Meeting? It Hurts

The only thing Xi Zhen could think after she calmed down was that Li Xingqing was still alive.

The person she had once believed dead had just as vividly appeared before her again. No matter what Li Xingqing had gone through over the past five years, and no matter what purpose she had in coming back, Li Ji was now sitting securely in a position of power; Xi Zhen did not think he would let Li Xingqing off so easily.

With such a formidable enemy in front of her, even though she knew rationally that Li Xingqing would not be reckless enough to show up in City A, Xi Zhen still felt uneasy. While dealing with the work on her desk, she messaged Shi Fengyu.

Ten Feet：【Fengyu, is the thing we left back then still there?】

Shi Fengyu was probably still busy and did not reply right away. Xi Zhen did not want to press her directly, so she could only force herself to calm down for the moment. She tried calling the number that had been sitting in her contacts for a long time; unsurprisingly, the call went through.

“Qiejie, is this a call with something in mind?” Li Xingqing’s lips curved when she saw Xi Zhen calling. She had reactivated this number a long time ago, and now it finally had a use again.

“Let’s meet.” Xi Zhen got straight to the point.

Hearing the invitation, Li Xingqing was not the least bit surprised; she had even already picked the place. “If Qiejie wants to see me, anytime is fine. How about the coffee shop downstairs from your place?”

“Fine. Today at five p.m.” Xi Zhen hung up neatly, not because she disliked Li Xingqing. It was just that whenever she faced her, she could never shake the feeling that something was off.

Right after the call ended, Shi Fengyu’s message came through.

Shi Fengyu：【I have it. What’s up? You want to make a move now? Isn’t that too early?】

Xi Zhen did not want to explain; she just told Shi Fengyu she was coming to get the materials right away, then set off at once.

At five in the afternoon, Li Xingqing arrived on time at the agreed spot. The coffee shop was easy to find, and after all these years, it still hadn’t run into any business problems.

Xi Zhen was already seated, waiting for her. Li Xingqing did not go over immediately; instead, she went to the counter and ordered two desserts.

“Right, this one and this one; table three.”

The young woman at the counter nodded, confirmed the order, and invited Li Xingqing to take a seat.

The moment she sat down, Xi Zhen’s gaze fell on her. Under that stare, Li Xingqing simply took the initiative instead. “Qiejie asked me out. Do you want to pick up where we left off?”

Xi Zhen finally realized what had changed in Li Xingqing over the past five years. The biggest change was probably her mouth. She had clearly once been a pure little white rabbit; who knew what had happened to her now, but every sentence seemed aimed straight at the softest spot in a person’s heart.

Xi Zhen: “......”

She said nothing and simply pushed the things in front of her over to Li Xingqing, signaling for her to look.

Unfortunately, Li Xingqing had no intention of understanding her goodwill. Just then, the desserts they had ordered arrived. Li Xingqing slid the documents Xi Zhen had handed over to the side and placed the cake in front of her. “Try it. Green grape and guava, and matcha pistachio; they were your favorite flavors. I don’t know if this shop’s taste has changed... ”

Realizing that her kindness had been completely ignored, Xi Zhen had not been angry for a long time, yet at this moment she still felt irritation rise in her chest.

“Li Xingqing!” she snapped.

But the person opposite her acted as if she did not understand and kept talking to herself. “It’s been a long time since anyone has called me by that name, Qiejie.”

“What exactly do you want?” Xi Zhen could no longer make sense of the Li Xingqing in front of her. She had changed too much; she was nothing like the person she used to be. If not for the exact same face, the same voice, the same familiar feeling, Xi Zhen would have almost suspected this was someone else entirely.

Seeing Xi Zhen angry, Li Xingqing put away the lazy expression on her face. Her finger tapped the things Xi Zhen had just pushed over. “What is this? It can’t be an explanation for why Qiejie said those things back then, right? Too bad; I’m not very interested in that.”

Back when public opinion exploded across the country, all the blame had been aimed at Li Xingqing. Even the fact that she was Li Taihong’s daughter had been exposed and spread everywhere. The stock of the Li Group plummeted overnight, and at that time Li Ji had found Xi Zhen precisely to make her record a video—a video that pushed all the blame onto Li Xingqing.

---

“I know you don’t want to put it that way, but for the sake of a dead person, are you really going to disappoint so many living people? Miss Xi, surely you’re not that bad at counting the costs of this deal?” Li Ji played with a metal lighter in his hand as he tossed the photos and videos on his phone in front of Xi Zhen.

“A dead person?” Xi Zhen could hardly believe it. She knew Li Ji and Li Xingqing were bound to fight to the death, but she had not expected Li Ji to go this far. No matter what, Li Xingqing was his sister.

“Miss Xi can finish watching before speaking. Unfortunately, the time left for Miss Xi isn’t much.” With a click, Li Ji lit the lighter, then flicked it shut again. Between the flare and the darkness, Xi Zhen looked at the bombing and funeral photos on the phone screen and suddenly felt an unreal sense of detachment. Just two weeks ago, they had still been walking hand in hand, talking about what they would do together later.

