Huai Zhi did not immediately return. She waited right there, waiting for Cui Jingci to finish his shift, lest he be intercepted at the gate by Meng Yan and subjected to all sorts of idle chatter.
Sure enough, the moment Cui Jingci's carriage appeared, Meng Yan lunged toward it, shouting from a distance that she had something she wished to say to Cui Jingci.
Huai Zhi feared that Cui Jingci's carriage would be stopped and that he would be snatched away by Meng Yan. She wanted to rush out, but she saw the driver seem to turn his head slightly, as if saying something to the person inside—yet the carriage did not slow in the slightest, as if it had not seen a person as large as Meng Yan at all, and continued pressing straight ahead.
Huai Zhi watched with her own eyes as Meng Yan was knocked to the ground by the carriage, and had she not dodged quickly, she would have been swept under the wheels.
She was stunned, frozen in place without moving.
Had the driver not seen her, or was it deliberate?
Huai Zhi saw the carriage stop at the carriage yard. She ran to the front of the carriage and looked up, waiting for Cui Jingci to descend.
Cui Jingci lifted the carriage curtain and did not see where this little sprout had popped out from. Upon spotting her, his brows and eyes immediately curved with a smile, and he asked, "Huai Zhi, why are you waiting for me here?"
Huai Zhi immediately asked Cui Jingci, "Xuanshuang, did you happen to see anyone just now?"
Cui Jingci stepped down from the carriage and looked at Huai Zhi. The setting sun fell upon his porcelain-white skin, casting a dim red glow. His brows furrowed slightly, and a hint of confusion appeared in his peach-blossom eyes. "Was there someone there?"
With him looking like this, Huai Zhi thought, he truly must not have seen anything. She shook her head and hardened her heart, deciding not to concern herself with Meng Yan outside any longer. She took Cui Jingci's wrist and said, "It's nothing. Let's go back."
Cui Jingci was caught off guard as she took his hand, and before he could react, his body was already following her lead.
She walked ahead, and he followed behind her, taking in the full view of her silhouette. Her neck was so slender—so slender that if she tilted her head back to the extreme, it seemed it might snap. But Cui Jingci knew it would not. With a neck so thin, a single gentle squeeze from him might be enough to end her life beneath his hands—yet here he was, allowing this woman, whom he could kill with such ease, to lead him along by the hand.
He followed her obediently, and the two returned to the courtyard together. Only then did Cui Jingci take out the thing he had been carrying and dangle it in front of Huai Zhi.
Huai Zhi grabbed the bag and looked at it, then brought it close to sniff, catching the fragrance of pastries within.
"For me?" Huai Zhi asked.
Cui Jingci smiled and nodded. "I bought it on the way back from my shift. Try it—do you like it?"
Huai Zhi's heart had felt somewhat constricted just moments ago, all because of Meng Yan's words. Now, seeing the pastries Cui Jingci had brought back for her, her gloom dispersed completely.
Cui Jingci was so good to her, so good that she had completely forgotten even the events of last night.
Yet it was precisely for this reason that Huai Zhi thought she ought to tell him about the scholar.
From the very beginning, she had been the one in the wrong. If she did not speak now, and Meng Yan snatched the chance to tell him first, the consequences would be even more unimaginable.
After finishing her meal, Huai Zhi unhurriedly ate all the pastries he had brought.
Cui Jingci could tell she had something weighing on her mind. After dinner, he went nowhere, simply sitting in the room—she ate her food, and he read his book. Apart from the occasional rustle of turning pages, there was no other sound.
After a long while, Huai Zhi finally finished steeling herself and couldn't help but speak to Cui Jingci.
She swallowed the last bite of pastry and looked at Cui Jingci. "Xuanshuang, are you busy right now? There's something I want to tell you."
Hearing her ask this, Cui Jingci said softly, "Go ahead."
Finally, she was going to say it. He'd been waiting almost to the point of exhaustion.
What could Huai Zhi possibly have to hold in for so long? Cui Jingci was actually a little curious.
