Chapter 4

On weekends, Ding Ya usually slept until the afternoon. She didn’t like cooking and would only do it herself if she got completely sick of takeout.

The new puppy at home was just over a month old, as milky and helpless as could be. After watching the puppy finish its milk and playing with it for a while, Ding Ya got a call from her parents saying they had already arrived in Bramble City.

Mom: “Your brother said a client gave him two single-day passes for Willow Garden, so your dad and I came to visit today.”

Both of Ding Ya’s parents were retired, but they rarely went out.

Ding Ya had planned to just stay home all day. Worried that her parents might run into trouble in the park, she hurriedly threw on some clothes and got ready to head to Willow Garden.

The puppy would be fine at home. Everything it needed was prepared.

Shen Mu had originally asked her to eat barbecue together that evening. Ding Ya had agreed, but now she quickly sent a message to cancel.

She followed it up with a string of apologies.

Luckily, Shen Mu was still basking in the glory of her Goddess publicly shredding a scumbag and didn’t care at all.

Ding Ya had woken up at noon, played with the dog for a few hours, and only felt hungry after leaving the house. She stopped at a convenience store, wolfed down a red bean bun, and got on the subway.

Willow Garden was a bit far from where she lived.

It was an artificial scenic spot in Bramble City, built around a local ancient pagoda, and quite famous on travel apps.

Especially the nighttime tour. The NPCs all wore ancient costumes, creating a highly immersive experience.

Ding Ya had visited a few times during university but hadn’t been back since starting work. She rushed through the subway while calling her parents, telling them to wait for her at the visitor center at the entrance.

“Mom, did Brother give you tickets or a QR code?”

“Yes, it’s linked to our ID cards. You and Dad took the high-speed rail, so you just scan your IDs.”

“Don’t wander off, okay…”

Ding Ya’s parents were getting on in years. She had a brother seven years older than her, a blood brother who, much like their father, was a lawyer. He barely had any time off all year.

Ding Ya had grown up pampered. Her family was relatively well-off in the county town.

Her parents didn’t place heavy demands on her, nor did they impose strict discipline on their youngest daughter. Compared to their parents, her brother was actually stricter, and now he fussed over her even more than they did.

Ding Ya had to transfer several times before getting off the subway.

After giving her parents instructions, she tapped open the messages Shen Mu had sent. She was still deep in gossip mode.

New comments on her perfect Goddess Jing Yuqi’s page. She had brutally destroyed the cheating two-faced guy, but wasn’t too harsh on the “sister” who tried to steal her man.

– [Dora’s Papa]: Little Ya, don’t you think my Goddess is perfect?

Ding Ya didn’t feel much. She was more interested in someone else.

These days, the bloody storms in the influencer circle also served as KPI fodder for marketing accounts. Many people learned about the brand Wellpond through this incident.

They discovered this brand not only sold clothes but also dolls, designed to be incredibly cute—completely opposite to Jing Yuqi’s style. It was reverse product seeding.

Jing Yuqi’s Weibo post included a photo with her business partner, the very evidence the scumbag used to doubt her innocence.

A spliced image.

The top photo looked very ambiguous, very happy, and it wasn’t the blurry, pixelated screenshot the scumbag had used.

It was clear the two weren’t kissing, just standing very close and talking. The background looked like an annual party, people seemed to be cheering them on.

The second photo was the same scene, the two posing openly together, holding champagne.

You could see their relationship was very good. Especially striking was how, against Jing Yuqi’s obviously fiery and sultry aura, this partner of hers was as cold as frost formed on a branch.

The colorful lights couldn’t show skin tone, but they deepened the contours of a person. The better the bone structure, the sharper the definition.

This partner didn’t smile as passionately as Jing Yuqi. It seemed like she hadn’t even put on makeup, arriving with a bare face. Those eyes looked at the camera, yet held a hint of reluctance.

It made Ding Ya, who was looking at the photo, zoom in just to see more clearly.

The face-connoisseurs in the comments clearly hadn’t seen Shu Chi before. They howled and barked, directly asking if this was the Second Boss?

Jing Yuqi, whose personality was exactly the opposite of her bombshell looks—a street-smart earthiness that could turn hot and spicy into outright sass—replied with one word: Yes—

This is our Boss Shu.

