Su Jinglan’s every gesture caught Ning Jiuwei’s eye, especially the way she lightly touched her lips, which was utterly enticing. Ning Jiuwei calmly withdrew her gaze and turned back to the design draft on her screen.
Su Jinglan let out a soft, amused chuckle, admiring Ning Jiuwei at work without a hint of restraint.
Designer Ning looks so focused, staring at the screen without so much as twitching.
That scorching gaze set her nerves on edge. Ning Jiuwei gripped her mouse tighter, fending off the wave of heat surging through her.
Work hours had long passed, and most people had cleared out of the office. The few designers who remained were hunched over their drawings, so quiet they might as well have been invisible.
Su Jinglan sat in the plush boss chair, fountain pen in hand. The blue windchime fragrance in the air had been swapped for a calming sandalwood scent. She focused intently on approving documents, oblivious to Ning Jiuwei tidying up her desk.
Assistant Lin, who had stepped out earlier, returned with a folder stamped with the company logo. As she passed the Chief Designer’s Office, she slowed her pace and glanced at Ning Jiuwei.
Ning Jiuwei happened to look up at that exact moment. Their eyes met, and Ning Jiuwei offered a gentle smile. Once Assistant Lin had entered the President’s Office, Ning Jiuwei left her own workspace.
“President Su, this is her resume.” Lin Fengmian shut the door to the President’s Office, ensuring no one could overhear, and handed over the documents.
Su Jinglan watched Ning Jiuwei’s solitary figure depart before taking the folder and setting it aside. She continued signing documents.
The office emptied out one by one. Lin Fengmian brewed a cup of coffee for Su Jinglan. Scattered lights dotted the office building, but an eerie silence hung over it, as if it were completely deserted.
After finishing a few documents, Su Jinglan rubbed her aching brow and asked Assistant Lin, “Is Zhaoyue still at the company?”
“She’s already gone.” Assistant Lin approached to organize the files and slid the coffee closer.
The coffee was just the right temperature. Su Jinglan took two sips, her eyes drifting to the documents.
She had tasked Assistant Lin with digging these up and was prepared for whatever they revealed.
Sure enough, Shi Wanxu wasn’t just a professor of cognitive psychology at Jiangji University—she was also a psychologist at Jiangji First People’s Hospital.
The photo in the file made her look no older than thirty. Su Jinglan checked the birthdate and calculated the age gap between herself and Shi Wanxu, which matched the one between Ning Jiuwei and Shi Wanxu.
The documents laid out Shi Wanxu’s education and career in detail: she had earned her PhD in psychology at twenty-five, returned home after graduation, and joined Jiangji Second People’s Hospital.
Su Jinglan read on, piecing together the timeline. Shi Wanxu spent five years at Second People’s Hospital before resigning and leaving Jiangji for a three-year stint at Jianglin First Hospital. Ning Jiuwei had done both her bachelor’s and master’s at Jianglin University, so those three years lined up as the most likely window for them to have met.
Had the pressures of grad school driven her to see a psychologist, leading to Shi Wanxu?
Further down, after those three years in Jianglin, Shi Wanxu returned to Jiangji Second People’s Hospital. She worked there for four years before transferring to First People’s Hospital two years ago.
That same year, she was hired as a professor at Jiangji University.
The full resume offered several possible points of intersection with Ning Jiuwei.
Su Jinglan closed the folder, her brow furrowing as she pondered.
“Can we get hold of Shi Wanxu’s patient records?” She smoothed her brow and looked up at Assistant Lin, who sat in the chair opposite.
Assistant Lin flashed her standard professional smile. “In principle, no. Patient records are confidential and not to be disclosed.”
In principle no meant yes, it could be done.
After a moment’s hesitation, Su Jinglan instructed her, “I want her patient records from those three years in Jianglin.”
“Before eleven tonight.”
Assistant Lin never questioned why they were investigating Shi Wanxu. She simply carried out the president’s orders.
The night had deepened by the time Su Jinglan stepped out of the office building. She paused, gazing from afar at the parking spots below. Ning Jiuwei’s reserved space sat empty—she had been gone for quite a while.
