Qian Fei twisted her ankle as she stumbled backward. Li Yifei thought taking the subway would be inconvenient, so he hailed a taxi instead.
Qian Fei hesitated, "The road home is too congested. Let's just take the subway."
Li Yifei practically shoved her into the car, "I know it's congested. Otherwise, why do you think I squeeze onto the subway every day instead of taking a cab? But with your foot like this, we'll just have to deal with the traffic."
In the taxi, Qian Fei suddenly asked blankly, "By the way, why did you come?"
Li Yifei had noticed her odd behavior since earlier. Staring at her, he replied, "I was worried. I followed right after you left."
The traffic was terrible, lasting nearly two hours before they finally reached home.
Qian Fei remained silent the entire ride.
When they arrived at their building, she got out and limped toward the entrance. After paying the fare, Li Yifei rushed over to support her.
"Listen, Qian Fei, I've never even helped my own damn father like this! You better appreciate it!" he said as he guided her into the elevator.
Qian Fei still didn't speak.
Once inside their apartment, he helped her sit on the living room sofa.
Qian Fei seemed dazed until suddenly, she looked up abruptly and said, "I really want to drink right now!"
Without another word, Li Yifei turned and went downstairs to buy alcohol.
※※※※※※
Qian Fei sat on the floor, silently drinking can after can of beer. Li Yifei ran his fingers through his hair, growing increasingly frustrated.
"Qian Fei, can you say something?" he asked.
She looked up at him with a vacant stare that made him slightly uneasy.
"Tell me, am I just a complete idiot?" Qian Fei suddenly asked.
Li Yifei looked at her, momentarily at a loss for words.
"Am I just destined to be cheated on?" As she asked this, two large tears rolled from her eyes, streaming down her cheeks. The sight made Li Yifei's heart race.
He had never seen a girl cry with such a calm expression before.
He watched as tears continued to fall silently from her eyes without a single sob.
Her silent weeping weighed on him. Unable to bear it, he asked, "Why aren't you making any sound when you cry? Let it out, don't hold it in!"
Her face wet with tears, Qian Fei gave him a bitter smile. "Even if I cried out loud, who would be there to hear it?"
Looking at her, Li Yifei suddenly felt a pang in his heart.
In that moment, he felt as if he could truly understand Qian Fei's pain and sorrow.
It was then that he realized the power of tears wasn't in dramatic wails of pain, but in silent weeping with a broken smile.
※※※※※※
After crying for a while, Qian Fei gradually calmed down.
Sipping her beer, she said to Li Yifei, "Looking back now, I really was an idiot. You hinted at me several times before, telling me to be careful, but I never caught on. Li Yifei, how did you know Hu Zining was cheating? And since you knew, why didn't you just tell me directly? I'm stupid and single-minded. If you don't spell things out for me, I really won't understand what you mean!"
Li Yifei looked at her. "I never interfere in other people's relationship problems. That I hinted at you several times was already unprecedented for me!" He paused, then asked, "Are you emotionally stable enough right now to hear the truth?"Qian Fei nodded and said self-deprecatingly, "It's not the first time anyway. How much worse can it get? I've already cried, so just tell me straight!"
Li Yifei hesitated for a moment before explaining what had happened.
"Do you remember the day the fuse blew at home? I came back very late that night because I was called to a bar for a meeting. At the bar, I saw a man at the next table getting cozy with a woman decked out in gold and jewelry—clearly a sugar mommy and her boy toy. It left quite an impression. Later, when we went to the hotel for due diligence, I recognized that man. I asked you if he was your boyfriend, and you said yes. At the time, since we weren’t that close, I didn’t mention what I’d seen.
"Then another time, I went drinking with my buddy—the one who got a bag of tea as a gift with his phone recharge—and we saw Hu Zining again. This time, he was with a different woman, wearing a Cartier bracelet, a Tiffany diamond ring, and a jade necklace. I have to admit, I was impressed by Hu Zining. Even if she were a goddess, I wouldn’t be able to stomach being with a woman who threw on accessories so haphazardly just to flaunt her new money! But he managed to sweet-talk her into happily paying for his drinks. Now that’s skill!"