Though Huai Zhi had prepared her words in her head just moments ago, now that the moment to speak had truly arrived, her start was inauspicious—she stumbled over her first words before slowly finding her rhythm.
She said, "Before I married you, I had dealings with a scholar. At the time… at the time he said that once he passed the imperial examinations, he would marry me. But later, my parents went back on their word and refused. For the sake of some bride price, they wanted to marry me off to that young master of the Sun family."
Cui Jingci understood now—Huai Zhi was confessing her past to him.
A scholar?
After she finished speaking, Huai Zhi hung her head very low. She didn't know what Cui Jingci was thinking; all she knew was that she didn't dare look up at him.
After what felt like a long time, Cui Jingci finally spoke. He stared at her, his tone unreadable. "The scholar said he would marry you—but did Huai Zhi ever say she would marry him?"
"Hm?" Huai Zhi suddenly didn't know how to answer. If she said no, would Cui Jingci believe her? But if she said yes, wouldn't that prove she'd harbored improper intentions?
Seeing her expression, Cui Jingci laughed. "Huai Zhi, next time you're about to have feelings for someone, could you wear a mask? Or better yet, just bury your head in the ground."
His words were somewhat harsh, but his tone was gentle, without mockery—it sounded more like a joke.
Huai Zhi couldn't clearly distinguish the line between a joke and mockery, nor did she know whether Cui Jingci was laughing at her or something else.
But whatever it was, it shattered her psychological defenses. A single light remark made her think, might as well throw caution to the wind—since he'd seen through her anyway, trying to hide it further would only make her look ridiculous.
She said, "I did agree to him, but that was all in the past!"
Cui Jingci asked, "After we married, you truly never had contact with him again?"
Huai Zhi closed her eyes and said something half-true, half-false. "After things settled down, I never saw him again."
What exactly that "settled down" meant, only Huai Zhi herself knew.
Hearing this, Cui Jingci laughed even harder.
So Huai Zhi wasn't that foolish after all—so after marrying him, she'd still thought about what she'd do if she ended up a young widow. Cui Jingci didn't know whether to find it ridiculous or infuriating. His chest heaved and trembled as he laughed hard.
Huai Zhi dared not look at him even more now, and even wanted to leave and hide.
Cui Jingci firmly gripped her wrist, not letting her escape. He looked at Huai Zhi, his fingers absently stroking back and forth against her wrist as he asked with a smile, "So, Huai Zhi—did you ever think about having a foot in both boats?"
Huai Zhi, caught red-handed, flushed crimson but immediately retorted, "I did not!"
After hearing this, Cui Jingci said faintly, "Oh, Huai Zhi doesn't have that thought. Huai Zhi is merely thinking—what if one day my useless husband dies, what am I supposed to do? It seems there's still a scholar who once said he was willing to marry me. Perhaps I should go back and seek refuge with him then. Good thing I didn't reject him outright back then. In any case, if my husband dies, I still have him. Huai Zhi, that's what you were thinking, isn't it?"
Huai Zhi had no idea how Cui Jingci could articulate her inner thoughts so clearly and bluntly. Some of it was skewed, some off the mark, not entirely accurate—but most of it hit the mark.
Being seen through one by one made her feel ashamed—the kind of shame that came from wronging Cui Jingci. Looking up at him gazing down at her from above, she felt her legs go weak.
She wanted to keep up a stubborn front, didn't want Cui Jingci to think of her that way. But knowing how clever he was, she feared nothing could escape his eyes. In the end, she could only cover her face—whether from fear, shame, or both—and finally burst into tears. "I'm… I'm sorry."
Tears seeped through the gaps between her fingers, drop by drop.
Cui Jingci pulled her hands away from her face, wiping her tears as he said with a mix of amusement and exasperation, "Your husband who's about to die hasn't even cried yet, and you, his heartless little widow, are already sobbing like this. Where's the logic in blaming me like this?"
Huai Zhi didn't know whether Cui Jingci was angry or not; she just kept saying she was sorry.
