Chapter 99

Chapter 99 - 99 097 Nighttime pillow talk Changlings bad girl Chapter 99: 097: Nighttime pillow talk, Changling’s bad girl disguise (First update) Chapter 99: 097: Nighttime pillow talk, Changling’s bad girl disguise (First update) The painting was ultimately left unfinished.

When calm returned, Xie Shang opened his eyes, gazing towards the slightly ajar window outside, his body still not fully recovered, his back drenched with sweat, his brain still lacking oxygen; he emptied himself.

Xie Shang, oh Xie Shang, you’re truly despicable.

Before Wen Changling, he had never loved someone like this, from repressed, to conceding, to indulging. He had untied all restraints, but now he found he couldn’t control these unfamiliar emotions. His own body was beyond his control; he began to endlessly loathe himself.

He wanted to hear Wen Changling’s voice.

On the desk lay only Xuan paper. He pulled out many sheets, wiping his hands over and over again, until the palms heated up before he finally stopped. With fingers that had been wiped clean, he dialed a series of numbers he knew by heart.

The ringtone sounded only twice before Wen Changling answered.

From her side, the sound of an old electric fan whirred; at night, she would lower her voice subconsciously, accompanied by a faint nasal quality, “Why aren’t you asleep yet?”

“Xie Xingxing,” the fan’s wind carried her voice crisply and pleasantly, “Aren’t you the one who doesn’t stay up late?”

That was no longer the case.

After dating Wen Changling, for various reasons, Xie Shang’s sleep quality had become exceptionally poor.

“Did I wake you?”

Wen Changling sometimes didn’t bother to take off her hearing aid when sleeping.

She was a person lacking a sense of security, not used to being completely cut off for long periods. Xie Shang had seen her napping with her hearing aid on, which wasn’t good for her ears, so he bought her a wristband that could convert mobile phone notifications into vibrations.

Sometimes she would use it.

She said, “No, I haven’t slept yet.”

Xie Shang’s voice was a bit dry, “What are you doing?”

“Playing on my phone.”

Xie Shang was silent for quite some time, his breathing controlled, very soft, out of fear of disturbing Wen Changling.

The heat in his body seemed to be climbing again.

“Changling,”

“Hmm?”

He called Wen Changling’s name and then fell silent again.

He clearly had something he wanted to say.

Wen Changling waited for a while, “Xie Shang, why aren’t you talking?” She felt Xie Shang was acting strange tonight, “What are you doing?”

Offending you, Miss Wen.

Before he became more confused, Xie Shang ended the call proactively, “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Xie Shang hung up the phone, sat quietly for a while, then got up to wash up, stepping over the shredded Lotus Sutra scattered on the floor.

*****

The next day, the summer was scorching.

Gu Yihuan’s recently healed leg, due to catching a cheater and getting into a fight, needed to be cast in plaster again.

Arriving at the hospital late last night and finding an available bed, Gu Yihuan simply checked in to stay, specifically arranging to share a room with Guan Sixing. The cousins, one with the left leg in plaster and the other with the right, were truly a pair of unlucky brothers.

Gu Yihuan, who typically couldn’t bear to be silent, was unusually quiet today. He lay on his side like a zombie, gazing out the window at a forty-five-degree angle, his face etched with depth and distress.

He turned over.

“Sixing.”

Guan Sixing was reading a physics paper.

Gu Yihuan sat up, unable to keep his mouth shut, finding it uncomfortable to stay silent, “Let me ask you something.”

Guan Sixing grunted in acknowledgment, signaling for him to speak.

Gu Yihuan pondered his words before starting with, “I have a friend.”

Guan Sixing looked up but did not interrupt.

Gu Yihuan thought about how to phrase his words simply and clearly, “My friend’s best friend got a girlfriend, and this woman,”

how should he describe her, Gu Yihuan was not good with words, his description might not be accurate, but after racking his brains, he described her as, “She seems like the type who’s really into the nightlife, but my friend’s friend doesn’t know it, and still thinks his girlfriend is a demure and diligent nurse.”

Guan Sixing didn’t look up, “How could Wen Changling be into partying?”

Gu Yihuan: “...”

Why are all the guys around him such high IQ, hard-to-fool types? It’s really annoying.

Gu Yihuan wouldn’t admit it and kept a straight face, talking nonsense: “I didn’t say it was her.”

A friend of a friend’s girlfriend is a nurse.

And this friend is none other than Xie Shang.

Guan Sixing couldn’t be bothered to expose him and played along: “How did your friend’s friend’s girlfriend end up playing?”

