‘If I look one more time, my eyes will report my location to my immune cells…’
“Ugh.”
“What a sin…”
“…”
-Yin: Got it.
-Yin: Also, Dad, can you watch fewer anime characters?
-Yin: Day after day, why are you even more girly than me?
Unable to hold back her urge to joke, she dealt a heavy blow to the middle-aged man on the other side of the screen.
-Money-Spitting Dad: Boohoo, sorry meow
-Yin: Good-for-nothing old man
-Money-Spitting Dad: Boohoo, your allowance next week is gone meow
?
‘Huh? Can we make peace?’
…
The bathroom door slid open.
A girl with water droplets still clinging to her hair had a towel draped over her shoulder as she yawned and walked out of the bathroom.
‘Hmm—maybe I soaked too long…’
Rubbing her eyes to forcefully push aside the thoughts of crawling back into bed for another sleep, Yin Xiaomeng let her hand holding the waterproof bag hang by her side, instinctively swinging it back and forth.
‘What was I supposed to do today…’
Her slippers scuffed across the floor as she squinted and glanced toward the dining area.
The leftover sweet porridge she hadn’t finished and the half-empty steamer basket had already been cleared away.
The girl lifted the towel from her shoulder and rubbed her hair with a bit of roughness.
There was still no reply from No. 4.
For some reason, whenever she thought of that face in the cinema—eyes full of her, yet wearing a malicious grin—her heart would stir with an inexplicable irritation.
There were actually very few people she couldn’t forget.
Yin Xiaomeng, who had already kissed countless girls, always treated them with the same scumbag attitude:
‘Just use them and toss them away. Why take responsibility?’
So much so that after successfully seducing and breaking up those couples, she would delete her memo files and quickly forget everything about that girl.
No matter how sweet the time spent together had been.
“…Tch.”
“Really, just my luck.”
The hair at her temples was still stuck together in strands; water droplets dripped from the ends onto her shoulder, soaking the thin fabric of her pajamas and leaving a damp patch.
The phone inside the waterproof bag bounced and jumped with her movements, its rounded corners thudding against her collarbone and shoulder.
The pain repeatedly stimulated her restless nerves, trying to calm the anxiety…
The hickeys on her collarbone and neck had faded to the point of being almost invisible, which at least avoided the possibility of classmates discovering what she’d done over the weekend when Monday came.
If she hadn’t thought about it, it would have been fine.
But once she did, her anger inexplicably flared up again.
“Damn it!”
“Annoying! So annoying!”
She stopped rubbing her hair, hooking one hand through the waterproof bag’s strap and gripping a corner of the towel with the other, waving it forcefully in front of her.
“That Bai! Damn her! Die! Just die!”
Probably because there might be other people in the villa and she needed to maintain her image, even though her ears were turning red from anger, Yin Xiaomeng could only mutter curses under her breath at the bastard who had left her with a considerable psychological shadow.
Though she didn’t want to admit it, she, who always took control, had accidentally tasted the feeling of being overpowered…
Strangely, she found herself savoring it?
It shouldn’t have happened.
Even though this variable wasn’t enough to influence all her future decisions, the feeling of something slipping out of her control was an itch that clawed at her heart…
“…”
Of course, the main issue was that even though she had been the one forced in the cinema, the photos that could have definitely caused Bai Ruoxi and her girlfriend to break up couldn’t be taken because both her hands were restrained.
Not a single one was captured.
Just taking screenshots of the chat records to find Bai Ruoxi’s girlfriend?
No way.
The evidence wasn’t sufficient.
Even if the other party was provoked by her words, this kind of ambiguous verbal exchange wasn’t strong enough to achieve the outcome she wanted for the relationship’s impact.
Compared to wanting to see a shut-in girl, Yin Xiaomeng wanted even more to see Bai Ruoxi, dazed from double abandonment.
Better yet, she wanted to completely crush that bastard, to make that face never wear that teasing expression again:
‘Oh, so you like this?’
She wanted that bastard who had straddled her and seen her in such a pathetic state to never, ever dare recall the scene in the cinema!
Only then could the pent-up anger in her chest be barely vented…
Her fingers tightened around the towel even more, the knuckles turning white from the sudden increase in force.
“…”
“I suddenly have a great plan.”
The thought of cutting off all ties with No. 4 completely changed in that moment.
‘Just severing all contact is too easy on her.’
“I’ll make sure she lives in my shadow forever…”
“…”
“…”
Lying on a small, crowded bed piled with various plushies, Bai Ruoxi hugged a big white bear plush and lay sideways, staring blankly at the screen of her phone.
Green chat bubbles appeared one after another, but the left side of the screen never showed the image she wanted to see.
To be honest, the moment she had pinned down the teasing girl in the cinema, she already regretted it a little…
But when she saw the panicked look in the other’s eyes with tears at the corners, she still inexplicably leaned in and kissed her.
She slightly lifted the arm hugging the big bear, and with her slightly cool index finger, she gently touched her own lips.
On her face, now free of makeup, a faint smile appeared without her noticing.
“Cute…”
That long-distance girlfriend of hers didn’t seem important anymore.
She lit up the dark screen again, looked at the new selfie she had set as her wallpaper, and her fingertip unconsciously traced the cheek of the girl in the photo, who was smiling with a hint of mischief.
‘I want to tease her again…’
“…”
Strange thoughts kept surfacing uncontrollably.
She had already apologized on WeChat for the actions driven by those odd thoughts and promised never to do anything so out of line again…
Why was she still…
She pressed her lips together and quickly swiped open the lock screen.
But this time, it was different from the countless previous times she had unlocked it.
Ding-dong.
A notification sound she hadn’t heard in a while rang out.
A very short voice message appeared on the screen.
Though she had waited a long, long time for that reply, the girl instinctively sat up straight on the bed.
-Yin: “I hate you…”
It was clearly a statement expressing ‘disgust,’ but combined with that slightly hoarse tone that carried a hint of shyness…
It sounded more like she was pouting?
Bai Ruoxi opened the voice message again in disbelief.
Her heart pounded like a drum at that moment, and even her breath stopped for a second.
Ding-dong.
Ding-dong.
-Yin: “You like it that much… well…”
-Yin: If there’s a next time…
I’ll never forgive you.
Two more special notification sounds rang out.
One hesitant voice message and one text message effortlessly hooked someone completely.