The mere sight of that empty spot brought a smile to Su Jinglan’s lips.
The kiss’s tingling thrill lingered even now, and her heart thumped powerfully at the memory of Ning Jiuwei taking the initiative. It stirred a fierce urge to unleash years of bottled-up affection.
Ning Jiuwei clutched her tablet stylus, her mind replaying the color of Su Jinglan’s lips and the sensation of the kiss—over and over. A few seconds of contact stretched into hours of mental replay.
What if they took it further? Would it loop for days?
No more thinking about it.
Ning Jiuwei let out a heavy breath and brewed herself a cup of honeysuckle tea to cool the fire within.
Ning Jiuwei returned to the study and sat down at the desk. She pushed aside the blank drawing paper in front of her and pulled out the cognitive psychology lecture materials.
She hadn’t touched the thick stack since leaving the library. Gazing at the words “Cognitive Psychology” on the cover, Ning Jiuwei’s thoughts drifted once more to Su Jinglan.
She flipped through the materials, her fingertips gliding over the two pages Su Jinglan had written. The paper was ridged and bumpy from the forceful strokes of the pen, the tactile sensation traveling from her fingertips straight to her brain and unleashing waves of surging emotion.
Ning Jiuwei pulled a book from the bookshelf—one Su Jinglan had given her that she still hadn’t read. Mimicking the earlier motion, she flipped through it backward from the end and stopped at random.
The other task she hadn’t completed at the library, she would tackle now at home.
She set a timer for ten minutes to read and memorize.
Fewer than Su Jinglan.
What she managed to jot down was sixty-eight characters shorter than Su Jinglan’s version.
The night had cooled swiftly. After one round of recitation from memory, the steaming honeysuckle tea was perfect for sipping. Ning Jiuwei drank half a cup, but the blaze leaping in her chest showed no signs of fading—instead, it burned even hotter.
Ning Jiuwei tried again.
This time, she recalled even less than before, widening the gap with Su Jinglan further still.
She was about to attempt a third round when her phone rang, interrupting her as she adjusted the timer.
Rubbing her forehead, Ning Jiuwei answered. On the other end, Wen Wanyuan chattered away like an excited little bird. “Ah Mu, I got a VIP gym membership card. It lets you bring one family member for free workouts. Come with me!”
“I don’t like exercising.” Ning Jiuwei preferred peace and quiet, steering clear of gyms with their mingled scents of sweat and throngs of people.
“Haven’t you noticed you’ve put on weight? You’ve got a little pooch.” Wen Wanyuan pushed hard with her invitation. “It’s a fancy gym in a five-star hotel—top-notch facilities, not crowded at all, and it comes with a free king room.”
Was the hotel business really that rough these days?
Ning Jiuwei glanced at her flat stomach and paused before asking Wen Wanyuan, “You sure this isn’t some long-stay hotel deal tossing in a free gym membership?”
“…” She hadn’t expected Ning Jiuwei to catch on so fast. Wen Wanyuan confessed, “Well, you could put it that way. But I really booked a month-long stay at the hotel to get fit. One business king room fits two, so you stay for free and we work out together.”
Ning Jiuwei didn’t budge. “I don’t need to work out.”
“Come on, Ah Mu, just keep me company.” Even over the phone, Wen Wanyuan wheedled with ease. “If I don’t exercise, soon you won’t be able to carry me anymore. Sister Ning, pretty please? I’m right at your door.”
Ning Jiuwei went to open up, and there was Wen Wanyuan, holding two bags of brand-new fitness gear: quick-dry shirts, sweatbands, flip-top straw water bottles—all in matching couple sets.
“This white one’s for you; the black is mine.” Wen Wanyuan looped her arm through Ning Jiuwei’s. “Aren’t I thoughtful, Sister Ning?”
“Sister Ning’s about to die of frustration with you.” Eager to avoid running into Su Jinglan, Ning Jiuwei ushered her inside to talk and got to the point. “So, why do you really want to work out?”
