pick the fruit.
“I didn’t mean it like that… Wen Ji, are you just in a bad mood today?”
At the mention of Ling Ze, Jiang Wei’s voice faltered. She muttered the sentence and drew her hand back.
On the surface, everyone at school was polite to her now.
But behind her back, they said she was exploiting her “life-saving grace” to climb up and cash in.
Did Wen Ji… think that too?
Softly, she tried to defend herself.
“It’s not like that. It has nothing to do with Senior Ling. I just saw you were upset and wanted to cheer you up.”
“…Sigh.”
Seeing her shrink back into that timid, cautious version of herself, Wen Ji couldn’t help sighing.
What was he doing, stabbing her with those words?
How was that any different from the people gossiping behind her back?
He pulled the notes he’d tucked into the middle of his textbook, pages he’d carefully written out for her, and handed them over, not quite daring to meet her eyes.
Then he turned and walked out, mumbling something about a teacher looking for him.
Jiang Wei was completely lost.
His temper flared out of nowhere, and vanished just as quickly.
When Wen Ji stepped into the hallway, he saw Ling Ze at the corner of the stairwell, walking toward the classroom at an unhurried pace.
Clearly here for Jiang Wei.
Wen Ji’s eyes darkened.
“Weiwei.”
Ling Ze stood at the door and waved, smiling gently.
“Senior,” Jiang Wei greeted, flustered.
She’d thought once she came back to school, everything would go back to how it was. She had no intention of “leveraging” any life-saving favor to bind anyone.
Under the envious, jealous, and curious gazes of her classmates, she lowered her head and walked toward him.
Ling Ze reached out and took her hand.
She tried to pull away, but his grip only tightened. His palm was large and warm, the strength in it brooking no argument.
“Senior, where are we going?”
“I’m inviting you to my graduation banquet.”
She glanced at his tall, straight figure, he was only half a step away, close enough to touch, yet somehow feeling very far.
“Ah… but, um, I didn’t prepare a present.”
Then it hit her. Second year was over. Ling Ze had gotten into a top university on his own merits.
She felt a little guilty. She’d been so busy studying, she’d completely forgotten.
Before she could get properly tangled up over it, he dropped another bomb that made her want to die of embarrassment on the spot.
“What you said in the car that day was quite interesting.”
“Huh?” Jiang Wei blinked. The question blindsided her.
“I heard I was kidnapped by my stepmother and her lover,” he continued casually. “Seems like you know my family’s affairs inside and out, junior. Even better than I do, the person involved.”
In an instant, the entire scene replayed in her mind, her trying to get the driver to speed up, spewing nonsense about rich-family intrigue as she went.
Her cheeks flamed. She bit her soft lower lip, completely at a loss.
So when the police did their follow-up interviews, the driver had apparently recounted every juicy word she’d said.
At this point, Jiang Wei wanted nothing more than to find a hole and bury herself in it.
“If Ah Yang hadn’t told me,” Ling Ze added lazily, “I might’ve thought you were in love with me.”
He spoke half in jest, half in teasing, giving her a step down.
Whether it was the dream or the memory of that night, Jiang Wei always felt a little awkward facing Ling Ze now, shy and uncomfortable in ways she couldn’t fully explain.
But since it was out in the open, she felt strangely lighter.
That day, he waited for her outside the classroom and said that with the pressure of third-year studies, she should relax a bit, and that he wanted to introduce her to some friends.
She’d wanted to refuse and tossed out a random excuse but he remained in the doorway, clearly prepared to wait as long as it took.
In the end, she went.
As she walked past Wen Ji’s desk, he gave a cold snort, the displeasure in it hard to miss.
Yongye Imperial City, City C’s biggest den of decadence.
Here, the dancers’ bodies were the softest, the courtesans’ faces the most exquisite, the wine the most obscenely expensive. Here were the nightclubs dripping with vice, the private rooms whose cover charges would wipe out a small family’s lifetime savings, and bills with so many zeroes no one bothered to count them.
In the car, dressed in a silver-gray suit, Ling Ze leaned back and turned his head to look at her in the passenger seat.
“How come you’re not wearing the clothes I bought you?”
His irises were a light shade, bangs falling over his forehead. When he looked at someone seriously, their reflection appeared clearly in his eyes, those deep, tender peach blossom eyes that made it terribly easy to fall.
Jiang Wei’s thoughts drifted.
She stared for a second, dazed. “The school uniform is fine too,” she mumbled.
Ling Ze snorted softly and rubbed her fluffy hair, a trace of indulgence in his gesture.
“Whatever. Anyone I bring with me can wear what they like.”
The moment they stepped into the VIP room of Yongye Imperial City, a guy with dyed yellow hair swaggered up. At first glance he looked slick and shady, but a closer look showed a baby face, he was still just a boy.
“Whoa, look at that, Brother Ze brought a little sister. In a school uniform, no less. Brother Yuan really knows how to play.”
Ling Ze’s brows pinched together. He shot the boy a glare.
The yellow-haired kid either didn’t notice the warning or pretended not to.
“Lu Lin. Shut up.”
The familiar voice made Jiang Wei look up, right into Mu Yang’s shadowed gaze.
Like he’d been burned, he abruptly shoved away the beautiful woman draped over his arm. She stumbled with a pained little cry.
“Mu Yang, you hurt me,” she pouted, clinging to him delicately.
Everyone’s attention swung between the somewhat stiff, nervous Jiang Wei and the way Ling Ze was holding her hand. The possessiveness in his body language was obvious.
They all thought they understood.
Another girl, about Jiang Wei’s age, hopped over with a bright grin.
“Ugh, ignore Lu Lin, that little brat’s had too much to drink. You’re Weiwei, right? I’m Ling Ze’s cousin, Mu Yue. My brother’s always talking about you. I heard when you saved him, you were crazy brave, didn’t even flinch with a gun pointed at you. Uncle Liu said that if you hadn’t kept your head, those kidnappers might’ve escaped.”
She reached out to grab Jiang Wei’s hand and drag her to sit, but found she couldn’t move her.
Because Ling Ze wasn’t letting go.
Mu Yue muttered under her breath, sulking, “Gets a girlfriend and suddenly can’t stand his own cousin. I just wanted to hear the story.”
Seeing the misunderstanding, Jiang Wei opened her mouth to clarify, but Ling Ze beat her to it.
“Don’t talk nonsense. I see Weiwei the same way I see you,” he said mildly. “I treat her like a little sister.”
Every word radiated protective intent.
Mu Yue rolled her eyes so hard they practically hit the ceiling.
What kind of “brother” showed that level of possessiveness toward a girl with no blood relation?
Her cousin was lying with his eyes wide open.