Chapter 71

“Jiang Chao, be a little more generous.”

The smile on Sheng Huaixi’s face was impossible to miss. “Since we’re sharing a parent-child suite, there’s no need to be so shy.”

“Shut up. And whose fault do you think this is?” Jiang Chao said, wrapped in a bath towel as she carefully gathered up her clothes. She looked up and shot Sheng Huaixi a glare.

Sheng Huaixi still had the nerve to tell her to be generous. Who was the reason she was being so stingy right now? Did this woman have no self-awareness at all?

Her shoulders, collarbones, and neck all prickled with a faint, itchy pain, like ants were crawling over her skin; she couldn’t help wanting to scratch.

Jiang Chao pressed the tip of her tongue against her teeth, turned around, tightened the bath towel around herself, and forced down the urge to scratch while ignoring the ache in the rest of her body and focusing on putting her things away.

Sheng Huaixi lounged lazily against the sofa cushion, one long leg crossed and swaying. Her bathrobe collar was slightly open, revealing just a glimpse of those pale, lustrous collarbones as her neck tipped back.

“Are you sure you want to soak with me?” Sheng Huaixi looked at Jiang Chao, her long lashes lowered as she toyed with a lock of glossy black hair around her finger.

“Sheng Huaixi, do you think I can go out looking like this?”

Jiang Chao’s smile was thin and fake. The bright smile on Sheng Huaixi’s face was practically daring her to reach out and pinch her cheeks, to wipe that grin right off her face.

Didn’t Sheng Huaixi do this to her herself? And didn’t she know exactly what kind of marks she’d bitten into her skin?

“Mm, that’s true.” Sheng Huaixi smiled, her fingertip resting at the corner of her lips. When she lifted her dark eyes, she looked absolutely enchanting in the room’s light.

Meeting Jiang Chao’s gaze as her lashes lifted again, she could see the obvious irritation there; the message was clear: shut up. But why should she listen?

Sheng Huaixi calmly switched hands and rested her chin on it, then curved her lips and brought up Jiang Chao’s earlier hesitation.

“You’re not afraid I’ll eat you alive now? Not worried I’ll do something nasty to torment you again? Weren’t you hesitating a lot before?”

“If you’re not afraid I’ll go all out and bite you to death, then go ahead and try.” Jiang Chao closed her eyes, gave up on struggling, and spread her hands in resignation.

Since she was already here, she was absolutely going to soak in this hot spring.

She’d come to relax in the first place, and on top of that, she’d just heard something from the past that sent her blood pressure even higher.

Jiang Chao was one hundred percent certain that she was soaking this tub.

But with her body covered in marks from Sheng Huaixi’s bites, there was absolutely no way she’d dare go out to the public hot spring with these traces all over her.

If Yuan Bai saw them...

Just thinking about the warning she’d given Yuan Bai before made Jiang Chao go cold.

Karma really did come around. She’d just warned Yuan Bai to keep things under control and not go too far, and now look at her—these marks on her neck and collarbone were even worse than what she’d seen on Yuan Bai last time.

As for her other coworkers, Jiang Chao wanted to avoid them even more.

After weighing it all, Jiang Chao could only soak with Sheng Huaixi in the private hot spring in their suite.

The marks on her body were from Sheng Huaixi; when Sheng Huaixi had a fever last time, she’d even helped her change clothes... She’d already seen and touched everything. What was there to be afraid of wearing a bikini and soaking?

“I’m going to shower and clean up. If you want to soak, go on ahead.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

The last syllable was drawn out lazily, and the gaze resting on her made Jiang Chao shiver. She grabbed a pillow beside her and hurled it at Sheng Huaixi. “Better not.”

It would be best if Sheng Huaixi didn’t wait for her at all.

The pillow struck the side of Sheng Huaixi’s body. Watching Jiang Chao’s back disappear into the bathroom, the smile on Sheng Huaixi’s face slowly faded; her clear black-and-white pupils turned utterly indifferent.

She stood, picked up her phone, and walked to the balcony. With a click, the window door shut tightly behind her, while scattered pinpricks of light glimmered ahead like fireflies.

