The two waited outside the door for a while, and Qin Shuzhi knocked once more.
Qi Yishan glanced at her phone—the time read 5:03 PM.
“Maybe they went out and haven’t come back yet?”
Qin Shuzhi thought it was possible.
Not knowing when the person would return, she thought for a moment and said, “I’ll leave my contact information. He can reach out to me later.”
Qin Shuzhi fetched paper and a pen from the car, wrote down her contact details, and slipped the note through the gap in the wooden door.
On the drive back, Qi Yishan, who was at the wheel, suddenly asked out of curiosity, “Why did you bring pepper spray up the mountain?”
“It was a gift from one of my students.”
Qin Shuzhi was a high school teacher. For the past two years, she had been assigned to senior classes. Last month, after the college entrance exams ended, her students held a reunion. As their homeroom teacher, she received many handmade gifts from the students that evening, one of which was a bottle of pepper spray from a male student.
His reasoning: as the most beautiful teacher in school, Qin Shuzhi had a high danger coefficient.
The usually mischievous boy had said to her with utter seriousness and earnestness, “Teacher Qin, don’t take this lightly. It’s a mini version—powerful, and it won’t take up space in your bag. You need to carry it with you at all times. Who knows, it might just save you at a critical moment someday.”
Today, those words had come true.
Recalling this, Qin Shuzhi felt grateful to that student, but at the same time, only a deep sense of bitterness and irony.
See—even a student who had only spent a year with her cared more about her than Shen Yichen did.
Thinking about it carefully, perhaps Shen Yichen had never truly loved her. He had only used her to fill a void during an emotional dry spell.
In the past, when he was cold toward her, Qin Shuzhi had simply taken it as his nature—after all, he was the cold, domineering CEO type.
But over the past month or so, his various attentions toward Zhou Siyan had finally made Qin Shuzhi realize: he was only cold to her. In front of Zhou Siyan, he was nothing but a lovesick puppy.
How ridiculous—she had wasted three years of sincere feelings on such a man.
Utterly foolish.
But thankfully, it was only three years, not the rest of her life.
The next day.
Qin Shuzhi felt her hand had become much more mobile, so she returned to the Qin family home in the afternoon.
She deliberately wore a white sheer long dress, the gauze on her hand hidden beneath the white sleeves. Unless one looked closely, nothing seemed amiss.
A servant saw her enter and said happily, “Miss, you’re back.”
“Yes, Aunt Hua.” Qin Shuzhi glanced toward the living room. “Is my mother not home?”
“She is—the master is too. The madam just went up to the study to bring the master his ginseng tea.”
Hearing this, Qin Shuzhi went upstairs.
As she approached the study, she heard conversation coming from the half-open door.
“…Once Zhizhi is married, it won’t be too late to consider Zhiheng’s marriage. What are you in such a hurry about?”
Hearing Mother Qin’s voice, Qin Shuzhi paused, her hand raised mid-knock.
“Our company has a large loan pending with Southern Bank. President Liao of Southern Bank has expressed interest in a marriage alliance. If I don’t respond, wouldn’t that be slapping him in the face?”
Father Qin said worriedly, “The company isn’t what it used to be. If this loan doesn’t come through, our biggest project can’t even get off the ground—do you understand?”
“Besides, our daughter’s marriage to Yichen is practically a done deal. What’s wrong with having Zhiheng marry into the Liao family?”
“You don’t understand,” Mother Qin said in a low voice. “I keep feeling… something’s off between Zhizhi and Yichen lately.”
Qin Shuzhi’s heart tightened outside the study door.
Father Qin was startled too. “What do you mean?”
“I went to see our daughter the other day. Just as I arrived at her building, I saw Yichen storming off with a sour look on his face. Then I went upstairs and saw our daughter with red-rimmed eyes—she’d clearly been crying. I tried to probe gently, but she wouldn’t say a word.”
Qin Shuzhi’s pupils contracted.
She remembered that day. Because there was a movie premiere she’d been looking forward to, she’d asked Shen Yichen to accompany her. He’d refused, saying he was busy, so she’d invited Yishan instead. Since the movie hadn’t started yet, the two of them went browsing at the mall downstairs—and that’s when they ran into Shen Yichen shopping for women’s clothes with Zhou Siyan.
