Chapter 69

Zhong Ning glanced at her resentfully. She had thought Fu Nanshuang would say something comforting, but instead, Fu Nanshuang just patted her own shoulder. “You’ll get used to it.”

Zhong Ning said, “Did you secretly eat ice cubes? How can you say something so cold?”

Fu Nanshuang took out a pair of sunglasses from her bag and put them on, then handed Zhong Ning a pink pair. “I’ve already been very sincere. Besides this, there’s nothing else to do. This muddy water is something you have no choice but to wade through, so try to enjoy it.”

“I picked out these glasses a couple of days ago. What do you think? Not bad, right?”

Facing the mirror, she fluffed her hair and reapplied her lipstick. Fu Nanshuang laughed. “Stop frowning. Just imagine how frustrated and frantic Zhong Zinuan will look in the future. Don’t you feel a little better?”

Zhong Ning adjusted her glasses and seriously pictured Zhong Zinuan stomping her feet in a rage. She nodded. “Doctor, your medicine works miracles.”

Fu Nanshuang laughed loudly. “Hahaha!”

The two of them walked out of the restroom together. Before they even left the store, they bumped into someone familiar.

“Miss Le!” Zhong Ning’s eyes lit up. “What a coincidence! You’re here to eat too?”

Fu Nanshuang said, “Don’t you know? This restaurant belongs to her.”

Zhong Ning was stunned. “Ah?”

When Le Zhiyu heard someone call her name, she visibly tensed up. But when she turned and saw it was Zhong Ning, her tense expression relaxed a little. “Miss Zhong, Miss Fu, I’m here to inspect the store.”

“How’s Rice Cake doing lately?” Zhong Ning asked.

At the mention of her cat, Le Zhiyu’s demeanor became more lively. She opened her phone’s photo album. “She’s gained quite a bit of weight.”

Zhong Ning leaned over to take a look and saw a clean, smooth-furred little calico lying in the sunlight, its nose pink, paw pads pink. “Looks like she’s long-haired. How lucky. She’s going to be absolutely beautiful when she grows up.”

Le Zhiyu pursed her lips and smiled faintly. “Yes.”

After looking at Rice Cake’s photos for a while, Zhong Ning felt recharged by the cat’s energy and finally felt much better. Before Le Zhiyu grew increasingly uncomfortable, she took the initiative to say goodbye. The latter quietly breathed a sigh of relief and waved at her.

“You can actually have a conversation with Le Zhiyu,” Fu Nanshuang clicked her tongue in amazement. “As far as I know, she has pretty severe social anxiety and hardly interacts with anyone in our circle. After breaking up with Qi Wan, she became even more withdrawn.”

“By the way, do you know about this?”

Zhong Ning was completely confused.

Fu Nanshuang immediately understood. “Alright, you don’t know.”

“Qi Wan, she’s Xie Shiqing’s aunt, though they’re not much different in age. Qi Wan and Le Zhiyu were classmates. No one knows exactly how they got together. Back in college, Qi Wan went abroad for graduate school while Le Zhiyu stayed here, so they separated. Long-distance wasn’t really a big obstacle, but no one knows the exact reason they broke up. All these years, neither of them seemed to have any new relationships; they both seemed to have stayed single.”

“At the engagement party last time, I saw the two of them talking together. Quite rare. Qi Wan has been back in the country for a while now. Maybe they’re thinking of getting back together.”

Zhong Ning didn’t know whether to gossip first or to be shocked that Dr. Qi was actually Shiqing’s aunt.

She had thought Dr. Qi and Shiqing were just ordinary doctor-patient. Shiqing had never mentioned this to her.

Perhaps Shiqing assumed she already knew. After all, even Fu Nanshuang knew about it, so it probably wasn’t a secret in their circle.

Even so… when they first went to the hospital for a check-up together, Shiqing hadn’t introduced them to each other.

A strange sense of suffocation rose in Zhong Ning’s heart, though she couldn’t explain why. It was like a crystal snow globe filled with a Christmas scene—though the snow swirled inside, the lights were bright and the fireplace warm, making her believe it was warm. Until a crack appeared in the crystal, and a flake of snow slipped through, landing in her palm, only then did Zhong Ning suddenly realize—it was cold.

How strange.

Why?

Why didn’t Shiqing introduce their identities to each other? Even if they had met before, now that they had a new relationship as family, wasn’t it appropriate to reintroduce themselves?

How strange.

Zhong Ning declined her friend’s invitation to go shopping and absentmindedly went home. Her mind seemed both to be thinking and completely blank at the same time. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t come up with an answer.

Xie Shiqing had her own spot on the living room sofa. Zhong Ning sat beside it, leaned her head lightly against the cushion, and stared blankly at the rose branch pattern on the sofa for a long while.

At the usual time she should have been home, Shiqing still hadn’t returned.

Zhong Ning forced herself to eat dinner, though it was her favorite dishes.

Maybe she forgot.

She thought, trying to find a reason for Shiqing’s behavior. The Zhong family and Xie family had known each other for a long time; Qi Wan must have crossed paths with them before. Of course she would know her. That’s why Shiqing didn’t bring it up again. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

She temporarily suppressed the emotions surging in her heart.

The key point was that Xie Shiqing was currently busy handling a company crisis. She didn’t want to disturb her over this.

After all, this wasn’t a big deal, and so much time had already passed. It wouldn’t be too late to ask after the film source issue was resolved.

Why bother her at such a critical moment?

When Xie Shiqing returned home, Zhong Ning didn’t show any of her inner turmoil. She gathered her emotions and, as she did every day, ran to the door to welcome the person she loved.

“Shiqing!”

With a bright smile on her face, she hurried to grab Shiqing’s hand as soon as she stepped out of the car. “You must be exhausted today. Did you have dinner?”

The night breeze was gentle, tree shadows swayed, and the wind softly tangled their hair together. Under the lights, Xie Shiqing’s pale face had a jade-like luster. Her black eyelashes drooped, and her moist red lips pressed lightly together as she sighed.

“Tired.”

In a voice as sweet and sticky as honey, she spoke in a low, pampered tone: “I want Ning Ning to carry me.”

Without hesitation, Zhong Ning turned around, squatted down with her back facing her, and reminded, “Be careful.”

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