“My friend met this girl abroad, during a game...” Gu Yihuan skipped the details, “Anyway, there’s a bit of a history. My friend thought she was a bad woman from the start, too good at playing games.” Gu Yihuan briefly summarized the ins and outs, and then came the main question, “Do you think my friend should tell his best friend?”

“Tell him what?”

Gu Yihuan showed a conflicted and worried expression: “Tell him not to be played by a bad woman.”

Guan Sixing said, “Brother Four won’t be.”

Gu Yihuan got anxious: “How could he not be? You didn’t see the way Brother Four—”—whatever Wen Changling did, he would accept and forgive everything.

Gu Yihuan immediately stopped talking and vehemently denied: “It’s not Brother Four, how could Brother Four be played? I’m talking about the best friend of my friend.”

Guan Sixing: “Oh.”

Gu Yihuan brought the conversation back to the main topic: “What do you think I should do?”

As for the bad woman Gu Yihuan was describing, Guan Sixing didn’t feel it was right to judge, as Gu Yihuan’s expressive abilities were only so good.

Guan Sixing said, “Don’t do anything.”

Huh?

Gu Yihuan fell into deep thought once again.

Six years ago, when Gu Yihuan was only sixteen, he participated in a summer camp in a foreign country. There was a bonfire party on the beach at night, which he attended, engaging in a courage game with a group of open-minded foreigners.

He lost the game, and his punishment was to ask the first person of the opposite sex who passed by their bonfire: “What color is your underwear?”

Yes, it was that offensive and tacky.

But he couldn’t lose face; otherwise, people would think that an Imperial Citizen couldn’t take a joke.

The first person who passed by had the same black hair and black eyes as him. Her skin was pale, and she seemed young, wearing a crop top with straps, her waist adorned with a bold and vivid tattoo, looking like a torch or a flower with a twisted shape. Her black shorts were very short, paired with strapped long boots. She had dyed her hair pink and wore the popular heavy eye makeup of the locals. She was a cool, beautiful girl, and she looked special; her eyes were so bright, yet they gave a blurry and unclear impression—melancholic, beautiful and decadent, full of stories, as if she had stepped right out of a movie.

The sixteen-year-old Gu Yihuan, dressed in biker fashion, approached her awkwardly: “Hey.” Keeping his distance, he asked the girl, “Are you also an Imperial Citizen?”

The girl turned her head to look over: “Are you talking to me?”

She was holding a beer bottle.

Gu Yihuan knew that beer—it was a local specialty, a particularly strong liquor.

He raised his voice to bolster his courage: “It’s not easy to come across fellow countrymen when you’re abroad. Help me out, will you?”

The girl agreed readily: “Sure, go ahead.”

Her eyes were beautiful when she smiled, like a million stars had miniaturized into tiny galaxy rivers residing within them.

“That, that...” After hesitating for a long time, the awkward boy, feeling ashamed, his tongue burning his mouth, quickly mumbled, “What color is your underwear?”

At that moment, he felt it would be normal to get slapped because, after all, this was verging on hooliganism, but the girl didn’t slap him nor did she call him a scoundrel.

She finished the beer in the bottle, tossed it aside, walked over, grabbed his hand, and placed it on her bare waist, right where the tattoo’s colors were most intense.

She laughed, like an innocent and naive fairy: “See for yourself what color it is.”

Gu Yihuan was so frightened that he immediately pulled his hand back.

She laughed even more joyfully, gently saying, “Little brother, you’re still young, you can’t play adult games.”

“Ling.”

Her companion called her over in a foreign language, and she waved at Gu Yihuan, the fellow countryman she had met in a foreign land, then turned and left.

A bad woman who was gentle and knew how to have fun.

That was the sixteen-year-old Gu Yihuan’s first impression of Ling.

He later went back to look for her, but Ling was no longer on the beach. At the time, in his adolescent phase, he felt he had been played by a bad woman, losing his dignity as a man, or perhaps there were other thoughts, or maybe it was just pure defiance.

After all, the eyes of a sixteen-year-old boy were too proud, youthfully arrogant, and easily curious about the opposite sex.

Later on, he forgot about it. For someone like him, who didn’t dwell on things, meeting just once wasn’t enough to make a deep impression. He didn’t recognize Wen Changling at first largely because she wore a pair of clunky, unfashionable, yet eye-

catching glasses. She seemed very quiet and honest, and her dress was nothing like Ling’s.

From Wen Changling’s reaction, it seemed she had forgotten as well.

It’s probably better that way, otherwise it would be too embarrassing.

But a leopard can’t change its spots, and Wen Changling was certainly not an honest Little White Rabbit; the difference was too striking, a bit unusual. Rather than worrying about his own silly incident from the past, Gu Yihuan was more concerned that Xie Shang might be toyed with by Wen Changling.