Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Gu Yushi posted on Weibo again.

Only this time, she wasn’t showing off Qin Xing. Instead, she wrote: [Are some people just born sluts who love eyeing other women’s men? Don’t let me find out who you are.]

Leaning against the window, I exhaled a stream of smoke and curled my lips.

Looks like they’d had a fight.

Gu Yushi and Qin Xing’s relationship had always seemed like a one-sided chase on her part. I’d looked through Qin Xing’s blog from when he was studying abroad all the way to his current Moments, and not a single post was about Gu Yushi.

A relationship that had been held together by one person alone now had me thrown into the mix, and at last, it was starting to teeter on the edge.

Qin Xing hadn’t answered my question today, but we both knew exactly what his silence meant.

Neither of us said anything after that. We packed up our fishing rods in a hurry and went home.

But I knew Qin Xing was nowhere near as calm inside as he looked.

Still, I couldn’t predict whether things would turn out well or badly.

Maybe he didn’t have much feeling for Gu Yushi, but the Qin and Gu Families had been closely tied through years of cooperation. A marriage alliance between them wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

Maybe he had feelings for me now, but how much could they really amount to?

Could they compare to his career?

Sure enough, Qin Xing messaged me on WeChat that very day.

[I won’t be going fishing anymore. Sorry for troubling you during this time.]

He was a man of his word. He really never went fishing again.

I went to different fishing spots every day, but it was as if he were avoiding me. He never appeared again.

Niannian was gone too. I wanted to adopt it, but even after searching the entire area nearby, I couldn’t find it again.

Only his profile picture had changed. It was now an orange cat lying on a rug, yawning.

I zoomed in and looked carefully.

It was Niannian.

…

Half a month later, I posted a photo on Moments of myself holding fish with another man.

The man was six foot one, with honey-colored skin. His black tank top stretched tight over his bulging pecs, and one arm was slung around my shoulders as he smiled brilliantly.

He was a male model I’d hired specifically for this. Two thousand a day.

Fishing was all about technique. If you blindly kept casting bait, you wouldn’t catch anything.

The next day, when I went back to that pond, a shadow suddenly fell beside me.

I looked up. Qin Xing sat down expressionlessly in the chair next to me, took out his fishing rod, and cast his line without a word.

But he hadn’t even put bait on the hook.

The two of us sat there in silence for a long time before he finally spoke, his voice giving nothing away.

“Who was that man yesterday?”

I said flatly, “You already have a girlfriend. What does it have to do with you?”

He fell silent.

For the next half hour, I kept catching fish, while Qin Xing didn’t catch a single one. He didn’t seem to realize he hadn’t put any bait on his hook. The air around him was heavy and oppressive, and who knew what he was thinking.

I got up, but after sitting for too long, my legs had gone numb. I stumbled and nearly fell. Qin Xing instinctively rose and caught me.

The instant our eyes met, he suddenly gripped the back of my neck and kissed me.

It was a completely unromantic scene. All around us, there were only the two of us-both rather mediocre anglers-the fish swimming beneath the water, and a kiss that was no more romantic than the setting.

Rather than a kiss, it was more like a duel. His force carried the ferocity of someone venting his anger. I refused to back down, wrapping my arms around his neck and rising onto my toes.

I didn’t know how long it lasted. Just as I was running out of air and my vision was about to go black, he let me go.

Panting, I looked up at him.

“Qin Xing, I won’t be the other woman.”

A deep red flushed beneath his eyes. It took him a long while to steady his breathing.

“I know.”

“I don’t want to make excuses, but I want to explain it clearly to you. She was arranged for me by my family. I don’t have much feeling for her. I’ll make things clear with her. Give me some time.”

…

That night, I opened Gu Yushi’s Weibo again.

She hadn’t posted anything. It was perfectly quiet.

But I knew she must be having a hard time right now.

Sure enough, late that night, she posted several breakdowns in a row on Weibo. The last one was only a few words.

[Just wait. I won’t let this go.]