Hui Yin touched the delicate petals of the cherry blossom hairpin with her fingers, tracing its edges.
She returned back to the sunroom after a maid brought her a handheld mirror as per her instructions. With a sigh, she put down the hairpin and took out her phone instead. There were already three missed calls from Jiang Xu, so she simply pressed redial.
It only rang once before Jiang Xu picked up.
"Wifey, are you alright? Did he hurt you?"
"I'm fine," Hui Yin quickly reassured him, hearing the note of anxiety in his tone. "I should be the one asking you that. Did those guards really let you go?"
"En..." An emotion she couldn't put her finger on hung heavily in his sigh. "Wifey, you're inside his home now right? I'm sorry that your boyfriend is so useless..."
Hui Yin's mouth twitched. Did he add the word 'boyfriend' to remind her not to be unfaithful? If he hadn't said sixteen words just then, she would have berated him!
"I'll be leaving soon, so I hope my 'boyfriend' won't entertain such ridiculous thoughts. Where are you now?"
"Back at the company. Wifey, I'll work hard so that he won't bully us again. I'll learn basic martial arts too!"
"Twenty-one...hmm, make sure to work hard. And stop being mean to your brothers."
Jiang Xu: "..."
"Are the twins there in the company?"
"...no."
"Alright." Hui Yin pursed her lips in disappointment. "Take care and wait for me to come back. I'm going to hang up first."
"Wifey, wait!"
Hui Yin paused, her finger hovering over the end call button.
"Are you leaving his home now? I'll come and pick you up!"
"No need, I'll come back on my own. Goodbye..."
"Wifey, wait!"
"...?"
"I'll buy you another panda so let's have another date next week, okay?"
"I'm not available next week. Maybe some other time...Jiang Xu, I'll hang up now."
"Wifey, wait!"
"What?" roared Hui Yin.
This was supposed to be a romantic goodbye where she suppressed her feelings of sadness and tried to casually say her farewells, but this lazy bum was ruining it!
Jiang Xu sounded aggrieved. "Wifey, don't let that bully seduce you! He might be more handsome than me, but his heart is uglier. He even abandoned his new fiancée!"
A lifetime-breaking record of twenty-five words or not, Hui Yin had finally reached the end of her patience.
"I. Won't. Let. Him. Seduce. Me." She said through gritted teeth. "Happy?"
"...En."
"Good for you."
Hui Yin directly hung up.
She picked up her hairpin and was finally in the mood of stabbing a jugular vein. Only it wasn't her neck that she wanted to stab, but Jiang Xu's.
If he had time to be jealous, then he was completely fine. Her worries were for nothing.
Hui Yin watched her reflection in the handheld mirror. In her opinion, it would have been better if Yue Lao gave her a knife. It was much easier and less gruesome to stab herself in the heart than in the neck. Hui Yin positioned the hairpin awkwardly, its sharp tip pointed at her racing pulse.
A drop of blood trickled slowly from her neck and down to her collarbones, staining her white shirt red. Hui Yin's heart gave a hard thump. What if Yue Lao was playing a prank on her and she actually died? Could she really trust that deity?
Or maybe he wasn't a deity at all, but a crazy old beggar whom she stupidly believed to be Yue Lao...
Hui Yin squeezed her eyelids shut and in one quick move, she stabbed the hairpin into her throat.
She abruptly cried out, her eyes flying open.
"Ouch!"
How could a tiny stab be so painful?
Her body fell back on the sofa, her fingers uncurling to let the hairpin drop to the floor with a clatter. Blood spilled on the sofa, and Hui Yin dazedly thought with inward pride that Lu Shen would probably have to replace it...
Her vision swam, spikes of light piercing through her skull. Her surroundings blurred, disappeared, and was swallowed by darkness.
Hui Yin felt like she was falling.
As time passed, she felt a distinctive tug at her wrist. Hui Yin didn't know how long she had been falling. She looked around and saw a bright red line, which seemed to be moving in different directions. It undulated like ink underwater, and it tugged at Hui Yin's wrist once again as if it wanted her to follow.
Somewhere in the distance, a garbled sound gradually became louder. It turned into a muffled voice that was shouting something, and as if a pair of earplugs were removed, Hui Yin finally understood his words.
He was shouting for her to wake up.
So Hui Yin opened her eyes.