Below that was a flood of questions: Is she single? What’s her orientation? Is she considering blind dates? And so on.

The teasing was incredibly natural.

Jing Yuqi, also unfiltered, replied as if matchmaking for Shu Chi—

Single. Orientation unknown, but she looks very not-straight. No blind dates. She says she believes in fate.

Single, huh.

Ding Ya saved this photo. After all these years, the anger of being deceived had long since turned to dust and blown away. But now, for no apparent reason, she felt a stir of restlessness.

Back in her teens, she had no concept of homosexuality or bisexuality.

She just thought girls were meant to be with guys—parents together because of love, just like those youthful campus love stories in novels.

At worst, it was some object of affection who’d buy her skins, level up her game account, voice chat with her until dawn, and grow up alongside her.

A young girl’s fantasies are born from TV dramas, loosely tethered to fragments of reality.

In the yearnings of puberty, Ding Ya looked down on the acne-foreheaded boys in her class who liked to crash into pillars for fun.

She had a secret crush, an online ID, a virtual target she had filled with her own longing.

At first, she hadn’t revealed it.

After all, that person called Book Late was initially a bit cold to her.

The subway exit led right to a milk tea shop. For some unknown reason—maybe the playlist—the song playing was the background music from the profile page of an account Ding Ya hadn’t logged into for years.

Shu Chi had gone fishing in the morning, then sent a fish to Jing Yuqi. On her way back, she stopped by the hospital to visit Yu Xinyi’s child.

The kid adored her, and they had lunch together.

Jing Yuqi, having battled the scumbag on the internet all night, woke up, and nearly got scared to death by the fish hanging on her doorstep. Remembering the all-access pass she’d given to Shu Chi, she mentioned it again.

Shu Chi headed straight to Willow Garden from the hospital.

Aside from company team-building events, she had never gone out for fun in Bramble City. Even Fantasy Town was only because of team building.

The young girls at the company were noisy; Shu Chi had no interest. She could sit in a restaurant all day and still refused to be in Jing Yuqi’s vlog. She’d rather babysit Jing Yuqi’s kid.

A child born from someone like Jing Yuqi could only be more rambunctious than the mother, but surprisingly, the kid was very clingy with Shu Chi.

Everyone at Wellpond knew their Boss Shu had a bit of an internet addiction.

A stark contrast to her looks and aura, she also liked playing very old games.

Many of the visitors at Willow Garden were young people wearing Hanfu.

When Shu Chi scanned her ticket, she happened to cut right between a group of Hanfu-clad people, completely oblivious that she had disrupted their formation.

Finally, the girl with the livestreaming phone helplessly said to her viewers—

“I wanted to take a group photo, but a stranger walked in among us. Forget it.”

She spoke quite loudly. Shu Chi was wearing earphones and didn’t hear a thing.

The sun was warm today. Shu Chi wore a thin trench coat; her short boots had a slight heel. She seemed even taller than the boy in Hanfu standing in front of her. Head bowed, she looked at her phone.

It wasn’t until the girl behind her tugged at Shu Chi’s clothing that she looked over.

This kid was probably a high school student, her hair done in a complicated style. What Shu Chi noticed first was her face.

Very round.

From her attire, she didn’t look like someone easy to talk to; seeing her face only reinforced that impression.

Even though years had faded the scar on her face, it still slanted across with a naturally fierce aura, not to mention her furrowed brows.

Shu Chi’s vibe wasn’t the flirtatious type. No matter how you looked at it, she seemed more like she’d eat someone alive.

The other girl awkwardly spoke: “Hello, Miss… Could you switch spots with me?”

The girl was probably just over 1.5 meters tall. Shu Chi looked down, watching her purse her lips. The glitter on her eyelids from her delicate eye makeup sparkled wildly in the light.

Shu Chi nodded without speaking. Seeing someone behind her holding a selfie stick, she moved to the back of the line.

After brushing past, the girl said to the other girls behind her: “I thought she’d refuse.”

“She’s so tall…”

Shu Chi stood behind the girl doing the livestream, still completely silent.

Kids that age have boundless energy. Taking photos, they didn’t care about others’ gazes. That bit of sunshine was almost spilling over, lifting anyone’s mood a few notches just watching.

