However, what Jiang Muyun and the Curly-haired Girl didn’t expect was that, faced with the stain on her chest, Yan Yu’s face showed neither panic nor suppressed tears.
She merely lowered her gaze and looked at it, then very calmly pulled a tissue from the small round table beside her and gently pressed it around the edges of the stain. Her movements were unhurried.
“It’s fine,” she said, lifting her head to look at the Curly-haired Girl, who was still putting on a show.
“Don’t worry about it. This is my own dress, not borrowed.”
“Your… your own?”
The Curly-haired Girl’s exaggerated expression froze on her face, as if she’d heard something utterly absurd.
“Miss Yan, you… you don’t have to pretend! We all know what kind of dress this is…”
“Yeah, Yan Yu, you don’t have to force yourself…” Jiang Muyun chimed in hypocritically.
“Miss Jiang, I’m not forcing myself. This really is my dress,” Yan Yu interrupted her, her gaze turning to Jiang Muyun, whose expression kept shifting.
“Let’s just drop this matter, okay?”
Drop it?!
Those two light words stabbed deeply into Jiang Muyun’s heart.
A buzz rang in her head, and a wave of vicious anger whooshed up.
‘How can we just drop it? This is nothing like what I expected!’
According to her script, Yan Yu should be pale-faced, both angry and scared, heartbroken over the borrowed sky-high dress, yet too afraid to actually demand compensation.
She should just swallow her teeth and blood, looking at them with resentful and cowardly eyes.
Then, Jiang Muyun would generously forgive Yan Yu’s clumsiness, or hypocritically offer compensation, grinding Yan Yu’s last shred of pitiful self-esteem into the dirt.
But what was this act Yan Yu was putting on now?
Treating it lightly, a single “my own dress” and a single “drop it”—just like that, she brushed aside the situation Jiang Muyun had prepared to make a big fuss over, as easily as flicking away dust?
That calm, rippleless gaze even made her feel that her own earlier smugness and the Curly-haired Girl’s performance were as ridiculous as clowns jumping around.
This feeling of punching cotton, only for the other person to ask if your hand hurt, left Jiang Muyun both frustrated and furious.
What she hated most was exactly this kind of unpredictable behavior from Yan Yu, putting on that “I can’t be bothered to argue with you” attitude!
Overwhelmed by emotion, Jiang Muyun forgot to maintain her usual gentle and warm image and took a big step forward.
“Yan Yu! What are you pretending for right in front of me?!”
She stared hard at Yan Yu’s face, trying to find cracks in her disguise. “Don’t think I don’t know about your family situation! Even if I had to pay compensation, it’s not like I can’t afford it. But you don’t need to put on this act in front of me! You…”
“No, Miss Jiang, you’ve misunderstood. I’m not pretending.”
Yan Yu shook her head gently, interrupting her increasingly agitated accusations.
“Misunderstood?!”
Jiang Muyun nearly laughed in anger, her chest heaving. “Do I have to spill all your family’s dirty laundry before you’ll admit it? You…”
She didn’t finish, because Yan Yu’s gaze had already passed over her shoulder and landed lightly in another direction.
Jiang Muyun followed her line of sight and instinctively turned her head, her heart giving a thump.
Su Qinghan had somehow finished her conversation over there and was frowning, walking quickly toward them.
Clearly, her raised voice and agitated posture had successfully attracted Su Qinghan’s attention, as well as that of many surrounding guests.
But Yan Yu’s mood was good.
‘Excellent,’ she thought silently.
‘The audience—especially the most important audience member—has been drawn over.’
‘The more spectacular the scene, the higher the attention. The more points and rewards I can reap from this “pitiful substitute forcibly enduring” act.’
Jiang Muyun obviously realized this too, and a flicker of panic flashed across her face.
The last thing she wanted was to reveal an unreasonable side in front of Su Qinghan.
She quickly took a deep breath, trying to adjust her expression, putting the mask of gentleness back on.
“Mu Yun,” Su Qinghan had already arrived, her gaze pausing briefly on the conspicuous stain on Yan Yu’s chest, her brow furrowing even deeper.
“What happened?”
Jiang Muyun opened her mouth, about to speak, using her best half-wronged, half-caring tone for a little “green tea” speech, when
—
“Qing Han, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”
A soft but clear voice cut in before her.
It was Yan Yu.
Jiang Muyun turned in shock, only to see Yan Yu slightly tilting her face up, looking at Su Qinghan.
Her usually quiet eyes were now perfectly misted with a layer of moisture, her lashes trembling slightly.
“It’s all my fault… my legs aren’t good. Miss Mu Yun’s friend kindly came over to toast with me, but I… I couldn’t get up, and my movements were inconvenient. I made her accidentally spill her drink on me.”
She lowered her head, looking at her soiled dress, her voice dropping even lower, full of helplessness.
“I knew full well that with me being like this, I shouldn’t come to such an occasion and cause everyone trouble… and I ended up making a mess, making everyone unhappy… I’m sorry, really sorry…”
The pitifulness in her tone, the humble posture of taking all the blame upon herself, was perfectly calibrated.
Especially when she mentioned her legs, she instantly painted the victim image vividly, instead making the perfectly healthy Jiang Muyun and her friend standing nearby seem a bit aggressive.
“Hey! Yan Yu! What nonsense are you spouting?!”
Jiang Muyun was so angry her face turned red.
This ability to turn black into white and strike first had her completely dumbfounded!
Clearly, she was the one who got drenched.
How could it suddenly become her fault for making someone else accidentally spill, and even say she shouldn’t have come?!
“Don’t you…”
“Mu Yun!”
Su Qinghan interrupted her in a deep voice, her tone carrying obvious impatience.
“You’re the birthday honoree today. You should enjoy the banquet happily. Yan Yu has already said this much, so don’t dwell on it with her.”
“No! Qing Han! Let me explain! I wasn’t trying to dwell on it with her! It was her…” Jiang Muyun was flustered and incoherent, trying to take back the conversational reins.
“Mu Yun,” Su Qinghan looked at her slightly reddened face, her tone growing firmer.
“I know you might have some opinions about her, but since you invited her here today, show a bit of the host’s magnanimity. Don’t make any more unpleasantness.”
‘The host’s magnanimity? Unpleasantness?’
A boom exploded in Jiang Muyun’s head, as if she’d been struck by lightning.
She couldn’t believe her ears!
Clearly, it was Yan Yu who was acting, playing pitiful, turning black into white!
How did it become, in Su Qinghan’s mouth, that she, the birthday honoree, was the one causing trouble, being petty, and lacking magnanimity?!
She felt a lump in her chest that she couldn’t get up or down, about to explode.
She abruptly whirled around, glaring viciously at the Curly-haired Girl beside her—the one who had given the stupid idea for the toast and was now standing there dumbstruck, unable to say a word. Her gaze was fierce enough to spit fire.
‘All this stupid fool! Useless!’
The Curly-haired Girl flinched under her glare, shrinking her neck.
Her lips quivered a few times, but in the end, she didn’t dare utter a single word.