Chapter 30: A Close Call

How does the Eldest Miss want to punish me?

A fierce wind howled. Rainwater gushed down in torrents.

Xing Yue tried several places, but none were open. She pulled the car over to the side of the road. The headlights shone onto the city’s landscaped greenery. Both sides of the street were lined with Southern Magnolias—Mo City’s unique local characteristic.

Long ago, He Zhiwen used to love them. Every time a thunderstorm battered the magnolia blooms to shreds, He Zhiwen would always feel heartbroken.

Now, only Xing Yue remembered the Southern Magnolias.

“Who?” she asked flatly. Her gaze was unfocused, quietly watching the rain through the car window. Her tone was as casual as if she were just chatting idly with the woman in the passenger seat—even if, in this moment, her heart was riddled with wounds.

Xing Yue thought of the way she had rushed over, frantic and impatient, the instant she received that text message. How utterly ridiculous she must have looked then. That was why Bu Yao had lashed out with those words about her being starved for affection as a child. And wasn’t it true? The behavior she was displaying was precisely that of a pitiful, love-starved wretch.

When she had first asked her question, He Zhiwen had worried Xing Yue might get upset. Now that Xing Yue’s tone seemed normal, she secretly breathed a sigh of relief and smiled. “It’s my wife. Her online handle is ‘Miss Great White Shark.’ You might have even come across her short videos. She went viral last year with a cosplay transition video.”

The moment Jiang Yue was mentioned, He Zhiwen’s mood noticeably perked up. It was as if any topic regarding Jiang Yue was something she could talk about forever.

Her eyes curved into crescent moons, as if recalling something amusing. She added, “Oh, that reminds me: the last character of my wife’s name and yours is a homophone. I don’t call her A’Yue; I only use the reduplicated form. Otherwise, it feels weird.”

As she finished, He Zhiwen touched the tip of her own nose, her face slightly flushed.

Xing Yue had some vague impression of that online name. She’d scrolled past one of the Great White Shark’s short videos recently; the comments were around twenty or thirty thousand, making her a minor internet celebrity. She couldn’t remember the face, only that such a person existed.

“You sent me a text, called me out here—all for this?” Xing Yue asked.

He Zhiwen’s expression faltered slightly. She shook her head. “Not at all. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. I wanted to catch up. My wife’s request was just something I brought up along the way.”

Xing Yue’s face was cold and grim. Her tone was measured, neither light nor heavy. “Is that so? Asking me to catch up in the middle of the night, and your location tag was a hotel… I thought you were asking me to get a room. I even brought my ID card.”

That tone made it truly impossible to discern if it was mockery or teasing. He Zhiwen’s expression turned awkward, as if she’d indeed sent a message that was easily misinterpreted. “Aren’t you… with Miss Bu…?”

“No, we’re not a couple,” Xing Yue denied flatly. She finally shifted her gaze away from the Southern Magnolia trees, turning her face to look at the woman beside her. Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “So now you know I can’t help you. Still want to eat?”

That tone wasn’t one of someone who didn’t mind. It was cold. Grim.

Perhaps she’d picked up on something, and He Zhiwen grew displeased. Especially the way Xing Yue treated her now—so completely different from when they were dating.

Back then, Xing Yue couldn’t bear to say a single harsh word to her. Now, she would use sarcasm with veiled barbs.

“A’Yue, don’t make it sound like I only came looking for you to use your connections.” She frowned, wanting Xing Yue to soften her words a bit.

But Xing Yue didn’t give her that face. “Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing now?”

From their meeting this afternoon until now, He Zhiwen hadn’t asked a single question about what was going on between her and Bu Yao. The certainty with which she assumed they were dating could only come from hearsay and gossip about her and the Bu family.

Perhaps in He Zhiwen’s eyes, she was no different from the circulating rumors—someone being kept by the Eldest Miss of the Bu family, living off a woman.

The first words out of her mouth were asking Xing Yue to pull strings for her—strings that would require her to turn right back and ask Bu Yao for the favor.