Shu Chi stared at the short girl and inexplicably thought of the girl who used to call her back then.

“I’m always the one talking, and you type so slowly. So annoying.”

“Hey, how tall are you? What if we meet someday and you think I’m too short?”

“I don’t think I can grow taller. I really want to reach 1.6 meters. Mom says wearing high heels later on would still be troublesome…”

“You have no idea how annoying my brother is. He says someone like me would have kids just as short, so I should find a taller boyfriend. What about you then?”

…

Ever since she saw that account light up again two days ago, Shu Chi had been suffering from insomnia.

She kept thinking of the past, of going to the internet cafe after work to chat with that person.

Back then, phone chats didn’t use much data. The mobile QQ logo looked pixelated, along with all those little chat widgets.

Where is my “wife” now?

What does she look like? Still like the photos she sent?

The park was very crowded today; the queue snaked through several turns. Ding Ya got off the subway and went straight to the visitor center to find her parents, then lined up with them.

Ding Ya: “Why are there so many people in the afternoon too?”

She stood on her tiptoes to look ahead.

Mom smiled: “Little Ya is all grown up but still tiptoeing.”

Ding Ya: “What can I do? I just can’t grow taller.”

Her dad was quite tall. She didn’t know why she took after her mother, which made her brother so smug.

Mom, Yang Jie, put her arm around Ding Ya and asked, “How’s work?”

Ding Ya normally called home often. She wasn’t the type to report only good news; she didn’t have that deep a generational gap with her parents.

“Just the usual. Overtime here and there.”

Mom made an “Oh” sound. “Next time you come home for a break, do you want to meet Aunt Wang’s son? He finished his master’s abroad and is back now.”

Ding Ya had gone on arranged dates after college graduation. Unfortunately, the candidates were either forced into it by their families or wildly exaggerated by the matchmakers. Ding Ya had zero interest.

She only did it for her parents’ sake.

Her lifelong expertise in muddling through served her well. She said vaguely, “I like handsome and rich guys. Mom, next time, can you ask Auntie to introduce me to someone better?”

Yang Jie: …

Ding Ya’s father, standing in front, said: “Being rich isn’t all that great either.”

Ding Ya nodded vigorously: “True. I prefer ones who haven’t been in a relationship before, or else it’s not fair, ya know.”

Yang Jie was rendered even more speechless. After a pause, she switched to a different question. “So have you met any boys you like at work?”

Ding Ya had no filter when she spoke. She asked her mom right back: “Mom, what if the person I like isn’t a boy?”

Yang Jie spent her time scrolling through short video apps and considered herself not too out of touch with the youth, long accustomed to the random nonsense that popped out of Ding Ya’s mouth.

“So you do like someone?”

Ding Ya shook her head. “No.”

The line was moving. Ding Ya glanced ahead. The very next second, her head snapped back, and she looked again.

But that beige-white silhouette was already gone.

Did I imagine it?

Once inside the park, Ding Ya’s parents, learning she hadn’t eaten lunch, immediately told her to find a restaurant.

Willow Garden’s prices were okay, and Ding Ya was somewhat hungry. She randomly picked one, but it was fully seated. The waiter said they could share a table in the main hall.

Ding Ya would rather wait for a free table than share, and wanted to drag her parents to another place. But her parents didn’t care at all and were already walking in.

Resigned, Ding Ya walked over. Yang Jie was talking to someone sitting at a four-person table.

By the time Ding Ya walked over, the other party seemed to have agreed.

Mom: “Little Ya, sit. Perfect, there are exactly three of us.”

Ding Ya had just sat down, looked up at the person beside her, and froze.

Shu Chi also found her a bit familiar, recalling they had just met two nights ago.

In the past, Shu Chi probably wouldn’t have even greeted her. But having become a boss, forced by Jing Yuqi to change her social behavior, she was much more proactive now.

She asked: “How’s the puppy doing?”

Ding Ya: …

Why is her first thought about that electronic puppy you gave me back then?

It seemed it got recycled by the system because no one fed it.

Ding Ya smiled, conjuring a bit of the uber-sweet voice she used back when their voice chat had double the effects: “It’s doing great, thanks for giving it to me, Sister.”