She was afraid that if Cui Jingci died of illness, she'd be caught and sold off by her parents again. She'd just be a widow—what could she possibly do?
Cui Jingci said nothing more, letting her cry. Only when she was sobbing so hard she could barely breathe did he let out a soft sigh and gently pat her shoulder in comfort.
Huai Zhi's eyes were brimming with moisture, tears streaming down her cheeks like melted sugar, glistening with a sticky sheen. She cried with deep emotion, as if truly terrified—perhaps afraid he'd be angry and abandon her, afraid she'd go hungry again with no one to care for her, and even more afraid that her disgusting mother would come looking for her again just like today.
Cui Jingci watched her tears, his eyes holding a malice she couldn't comprehend.
Huai Zhi, if you knew that tears like these looked as alluring as peach blossoms, as sweet as honey to others, you'd be so ashamed you'd wish the ground would swallow you whole.
If you knew that the man standing before you, watching you cry, was thinking of stripping your clothes off, you'd tremble with fear again.
But then again—hadn't these worthless tears of hers also been shed before that scholar?
He said, "Huai Zhi wouldn't have cried like that in front of that scholar too, would she? Crying and saying, 'If that sickly man dies, what am I supposed to do?' And then that scholar's heart softened at your tears?"
Huai Zhi suspected Cui Jingci truly possessed the ability to read minds. Caught red-handed, even her sobbing hitched for a moment. Frightened by his somewhat dark gaze, her lips parted and closed, at a loss for words. In the end, she simply cried harder, using it as a way to evade his more piercing interrogations.
Bad Huai Zhi, thoroughly bad—he wasn't even dead yet, and she'd already thought about finding a second husband.
Cui Jingci said no more. He pinched his sleeve and wiped her tears dry, then let out a soft sigh. "What use is crying here?"
With that said, he didn't bring it up again, as if nothing had happened. He held her and comforted her for a few moments, and when she stopped crying, he left.
Although Cui Jingci said no more, Huai Zhi still felt uneasy at heart. It was not until later, when night fell and it was time to rest, that Huai Zhi quietly removed her clothes and lay on the bed waiting for him.
In her mind, she was thinking about Cui Jingci's words.
She could roughly understand what Cui Jingci meant.
Cui Jingci's energy was better than she had ever anticipated. Huai Zhi felt that she had truly underestimated him. He was quite lustful—of course, perhaps it was also because he wanted a child. Huai Zhi understood that to him, she was of little use, and this was probably the only skill she had.
As for that scholar's matter, it was her fault. How could she have harbored such a terrible thought of hedging her bets? It was only natural that Cui Jingci was displeased.
She thought that a mere verbal apology sounded contrived and insincere, so she should make up for it in a more substantial way.
And so, she stripped herself bare.
When Cui Jingci returned from outside and had washed himself, he was greeted by such a tantalizing sight. A thin quilt was draped over her, with two slender, bare arms resting atop it. From the way the thin quilt clung to the curves of her body, Cui Jingci could tell that Huai Zhi was wearing nothing at all.
Truly, the sun must have risen from the west—Huai Zhi could actually understand what people said now.
But this time, Cui Jingci made no move. He sat down at the edge of the bed, as if he had seen nothing at all.
He got onto the bed and turned his back to her.
Huai Zhi had not expected things to turn out like this. He… had he not seen her?
This was completely unlike Cui Jingci's usual behavior.
She shifted over to his side and reached out to poke him. Cui Jingci did not move, only asking lightly, "What's the matter?"
Seeing how cold he was, Huai Zhi figured he had no interest tonight, so she did not provoke him further. She mumbled, "Nothing… you're tired, so go to sleep."
A lone candle still burned by the table, unextinguished, signaling that Cui Jingci had not actually planned to sleep right away.
Now the light of that solitary candle fell bleakly upon the side of his face, casting his features in shadow and obscurity. After hearing Huai Zhi's words, he fell silent at once, yet he could not help but curl his thin lips slightly.
He had only deliberately teased her with a single remark, and she was already unable to bear it?