Stepping into the room, Mo Guiyi closed the door behind her. She immediately began rummaging through the drawers and boxes. At the very bottom of a trunk, inside a tin box, she finally found the jade pendant.
The pendant was warm to the touch, with a smooth, glossy sheen that clearly marked it out as something extraordinary. How on earth could she have ever been willing to give such a treasure away to someone else in the past? She truly had been far too naive, innocent, and foolish.
Just as Mo Guiyi gripped the jade pendant tightly in her hand, a commotion broke out outside. Yao Shujing had returned.
From outside the room came the voices of Yao’s mother and Yao Shujing. “You’re back? Go wash your brother’s clothes later. You didn’t even wash yesterday’s batch—are you trying to shirk your chores out of laziness? You’ve left your brother with nothing clean to wear. If you don’t wash them out today, see if I don’t skin you alive!”
“I know,” Yao Shujing answered submissively, her voice laced with grievance.
She was just about to head off to do the laundry when Yao’s mother’s voice piped up again: “Wash the clothes later. Guiyi is here looking for you.”
Yao Shujing paused. Why was Mo Guiyi here?
Lowering her voice to a warning hiss, Yao’s mother muttered, “Even though Mo Guiyi’s family background isn’t good and she’s full of bourgeois airs, the man she married is a military officer. He’s bound to have plenty of well-off, unmarried single officer friends around him. You need to keep your eyes open and look out for a match for yourself. If you can marry an officer, your younger brother will have someone to look after him in the future.”
Brother, brother… In their eyes and hearts, there was only ever her younger brother. Yao Shujing had bitter words stuck in her throat that she couldn’t voice. She was still relying on them to fund her schooling, so she had no choice but to keep pandering to them for now. But the moment she got into university, she swore she would never return—as for that brother of hers… she wished she could choke him out.
Listening to the conversation outside, Mo Guiyi narrowed her eyes.
When Yao Shujing entered the room and saw Mo Guiyi sitting inside, she froze for a second. “Guiyi, you came to see me.” Remembering what happened last night, Yao Shujing deliberately wanted to cozy up to Mo Guiyi. She wasn’t sure if Mo Guiyi had grown suspicious of her after the events of the previous evening. There were still far too many things on Mo Guiyi that she could exploit; she couldn’t afford to burn bridges with her just yet.
The moment Yao Shujing walked up to her, her eyes caught the object resting on the table. Wasn’t that the jade pendant she had scammed out of Mo Guiyi? Why was it sitting out on the table?
Yao Shujing flew into a sudden rage. Losing control for a split second, she rebuked angrily, “Guiyi, how could you go rummaging through my things like that?!”
“Didn’t you say it yourself? ‘What’s mine is yours, and you can touch my things whenever you want’?” Mo Guiyi asked her with a raised brow.
Yao Shujing’s face stiffened. That was just something she had said offhand to string her along! Who told her to actually take it seriously?! Acting all high and mighty like some capitalist young miss, she has zero manners!
Yao Shujing forced a rigid smile. “Right… but you could at least have given me a heads-up before poking around my personal belongings.”
Before Yao Shujing could reach out and grab the pendant, Mo Guiyi snatched it up first. Looking at Yao Shujing’s instantly frozen face with an amused arch of her brow, she twirled the jade pendant between her fingers and chuckled, “Yours? Isn’t this pendant mine? How did it suddenly become your property?”
A dark glint flashed through the depths of Yao Shujing’s eyes. From the moment she had gotten her hands on this pendant, she had never intended to return it to Mo Guiyi. In the past, anything she ever took from Mo Guiyi was never given back. Mo Guiyi had always been thin-skinned; after a few casual remarks, she would feel too embarrassed to ask for it again. Why was she actively coming to demand it back this time?
Resorting to her old tricks to brush her off, Yao Shujing equivocated, “Guiyi, didn’t you give this pendant to me to wear for a few days? Why are you changing your mind now?”
Mo Guiyi shook her head, correcting her narrative. “Not given, lent. Back then, you thought this pendant looked pretty and asked to borrow it to wear for a few days. But how long has it been now? A full month, right? Shujing, you couldn’t possibly be planning to never give it back, right?”