Listening to all this, Qian Fei suddenly felt incredibly grateful that she had firmly resisted Hu Zining’s advances when he tried to take her to his place.
Hugging her beer can, she fell silent and began seriously reflecting on herself. Why had she failed to notice all the obvious signs that Hu Zining was that kind of person?
Had she never truly cared about him from the start? Had he just been someone to fill the void, a convenient marriage prospect in her subconscious?
Perhaps she had never genuinely fallen for him, and so she had never truly paid attention to him. Whatever he said or did, she never bothered to discern the truth. It wasn’t so much that others had deceived her, but that she had willingly stayed in her own imagined world, deceiving herself.
She suddenly felt at peace about Hu Zining. In truth, he had just been a shield to help her escape and forget about Wang Ruohai—she just hadn’t realized it until now.
Still, the thought of that man kissing her with the same lips that had sweet-talked and even kissed other sugar mommies made her stomach churn violently.
She didn’t even bother with slippers, stumbling and staggering to the bathroom to vomit.
She retched violently, as if she were about to turn her stomach inside out.
Li Yifei followed her into the bathroom, pinching his nose in disgust while nervously asking, "Qian Fei, don’t tell me you’re pregnant because of him?"
After emptying her stomach with what felt like her last breath, Qian Fei weakly crouched by the toilet, tilting her head to glare at Li Yifei. "Pregnant my ass! The only reason he lashed out was because I didn’t let him take advantage of me—physically or financially!"
Li Yifei looked at her and clicked his tongue. "What a guy. He really isn’t picky, is he? Willing to kiss just about anyone!"
It wasn’t until after rinsing her mouth that Qian Fei processed what Li Yifei had implied. Drunk and heated, she bent down, grabbed a slipper, and hurled it at his face without a second thought.Li Yifei was stunned by the hit and jumped up in a rage, shouting, "Qian Fei, have you lost your mind? Don't take your breakup out on me by acting drunk! Don’t think I’ll go easy on you! Try throwing that slipper at my face again!"
No sooner had he spoken than, as if on cue, the other slipper smacked him squarely in the face.
Furious, Li Yifei stormed over, grabbed Qian Fei’s arm, and roared, "You think I won’t slap you?"
Qian Fei tilted her head up to look at him, her tear-streaked eyes unnervingly clear. "Go ahead, slap me to death! After tonight’s mess and knowing I still have to squeeze onto the subway tomorrow morning, I might as well call it quits right here!"
Li Yifei met her gaze, and suddenly, his anger dissipated.
※※※※※※
Qian Fei struggled to pull herself together. Three days after the incident, when she felt she had regained control of her emotions, she called Yao Jingjing and told her what had happened.
Yao Jingjing exploded on the other end of the line, insisting on buying a ticket back immediately to splash sulfuric acid on Hu Zining at the hotel. It took all of Qian Fei’s pleading and reasoning to calm her down.
Before hanging up, Yao Jingjing told her, "Hang in there a little longer, Feifei. I’ll wrap up my work here as fast as I can and come back to be with you! Screw that rich jerk—I don’t care anymore. Let him go play with himself!"
After the call, Qian Fei felt both touched and worried. It seemed Yao Jingjing might be facing her own romantic troubles in Dalian.
The usually fiery and determined Yao Jingjing had never uttered anything as resigned as "Let him go play with himself."
Qian Fei didn’t want Yao Jingjing to come back—because if she did, it would mean she was hurt.
Two more days passed. While having dinner at home, Qian Fei unexpectedly received a call from Hu Zining.
He cursed at her over the phone, "Qian Fei, did you sleep with our chairman? Don’t think you can screw me over behind my back!"
Before she could process what was happening, Li Yifei snatched the phone from her and barked into it, "Listen here, you little shit. Didn’t I tell you there’d come a day you’d be kneeling and calling me grandpa? Stay the hell away from Qian Fei from now on, or I’ll make sure you can’t even survive in Beijing!"
With that, he hung up.
Qian Fei stared at him, dumbfounded.
