‘Reserved…’
‘I need to be a little more reserved!’
Setting her phone securely on her thighs, Bai Ruoxi took a deep breath and raised both hands to slap her cheeks a little harder.
The corners of her mouth still couldn’t help curling up.
All the messy thoughts in her head scattered the moment she heard the voice of the girl she’d been muttering about all night.
Maybe this was the hardest part of a long-distance relationship.
The most infatuated stage, when couples should be glued together, left each alone in their own rooms, while one of them got targeted by a thief and slipped in through the gap.
Compared to a “girlfriend” she hadn’t seen in ages—someone she couldn’t even hold hands with or hug—Yin Xiaomeng, this little rich girl in the same city who clearly cared about her, was far more attractive.
Of course, part of the fault lay with the one who wavered first.
—Bai: No!
—Bai: I’m really, really sorry!
—Bai: From now on, I promise this will never happen again!
After briefly tasting what companionship felt like, the girl, now physically repulsed by “emptiness,” grabbed her phone.
Her fingers trembled slightly from excitement as she typed.
‘Although…’
‘Although her tearful plea was really cute…’
An image from her memory jumped out unbidden, and Bai Ruoxi’s typing fingers paused briefly.
But in the end, she still sent that “vow.”
Even if she wasn’t sure whether, if she saw that vulnerable side again, she could hold herself back as she’d promised…
‘It should be okay, right?’
She looked at her fingers resting on the screen.
Having already started to enjoy the feeling of controlling others, she didn’t even realize that the girl who once couldn’t watch any kind of sport movie without blushing to the point of bleeding was now acting so skilled in the cinema.
The messages on her phone didn’t update again.
The exchange ended with her unguaranteed promise.
She stared at the phone for a long, long time, then stretched her stiff neck.
Her mood, which had been somewhat heavy, finally returned to its usual liveliness.
She took her eyes off the now-dark screen and subconsciously looked toward the instrument on the corner shelf.
For some reason, she felt like today was a good day to try a new score.
‘…What kind of songs does Little Mengmeng like to listen to?’
‘…The theme from PreCure?’
She crawled to the foot of the bed, sat down, and reached out to pull the instrument off the shelf into her arms.
Her slender fingers gently plucked the four steel strings, from thick to thin, and the smile at the corners of her mouth grew a little wider.
On the other side, Yin Xiaomeng, who had already returned to her own bedroom, had put her phone away and placed it on the desk.
Having no interest in “games,” the way she killed time in her daily life was a bit unusual.
Compared to traditional or common hobbies, her liking for financial news carved a chasm between her and her peers.
She still remembered that when she was living with her parents, her somewhat unreliable father, who was still coasting on the family business, had commented on this outlandish hobby:
“My god, what kind of old-person hobby is that? Can’t you keep up with the times like your old man?”
Of course, faced with that “sincere advice,” the girl back then—who hadn’t yet switched genders due to a third sex—had unceremoniously shot back, “Why don’t you just drown, you old playboy?”
Sure, she’d been chased around for an afternoon by a red-faced someone wielding a feather duster.
But it was all worth it.
Of course, her mother, a self-made new-age female entrepreneur, actually appreciated her hobby.
If it weren’t for the fact that she didn’t want her interest to become a heavy burden, she might have been signed up for some classes on weekends.
“Mm. I’ll watch a bit… then go for a run.”
“I went straight to bed after coming home yesterday, so I didn’t finish my daily plan.”
She took her laptop out of the desk drawer, expertly set up the cooling stand, and arranged the computer neatly.
After slightly lifting her hips to press the master power switch on the desk, she pulled out the laptop’s charging cable from the cable tidy on the corner of the desk.
Power on.
Wait.
Enter password.
Wait again.
The laptop, now plugged in, made a faint sound while running.
She didn’t mind the noise of the fan cooling.
She stared blankly at the icons on the screen.
“…I’ll have Dad check later… where she lives now.”
If it’s long-distance, shouldn’t it be relatively close?
The phone buzzed with a vibration.
Without even looking, Yin Xiaomeng could roughly guess what No. 4, who was probably glued to the screen, had sent.
She was a veteran of many battles—better than anyone she knew exactly how devastating her replies were.
Especially to someone who kept sending dozens of messages apologizing and seeking forgiveness, even when she hadn’t replied at all.
The deliberately affected, coquettish voice messages were the sweet bait on the hook.
The hesitant, half-finished words gave plenty of room for imagination.
And the final forgiveness, tinged with a hint of acting spoiled, was like slapping the other party in the face with “We’ll go out again next time.”
