“Wait, don’t get out yet.” Yi Qingzhuo stopped her, calmly saying, “First turn on the hazard lights and pull the car over to the side of the road. Visibility is limited in the rain—I’m worried about being rear-ended by cars behind.”
Shen Chaoyi thought for a moment, steadied her nerves, and did exactly as Yi Qingzhuo instructed.
After parking the car, Yi Qingzhuo unbuckled her seatbelt and pressed a hand on Shen Chaoyi, who was about to unbuckle hers. “It’s raining. Stay in the car. I’ll go check it out.”
With that, Yi Qingzhuo pushed open the door and got out.
As soon as she stepped out, she saw the woman who had been lying in the middle of the road shift with the car’s movement, now lying directly in front of the vehicle.
???
A moving victim?
Yi Qingzhuo raised an eyebrow. She didn’t notice any external injuries on the woman—not a trace of blood, just exaggerated, howling cries.
“A scam?” Yi Qingzhuo narrowed her eyes.
So blatant? She didn’t even bother to make it look convincing.
When the woman saw it wasn’t the driver getting out, she let her head, which she had just lifted, flop back to the ground as if boneless.
She wailed, “Ow, ow, ow! Don’t you know to drive slower in the rain? You hit me, do you realize that? Ouch, my leg! It hurts so much! Is it broken?”
Yi Qingzhuo put one hand in her pocket and looked around.
Traffic here wasn’t heavy. The road was only two lanes, and the area was surrounded by old residential neighborhoods.
There were no surveillance cameras on the street either.
With the woman’s shouts, a few passersby occasionally glanced over from under their umbrellas.
Then they turned and walked away, their looks at Yi Qingzhuo uniformly saying, “You’re in trouble. It’s a scam, a blatant scam.”
No cameras on this stretch, and it was raining—who could say for sure?
Yi Qingzhuo’s expression darkened. “Our speed was thirty miles per hour. Not speeding, not drunk driving. What’s the point of scamming us? We haven’t broken any traffic laws, so we’ve got nothing to be afraid of. Are you even professional?”
Her tone was dripping with sarcasm, and she looked at the middle-aged woman on the ground with contempt.
She had probably seen that the driver, Shen Chaoyi, was a woman, and the passenger was also a woman, and figured they’d be easy to fool.
The middle-aged woman was taken aback, but since the act had started, she had to tough it out. “You hit someone and you think you’re in the right? My leg… it feels broken. What are you going to do about it? Either call the police and leave a record, or pay up so I can go to the hospital.”
“Sister,” Yi Qingzhuo said coldly, pointing at the car’s dashcam. “There’s no surveillance here, but there is a dashcam. It will show clearly whether we hit you or not. And you should be grateful we weren’t going faster, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to stop in time, and you’d have money but no life to spend it.”
After a pause, she added, “A police record? You think that scares me? I’ve got so many records in my life that if I threw them at you, they’d kill you.”
The older woman glanced at the front of the car and started throwing a tantrum. “Don’t lie to me! In this rain, the dashcam can’t see crap! Five thousand, and we settle this privately.”
“You’re not professional, but you know a little. Do you know this car also has a camera up front?” Yi Qingzhuo stepped back to keep a safe distance, avoiding getting splashed.
Then she pointed at the camera near the license plate and the ACC adaptive cruise radar, and began to bluff with a serious face. “Is this the angle you hit? See? Is it clear?”
Shen Chaoyi’s gaze followed that elegant, aloof back, and the panic in her eyes seemed to subside a little.
Her hands gripping the steering wheel tightened, her brows furrowed. In the end, she pushed open the door and got out.
What met her eyes was a woman with a pained expression lying in front of her car.
Shen Chaoyi’s pupils contracted. Rain fell on her without any cover, and her thick eyelashes trembled, the droplets on them sparkling like crystal.
Shen Chaoyi stood stunned for a moment.
Yi Qingzhuo, holding an umbrella, immediately saw Shen Chaoyi getting soaked and took two steps to her side. “Why did you get out? It’s just a scammer. I’ll handle it quickly.”
When the woman on the ground saw Shen Chaoyi, she thought her gentle, jade-like demeanor made her look much easier to deal with than Yi Qingzhuo.
So she decisively switched targets and turned to sob at Shen Chaoyi. “Little sister, you were driving, right? You know whether you hit me or not. My leg feels like it’s about to break. You two are young and clearly educated—you understand that you have to take responsibility for your own mistakes. You’re not going to run away from it, are you?”
Shen Chaoyi clearly couldn’t handle this unreasonable woman. Hearing this, she was about to crouch down and check the injury on her leg.
But Yi Qingzhuo grabbed her shoulder and shot a sharp look at the woman. “You’ve picked the wrong target this time. I really haven’t read many books. I’ll tell you this: either you leave on your own, or I call the police and they’ll take you away. There’s a camera here—who do you think you can fool?”