He tossed his hair and smirked. "What, stunned by my dashing heroics?"
Qian Fei couldn’t help but laugh. "What just happened? And why’d you hang up? He cursed at me, and I didn’t even get to curse back!"
Li Yifei clicked his tongue. "The only remotely feminine thing about you is your pettiness." Then, with an air of nonchalance, he explained, "It’s nothing much. The hotel just fired Hu Zining."
Qian Fei blinked. "Seriously? What did you do?"
Li Yifei straightened up pompously. "Just made a few calls, that’s all."
Qian Fei scoffed. "Yeah, right. Keep bragging!"
Annoyed, Li Yifei retorted, "Why don’t you believe me? How else do you think I pulled it off?"
Qian Fei shrugged. "You probably got your project manager to talk to the securities rep, didn’t you?"Li Yifei wagged his finger at her. "No! I keep work and personal matters completely separate, so I would never go through someone on the project for this! I happen to have an uncle who's a few connections away from a municipal official overseeing the hotel chain. Getting Hu Zining fired is just a matter of making a few calls to have that official pass the word to Chairman Lin of the hotel group. Honestly, such a trivial matter isn't worth bothering the chairman directly, but I want to teach Hu Zining a lesson—let him know exactly who he's been spewing crap about! Does he even have the right?"
Qian Fei remained skeptical. "A few connections away from a municipal official? I'm a few connections away from Qian Xuesen too!"
Li Yifei looked exasperated. "Qian Fei, do you really think I'm that unreliable in your eyes?"
Qian Fei nodded without hesitation.
Li Yifei felt utterly defeated.
Qian Fei suddenly said, "Don't call me a bleeding heart, but even though Hu Zining was dishonorable, to be fair, I was also using him to get over my past relationship. Making him lose his job over what happened between us—isn't that going too far?"
Li Yifei slammed his chopsticks on the table. "I've lost my appetite! Qian Fei, the world won't stop turning just because there's one less doormat, okay? Can't you have a bit of a temper and personality for once?"
Qian Fei quickly picked up the chopsticks and handed them back to him. "Alright, alright! No problem! I'll grow a temper right now!"
Li Yifei took in her appeasing, ingratiating expression and couldn't decide whether to laugh or get angry. "Let me tell you, Hu Zining has pulled plenty of shady stunts at that hotel. Even if he gets fired, he deserves it! Like that time someone tried to convince you to move—that was him, wasn't it? He didn't manage to screw you over, but he did screw over one of the receptionists at his hotel!"
Qian Fei was stunned. "How do you know that?"
Li Yifei answered calmly, "The phone credit kid told me."
Qian Fei watched him shovel the last bite of rice into his mouth. "I didn't know you were so interested in men. You've been paying quite a bit of attention to Hu Zining!"
Li Yifei put down his bowl and chopsticks, shooting her a glare. "And who do you think I'm doing this for?" With that, he stood up with a haughty air and turned to head back to his room. "Just so you know, I'm not doing the dishes tonight even if you kill me!"
Watching his retreating figure, Qian Fei felt the gloom of the past few days lift, and she laughed from the bottom of her heart.
Author's Note: Thank you to all the lovely readers who sent over thunder and grenades! You guys actually got me onto the homepage's leaderboard for top gifts this afternoon—even if it was just the last spot, it's something I never even dreamed of. I'm so touched by your generosity! Bowing in gratitude! >3<
The reason the female lead didn't notice Hu Zining's red flags is that she never really cared about him in the first place. Actually, the wounds from her first boyfriend run pretty deep—she just doesn't talk about it or even realize it herself, but the damage has subtly affected her life. Looks like she'll need Li the Little Scoundrel to heal her later~
Considering the nasty rumors already spread by that scumbag and his sidekick, next chapter might see Qian the Useless suggesting that Li the Little Scoundrel move out. What to do!!!Leave a comment of at least 25 characters and rate it 2 stars - all relevant comments will earn you points! Points can be used to unlock VIP chapters~ What are you waiting for? Start commenting now The flamboyant wavy line is back to steal the spotlight again^_^
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