Xing Yue’s words were too sharp. He Zhiwen was unused to it and uncomfortable. “I thought that even after we broke up, we could still be really good friends. It seems I misjudged you, Xing Yue…”

She yanked the car door open and stepped out. The hotel wasn’t far from here; she could easily walk back.

Xing Yue sat in the car for a few seconds of silence, but the more she thought about it, the harder it was to swallow her anger. She got out and followed.

Rainwater drenched Xing Yue. She hadn’t taken an umbrella and stepped directly under the cover of He Zhiwen’s—a single-person umbrella that instantly became crowded.

She abruptly grasped He Zhiwen’s waist with both hands, pinning the woman in place.

“A’Yue…” He Zhiwen’s heart lurched into a wild sprint. She watched Xing Yue’s face slowly draw closer. That familiar face, its mature charm like a rich red wine that lured people into intoxicated confusion.

The woman nervously closed her eyes, her face burning hot, faintly and secretly anticipating something.

She waited nearly thirty seconds, but the sensation never landed upon her lips. She opened her eyes in confusion and was met directly with Xing Yue’s mocking scrutiny.

“Teacher He, you have even fewer limits than I gave you credit for.” Xing Yue dropped these words, ran back to her car through the rain, and sped off.

Xing Yue hadn’t even been gone forty minutes. The moment she got back, she went straight to the nightstand and unlocked the drawer she had just secured. The items she had just tidied were yanked out all over again.

Bu Yao was lounging on the bed watching TV. She didn’t even lift her eyelids. On the nightstand sat a bowl of fresh strawberries. She picked one up and chewed it slowly. “What’s this? Not safe enough locked up here? Need to put them in a safe?”

She abruptly transformed into a caring, enthusiastic little angel, offering advice to Xing Yue. “Build a hidden compartment in the wall. Put your treasures inside, then seal it with cement. It protects against snakes, bugs, rodents, ants, and dampness. Guaranteed against everything except thieves! Because, you see, thieves won’t be eyeing your worthless junk.”

Xing Yue hadn’t even had time to change out of her clothes after returning. The floor was covered in wet puddles. Her humiliation was only made more wretched under Bu Yao’s sarcastic, strange tone of voice.

The handmade miniature house. The paper stars. The pop-up book. Xing Yue stuffed them all into a black trash bag. Rainwater streamed down her face. She stood by the bed, stern and severe. “If I hear you breathe again, I’ll stuff you in there too.”

From the very instant Xing Yue had stepped out the door, Bu Yao had been bottling up her anger. Now Xing Yue had the audacity to come back and throw harsh threats at her? She let out a cold laugh, snatched up the blanket, and flung it right over Xing Yue. “Xing Yue, do you have no shame?! Smell this blanket yourself. You think I didn’t know why you turned off the night light tonight? So you were… doing… that kind of thing! How dare you! Right in front of me! And then you went out to meet your ex-girlfriend!”

A snake’s sense of smell was extremely sensitive, especially to the scent of their own kind. Although Xing Yue’s tail was impaired and carried no snake scent, the things she did have—sweat, fluids, blood—smelled the same as an ordinary human’s.

So the evidence of Xing Yue secretly pleasuring herself in bed before leaving was unmistakably obvious.

The moment she’d burrowed into the blankets, she’d discovered it. This scoundrel Xing Yue—thinking of her one second, then running off to another woman the next.

Hearing the Eldest Miss’s accusation, Xing Yue remained calm and composed. “What is the Eldest Miss so angry about? I am an adult. A full-fledged homosexual, no less. Do you not have normal physiological reactions? Even if I did that, so what? It doesn’t prove it was you I was thinking of.”

Ignoring Bu Yao’s imminent volcanic eruption, she placed the blanket back on the bed, grabbed the trash bag, and walked out.

As she headed downstairs, she let out a long breath. That was close—she had nearly lost that argument. Would’ve been mocked by Bu Yao all night otherwise.

Xing Yue disposed of the trash bag at the community garbage station.

As she strolled along the path, the brief few dozen minutes spent with He Zhiwen left only one thought echoing in her brain: Money is so good. Power is so good. Even an ex-girlfriend who hadn’t replied to a single message in three years after the breakup would come back to ask you for favors, come back to invite you to dinner.

