Chapter 26 Part 2

Given Xu Qingzhu’s caution, she wouldn’t expose Liang Shi without absolute certainty.

Liang Shi lay back down on the bed. Everything she’d said about not being sleepy was a lie. She was exhausted. She hadn’t slept well last night, then spent the day at the Liang family home. Both body and mind were drained. The only reason she couldn’t sleep was that someone had been lying beside her.

Now that she had the bed to herself, Xu Qingzhu’s scent still lingered faintly in the air, but it didn’t trouble her much.

Before drifting off, she remembered to set an alarm.

Xu Qingzhu was curled up on the downstairs sofa reading her novel.

She’d slept a full day and night, so she wasn’t particularly drowsy. But her body was weak, and after less than two hours, her eyes grew dry and gritty. She could no longer concentrate.

She closed the book, rubbed her eyes downstairs, and guessing that Liang Shi had fallen asleep, she made her way upstairs at an unhurried pace.

Her movements opening the door were light, careful not to wake the sleeping woman.

A lamp was on in the room, casting just enough light over the doorway. When she’d left, she had distinctly turned on the lamp by Liang Shi’s side, near the balcony. But now, the lamp on her own side was lit, illuminating her path back to the bed.

Liang Shi’s sleeping posture was neat and proper. She lay on her back, hands resting on her lower abdomen, breathing shallow and even.

Xu Qingzhu walked over and sat on the bed. One side dipped gently under her weight. Liang Shi didn’t stir. She must have been sound asleep.

Xu Qingzhu slipped the book into the drawer and slowly settled onto the bed, leaning against the headboard as she turned to look at Liang Shi.

Liang Shi hadn’t been wearing makeup lately, or if she did, only light makeup. The old Liang Shi would always come home with a full face, no matter how late, and the makeup was heavy. She favored garish, inappropriate colors, especially lipstick. She basically used every shade that couldn’t sell, playing dress-up with her pretty face. There had been several occasions when Xu Qingzhu found her passed out on the sofa with full makeup.

Now, though Liang Shi had the same face as before, the eyes were entirely different.

Some say you can judge a person’s character by whether their eyes are bright. If someone’s eyes shone like stars, they were surely of upright character. But in the old Liang Shi’s eyes, there was no light. Only a deep disgust toward the entire world. Sometimes, her face would twist into an expression that seemed to wish everyone in it would just die.

The current Liang Shi’s eyes, however, always carried a warm, gentle gleam.

Xu Qingzhu was someone who excelled at noticing details, just as the current Liang Shi hid every action in subtle cues.

It seemed that apart from that reckless moment in the hospital, when she’d burst into the ward carrying strawberries and brazenly declared she would change and begged Xu Qingzhu to trust her, she’d been calm and gentle in every other instance.

Her body always seemed to carry the faintest scent of white tea.

It was deeply reassuring.

During the period after her maternal grandfather’s death, Xu Qingzhu would always brew a pot of white tea in her room. She’d grown used to falling asleep with that scent, as if her grandfather had never left.

Once again, she smelled that reassuring fragrance.

But she truly couldn’t confirm who Liang Shi was.

Where had she come from?

Xu Qingzhu sat there, her gaze tracing the contours of the other woman’s features inch by inch.

She still thought Liang Shi looked better without makeup.

But… what did that matter to her?

In the end, she was going to divorce Liang Shi.

She refused to obey her father’s wishes, to use marriage as a bargaining chip for the company’s desperate survival, and she refused to let her grandfather’s life’s work go down the drain. She had to join the company, even if her father objected.

Come to think of it, the reply to the message she’d sent her father last time had been just two words: Not permitted.

Her father believed that marrying into a good family, finding an alpha who treated her well, would be the best possible outcome for her life. But he forgot that she’d been first in her class her entire life, had been admitted to Qingyi University with top scores, and had earned an MBA degree. Had she not been reluctant to live too far from home, she would have pursued further studies abroad.

