Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When I opened my eyes the next day and saw the empty space beside me, I wasn’t all that surprised.

Zhou Qiji really was a busy man. Sometimes I was even afraid that sending him a message would interrupt his work.

After getting up, washing, and stepping out of the bedroom, I froze for a moment when I saw the person standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room.

Zhou Qiji was fully dressed and on the phone. I had no idea who was on the other end. All I heard him say were things like, “Got it” and “I’ll be on time.”

After hanging up, he turned and saw me. The expression on Zhou Qiji’s face didn’t change much.

“You’re awake?” he said. “Come have breakfast.”

I sat down at the dining table and started scrolling through today’s trending searches. Then I suddenly felt something was off.

Two of the top trending topics looked familiar: #Who Exactly Is Teacher Strawberry# #Teacher Strawberry Deleted Her Account and Ran#

Before I clicked into the trending topic, I was still clinging to a tiny sliver of hope. But after I clicked in, my heart died on the spot.

What was wrong with people these days? Why could a fanfic writer deleting her account and running away possibly make it onto the trending searches?

[I’d thought Teacher Strawberry might run away one day, but I didn’t expect her to be this decisive. That account had almost a million followers, for crying out loud.]

[Damn it, I wasn’t even curious before, but now that she’s run off, my need to know has reached its peak.]

[So is Teacher Strawberry’s name just too niche, or does she actually have some crazy identity?]

[No, girl, who the hell are you? My lips are sealed, hurry up and tell me!]

[Judging from Strawberry’s writing, she might be some big shot in the webnovel circle who ran because she was afraid of being exposed.]

[Teacher, if you run away, what are we starving CP fans supposed to do? Waaah…]

[…]

I silently stared at these netizen comments, which were refreshing almost every second.

I had no idea how people could be this obsessed with gossip.

I was so focused on surfing the internet that I didn’t even hear Zhou Qiji call me.

“Chu Ruotang.” That was the only thing I heard, and I looked up from my phone in confusion.

Zhou Qiji looked at me. “Eat your breakfast properly. Don’t just stare at your phone.”

“…Oh.”

Out of guilt, I would never voluntarily bring up anything related to the fanfiction about the two of us in front of Zhou Qiji.

But to be honest, I was actually rather curious what Zhou Qiji thought about there being fanfiction about the two of us.

Unfortunately, he didn’t really look at his phone when he was at home, and it wasn’t like I could just start that conversation with him.

I still remembered what happened back when we got married. My family had actually been looking for suitable men around my age for me. They had never really supported my decision to make my way in the entertainment industry.

But I insisted on acting, so they turned a blind eye.

Marriage, however, was too important for them to let me mess around. My mother warned me more than once to stay away from those seemingly glamorous men in the entertainment industry. At the very least, her requirement for a son-in-law was that he had to come from a family of equal standing.

Back then, Zhou Qiji was the one who reached out to me first. In another sense, we had grown up in the same circles. Our families had been friends for generations, and we had gone to the same elementary school, middle school, and high school. We each had our own halo and no shortage of friends, yet we simply weren’t close.

Especially after my young girl’s heart first started stirring, Zhou Qiji had plenty of admirers back then, and when he rejected them, he left them absolutely no room for fantasy.

My pride had been higher than the sky at the time. There was no way I could put aside my dignity to pursue him.

People were just that contradictory.

Even though I knew my family background, looks, and personality weren’t bad, I also knew I wouldn’t be the exception.

When Zhou Qiji proposed marriage, I had a feeling that this was probably my one and only chance to become more involved with him.

So I didn’t think about it for very long before agreeing.

Having a crush was not fun at all, because I knew perfectly well that the person I liked was outstanding in his own right. The halo I saw around him wasn’t some filter I had imposed on him. He had been shining all along.

I wasn’t hung up on whether I was worthy of him. Liking someone wasn’t something you could obtain just because the word “compatible” applied.

At first, I assumed this would be a marriage in name only. Only later did I realize that Zhou Qiji didn’t think that way.

But our beginning had been far too formal, and the way we interacted was only ever courteous and respectful. Taking even one more step forward might easily bring trouble to both of us.