Enclosed in Yi Qingzhuo’s arms, Shen Chaoyi turned her head sideways.
Although the wet clothes on her shoulder were cold against her skin, Yi Qingzhuo’s embrace seemed warm.
Shen Chaoyi leaned close to Yi Qingzhuo’s ear and said, “That’s an ACC radar, not a dashcam.”
“I know. I was bluffing her,” Yi Qingzhuo whispered in Shen Chaoyi’s ear.
Dealing with this kind of person required abandoning civilized methods.
The rhythm of Yi Qingzhuo’s heartbeat transmitted through her clothes to Shen Chaoyi, who gave a gentle smile, seeming somewhat reassured.
She crouched down and said to the woman, whose features were twisted and who was drenched, “I’m a doctor. Let me check your injuries first.”
Hearing that, the woman’s alarm bells went off immediately.
She pulled her leg back and eyed Shen Chaoyi warily. “You say you’re a doctor? So what? Why should I believe you?”
“Then why should we believe you when you say we hit you?” Yi Qingzhuo snapped.
Who ever heard of a hit person moving with the car? It was clearly a scam.
Shen Chaoyi turned around and took out her work ID from her bag. “Take a good look. I’m a doctor in the Emergency Department of the First People’s Hospital. You say I hit you—let me check where you’re injured. If it’s my fault, I definitely won’t run away.”
The woman leaned in to look, and her expression changed instantly.
She hadn’t expected Shen Chaoyi to actually be a doctor, and combined with Yi Qingzhuo’s talk about the camera…
The guilty woman cursed her bad luck inwardly, rolled over, and got up swiftly.
She even muttered defensively, “Forget it. You’re just young girls. I’ll let it slide today. Bad luck for me. You go ahead.”
With that, she turned around, still muttering, and didn’t stop walking.
With her final excuse for herself, she disappeared into the alley.
“This is clearly a scam. If you run into one next time, you don’t need to be nice to them.” Yi Qingzhuo looked down at Shen Chaoyi, whose clothes were already soaked.
Shen Chaoyi stood up, put her work ID back in her pocket, and said with a light laugh, “Got it. Next time I’ll tell them the ACC radar is a dashcam too.”
Yi Qingzhuo’s face stiffened. “Just improvising.”
Shen Chaoyi opened the car door and saw Yi Qingzhuo’s embarrassed expression, making her smile even wider.
Once back in the car, Shen Chaoyi finally felt the chill from her wet clothes. She clenched her jaw and couldn’t help shivering.
In late autumn, wearing wet clothes was indeed cold.
Yi Qingzhuo noticed and reached to turn on the heater, but tapping it twice yielded no response.
Shen Chaoyi tried to restart the car. She pressed the button, but the car didn’t respond at all.
Surprised, she tried twice more, then let out a silent sigh. “It seems like it won’t start. The spark plugs might be wet.”
Yi Qingzhuo stared at Shen Chaoyi in her wet clothes and was silent for a moment. “My place is only a ten-minute walk from here. This rain won’t let up for a while. Your clothes are all wet—if you keep wearing them, you’ll catch a cold.”
“How about coming to my place first, change into some dry clothes, and when the rain lightens, we can take a cab back.”
“Go to your place?” Shen Chaoyi asked hesitantly.
She hadn’t expected to suddenly go to Yi Qingzhuo’s home; she had no mental preparation at all.
Seeing this, Yi Qingzhuo quickly said, “Don’t misunderstand. I’m not trying to…”
“I’m not misunderstanding,” Shen Chaoyi said, looking at her steadily. “Isn’t your aunt at home? Would it be inconvenient for me to come over?”
“She’s not home. A couple of days ago, she heard about some place where prayers are particularly effective, so she left yesterday. She’ll be back in three days,” Yi Qingzhuo explained.
Shen Chaoyi’s eyes flickered. “Alright then.”
So Shen Chaoyi pushed open the car door and got out.
Yi Qingzhuo took off her jacket, walked over to Shen Chaoyi, and draped it over her shoulders.
“Aren’t you cold?” As warmth enveloped her, the clean, unique scent of Yi Qingzhuo wrapped around her.
The residual warmth from Yi Qingzhuo’s body in the jacket seeped into Shen Chaoyi, strand by strand.
“Why do you always dress so lightly?” Shen Chaoyi looked at Yi Qingzhuo’s thin black long-sleeved shirt and wanted to give the jacket back.
Yi Qingzhuo stopped her. “I’m not cold. I’m used to dressing like this. Your clothes are wet—if you get hit by the cold wind, you’ll definitely catch a chill.”
She seemed to have a naturally cold constitution; no matter how cold the winter, she never dressed too warmly.
Her hands and feet were always cold, but she didn’t really feel it.
