Luo Yanzhi was pushed away abruptly, leaning backward a little. However, since she was already in a prone position, she didn’t fall.
This was the first time Ning Ruohuan had offered such significant resistance toward her. For a moment, she failed to react, lifting her head in a daze.
Ning Ruohuan’s chest rose and fell slightly as she struggled to suppress the rising flare of anger. Her slender fingers clawed fiercely into the mattress; the bedsheets wrinkled sharply and abruptly around the spots where her hands gripped.
Luo Yanzhi’s brow furrowed: “What are you doing?”
Ning Ruohuan bit the tip of her tongue, the taste of blood spreading through her mouth. She forced her voice to remain calm and soft: “What did you mean by that sentence you said in the living room?”
Luo Yanzhi replied: “What did I say? I don’t remember.”
Ning Ruohuan’s tongue felt sore and numb. The words Luo Yanzhi had spoken were difficult to voice; the suppressed anger caused the artery in her neck to throb powerfully. “You said… you said she already has a wife and a child.”
Initially, she hadn’t understood the meaning behind Luo Yanzhi’s words. But when Luo Yanzhi just asked her who she had been chatting with so happily, her fragmented thoughts instantly connected.
Luo Yanzhi was mocking her—mocking her for getting so close to that woman and her child.
Yet, Ning Ruohuan clearly didn’t even know who they were; she didn’t even know the little girl’s name.
A strong sense of humiliation made her entire body tremble. No matter how outspoken Luo Yanzhi had been in the past, she had never said something that made her feel this humiliated.
Reminded of it, Luo Yanzhi recalled the sentence. She knelt on the bed, staring unblinkingly at the slightly trembling person in front of her. She narrowed her eyes, her pale pupils filled with coldness. “Why is Sister so agitated?” She spoke with a half-smile, “Or rather, did I hit the mark, and Sister is now flying into a rage out of shame?”
“Luo Yanzhi!” Ning Ruohuan said coldly.
Luo Yanzhi was briefly stunned by this stern tone. Her long, upturned eyelashes blinked slowly before she smiled: “Sister, I’m here?”
She pointed to Ning Ruohuan’s phone sitting on the bedside table: “I saw her phone scan Sister’s phone. Were you adding each other? Sister is popular as always—just going out once is enough to make people want your contact information.”
She moved in a slow, calculated circle, stepping into her slippers on the floor. Then, glancing at Ning Ruohuan, she stepped down with the other foot, shifted her position toward the nightstand, and reached out a long arm to pick up the phone.
She lit up the screen. The wallpaper was a photo of her and Ning Ruohuan. In the photo, she was laughing happily, and Ning Ruohuan was as well, though her smile wasn’t as wide—just a slight, gentle curve of the lips that felt warm and like a spring breeze.
Luo Yanzhi’s gaze paused. She pressed her thumb onto the fingerprint module at the bottom-center of the screen. In an instant, the screen unlocked.
The first thing she saw was still the photo of her and Ning Ruohuan used as the home screen.
Luo Yanzhi tilted her head to look at Ning Ruohuan. The other woman was also looking at her. In those eyes, the familiar gentleness had vanished, leaving only an indescribable expression.
Her heart skipped a beat, and her thumb stopped sliding across the screen. The phone lay in her palm, growing dimmer as no one operated it.
It was then that Ning Ruohuan spoke: “What do you want to check now?”
Luo Yanzhi was snapped back by these words. She shook her head slightly and unlocked the phone again: “I want to see what Sister chatted about with the new person. Sister won’t mind, right?”
Ning Ruohuan reached out, grasping Luo Yanzhi’s wrist to stop her from tapping on WeChat: “What if I say I do mind?”
Luo Yanzhi was visibly stunned. In the past, whenever she made such a request, Ning Ruohuan would always go along with her. Even if she was unhappy afterward, Luo Yanzhi would act weak or play cute, and Ning Ruohuan wouldn’t have the heart to criticize her.
Being rejected today was a first.
Consequently, she became even more convinced that something scandalous was going on between Ning Ruohuan and that woman.
She became even more desperate to see with her own eyes whether the two of them had chatted about anything.
“Why? Sister used to let me look,” Luo Yanzhi said, half-joking and half-serious. “Or is it that Sister is hiding some unspeakable secret from me?”
Ning Ruohuan dodged the hand reaching toward her and simply said: “Give me the phone.”
Luo Yanzhi stared at her fixedly. After a long silence, she asked: “What if I insist on looking?”
Ning Ruohuan: “This is my privacy.”
Having said that, she tried to pull the thin phone from Luo Yanzhi’s hand, but because Luo Yanzhi gripped it too tightly, she couldn’t pull it back immediately.
The two fell into a deadlock.
Ning Ruohuan felt it was pointless. She was tired; she didn’t want to play this game of suspicion with Luo Yanzhi anymore. “Let go.”
How could Luo Yanzhi let go? She pressed further: “Is Sister feeling guilty?”
The anger Ning Ruohuan had been suppressing suddenly surged up.
She felt guilty? In these five years, the person she communicated with most was Luo Yanzhi; the one she faced most was also Luo Yanzhi. Because of a single sentence from Luo Yanzhi—”Sister, I’m very possessive, can you talk to others less? It makes me unhappy”—she had reduced her interactions with others.
