The man was permeated with a complex aura, making it impossible to tell whether he was encroaching or backing down.
Gu Qingjiao calmed herself down for a moment, vaguely sensing that Shi Lijiin had gone a bit too crazy. However, online sources said that violent methods could not be used to deal with such patients.
Gu Qingjiao’s wrist was squeezed until it felt somewhat numb. Lowering her eyes, she spoke in a low voice: “I am not Gu Qingjiao. I am her older sister, Gu Qingshu. Second Young Master Shi, please let me go.”
Shi Lijiin’s knuckles slowly crept up along her wrist, completely wrapping around her slender fingers. Rubbing his thumb, he traced across each of her three nails one by one, finally stopping at her slightly sharper little fingernail. Shi Lijiin pressed down gently, a tiny, familiar sensation of pain gradually transmitting into his perception, and he smiled faintly.
“Why are you suddenly being so polite? You never called me that before.”
Gu Qingjiao used a bit of force to pull her hand back, rubbing her numb knuckles, while silently wondering whether a curse word was appropriate to use right now.
“My condolences, brother-in-law.” She frowned and advised.
“What brother-in-law?” Shi Lijiin finally understood a human sentence.
Gu Qingjiao repeated: “I am not Gu Qingjiao. I am her twin older sister. My name is Gu Qingshu, the ‘shu’ as in ‘comb’. You should be my brother-in-law.”
Shi Lijiin: “Will you say anything just to run away from me?”
“I am not lying to you.” Gu Qingjiao rubbed the neck that had just been assaulted, her tone turning somewhat displeased. “I don’t owe you money. Why would I run away from you?”
Hearing this, Shi Lijiin turned entirely gloomy. “You are blaming me for not treating you well enough.”
Gu Qingjiao speechlessly supported her forehead. After a few seconds of calm, she had no choice but to raise her hand and pat the top of his head. “Second Young Master Shi, even though you really didn’t treat her very well, I believe Gu Qingjiao wouldn’t take it to heart, and I won’t blame you either.”
She had originally thought she could brush him off this way, but he actually bent down and pushed his luck, demanding: “Touch me again. Gu Qingjiao, touch me again.”
Gu Qingjiao: ……
She thought that if her past self had been overly unrestrained, she would act more gentle and timid this time, so at least he wouldn’t see a shred of Gu Qingjiao’s shadow in her.
Touching him again was out of the question, impossible in this lifetime.
She blinked her eyes weakly and said in a soft voice: “Second Young Master Shi, I know that toward her, you are deeply affectionate, but you must understand that I am not that person, and I have a partner myself. Oh, my partner is also in this estate.”
The temperature in Shi Lijiin’s gaze plummeted abruptly. His entire person was like an unsheathed carving knife, hateful yet pitiful.
“I searched for you for so long, and you went to find someone else?”
Unfathomable. How can someone find someone else when separated by life and death? Shi Lijiin was truly not right in the head. It seemed this place was not safe for a long stay. Gu Qingjiao slowly crept back toward the car door and tapped gently on the hard panel. “Help me open the door. I will go find my ID card to show you.”
“I don’t need an ID card. I only want you.”
“?”
Shi Lijiin pinched her chin with two fingers, his other hand wrapping around to hug her waist: “As long as you wear this face, whether you are Gu Qingjiao or Gu Qingshu, I want you.”
Gu Qingjiao: Damn it.
Shi Lijiin took out his phone and skillfully dialed a number.
“Hello, Second Young Master?”
“Come over and drive.”
“Good.”
Gu Qingjiao let out a helpless sigh. As a main character, she had maintained her image well enough, but now she seemed to have run into a bit of an obstacle. Furthermore, the system wasn’t around, and since she didn’t know how to handle this, she figured she might as well take out her phone too. “Then wait a moment. I’ll make a phone call to my mom. She seems quite worried.”
Shi Lijiin waited quietly beside her.
Over the phone, the woman’s anxious voice leaked out from the receiver:
“Shushu! Are you alright? Did he do anything to you? That bastard, daring to bully my daughter, I will definitely make him pay…”
Before Gu Qingjiao could figure out what to say, her phone was snatched away by Shi Lijiin. He held the phone up to his ear just as a barrage of chaotic words exploded from the receiver.
Shi Lijiin calmly listened to her finish cursing, then cut her off with a single sentence: “Shen Qin, your older sister is at my house. Do you want to see how she dies?”
The voice on the other end of the line softened, pleading with a thin, tearful sob: “Second Young Master Shi, please let us go… Give Shushu back to me…”
Pulling the phone away from his ear, Shi Lijiin casually pressed hang-up.
Just then, two other people unlocked the outer fence and got into the car. Jason sat in the passenger seat chewing gum, turned around to cast a disdainful look at the fake younger sister, and rolled his eyes internationally.
Just this plain-faced little cabbage thinks she can compare to my little sister Qingjiao?
The Second Young Master is truly blinded by love!
The more he looked, the angrier he got, to the point where his throat flared up in irritation. So, right in front of her, he purposely swallowed the gum in his mouth, used his facial expressions to convey the message that your days won’t be easy from now on, and then violently pulled the privacy curtain closed in front of him, choosing out of sight, out of mind.
Returning to the Shi family’s Southern Manor once more, Gu Qingjiao’s mood had calmed down a lot.