“To stay in shape.” Wen Wanyuan patted her belly. “I’m getting older, metabolism’s slowing down. Better get moving before I puff up. Imagine if I land a partner someday—we get naked, bare it all, and they see a donut. How mortifying!”
Without warning, Su Jinglan’s image flickered into Ning Jiuwei’s mind.
The kiss’s afterglow lingered too powerfully; she was still buzzing from it.
She lowered her gaze to dispel the memory of their lips meeting, but her heart rebelled, dredging up more: the feverish night Su Jinglan had carried her to bed, the way they’d fallen asleep entwined on the hotel sheets.
Su Jinglan had an incredible figure.
“When do we go?” Ning Jiuwei asked.
Wen Wanyuan lit up with a grin and hoisted the bags. “Now.”
Wen Wanyuan carted the bags right back downstairs. She drove, stowing them in the back seat while seating Ning Jiuwei up front.
They drove from Xitang Mansion straight to the hotel.
Of all the five-star hotels out there, it had to be Wan Jun Hotel again. Staring at the opulent facade, Ning Jiuwei couldn’t suppress thoughts of Su Jinglan.
By now, Su Jinglan was probably home, wasn’t she?
Su Jinglan lounged on the sofa with the TV droning in the background, half-listening to international and domestic news reports while scrolling through financial updates.
She wasn’t alone. In the kitchen, a figure hustled about. At the kitchen island, Assistant Lin cradled a tea caddy, meticulously measuring leaves, boiling water, and steeping a pot.
Assistant Lin finally pieced it together: this was why the president had abruptly relocated from Fenglinwu Community to Xitang Mansion—Designer Ning lived right across the hall.
After the initial scald with boiling water, Assistant Lin carried the tea tray to the sofa and set it on the coffee table within easy reach of Su Jinglan.
A vibration buzzed in her pocket—new messages. Lin Fengmian read them, then headed to the kitchen to find Lin Zhaoyue. “Do we have a printer at home?”
“There’s some in the study.”
Su Jinglan, lounging on the sofa, overheard their conversation and said to Assistant Lin, “Just send it to me directly.”
Assistant Lin forwarded the medical records she’d found to Su Jinglan.
Reading digital files was slower than flipping through paper ones, so Su Jinglan opened the document and skimmed it at a glance, searching only for keywords.
“These are all the patients she handled over those three years?” Ning Jiuwei’s name wasn’t in there.
Assistant Lin nodded. “Yes, everything’s here. She never misses anything when she’s digging up records.”
Looks like they hadn’t met during those three years in Jianglin. Su Jinglan widened the scope. “Have her pull records for every patient Shi Wanxu has ever treated since she started practicing medicine.”
Assistant Lin accepted the order and got right to work. Su Jinglan deleted the files from her phone and dismissed the pair.
It had been a long time since Ning Jiuwei had done any intense exercise, so after five minutes on the treadmill, she stepped off. Wen Wanyuan was just hitting her stride, but Ning took a sip of water, caught her breath, and said, “That’s enough for today. I’m heading home.”
Wen Wanyuan: “???”
True to her word, Ning Jiuwei left without lingering a single extra minute.
She hadn’t worked up much of a sweat, and she wasn’t about to use the gym’s public showers. Instead, she stayed in her workout clothes and took a cab back home.
The moment she unlocked her apartment door, Su Jinglan emerged from the unit across the hall.
“Hit the gym?” Su Jinglan’s smile was gentle as she slipped naturally inside Ning Jiuwei’s home.
Ning Jiuwei hummed in acknowledgment, set down her gym bag, and headed for the shower.
Su Jinglan reached out, wrapping an arm around her waist from behind and pulling her close. She rested her chin on Ning Jiuwei’s shoulder in an intimate embrace. “Who’d you go with?”
Ning Jiuwei’s heart pounded a thousand times harder than it had on the treadmill. Her body went limp, a dizzying vertigo washing over her. Su Jinglan chuckled softly in her ear. “Turn around.”
~~~