“Of course not.” Yao Shujing’s face flushed a burning red with shame and anger. Biting down hard on her lower lip, she squeezed a few fake tears out of the corners of her eyes. “How can you think of me like that? We’re best friends! I just had some things to take care of these past few days and wanted to borrow your pendant to wear temporarily—you wouldn’t even refuse to help me with this little favor, would you?”
Mo Guiyi put on a troubled expression, furrowing her brows in feigned hesitation. Now that the item was safely back in her hands, there was zero chance she would hand it over again. Besides, if she let Yao Shujing borrow it for “a few more days,” she would undoubtedly drag it out indefinitely with endless procrastination, until she finally hid the pendant away and used a fake excuse that it was “lost,” ensuring she never had to return it at all. She knew every single one of those little crooked schemes spinning around in Yao Shujing’s head like the back of her hand.
Pondering for a second, Mo Guiyi asked with a tone of counterfeit concern, “What kind of occasion requires wearing such valuable jewelry anyway? You aren’t letting yourself get scammed by someone, are you?”
Yao Shujing bit her lip, unable to spit out a word for a long moment. “I just have a use for it, anyway! I can’t return the pendant right now.”
With that, Yao Shujing lunged forward to snatch it back.
With a flick of her wrist, Mo Guiyi lifted her hand out of reach, the look in her eyes turning frosty. “I’m not giving you this pendant. You can drop that fantasy right now.”
“Why are you acting like this!” Yao Shujing stamped her foot in anxious frustration.
Hearing the commotion outside, Yao’s mother pushed the door open and barged in. “What’s going on? What’s all this fuss about?” She glared fiercely at Yao Shujing. “If you have something to say, speak properly to Guiyi! Stop picking fights with her. It’s your sheer good luck that someone like Guiyi is willing to be friends with you—don’t push your luck and start climbing over people’s heads.”
“I didn’t!” Yao Shujing protested, feeling deeply aggrieved and panicked. That was such an expensive piece of jade! The cooked duck was literally about to fly right out of her mouth. She was beside herself with anxiety.
Pulling out the pendant, Mo Guiyi sighed dramatically. “Auntie, it’s like this: a month ago, Shujing borrowed my jade pendant to wear. Since it’s been so long, I came to ask for it back, but Shujing says she needs to use it for something these days. Tell me, what business does a young girl like her have that requires wearing such a valuable piece of jade? Could she be getting swindled by someone outside?”
Yao’s mother swept her gaze over the pendant in Mo Guiyi’s hand, her eyes instantly lighting up. Such a fine piece of treasure… This damn, useless little hussy Yao Shujing had secretly hoarded something this valuable without ever taking it out to show them! She had actually kept it hidden all to herself. If she had known about this sooner, would she ever have let her return it? Was this dead girl actually guarding against her own family? She had always known this little money-grubber was full of untrustworthy tricks.
“Guiyi, dear, are you certain this is the exact pendant you lent to Shujing? Could there be some mistake?” Yao’s mother’s eyes gleamed with undisguised greed.
Seeing right through her thoughts, Mo Guiyi smiled. “Absolute certainty, Auntie. Look, my name is even carved right here on the jade.”
Sure enough, near the edge of the pendant, a tiny character (Yi) was delicately engraved. Right from the start, because the character on the pendant matched her own name, she had remembered it with absolute clarity.
Disappointment flashed across Yao’s mother’s eyes. Who knew how much money a piece of jade this precious could sell for? If it weren’t for this dead girl guarding herself against them, would they have missed out on such a massive windfall?
“Auntie, you guys… you couldn’t possibly be planning not to return it, right?” Mo Guiyi asked, feigning utter shock.
“H—how could that be?” Caught red-handed with her intentions exposed, Yao’s mother forced an awkward, ingratiating laugh. “Of course a valuable item like this needs to be verified clearly first, just in case there’s some misunderstanding.”
“There’s no way there’s a misunderstanding,” Mo Guiyi smiled. “Your family shouldn’t have anything like this lying around, after all.”
The expressions on both Yao’s mother and Yao Shujing’s faces instantly grew thoroughly strained and ugly.