Xu Mengzhou wasn’t an idiot. She just hadn’t paid close attention before. But now that she sensed something off, looking back at what happened earlier made everything painfully obvious.
They had barely met a handful of times. The very first time in the hospital, when she accidentally shook off her hand, this fine wife of hers had deliberately used the film set to scare her.
Then, when Xu Mengzhou said she didn’t need her staying by her bedside, the woman immediately turned around and left on a business trip without sending a single text.
And now, just because Xu Mengzhou messed up the heat on a dish, the woman intentionally made her drink that awful “wellness soup,” which tasted so bitter it was practically a refined essence of Chinese goldthread.
Not only was she mean, but she was petty and holds a grudge.
Xu Mengzhou gritted her teeth and ground her shoe heel viciously against the shiny tile floor, pretending it was the top of Ruan Li’s foot.
Then again, I am the one in the wrong here.
She wanted to get back at her, but she couldn’t muster the energy. Her bubbling anger deflated like a balloon poked with a needle, sizzling away into nothingness.
Listlessly trailing behind Ruan Li and sniffing the faint, bitter herbal scent along the way, it wasn’t until Xu Mengzhou watched her tilt her head back and down the entire bowl of wellness soup in one go that she snapped out of it. Her expression flickered as she realized something.
“Is that stuff… medicine? Are you feeling unwell?”
Ruan Li set down the porcelain bowl and picked up a cherry. The deep, dark-red flesh of the ripe fruit made her fingertips look translucent and pale. Perhaps it was just a reflection of light, but even her fingernails carried a tinge of dark purple.
The sweet, crisp fruit aroma cut through the bitterness in her mouth. She picked up another one and casually replied, “Wellness soup. I have to drink it every day. Given the ingredients, though, calling it medicine isn’t wrong either.”
Xu Mengzhou had a sudden realization.
She knew about the drama in Ruan Li’s family…a tragedy twisted by money and power.
The most pitiable, innocent victim was Ruan Li herself. Word was that a bribed doctor had ruptured her amniotic fluid, damaging her overall bodily functions and leaving her with heart issues.
Nurturing her body to its current state, where she appeared nearly healthy, was already a rare miracle.
Xu Mengzhou shut her mouth and stopped asking, afraid of opening old wounds.
After eating just two cherries, Ruan Li stopped and wiped her hands, preparing to return to her room.
They were fresh cherries, just bought that morning. Xu Mengzhou picked one up to eat as well. It had the natural sweet-and-sour taste of the fruit, but with hardly any sourness…just enough to enrich the texture. It was immensely sweet, bursting with abundant juice after just one bite. It tasted fantastic.
“They’re not spoiled, why not eat a few more?”
She casually picked up the fruit bowl. Eating a little something like this wouldn’t fill her up at all. When she was craving a snack, she could easily polish off a small basin of them just to satisfy her palate.
“Eating too many makes you prone to internal heat,” Ruan Li said.
Two is considered “too many”?
Though, given her body’s condition, it seemed there wasn’t much she could eat in excess…nothing too cool, too hot, too spicy, or too oily and salty. What was the point of living if a person couldn’t even satisfy basic food cravings?
Xu Mengzhou grimaced. Ruan Li didn’t seem to mind much herself, but Xu Mengzhou felt uncomfortable on her behalf.
After taking her medicine, Ruan Li brushed her teeth and finally climbed into bed with her tablet.
It was an eye-care e-ink screen filled with dense, tiny lines of text. Xu Mengzhou tilted her head and stole a glance. Assuming she was working, she silently dug out her headphones and put them on.
Her own drama wasn’t finished yet.
The martial arts film played out like a serialized drama, making it impossible to stop watching. Xu Mengzhou was utterly entranced, even committing a few fan-fighting choreography moves to memory.
The twist at the end was so brilliant that in her excitement, she slapped her own thigh hard.
Her leg turned red, and the slap rang out loudly…cutting right through the ending credits. Only then did she dazedly remember that there was another person in the room.
She turned around to look. Ruan Li was already asleep.
Asleep?!
Had it slipped into the middle of the night without her noticing?
She glanced at the time: just past ten o’clock.
No way… What kind of elderly sleep schedule was this? It was way too early!
Xu Mengzhou put down her tablet, looked at her crutches, checked her cast-bound leg, and mentally gauged the distance between the sofa and the bed.
She fell into a long, profound silence.
The good news: the goodnight kiss crisis was successfully avoided.
The bad news: how was she supposed to get herself onto the bed without waking the other person up?
At her wit’s end, the giant throw pillow on the sofa caught her attention.
A few minutes later, Xu Mengzhou awkwardly hoisted herself up from her “pillow raft,” hooked both arms onto the edge of the bed, and dropped herself onto the mattress like a slab of frozen meat. As she rolled to absorb the impact, she didn’t forget to prop up her lower leg to avoid any bumps.
No matter how careful she was, she was still a heavy load weighing over sixty kilograms. Xu Mengzhou held her breath. Within her line of sight, Ruan Li was still sleeping; she probably hadn’t woken her.
She let out a breath of relief, pulled out two wet wipes, and cleaned the palms of her hands that had been propped on the floor like oars.
