“Shen Yichen, today is my birthday. Are you sure you want to go to her?”
Qin Shuzhi watched the man who was in a hurry to leave after taking the phone call.
Shen Yichen frowned. “I told you, Yanyan fell at home and needs me to take her to the hospital.”
Qin Shuzhi found it laughable. “If she fell, why didn’t she call an ambulance? Why didn’t she ask any other friend? Why does it have to be you—a man who’s supposed to be celebrating his girlfriend’s birthday?”
“That’s enough! Can you stop being unreasonable?” Shen Yichen snapped at her.
“It’s just a birthday. It comes every year. What’s the big deal about missing one? Yanyan isn’t feeling well right now—are you telling me I should just ignore her and stay here with you on this mountaintop, blowing in the wind, watching the stars, and waiting for sunrise?”
Qin Shuzhi felt a pang in her heart. “So… asking you to spend my birthday with me… is such a burden to you, is it?”
“I don’t have time to argue with you over nonsense.”
Shen Yichen looked impatient, glancing at the high heels on her feet. “You’ll be slow going down the mountain in those heels. I’ll go ahead. Once you get down, hail a cab and go home. We’ll talk about anything else tomorrow.”
Qin Shuzhi watched the man turn and head down the stone steps, rushing desperately toward his ex-girlfriend, and felt nothing but cold despair.
“Shen Yichen.”
She called out to him, speaking slowly and deliberately. “If you leave tonight, we’re done.”
“Qin Shuzhi, will you just drop it!”
Shen Yichen turned around furiously and shouted at her.
“I really don’t have time to play these games with you right now.”
With that, he went down the mountain without looking back.
It was a July night, yet the wind atop the mountain was bone-chillingly cold.
Qin Shuzhi stood at the top of the stone steps, watching the man gradually disappear from sight, and closed her eyes heavily.
Fine. Since he had chosen Zhou Siyan.
Then what was between them was over.
She didn’t know how long she stood frozen in the wind. Finally, Qin Shuzhi raised a hand to wipe the tears from her face, turned around, and walked back to the tent.
On the small folding table in the tent sat a cake, flowers, and a beautifully wrapped gift.
Her gaze fell on these items, and she let out a bitter laugh. She walked over, grabbed her bag, and turned to leave.
The stone steps down the mountain were long—step after step—and with every step she took, Qin Shuzhi’s resolve grew stronger.
Walking down from the mountaintop to the foot in high heels took nearly an hour. No wonder that man, so worried about his ex-girlfriend, had found her a burden and abandoned her.
Going up, she’d taken the cable car and hadn’t felt a thing. But now, walking all the way down, her legs were aching.
Qin Shuzhi reached the intersection at the foot of the mountain, caught her breath, and pulled out her phone to hail a ride.
But when she looked at it, the battery was dead. The phone had shut down.
Ha.
When you’re down on your luck, everything goes wrong.
Under the dim streetlight, everything was eerily quiet. There wasn’t even a single pedestrian, let alone a car.
With no other choice, Qin Shuzhi had to walk to the next intersection to flag one down.
Just as she was about to pass a pavilion and head toward a brighter, wider road, a lewd whistle suddenly came from beside her.
“Ooh, where’d this little goddess come from? Come over and keep us brothers company for a while!”
Two drunk men clutching beer bottles jumped out from the shadowy pavilion, eyeing her with ill intent.
Qin Shuzhi’s heart seized with terror.
A dark, windy night. A remote place. Drunken thugs. A dead phone. For her, this was nothing short of a death sentence.
“Pretty little thing, big brother here will buy you a drink.”
Feeling their lecherous gazes roaming over her body, Qin Shuzhi’s hair stood on end. Without a moment’s hesitation, she spun around and fled toward the fork in the road behind her.
“After her.”
She heard the sound of a bottle shattering followed by heavy footsteps closing in.
Wearing high heels, Qin Shuzhi couldn’t outrun the two men no matter how desperately she ran, and was soon cornered against the railing of a small slope.
“Don’t come any closer. If you take another step, I’ll call the police.” Qin Shuzhi warned, feigning composure.
“Heh heh, quit playing the prude.”
One of the men approached, his eyes filled with lewd amusement as he looked at Qin Shuzhi in her red dress with her delicate figure. “Dressed like that and coming here alone at night—you’re just looking for excitement, aren’t you?”
Seeing the two men closing in, Qin Shuzhi’s hand gripping her bag trembled with tension. Panic surged in her heart, but she forced herself to stay calm.
She had to find a way to save herself.
Suddenly, a thought struck Qin Shuzhi, and her hand quietly slipped into her bag.
She deliberately relaxed her defensive posture, putting on a show of weakness.
Seeing her trembling with fear, standing frozen like a small, helpless rabbit, the two men’s lust swelled even as their guard dropped.
The heavier one approached Qin Shuzhi first. Just as he reached a hand toward her chest, he glanced back at the skinny man behind him with a leering grin.
“Brother, let big bro go fir—ah—”
Before he could finish, he received a vicious kick to the groin.
The pain sent him collapsing to his knees on the spot. Clutching himself, he pointed at Qin Shuzhi and cursed furiously, “You goddamn bitch, you dare kick me?”
“Skinny, grab her! I’ll fucking kill her!”
Seeing the skinny man charging at her, Qin Shuzhi found her angle and yanked a pepper spray from her bag, shoving it directly into his face and unleashing a fierce blast.
The skinny man cried out in pain, covering his face and stumbling backward. Qin Shuzhi seized the moment and bolted to the side.
Seeing this, the heavy man gritted through the pain and lunged at her, tearing at her clothes.
A ripping sound.
The neckline of her dress was torn open. The heavy man grabbed her collar tightly and wouldn’t let go. Qin Shuzhi struggled fiercely, raising the pepper spray in her other hand and attacking his face with it.
“Ah—”
Enraged by the pain, he shoved her hard toward the railing.
The railing only reached knee height. Qin Shuzhi staggered backward from the powerful shove, her feet catching on the railing while her body, driven by momentum, toppled headfirst down the dim slope.
The world spun around her as she tumbled down the slope, crashing into something. The moment her body steadied, a searing pain shot through her left forearm—as if something thin and hard had been driven deep into her flesh.
She heard the heavy man’s cursing in the distance, but she couldn’t afford to check whether her arm was injured. She yanked her hand free, scrambled to her feet, and ran blindly in one direction.
She didn’t know how far she’d run or where she’d ended up, when she suddenly caught sight of a light glowing at the entrance of an old house ahead.
Like a drowning person spotting a lifeline, she sprinted toward it.
The front gate was tightly shut. She ran up, pounding on the door and calling out while glancing back nervously to watch for the two men chasing her.
With a creak, the door was opened from the inside.
Qin Shuzhi’s tension eased. Without even seeing who was inside, she pushed past the person and darted in, then turned around and slammed the door shut.
Shi Yuanxing looked at the woman’s back in confusion. “You…”
Qin Shuzhi turned around. “I’m sorry. I was harassed by two thugs. Could I stay here for a while?”
The moment he saw the woman’s face clearly, Shi Yuanxing’s pupils jolted with shock.
It’s her?