What was laughable was that neither the money nor the power was hers. It was all bestowed upon her by Bu Yao. She could already perfectly picture Bu Yao’s smug, self-satisfied expression when she found out. That little poisonous woman had a mouth more venomous than a snake’s.

Xing Yue was full of hatred. Bu Yao was driving her to the point of almost developing a complex against the rich.

Just as she returned and hadn’t even closed the door, she was ambushed at the entrance and received a full-body embrace. Lips slick with strawberry juice aggressively kissed her—fierce and irritable, as if trying to devour her whole.

She attempted to push away, but her neck was seized in a tight grip. A warm, soft snake tongue swept across her lips, licking every inch. The kiss was too deep—so deep she could trace the exact shape of Bu Yao’s serpentine tongue.

The two forked tips were nimble and mischievous, entwining with her own response, sucking…

They tumbled inside, still embracing. The moment the door closed, Bu Yao was pinned against the door panel and kissed repeatedly. Xing Yue was like a woman in the desert desperately drawing water from a spring—parched beyond measure.

Even Bu Yao was starting to have trouble breathing. She was the one who initiated the forceful kiss. Why wasn’t Xing Yue resisting now? Were those two half-hearted shoves just for show?!

Xing Yue was such a good actress. Such a closet pervert.

She tried her best to kiss Xing Yue back, her cheeks flushed and rosy. Kissing until she was fully sated, she asked, “Did you kiss her?”

Xing Yue countered, “Who?”

“Who else? You have another ex-girlfriend?” Bu Yao grabbed her clothes. Though it was phrased as a question, mockery already laced her voice. “What were you doing out there with He Zhiwen? You came back so fast. Was there no hotel outside you both liked?”

Xing Yue’s mouth felt a little sweet. She went to pour herself a glass of water and said while drinking, “The Eldest Miss is doing this wrong. Can’t you comfort me? Show me some concern? Give me that sense of consolation that ‘even if others abandon me, I still have you’? You’re always mocking me, rubbing salt in my wounds. How am I supposed to feel happy? How am I supposed to want to remarry?”

Every time she developed a little more good feeling for Bu Yao, Bu Yao had to twist the knife in her heart.

The gap in their family status was already an impassable chasm to begin with. The Eldest Miss constantly lording it over her like this would wear her down to exhaustion.

Bu Yao stood in front of her. “So am I just your second choice?”

“Don’t twist my words. It’s not like I’m picking concubines,” Xing Yue explained more carefully. “What I mean is, can you just comfort me a little? Even though I brought it on myself, it’s still true that in this entire apartment, the only other person besides me who breathes is choosing to mock me… We don’t even have the atmosphere for dating. How can we get back together?”

Thinking about the future, if she remarried Bu Yao and had to spend the rest of her life like this, she might as well stay single for her entire life.

Xing Yue was also aware: the reason she could never fully steel her heart to reject Bu Yao went beyond her superficial nature and soft heart. More than that, it was because she truly, vividly perceived Bu Yao’s intense, fiery affections.

Occasional little temper tantrums were also very cute, but if she could never properly express her emotions long-term, that small bit of cuteness was something she really couldn’t withstand.

At some point, the red snake tail had slipped out, involuntarily creeping its way onto Xing Yue’s body.

How could Bu Yao not know how exhausted and wretched Xing Yue was tonight? Reduced to this state entirely because of another woman’s harm.

“You ran off to find another woman, and you still demand that I comfort you?” Her words were fierce and severe. Wasn’t she, sitting alone at home waiting for Xing Yue, wronged too?

Xing Yue tilted her head back against the sofa, her expression utterly fatigued. “Then how does the Eldest Miss want to punish me? After knowing I was dumped, you want to stomp on me some more? Will that make the two of us look more like a matching pair?”

The main overhead light in the living room wasn’t on. The warm-toned lamp that was lit cast its glow over Xing Yue, wrapping her in an aura of profound loneliness, as if no matter where she was, she was eternally adrift.

Bu Yao’s tail rubbed gently against Xing Yue’s palm. “What do you want me to do?”

“Hold me. Don’t speak.”