"I’ve never seen someone so brazen about doing something wrong. You really have no shame," the landlady, in her forties and always quite fiery, said. Her attitude when she kicked Shen Mianmian out of the shop that day said it all.
Now that she heard what Cheng Xining said, her anger intensified, looking as if Xining had stolen clothes from her shop.
"Who are you calling shameless?" Xining, who had never been cursed at before, felt deeply humiliated and her face turned bright red with anger.
"I’m talking about you, what about it?" The boss’s wife turned around and started shouting to the people outside, "Everyone, come and see! The girl yesterday was wronged; she didn’t steal any clothes at all. This woman caused all the trouble, accusing others. She looks decent, but her actions are anything but!"
"You—you shut up!" Xining was so angry she could hardly keep from marching over and covering the woman’s mouth.
"I’m telling the truth, why should I shut up?"
The landlady’s voice got even louder.
Seeing more and more onlookers gathering, Xining lost her composure and turned to leave, but the woman from the shop blocked her path, "Why are you running? If you have the guts to do it, don’t you have the guts to admit it?"
"Do you believe that if you keep blocking me, I will make it so your shop can’t keep running?"
Xining, for the first time, encountered someone so unreasonable and fiery that she could think of nothing else but to make threats.
The shop assistant, seeing the situation escalating, quickly tried to intervene, "Alright, alright, stop arguing. Just clear the matter up, and that’s fine. If you keep quarreling here, how can we do business?"
Being in someone else’s store, the landlady showed some restraint and said to Xining, "Don’t ever come to my shop again. I don’t welcome people like you. Otherwise, if things go missing, I won’t even know what happened." Thıs content belongs to 𝗇𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗅✦𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾✦𝗇𝖾𝗍
"What do you mean by that?" Xining glared at her angrily. "Are you calling me a thief? Believe it or not, I’ll sue you for slander!"
"Go ahead and sue! My shop is just across the street. I’ll be waiting," the landlady huffed, turning on her heel and sashaying back across.
The other onlookers whispered among themselves, looking at Xining with various remarks, recalling the scene Mianmian had faced the day before. She couldn’t believe that just one day later, it was happening to her.
She felt unbearably wronged and turned to Ruan Yiqian, "Brother Yiqian, they’re bullying me . Why haven’t you said anything?"
If Brother Yiqian had just said one word earlier, no one would have dared to bully her.
"You’re old enough to understand that when you do something wrong, you need to face the consequences. That’s how you learn. You feel so aggrieved now, think about how Mianmian felt when she was falsely accused of stealing clothes."
Ruan Yiqian had no intention of indulging Cheng Xining’s refusal to accept reality any longer. She was old enough to learn to take responsibility for her actions.
Xining’s tears fell one by one in her frustration, "I’ve done enough now, haven’t I? Can you go and report to He Nan now?"
With that, she turned and ran off.
She loathed Shen Mianmian. Ever since Mianmian appeared, everything had changed. The people who used to dote on her were slowly pulling away. Mianmian had taken He Nan, and now she was about to take Brother Yiqian too. Would she someday take her parents away as well?
Ruan Yiqian pursed his lips and watched Xining’s retreating figure, with no intention of chasing after her. In this way, he was very much like He Nan—once something was decided, his resolve was firm and would not change easily.