For the company’s sake, and for a small selfish desire of her own, she had chosen marriage.

But what had this marriage brought her?

Only endless suffering and ceaseless fear.

Xu Qingzhu exhaled softly. Late at night, she couldn’t help ruminating over these things and exhausting herself over them.

She decided to stop following her father’s decisions. Instead, she sent a message to her maternal cousin uncle, who worked at the same company, telling him she intended to come work there and needed him to arrange a position. She didn’t need to parachute in and displace existing employees. She just needed an opportunity to work at the company, preferably in a core department like the design department or the exhibition department.

For a jewelry company, the design department was the heart. Without designs good enough to surpass competitors, a company could never establish itself in the industry. The exhibition department handled the annual runway shows for new releases, from hiring models to defining every piece of jewelry, indirectly influencing the sales of each new product.

The advertising and marketing departments were equally important. Every marketing plan determined whether a piece of jewelry could catch the public’s eye at a glance and spark consumer desire. The era of “good wine needs no bush” was long gone. In today’s market, marketing was an indispensable element.

The field most aligned with Xu Qingzhu’s professional background was human resources management, but she still chose to go where the soul of the company lay. To completely reverse Minghui’s current situation, the rotten roots had to be pulled out entirely. Bringing in new people without uprooting the rot was pointless. It would be like grafting new shoots onto diseased roots. Sooner or later, they’d rot too.

Her maternal cousin uncle replied quickly, telling her to come by anytime. There happened to be an opening at the management level in the design department, and she could step right into it.

Parachuting in was apparently the fastest way.

Xu Qingzhu replied: 【Alright, thank you, Uncle.】

A few seconds later, she added: 【I’ll report for duty tomorrow.】

The next morning, Liang Shi was jolted awake by her alarm.

She’d slept reasonably well and immediately silenced the alarm to avoid waking Xu Qingzhu. But when she turned over after turning it off, Xu Qingzhu was already gone.

She reached across the bed. The sheets were cold.

Did Xu Qingzhu not come back to the room last night?

Musing over this, she tied her hair back and headed to the bathroom to wash up.

Today was her first day reporting to Dongheng Group. She couldn’t exactly show up bare-faced, but she didn’t go heavy either. Just a simple base layer, lipstick, everyday eyeshadow, and a coat of mascara to curl her lashes.

While applying mascara, she thought of Xu Qingzhu.

Xu Qingzhu’s lashes seemed long and curled enough without mascara.

The thought made her hand slip. The mascara wand smeared black beneath her eye, smudging into a dark blotch.

She immediately grabbed tissue to wipe it off, but this mascara was waterproof and quick-drying. Rubbing only made the area below her eye darker, as if she had a black eye.

Liang Shi: “…”

Even a makeup veteran could have a mishap. Absolutely ridiculous.

She searched the cosmetics rack for makeup remover but found none. She went back into the bedroom and checked Xu Qingzhu’s vanity. A quick sweep revealed nothing.

With no other option, she picked up bottles one by one to read the labels. But many of these products had no Chinese text at all. Some were covered in Korean, others entirely in Japanese. The easiest to read turned out to be one with all-English labels, but when Liang Shi looked closer, it was a bottle of lotion.

“…”

Helplessly, she was doing her best to translate the label on the last bottle that resembled a makeup remover when the bedroom door swung open.

Xu Qingzhu walked in.

Liang Shi: “…”

Isn’t it a bit rude to go through someone’s things without asking?

Under Xu Qingzhu’s gaze, Liang Shi finally mustered a sliver of self-awareness. She held up the bottle in her hand and said with some difficulty, “I’m looking for makeup remover.”

Xu Qingzhu glanced at her. The large black smudge beneath Liang Shi’s eye was hard to ignore.

“Did your eyeshadow smear?” she asked calmly.

“No.” Liang Shi said. “Accidentally smudged it while applying mascara.”