During the six months when Luo Yanzhi required the maximum amount of emotional support, Ning Ruohuan had barely even spoken a few words to the servants at home. The isolation was so extreme that she once feared she had lost her ability to express herself.
After Luo Yanzhi passed that period, Ning Ruohuan’s tense nerves relaxed. She became particularly fond of talking to people to prove she hadn’t become a mute. However, she still remained considerate of Luo Yanzhi’s feelings. She would pull the now-less-busy woman aside to talk about their future life.
But Luo Yanzhi grew annoyed, throwing back: “Does Sister not have friends? Can’t you talk about these things with your friends? I finally have a few days of rest, can you not talk to me about this every day? It’s annoying and boring.”
Chaos swirled; Ning Ruohuan’s ears rang. Everything around her felt like a tide rushing in, then rushing out.
Luo Yanzhi’s voice rang out again: “Sister, what exactly are you afraid of?”
Ning Ruohuan looked up, unable to hide her exhaustion: “Yanyan, I can let you look. But by the same token, as your fiancée, do I also have the right to check your phone?”
Luo Yanzhi hadn’t expected her to make such a request: “What did you say?”
Ning Ruohuan looked her straight in the eye and said calmly: “Give me your phone.”
Her phone had Luo Yanzhi’s fingerprint recorded, but she didn’t even know Luo Yanzhi’s phone password.
An unequal status gap.
Luo Yanzhi’s face stiffened: “Is there a need for this?”
Ning Ruohuan asked her back: “Then is there a need for what you’re doing?”
It was unclear which word had upset Luo Yanzhi, or perhaps the entire sentence had displeased her.
But she still did not release Ning Ruohuan’s phone.
The air solidified. The bedroom showed faint signs of instability; it was the spatial superpower at work.
Ning Ruohuan stared at Luo Yanzhi without fear.
After dozens of seconds, Luo Yanzhi’s expression softened. The corners of her mouth curled upward as if she wanted to force a smile, but she was likely truly unhappy and couldn’t act it out, so no trace of a real smile could be seen.
Nevertheless, it begrudgingly eased the atmosphere.
Luo Yanzhi said with a smile: “If Sister wants to look, just look.” She leaned her upper body forward, closing the distance between her and Ning Ruohuan. She pressed her thumb against the bottom edge of the phone and pushed; the phone slid forward, exposing most of its body. “It was I who was too willful. I shouldn’t have thought about checking Sister’s phone.”
Five years was enough time for her to fully master Ning Ruohuan’s personality. If force didn’t work, then she had to rely on softness. If she adopted a good attitude, no matter how overboard she had been previously, Ning Ruohuan would forgive her.
If she added some physical intimacy and said a few things Ning Ruohuan liked, even the last bit of anger would dissipate.
Ning Ruohuan’s temper tonight was much firmer than before. Luo Yanzhi thought it was probably caused by the cold war of the past few days.
A temperament that hadn’t softened to begin with, combined with her provocation tonight, had made it even harder.
Luo Yanzhi lowered her head and hugged Ning Ruohuan pitifully. She leaned her forehead submissively against the other’s chest like a small animal; there was no trace of the aggressive person from minutes ago.
Her tone carried a hint of a sob, making her look as if she had been bullied severely: “Sister, Sister…”
She murmured the name softly as she held the person in her arms.
Ning Ruohuan’s arms went stiff.
“Sister, I’m sorry, please don’t be angry,” Luo Yanzhi apologized in a low voice, her words heart-wrenching. “I just care about you too much. When I see you adding someone else’s contact info, I get so jealous and miserable. I can’t control myself; I don’t want to be like this either.”
She furrowed her brows in deep pain, looking up with tearful, shimmering eyes: “Sister…”
Ning Ruohuan let out a long breath and pulled out two tissues to wipe Luo Yanzhi’s tears.
“Sister,” Luo Yanzhi called out hoarsely.
Ning Ruohuan’s tone was still on the colder side: “I simply helped her partner and child take a photo once before by chance. Meeting them again today, she said her daughter drew a picture for me. I didn’t want to reject the child’s kindness, so I added the person’s contact. After they sent the photo of the drawing, we didn’t exchange another word.” Having said that, she added, “She and I will likely just stay as contacts who never talk. The kind of thing you’re thinking of is completely impossible.”
She gazed at Luo Yanzhi: “Or does Yanyan think I am that kind of person?”
Luo Yanzhi shook her head hurriedly: “No, I don’t think of Sister that way.”
Ning Ruohuan continued: “Then why did you insist on seeing my phone?”
She picked up the phone, unlocked it, and went straight to the chat interface with that person. Aside from the automated greeting when adding a friend, there was only a single photo sent by the other party—a drawing by a girl.
Luo Yanzhi glanced quickly at the content. After confirming there was nothing wrong, she said with a sob: “I understand.”
She wanted to ask if Sister had deleted messages in advance, but then felt it was impossible. She had watched Sister all the way back; after putting the phone in her pocket, Sister hadn’t taken it out until now.
She curved her lips in satisfaction, showing a genuine smile.
“What about you?” Ning Ruohuan turned off the phone. “Where have you been these past few days? What have you been doing?”
Luo Yanzhi kissed her lips: “I was handling some private matters. Sister, give me some private space.”