After all, Yin Xiaomeng had never hidden her affection for Bai Ruoxi, right?
“Looks like the cold treatment is working well.”
“I just wonder how long it’ll take for that No. 2 girl to realize she’ll feel empty without me.”
“At least… I’ve been with her for a while.”
She connected her drawing tablet to the computer, twirling the stylus between her slender fingers.
‘Forget it, forget it. Whatever.’
Maybe she felt she’d been paying a bit too much attention to that clueless No. 2 lately.
She pouted, decided to treat every little fish fairly and equally, and quickly shook those thoughts out of her head.
“Let’s watch a show first… no, the news.”
“…Toxic.”
…
“Why did gold drop so suddenly again?”
“…Just a few days ago, the gold price seemed to have an upward trend.”
She rubbed her temples, leaned back in the chair, and muttered the information she’d just heard.
Even though after the previous rise, the current gold price was already way higher than normal, and even if it really started falling, it couldn’t go lower than the starting point in a short time.
But the girl, who actually had a stash of gold, watched the declining price and always felt like the money that should have been hers was now going into someone else’s pocket.
That feeling—aching was an understatement.
“Damn it. My cursed possessiveness.”
“Sigh.”
“Time to change clothes. I haven’t done today’s exercise yet.”
Forcefully suppressing her desire to possess the money in other people’s pockets, and giving herself a small warning not to do anything illegal, she took a deep breath and shut down the computer, whose screen had stopped moving.
She neatly put the unplugged charging cable back into the cable tidy and waited silently until the sound of the laptop’s fan during shutdown completely disappeared.
Buzz—
The phone, which had been ignored for nearly half an hour, vibrated.
Unlike the brief buzz of a new message, this vibration felt more like someone was calling.
Frowning slightly, Yin Xiaomeng sat up straight from her reclining position and reached for the phone that was urging her to answer.
“…Mom?”
She looked at the caller ID on the bright screen with confusion.
She couldn’t figure out what earth-shattering bad news had happened today to make her parents—that lovey-dovey couple—both remember the poor kid they’d forgotten for several months.
Could it be that her grandfather, who had been bedridden for who knows how many years, had a problem?
No way.
She’d been dragged to see him a few months ago, and the old man was ruddy-faced and full of energy.
“Could it be that Dad is about to fly the coop and is calling me home to inherit the family business?”
“…Isn’t Big Sister still around? It shouldn’t be my turn, right?”
Even as she said that, her body obediently answered the phone that had been ringing for a long time.
“Hello?”
“Little Mengmeng? Are you listening?”
Classic “hello” start.
Maybe the silence on her end made the woman suspect her daughter wasn’t near the phone.
After a brief thought, she started calling the two elders she’d arranged to stay with her daughter.
“Zhang Ma? Uncle Chen? Is Xiaomeng not by her phone?”
“…Mom. What’s up.”
The girl, who had been quiet all along, finally couldn’t help speaking up.
“What do you—”
“Oh, you’re there, Little Mengmeng? Next week is your eldest aunt’s birthday. I’ll have your dad drive over to pick you up?”
Her words were cut off.
Hearing her mother’s obvious “I want to take you to show off” tone, Yin Xiaomeng suddenly understood why her father hadn’t just told her directly what they were doing next week.
Thinking about her eldest aunt’s extensive connections and that one time she hadn’t been able to resist her mom’s urging, only to see her cousin’s resentful glare after being compared to her…
Her head was throbbing with pain.
“…Can I not go?”
“Isn’t it enough for Big Sister to go with you? Why do I have to tag along?”
“I’m just an ordinary high school sophomore. It’s not summer vacation yet—I need to study.”
She offered an excuse that would shut up most parents.
But her mother, who knew her daughter’s academic situation inside out, flatly rejected this seemingly reasonable excuse.
“An ordinary high school sophomore?”
“Haven’t you already finished the high school curriculum on your own and started preparing for math competitions to get a guaranteed admission?”
“Don’t give me that nonsense. You’re my flesh and blood—I know you too well. I’m making you get closer to your aunt for your own good. Her network…”
The chatter continued.
Yin Xiaomeng instinctively turned off the speakerphone.
She suddenly felt like just blurting out that she “likes girls” and is a “husband-stealing creep.”
At least that way, they’d probably stop pushing her to “get on the right track.”
“Sigh…”
“Why can’t Big Sister just inherit the whole family company? Why do I have to learn to take over a branch like she did?”
“With all my black history, if someone digs it up, the stock price would plummet like in those novels, right?”
She muttered under her breath, then let out a long sigh, praying that her phone battery would drain quickly and shut down automatically.