Xu Qingzhu walked in. “Okay.”

She went to the vanity, pulled open a drawer, and took out a round tin Liang Shi had never seen before. Inside were neatly arranged cotton pads with a faint whiff of alcohol.

Xu Qingzhu handed it to her. “Everything on the vanity is everyday skincare.”

“Okay,” Liang Shi said, accepting it. “Thanks.”

Liang Shi carried the tin of cotton pads into the bathroom and carefully wiped at the smudge in the mirror. But from the reflection, she could see Xu Qingzhu’s face.

Xu Qingzhu was standing in the doorway, staring straight at her.

Liang Shi: “…?”

She couldn’t help asking, “Did I kick you last night?”

“No,” Xu Qingzhu said. “Your sleeping habits are quite good.”

“Then…” Liang Shi couldn’t hold back. “Did you need something from me?”

Xu Qingzhu paused. “Not exactly.”

What do you mean, not exactly? Either you do or you don’t. What kind of answer is “not exactly”?

Besides, she’d already messed up her makeup because her hand was shaking, and now someone was standing there watching her. It was creepy.

Liang Shi let out a soft breath. “Well, you…”

“Fine, I do.” Xu Qingzhu cut her off. “I’m going to work today.”

Liang Shi’s heart lightened. “Oh, that’s great. Go for it. Your family’s company?”

Xu Qingzhu nodded. “I get off at six. I might work overtime, though. If I’m back late, don’t wait for me for dinner.”

“Got it.” Liang Shi played along. “I have work too. I didn’t like the HR department my second brother arranged for me, so this time I’m trying a newly opened department. Should be six o’clock off as well, though I expect overtime in a new department, so my schedule won’t be fixed either. If I’m not back by dinner, you don’t have to wait for me.”

Xu Qingzhu nodded. “Alright.”

The negotiation was reasonably pleasant. Once it concluded, Liang Shi turned back to the mirror to keep working.

She didn’t want to remove all her makeup for one tiny smudge, so she’d just wipe at it with the corner of a cotton pad and touch up with foundation. No big deal.

But Xu Qingzhu kept standing in the doorway. After all the logistics were settled, she still hadn’t left.

Liang Shi: “…”

Back in her acting days, even with a dozen cameras trained on her for close-up shots, she’d never felt this tense.

She couldn’t help it. “Is there something else?”

Xu Qingzhu shook her head. “No.”

The answer was frank, but she simply refused to leave.

Liang Shi lowered her hand. “Do you need the bathroom?”

Xu Qingzhu still shook her head. “I can use the one downstairs if I need to.”

Liang Shi: “…”

Then what are you doing here?

She held her tongue, barely keeping the words in. She didn’t want to upset Xu Qingzhu and trigger the System’s bad luck penalty.

But mainly, having Xu Qingzhu standing there made her nervous. And when she was nervous, her hands shook. The smudge was entirely because she’d unconsciously thought of Xu Qingzhu’s lashes and slipped. Now the woman was standing right there watching.

Liang Shi sighed inwardly. Forget it. Worst case, she’d remove all her makeup and wash her face.

As she turned on the faucet, Xu Qingzhu spoke up. “Do you… not know how to do makeup?”

Liang Shi: “…?”

“What?” Liang Shi denied it instantly. “My makeup skills are perfectly fine.”

In truth, she’d actually been a beauty blogger for a while back in her old life. The long makeup sessions during filming had made her obsessively observe the cosmetics on the table. Eventually, out of boredom, she’d started livestreaming to chat with fans about good products, and on her most idle days, even did costume makeup cosplays.

Of anime characters, but still.

She’d just had a rare slip-up, and Xu Qingzhu had witnessed it in real time.

Xu Qingzhu stepped inside. She turned off the faucet, neither believing nor disbelieving, and took out a fresh cotton pad from the tin. She folded it twice between her fingers, then looked up at Liang Shi.

“Bend down.”

Liang Shi: “…”