The bed was a custom-made three-meter king size, and the comforter was just as massive. Ruan Li occupied only the very edge, leaving quite a distance between them. Xu Mengzhou carefully lifted the blanket and rolled in.
Taking another look at her wife, her eyes were tightly closed, her breathing steady and silent. Only the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest was visible.
Her legs were curled up, and her hand was loosely clenched into a fist against her lips, looking like a baby.
A posture that lacks a sense of security.
The description flashed through Xu Mengzhou’s mind.
For no apparent reason, her heart softened. It was like an able-bodied person seeing a drenched kitten…it was hard to suppress the sympathy and pity rising from within.
The bedside lamp was switched off, plunging the room into darkness. Only a vague human outline remained, along with a subtle body warmth and an ethereal fragrance. It made her truly realize that she was indeed married now.
And the person lying beside her was the lover she had begged for.
Suddenly, she felt a slight urge to know about their past together.
Xu Mengzhou wasn’t an early sleeper. Even with the phone screen dimmed as low as possible, it still cast a light. Thinking of Ruan Li, sleeping early was likely due to her physical condition…her energy simply couldn’t keep up.
After playing on her phone for just a little while, she put it down, afraid of disturbing the other woman’s sleep.
To her surprise, falling asleep turned out to be easier than she thought.
When she opened her eyes again, broad daylight greeted her.
Brilliant sunlight squeezed through the gap in the curtains like the yolk of a soft-boiled egg…once broken, a pool of warm, golden yellow spilled forth.
Aside from herself, the room was completely empty.
Xu Mengzhou reached out to feel the space beside her; the spot was already bone-cold. She had left a long time ago.
She pursed her lips and turned her head to the side. The bed sheets next to her were still a mess, as if the person had only just left and could return at any moment.
After a whole night, the subtle fragrance on the bed was still there…in fact, it felt even more pronounced. Was it the scent of hair oil?
Xu Mengzhou rolled over, bringing the tip of her nose close to the pillow, and took a gentle sniff.
She couldn’t quite describe it. It wasn’t floral, nor was it fruity. It was a very peculiar, delicate aroma.
She took one sniff, then couldn’t help taking a second, and a third…
Ding-ling!
Her phone rang.
Xu Mengzhou shuddered instantly and snapped back to reality.
What on earth am I doing?!
Scrambling frantically, she practically crawled and tumbled off the bed, completely ignoring the corner of the blanket that dragged onto the floor. Grabbing her phone, Xu Mengzhou hopped on one leg and bolted out of the bedroom, rushing straight onto the tatami mat in the living room.
She was panting heavily, her chest heaving violently. It was hard to tell whether it was from the intense exertion or sheer shock from her own behavior, but she looked completely shaken.
After a long while, Xu Mengzhou swallowed hard, rubbed her face vigorously, and muttered to herself, “Remember, you didn’t do anything. Nothing happened just now.”
After repeatedly hypnotizing herself five or six times, she finally clicked open her phone. It was a message from Ruan Li.
Ruan Li: Remember to clear your evening for dinner together. Also, about visiting home…you already missed Qingming, so you must go back for the Dragon Boat Festival. Mom requested it.
The Dragon Boat Festival was still some time away; her cast would be off by then, so going back wouldn’t be a problem. Xu Mengzhou didn’t take that part to heart. However, the invitation to dinner made her raise an eyebrow.
Is Ruan Li a bit too clingy? She wants to eat together every single day…doesn’t she have work to do?
Especially after what she just did… how could she even face her now?!
Smack!
It was the sound of Xu Mengzhou slapping her own thigh again.
She hit herself pretty hard, wincing and gasping from the pain, which instantly brought her back to her self-hypnosis attempts.
Xu Mengzhou: Not sure if I’m free tonight. Han Shutong asked me to go horseback riding.
Ruan Li: You asked me first. Even if you want to back out, do you really need to use such a lame excuse?
Xu Mengzhou: I asked you?
The other side didn’t reply with text, only sending over a short video.
It wasn’t very long, only a dozen seconds or so. Yet for some reason, as Xu Mengzhou stared at the loading progress bar, she had a terrible premonition.
The black screen suddenly lit up. After a moment’s shake, it stabilized into a clear picture.
In the frame, a hand was tightly gripping several fingers of another person. A familiar small mole on the back of the hand made Xu Mengzhou’s eyes go wide.
That was her hand!
“Don’t go… wait for me…”
A slurred, indistinct murmur came right out of her own mouth. Staring dead at her screen, she watched herself nuzzle her face against the pillow, arching forward forcefully as if trying to get closer to the other person.
“I have to go to work now,” Ruan Li’s voice came from off-camera, crystal clear and laced with subtle laughter.
“Then after work… let’s eat together… I have something to…”
Before finishing the sentence, she drifted right back off into sleep, so completely out of it she looked like she’d been knocked unconscious.
Click.
The screen went black.
It reflected a face as dark as the bottom of a burnt pot.
Xu Mengzhou: WE CAN EAT TOGETHER, JUST DELETE THE VIDEO ALREADY!!