One thousand?
Su Mian turned around and found herself looking at an extraordinarily familiar figure.
The man wore a crisp white dress shirt paired with simple black trousers and polished leather shoes. Loose strands of hair fell casually over his forehead, unstyled, yet adding a hint of wild, uninhibited charm to his sharp, handsome features.
The lock on her memories sprang open instantly. Though Su Mian found the man unfamiliar on a personal level, her memories held no such distance—so much so that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t ignore his presence.
“Where did you find this watch?”
Lu Zheng stared with a tightly knitted brow at the heavy woman before him. She possessed the exact body type he disliked most, yet an undeniable sense of familiarity radiated from her, drawing him closer despite himself.
Only then did Su Mian remember her current appearance. Lu Zheng likely couldn’t recognize her at all.
When she was first kicked out of the Lu household, the kids were still tiny, and she hadn’t gained all this weight yet.
Her bloated figure was entirely the work of that transmigrator, who had let her go to seed just to fit the miserable fate outlined for her character in the novel.
In the past, the original Su Mian had been madly, hopelessly in love with Lu Zheng—but that wasn’t the real her.
Seeing Lu Zheng now brought no flutter to her heart, only a wave of deep disgust.
In her memories, Lu Zheng had indeed dropped ambiguous hints to her in the past. To Su Mian, the man standing before her was nothing more than a two-timing flirt who had betrayed two good women.
She wanted nothing to do with the main leads anymore, but this watch was undeniably a token of affection Lu Zheng had once given her.
If she could milk some money out of him, it would at least serve as a small payback for all her trouble.
After all, just so Lu Zheng and Chen Zhiyi could enjoy their happily-ever-after, she—a mere plot device—had sacrificed five whole years of her life and ended up in this wretched state. What was wrong with taking a bit of his cash?
Su Mian curled her lip and was just about to speak when the man in the suit realized things were taking a turn.
“Hey, hey, hey! What do you think you’re doing, barging into someone else’s deal like this?” he chimed in hastily.
Turning back to Su Mian, the man pressed, “You’re not actually thinking of selling it to him, are you? I’ll give you a thousand!”
He then glared at Lu Zheng. “Hey, kid, ever heard of first come, first served? I saw this watch first! What are you crashing the party for? Don’t you know the rules?”
His loud voice quickly drew the gazes of onlookers passing by.
Lu Zheng looked at the man in the suit, his brow furrowed. “This pocket watch is extremely important to me.”
“I don’t care how important it is to you! I saw it first, and this heavy lady—ahem, this female comrade—approached me first. Coming out of nowhere to cut in line, isn’t that a bit uncalled-for?”
Su Mian was speechless. They were actually picking a fight right here. Was she going to get her business done or not?
As expected, Lu Zheng was her jinx. Nothing good ever happened whenever she ran into him.
To her pleasant surprise, however, Lu Zheng’s next words instantly sparked her excitement.
“Then let’s bid for it and see who’s willing to pay a higher price. I trust this comrade would prefer to sell to whoever offers the most, wouldn’t she?”
With that, Lu Zheng turned his gaze straight toward Su Mian.
His dark, probing eyes searched her face as if trying to peer through to her very core.
Su Mian even began to suspect whether he had recognized her.
At that moment, the man in the suit raised the stakes.
“I’ll give you eleven hundred for that watch!”
His call caused an instant stir among the crowd.
Eleven hundred yuan! That was no small sum.
What did it mean to be a “ten-thousand-yuan household”? In this era, a family capable of saving ten thousand yuan was considered exceptionally wealthy.
Su Mian was equally stunned by his offer.
Her pocket watch was actually being bid up to eleven hundred?
To think that this very man had tried to lowball her for five yuan just moments ago.
Safe to say, he was a truly scheming hypocrite.
Then again, were these two men out of their minds? It was one thing to flaunt their wealth in front of so many people, but they were dragging her into the spotlight too.
She was a lone woman with two small children. If a criminal targeted them, the consequences would be catastrophic.
“Twelve hundred,” Lu Zheng stated coldly.
True to his background as a wealthy young master, he certainly didn’t lack cash!
Could he show a little consideration for her, though? More and more onlookers were gathering around.
Just as Su Mian was trying to figure out how to resolve the situation, a woman’s voice suddenly called out to Lu Zheng.
“Ah Zheng, what are you doing here?”
Without even turning her head, Su Mian knew it was the female lead, Chen Zhiyi.
What kind of luck was this? In her memories, Su Mian had never crossed paths with either of them again after being kicked out of the Lu house.
Likely to serve the novel’s narrative—which focused on the lead couple’s blissful married life rather than another encounter with the villainous female supporting character—the transmigrator had subconsciously stayed out of their way.
Otherwise, how could it be such a absurd coincidence that Su Mian encountered them on her very second day of regaining control over her own body? It was truly a cursed twist of fate.
Chen Zhiyi walked up to Lu Zheng’s side and wrapped her arm around his.
Yet no one noticed that the moment she touched him, Lu Zheng instinctively tried to pull away.
“Ah Zheng, what are you all doing? What happened?” Chen Zhiyi asked again.
Chen Zhiyi was the textbook definition of an early-era, sweet-and-naive romance heroine—innocent, kind, and generous to a fault.
That was why, even after being framed repeatedly by Su Mian in the original story, she had still chosen to “kindly” forgive her every time.
Su Mian, however, couldn’t bring herself to like Chen Zhiyi at all. From her perspective, Chen Zhiyi wasn’t being kind; she was just being foolish.
Chen Zhiyi had a knack for turning simple matters into overly complicated ordeals.
In truth, Su Mian and Chen Zhiyi had been on decent terms initially. Chen Zhiyi had repeatedly insisted she held no romantic feelings for Lu Zheng, so Su Mian had naturally tried her best to maintain a friendly dynamic with Lu Zheng’s “girl-next-door.”
Who could have guessed that the two of them would secretly start a romance behind her back?
So when Su Mian turned villainous back then, it didn’t happen without reason.
Lu Zheng glanced at Chen Zhiyi, then shifted his eyes back to Su Mian.
“I want to buy the watch in her hand,” Lu Zheng said.
Hearing this, Chen Zhiyi cast a quick glance at Su Mian before losing interest in her appearance.
However, the instant her eyes landed on the pocket watch in Su Mian’s hand, she gasped in surprise. “Isn’t… isn’t that yours? How did it end up in her hands?”
As she spoke, Chen Zhiyi pointed directly at Su Mian, making it sound as though Su Mian had stolen Lu Zheng’s watch.
See? Su Mian knew her distaste for Chen Zhiyi wasn’t unfounded.
Barely five minutes into their encounter, and the female lead was already falsely accusing her of theft.
Su Mian, however, couldn’t care less.
Regardless of who the pocket watch had originally belonged to, since Lu Zheng had given it to her, it was now hers.
To feed her two children, Su Mian was ready to stand her ground.
She looked at Chen Zhiyi, let out a cold laugh, and declared, “Comrade, please use your head before you speak next time. This pocket watch belongs to me. How did it suddenly become someone else’s the moment it left your mouth? Are you planning to steal it, rob me, or just openly claim my property as your own?”
Her sharp retort left Chen Zhiyi’s face drained of color.