Li Yifei rushed home to find Qian Fei and Liao Shiyu sitting in the living room chatting while watching TV.
Qian Fei was complaining, "Ugh, this actress with her sausage lips isn't pretty at all—why does she always play great beauties? Is it to train the male lead's endurance and tolerance?"
Seeing him appear, Qian Fei started in surprise and turned to ask, "Big bro, didn't you say you were working overtime?"
Li Yifei glanced at Qian Fei, then at Liao Shiyu, and yawned. "Too tired. Came back to catch some sleep," he said as he headed toward his room.
Qian Fei followed him in and cautiously asked, "You're sure you're 'sleepy' and not 'hungry,' right?"
Li Yifei flopped onto the bed. "I need to rest for a bit," he said, then paused before adding, "Jinjin, I think I have a suit still at the dry cleaners. Can you go pick it up for me? I'll take it when I leave later."
Qian Fei scoffed. "Still daring to order Qian the Guarantor around for errands like this? I see your future is set—no great prospects ahead! So ungrateful for talent! Tsk tsk!" Despite her words, her feet were already moving toward the door.
After she left, Li Yifei sprang up from the bed, flung open the door, and said sternly to Liao Shiyu on the couch, "Liao Shiyu, come here. We need to talk."
●︶3︶●
Leaning against the doorframe, Li Yifei got straight to the point. "The old man sent you to live here, didn't he?"
Liao Shiyu smirked. "I knew you'd figure it out."
Li Yifei frowned. "And besides that? Any other reasons?"
Liao Shiyu lifted her chin slightly, meeting his gaze. "Seems you already know the other reasons too."
His frown deepened. "Liao Shiyu, what exactly are you planning? Care to enlighten me?"
"Nothing much," she replied. "Just wanted to see what's so unforgettable about her."
"Good thing she still doesn’t know who you really are, and you haven’t actually harmed her," Li Yifei said coldly. "Otherwise, whatever childhood friendship we had wouldn’t be enough to save you."
Liao Shiyu laughed. "I’ve never seen you protect someone like this before! She really is enviable!"
Ignoring her remark, Li Yifei said icily, "Move out tomorrow. If you don’t, I’ll fire that guy surnamed Wang."
Her laughter faded. She stood up from the couch and walked over to him, her voice low. "I broke up with him, but I didn’t have him fired. Don’t you dare touch him."
Li Yifei scoffed. "Calculate whether your parents', uncle's, and your own shares combined outweigh what I’m set to inherit. If not, quit scheming and find a good excuse to leave." He paused, then added, "I’ve always hated your conniving ways, even as kids."
After a moment, Liao Shiyu’s expression softened in concession. "I’ll move out tomorrow. Just leave him alone." She hesitated, then continued, "I did plan to do something to Qian Fei, but I don’t want to anymore. You don’t have to worry. But what about you? When are you going to tell her your real identity? Hiding it from her isn’t any different from what I did. Aren’t you afraid you’ll end up hurting her yourself?"Li Yifei thought for a moment and said, "Didn't the old man tell you? It's an agreement between us."
Liao Shiyu shrugged. "You think he really wants me as his daughter-in-law so badly that he'd tell me everything?"
●︶3︶●
On New Year's Day, the legendary hot-tempered old man Li Qiansheng called Li Yifei.
He mentioned the accounts of the 72nd chapter group, noting that many issues indeed existed in some branch and subsidiary companies.
Especially the group's listed subsidiaries, dragged down by one of the group's grandchild companies, had seen declining business performance year after year. Without measures for asset restructuring, the group's listed subsidiaries might very well be pulled down to delisting.
Ever since he returned home, the old man had been incessantly nagging in his ear, saying marriage should be about matching social status—that finding a grassroots female sponsor was worse than marrying a childhood friend who held shares in the group. The old man spared no effort trying to pair him up with Liao Shiyu.
He asked the old man what it would take to stop interfering between him and Qian Fei. After some thought, the old man said, "Show me her capability. If she's competent enough to assist you, I might consider overlooking her background."
Thus, they reached an agreement.
Once he sorted out all the group's affairs and accounts, Qian Fei would take charge as the project leader to complete the asset restructuring of the group's subsidiaries.
But until the restructuring plan was finalized, he couldn't reveal his true identity to her or offer any assistance. If she could help the company overcome this hurdle through her own abilities, the old man would no longer stand in their way.
However, if Qian Fei failed or caused any losses to the company during the process, Li Qiansheng declared, "She wouldn't be qualified to be my Li family's daughter-in-law."
Li Yifei agreed to these terms. He had full confidence in his woman.
She was no longer the timid little employee she once was. What she needed now was a battlefield to strategize and showcase her abilities.
He was willing to give her that battlefield, to watch her win a brilliant victory.
●︶3︶●
Qian Fei stormed back from the dry cleaners.
The moment she entered the room, she pounced onto the bed, straddling Li Yifei and gripping his neck as she angrily demanded, "Are you getting early-onset dementia? Do you even have a suit at the dry cleaners? The owner and I turned the whole shop upside down and couldn't find it! Then I remembered you moved out ages ago!!!"
Li Yifei feigned sudden realization. "Ah, right! I did move out a while ago! Must be memory issues from being too busy lately."
Seeing his utterly nonchalant expression, Qian Fei seriously considered stabbing him a couple of times.
Li Yifei's hands crept up to her hips, giving them a pat as a lecherous smirk spread across his face. "Since we're in this position, why don't we just skip straight to dinner?"