That incident had sparked an argument. Shen Yichen accused her of being unreasonable and stormed out of her apartment with a cold face.
“Maybe it’s just… a little spat between the young couple?” Father Qin said. “When two people are together, minor friction is normal.”
“Friction is fine, but a woman needs to be coaxed, you know that,” Mother Qin huffed. “Him storming off like that, leaving my daughter crying at home alone—what kind of behavior is that?”
“A good husband’s first requirement is to be gentle and considerate. If he can’t even treat his wife well, then money and power mean nothing.”
Father Qin: “…” He didn’t dare speak, afraid the fire would spread to him.
Heaving a sigh, he asked his wife helplessly, “So what do you want to do about it?”
“I don’t want to do anything. I just feel… uneasy about it,” Mother Qin said. “Anyway, right now the most important thing in our family is Zhizhi’s marriage. Everything else… put it aside for now. Don’t go making more trouble for me.”
Father Qin said, “But what about the Liao family…”
Mother Qin gave the order directly. “Figure it out yourself.”
Qin Shuzhi’s heart felt heavy as she silently turned and left the study.
She’d come home intending to tell her parents about breaking up with Shen Yichen.
But she hadn’t expected her marriage to indirectly affect her younger brother’s marriage prospects and the company’s strategic decisions.
She’d barely been downstairs for a moment when Mother Qin came down.
Seeing that she was home, Mother Qin was overjoyed and immediately rushed to the kitchen to prepare this dish and that soup.
Watching her mother like this, Qin Shuzhi’s eyes grew a little red.
The truth was, she wasn’t the Qins’ biological daughter—she’d been adopted.
But the Qins had treated her as their own flesh and blood, showering her with boundless love.
And then she thought about what had happened on her birthday night. She couldn’t bear to imagine how heartbroken her parents would be if they found out she’d been brought so low because of a man.
By the time she finished dinner and left the Qin residence, Qin Shuzhi still hadn’t brought up the breakup.
Feeling restless and weighed down, she didn’t go straight home. When her car passed a quiet bar owned by an acquaintance, she pulled over.
Because he’d been in a hurry to get Qin Shuzhi to the hospital that day, Shi Yuanxing had left a laptop at the old residence. So upon returning from Country T, he went straight there to pick it up.
Pushing open the door and stepping across the threshold, he spotted a pink slip of paper on the floor in the moonlight.
Frowning in puzzlement, Shi Yuanxing bent down to pick it up. When he opened it, his eyes immediately lit up.
It was her contact information, left for him.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he typed in the number and dialed.
At the bar.
Qin Shuzhi, who had already drunk quite a bit, was lost in thought: Mom said the most important thing in the family right now was her marriage, so how was she supposed to resolve her marital situation without adding to the family’s burden?
Suddenly, the phone beside her wine glass rang. Qin Shuzhi glanced at it—an unfamiliar number.
Hmm?
Was a telemarketer working this late?
She didn’t answer and hung up directly.
Then she picked up her glass and took another gulp of wine. The next second, the phone rang again.
So dedicated.
Fine, it was late at night—no point making things hard for some working person.
She grabbed the phone and pressed answer. “Hello, what are you trying to sell me…”
On the other end, Shi Yuanxing heard the woman’s clearly tipsy voice and paused for a moment. “Miss Qin, this is Shi Yuanxing.”
“Who is Shi Yuanxing…”
Qin Shuzhi’s head was feeling a bit dizzy. She only noticed that the person’s deep, magnetic voice was quite pleasant, and it vaguely sounded like she had heard it somewhere before. Suddenly, she remembered.
“You’re Mr. Shi?”
“Yes.”
“Great, you finally contacted me. I still owe you money—oh~ not just that, I owe you shoes, I owe you a shawl…”
Shi Yuanxing listened to her somewhat incoherent rambling and frowned with concern. “Is there anyone with you?”
“No, I’m drinking alone at a bar.”
Shi Yuanxing asked, “Which bar are you at?”
Qin Shuzhi muttered and mumbled, finally managing to say the name of a bar, and then the call suddenly cut off.
Shi Yuanxing immediately looked up the bar’s address on his phone, then drove over.