“Check who was using the public hot spring during the time today when Jiang Chao took wine from the front desk back to the room.”

Her voice paused briefly, then Sheng Huaixi said coldly, “Within five minutes.”

A sharp crack sounded against the glass tabletop. Sheng Huaixi swallowed down the restless gloom in her chest, her tongue sweeping over her lips again and again. Her fingers flexed, grasping at nothing.

Nothing there; she’d missed completely.

Sheng Huaixi pressed a hand to her forehead. Her brows were twisted into a fierce knot, and she clicked her tongue in obvious displeasure, her tongue pressing against her cheek as she forced herself to clench her palm hard enough to hold back the agitation in her chest.

“Bang!”

The tightly shut window was shoved open hard by Sheng Huaixi. Cold wind poured in through the open neckline of her bathrobe, the sound rushing past her ears, and the heat that had lingered after bathing quickly faded away.

She was drenched through with a bone-deep chill.

Still restless.

Sheng Huaixi lowered her eyes. The crescent-shaped marks on her nearly crimson palm stood out starkly. Her lashes fluttered as she counted them with a curious sort of interest.

One, two, three, four... twenty.

Not as many as she’d left on her skin six years ago.

Sheng Huaixi lifted her gaze, her dark eyes calm and cold, and gave herself a flat, detached appraisal.

As she thought about it, Sheng Huaixi suddenly bent over and covered her mouth, retching dryly. The pain was clear and sharp; the nausea clawing up her throat forced tears to spill from the corners of her eyes.

Her brows smoothed out. One hand braced against the table as her body folded low like a drawn bow; the other hand gripped her cheeks tightly, harder and harder, until they flushed red and the veins on the back of her hand stood out in tension.

The oxygen in her nose and mouth grew thinner and thinner. Sheng Huaixi closed her eyes; her long lashes trembled violently. The lack of air made her mind foggy and heavy, and the instinct to survive forced her to let go.

Just as her body was tensed to its limit—

Sheng Huaixi let out a heavy breath and swayed, nearly dropping to her knees on the floor.

When she opened her eyes again, everything before her seemed filtered through a blur. The steam from the hot spring twisted through the air, and the scent of plants in her nose was vivid and alive.

The pain in her heart and the real, fresh fragrance of the greenery told Sheng Huaixi one thing:

This was real. She was no longer six years in the past. Jiang Chao was beside her; she had already found Jiang Chao.

Page after page of false information, cup after cup of pungent liquid, day after day of waiting.

Countless nights of reversal and lies; every face that swayed before Sheng Huaixi wore words that had been fabricated.

“I like you. We’re meant to be together, aren’t we?”

“What a beautiful face, sister. Leave a scar that belongs only to me on it, okay?”

“Sheng Huaixi, who are you looking at? Shouldn’t you be looking at me?”

They kept talking about sincerity, again and again, while desire overflowed from their eyes and every bit of it was counterfeit. They were all fake people.

Disgusting...

Sheng Huaixi dry-heaved again, then coughed several times from the choke in her throat. Her palm tightened. She turned back carefully, then reached out behind her to shut the window door more tightly.

Her hand caught only empty air.

“Your mood is obviously terrible, so why did you deliberately tease me just now to make me happy?”

The tightly closed balcony window was pushed open, and Jiang Chao’s gentle, reproachful voice drifted through the air with the scent of rose body wash.

Sheng Huaixi looked back. The skin around her eyes was faintly red, and the emotion spilling from her gaze was unrestrained sorrow. The deep lake there rippled in layer after layer of disturbance because of it.

Behind her, the scattered lights spread out like fireflies, laying themselves across Sheng Huaixi’s back like a thin shawl draped over her pale, trembling shoulders.

Jiang Chao’s fingertips trembled. Meeting Sheng Huaixi’s tear-glossed eyes, her heart was struck hard.

“What, do you want... to coax me?”

Sheng Huaixi forced the corners of her mouth upward. Her voice trembled; long-suppressed wounds were quietly torn open, and emotions she had hidden for so long were beginning to collapse under Jiang Chao’s gaze.

A pair of water-red, blurred eyes looked at Jiang Chao.