Qian Fei scrambled to get off, but Li Yifei clamped down, immobilizing her.
His hands began exploring buttons and belts with great enthusiasm. Just as things were heating up, knocking sounded at the door.
Liao Shiyu's voice called for Qian Fei from outside.
"Shit!" Li Yifei gritted his teeth. "That damn woman—she's definitely doing this on purpose!"
Qian Fei tumbled off the bed in a flurry, hastily straightening her clothes before opening the door to ask Liao Shiyu, "What is it?"Liao Shiyu glanced behind her with a hint of schadenfreude flashing in her eyes before turning to Qian Fei and saying, "My apartment's renovations are done. I'm moving out tomorrow, just letting you know."
Qian Fei was taken aback. "Huh? Oh, okay. Let me know if you need any help."
Liao Shiyu returned to her room to pack her things.
After closing the door, Qian Fei said to Li Yifei, "The progress of her apartment renovation has been so unpredictable. It was suddenly done just like that."
Li Yifei pulled her over, pressing her down onto the bed with a wicked grin. "The sooner this kind of surprise comes, the better! I can't wait for her to move out. Then we can expand our dining area to every room in the house!"
●︶3︶●
The next day, Liao Shiyu quietly went to Li Yifei's family home.
She walked up to the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room and called out to the person lounging on the rocking chair, basking in the sun. "Uncle."
The man opened his eyes and turned his head.
His face was that of a refined, distinguished middle-aged man, resembling Li Yifei but with an added air of decisiveness and sharpness.
He smiled, the hard lines of his face softening briefly before returning to their usual sternness.
"Shiyu's here. So, how is she?" he asked in a deep voice.
Liao Shiyu sat down on a nearby chair and poured herself a cup of tea, taking a sip.
"She's a good girl," she said softly after a moment. "No ulterior motives, just pure and kind. She does like money, but only if it's money she's earned herself. I've observed her character carefully—there are no issues. Once she takes over the company's asset restructuring project and proves her competence, you can rest assured and let Li Yifei continue seeing her."
The middle-aged man leaned back in his chair, rocking slightly.
"Quite rare for you to have such magnanimity, speaking well of your romantic rival."
Liao Shiyu chuckled lightly. "Because even if I badmouthed her, it wouldn’t actually turn her into a bad person. It would just make me look petty."
The man rocked in his chair again. "You really don’t plan on telling those two why you sought out Wang Ruohai in the first place?"
Liao Shiyu set down her teacup. "No need. It’d feel like I’m trying to whitewash myself. Why should I live like some pure, innocent flower? I think living like this suits me just fine—it’s got character." She paused, then added, "Besides, I did steal him away."
The man gazed out the window, his voice low and resonant. "I remember that summer during your second year of high school when you insisted on traveling alone with just a backpack, and no one could stop you. After you came back, you secretly told me you’d met a boy in a riverside town. You’d nearly drowned, and he saved you. You said you liked him so much that before parting, you made a promise to both apply to universities in Beijing. But then in your senior year, your parents emigrated, and no matter how hard you resisted, you ended up going abroad. Later, you emailed me saying you’d lost contact with that boy after arriving in the U.S., and you even fell ill over it."
He paused before continuing softly, "That boy was Wang Ruohai, wasn’t it?"
After a long silence, Liao Shiyu sighed faintly. "Sometimes it really upsets me that he just forgot about me like that."The middle-aged man gave a slight tug at the corner of his mouth. "When you were a sophomore in high school, you wore glasses and braces—you've changed quite a lot since then. And didn’t you say that to keep your parents from tracking your vacation, you used your cousin’s name and ID at the time?"
Liao Shiyu said, "Yes. After getting my master's degree, I insisted on returning to China, just to try my luck and see if I could find him. Maybe he really did go to university in Beijing and stayed there. And I was truly lucky—I never expected to run into him at Qiansheng. I recognized him at first glance. I waited for him to remember me too, but he didn’t. I didn’t hide my feelings for him, and he noticed. I asked him out—he refused the first two times but showed up on the third. At first, he didn’t tell me if he had a girlfriend, and I didn’t ask. Later, when I found out he really did have one, I asked him to choose. He hesitated, unable to decide. It wasn’t until we both got drunk and went to a hotel, where Qian Fei caught him red-handed, that he finally made his choice. In the end, I suppose I really am just a bad woman.
"At first, when we were together, things were good. But gradually, he kept comparing me to Qian Fei. He complained that I couldn’t cook, didn’t do housework, and was spoiled with a bad temper. When I went home with him for the New Year, his mother kept calling me Qian Fei’s name. I was furious and didn’t hide my displeasure. After we returned to Beijing, he broke up with me.
"While we were at his family’s place, I walked with him by the little river where I’d nearly drowned years ago and asked if he remembered anything. His face darkened, and he looked a little sad. I knew then that what he was remembering wasn’t me—it was Qian Fei."
Liao Shiyu murmured to herself, gazing melancholically at the teacup in her hand.
"What does it matter how beautiful first love is? In the end, it couldn’t compare to seven years of companionship."
The middle-aged man, reclining in his rocking chair, asked softly, "Why not tell him all this?"
Liao Shiyu took a sip of tea. "If he remembers on his own, fine. If not, then so be it. I don’t need sympathy or pity. I’m a bad woman, and I’ll live my bad life just like this—it’s kind of fun, actually."
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