On the black-and-white photo, the person’s lips were faintly curved, as if it were the last smile left to the world. In the end, Xi Zhen was left with no choice. She could not let the people closest to her pay for the failure of her own love life; as for Li Xingqing, she would probably only ever become the person Xi Zhen thought of in the middle of the night after waking from sleep.

---

When Xi Zhen, now at the center of public opinion, appeared before the cameras, she attributed everything to Li Taihong’s indulgence of his daughter; to fulfill his daughter’s dream, he had not even hesitated to seize the hard work others had built over many years.

Li Xingqing, along with the Li Group, was dragged onto the hot search and cursed by the public. Many netizens even called for a boycott of products under the Li Group’s umbrella. The Li Group’s stock plunged, and countless shareholders were tearing their hair out. On top of that, Li Xingqing had supposedly “died,” and there was still no will. Thus Li Ji, as the undisputed heir, took the Li Group into his hands just like that. It probably seemed like a conclusion that satisfied everyone, and the story from those years came to an end there.

Afterward, many of the compensation payments Li Ji had promised were delivered to Xi Zhen as agreed, only for her to turn them all away. But everything seemed already decided, and Li Ji did not care in the slightest whether Xi Zhen accepted them or not.

Watching Li Xingqing’s gaze turn sharp in an instant, Xi Zhen realized she was asking about what had happened back then. But when she tried to explain, she didn’t know where to begin.

Should she start with Li Ji telling her that Li Xingqing was already dead and that she should give up? Or with Li Ji using Xi Zhen’s few remaining relatives and friends to threaten her? Should she say that she truly had no other choice back then, or that if they had missed each other, then they had missed each other; there was no need to dwell on so many meaningless things.

None of it was easy to say. Everyone had private motives they did not want to admit. Xi Zhen could only say that handing over the materials Shi Fengyu had kept for her was the only compensation she could offer. But it was obvious that Li Xingqing was not satisfied with that.

The cake that had originally seemed sweet now tasted bitter on the tongue. Xi Zhen felt that they had already missed far too much; they should never have continued in the first place. And yet guilt still kept her from speaking.

A long time passed; so long that Li Xingqing felt the air between them was about to stiffen. Then she suddenly froze.

Because Xi Zhen, sitting opposite her, was crying.

On the wooden tabletop in front of Xi Zhen, two tiny pools of water gradually gathered, then slowly spread.

To be honest, Li Xingqing had never seen Xi Zhen cry; not really cry. After all, when she first met Xi Zhen, the other woman was already close to thirty, and tears seemed to have long since been excluded from the life of someone in her thirties.

The Xi Zhen in Li Xingqing’s memory had always been gentle, confident, and brimming with mature composure. All of those things made her unconsciously depend on Xi Zhen back then, the way a child depended on an adult. So Li Xingqing liked being called “good girl” by Xi Zhen, and she would act spoiled in front of her like a child.

But now, five years later, the once calm and powerful Xi Zhen was suddenly crying in such a helpless, childlike way. That realization made Li Xingqing even more flustered.

Li Xingqing admitted that over the years, she had felt resentment. She hated that Xi Zhen hadn’t been able to hold on a little longer, hadn’t been able to trust that she could handle everything and come back to find her. But what she hated even more was herself; she hated how weak she had been, hated that in that relationship back then, she could only take on the role of the one being protected.

So now that she had returned, she had thrown everything else aside and insisted on coming before Xi Zhen to prove something. She wanted Xi Zhen to acknowledge that she was a real adult; she wanted to shake off that feeling of being protected in every way. But only now did she realize that, from start to finish, the most childish one had always been her, Li Xingqing.

Xi Zhen’s tears spoke of her difficulties back then, and of the regrets she had carried all these years. These were not crocodile tears, because she had never needed to bear such things in the first place. Back then, she had simply been in what she thought was an ordinary relationship, and she had even done nothing wrong in it. On the contrary, it had been Li Xingqing herself; in the earliest stage of that relationship, she had enjoyed the other’s meticulous care through deception, and after the lie was exposed, she had turned around and demanded why the other had treated her that way.

When all the ugliness had belonged to herself, she still blamed someone else in the end.

Li Xingqing regretted it all at once. She reached out, wanting to wipe the tears from Xi Zhen’s cheeks, only to have Xi Zhen avoid her without the slightest mercy. Xi Zhen was already starting to lose control of her emotions. She left the materials behind, gave Li Xingqing no chance to say anything, and got up to leave.

Seeing her move, Li Xingqing was startled and hurriedly tried to pick up the documents and grab Xi Zhen’s hand. Unfortunately, she missed in the end. This time Xi Zhen left very quickly, giving Li Xingqing no room at all to turn things around.

This was near Xi Zhen’s home to begin with, so of course she was much more familiar with the area than Li Xingqing, who had not returned in five years. Before long, she had disappeared without a trace.

The weather in midsummer was unpredictable; just moments ago, when they first entered, the sunlight had still been dazzling, but now the sky was already thick with clouds.

With a thunderous roar, rain poured down in sheets. People in the street immediately scattered in all directions to take shelter from the sudden downpour; Li Xingqing stood alone in the rain, not knowing where she should go.