From the moment she stepped out of the car, she was led by the hand the entire way by Shi Lijiin. The servants cast surprised yet somewhat evasive glances toward her side: Wasn’t Miss Gu dead?!
Shi Lijiin brought her to his private villa and pressed the elevator button for the fifth floor.
Ah? Entering a room right away? Are we going to play it this stimulating?
Whatever a puppet looked like, that was exactly what Gu Qingjiao looked like right now.
After entering the room, Shi Lijiin first had her sit down, then took a kraft paper file bag out of a drawer. Squatting down in front of her, he pulled out the Marriage Agreement bit by bit and flipped the signature page to show her.
“I signed my name, and I stamped my fingerprint too. Gu Qingjiao, we can be together now.”
Gu Qingjiao felt no ripples in her heart, simply offering the same line as before: “Second Young Master Shi, Gu Qingjiao is already dead.”
“I know.” Shi Lijiin reached out to stroke her hair. “During the time you were gone, I felt like I was dead too.”
“You showing me these things now gives me no feeling at all.”
The gloomy light in Shi Lijiin’s eyes grew brighter and brighter, though not because he saw the dawn, but because a tender moisture coated the surface of his pupils, making him look bitter and fragile. He sat down beside Gu Qingjiao and tightly grasped her hand. “What will make you have feelings? If you blame me, can you hit me?”
“My sister’s death has nothing to do with you. Second Young Master Shi, don’t blame yourself too much. If you really feel indebted, then just have the driver send me back.”
“I finally found you, why would I send you back? You… haven’t you always been reluctant to leave? Gu Qingjiao, you have feelings for me in your heart, right?”
Looking at this morbid man in front of her, Gu Qingjiao didn’t know how to explain it either. If she spoke too much, she was afraid of agitating him, as this person’s life was worth at least several billion, and if he fell apart in her hands, she wouldn’t even need to be the female lead anymore.
“Think whatever you want.” After weighing her options for a long time, she indifferently dropped those few words.
Shi Lijiin had a paranoid personality, and all he thought about were things that made him happy. He didn’t pester Gu Qingjiao with further questions either; instead, he treated her like shifting sands that could dissipate at any moment, believing that no matter how unreal it was, he had to hold onto her tightly in his hands.
Unintentionally raising her eyes, Gu Qingjiao discovered a garment hanging above the terrace that was so red it had turned black. The style of that clothing looked somewhat familiar, but upon closer inspection, it looked as though it had been drying for a very long time, with edges that seemed somewhat hardened.
“That piece of clothing…” She pointed at it, her thoughts inexplicably chaotic.
Shi Lijiin followed her gaze, his tone indifferent: “This is the only thing you left behind for me.”
Gu Qingjiao remembered. On the day of the Lantern Festival last year, she had been wearing this exact cloak, except that the cloak had originally been a pristine, clean white, and now…
Hiss.
Still, it could probably still be worn after a wash? After all, the style really was pretty.
Unfortunately, past events had become flowing water, and that cloak no longer belonged to her. It was just like right now, even though someone as handsome as Shi Lijiin was sitting right beside her, acting cute and playing the pitiful card, she still couldn’t manage to spread her favors evenly. After all, there was a male lead in the original text; she certainly couldn’t have it both ways with multiple men.
A person needed to have bottom lines. Sticking to roughly 1V1 would do.
Gu Qingjiao stood up and politely bid him farewell: “I really am not Gu Qingjiao. I hope the Second Young Master won’t mistake me for someone else again. Goodbye.”
As a result, she had barely taken three steps after standing up when her upper body was grabbed from behind by that crazy young master.
Gu Qingjiao rolled her eyes for the N-th time today; her eyelids were practically going numb.
“I know you are in Southern Manor every day, but I am accompanying you every day. Did you know that?” His tone carried a hint of eeriness.
Gu Qingjiao froze.
The man was clearly pressing very close, but why did she feel a slight chill down her spine?
She guessed that Shi Lijiin must have developed some kind of delusion, because ever since the Lantern Festival, aside from sweeping her own grave once, she had been cooped up at home in the Gu residence and hadn’t gone out much.
“Second Young Master Shi, please let me go.” Gu Qingjiao was getting somewhat impatient.
Shi Lijiin stubbornly hugged her tight, burying his entire face almost into the side of her neck. Gu Qingjiao was forced to tilt her head, her entire right shoulder slumping down and sitting half an inch lower than the left. She could very clearly feel the waves of warmth radiating from the man’s breath.
Shi Lijiin: “I am so tired.”
Gu Qingjiao: “Then go to sleep.”
Stop clinging to me!
“I’m afraid you’ll leave.”
“Of course I will leave.” Gu Qingjiao laboriously shoved him away and turned to face him once more. “Shi Lijiin, the person who had an engagement with you is not me.”
Shi Lijiin’s gaze flickered weakly, his condition visibly much worse than before.
“Then let’s sign it again.”
“…”
Only a ghost would sign with you.
Gu Qingjiao tidied up her clothes, which had been rumpled by the man, glanced casually behind her, and noticing that the other party was momentarily dazed, she quickly seized the opportunity to slip away.
Shi Lijiin supported the edge of the bed with one hand, his body heavy as he slowly sat down. He stared toward the spacious doorway, hearing the sound of Gu Qingjiao’s hurried footsteps retreating in his ears.
He wasn’t in a hurry to chase after her.
Because she couldn’t escape.