Qin Jiao carefully inspected the newly installed kitchen wall cabinets. The downlights had been put in as well, and it all looked pretty good.
She then went to check the bathroom... Shen Yi had insisted on installing a bathtub. When they went to buy it, he had even specifically requested one large enough for two people.
’I really don’t know what to say about this guy.’
’Didn’t he see how the salesman blushed? The guy was a man in his thirties!’
’It’s been a while, Shen Yi should have booked the plane tickets by now.’
But when Qin Jiao finished inspecting all the recent renovation work and looked up, she saw Shen Yi just walking in the door.
He was battered.
"Did you get in a fight?" Qin Jiao took a closer look. Seeing that his legs seemed fine and he just had a bruise by the corner of his mouth, she finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Shen Yi tried to smile, but the movement stretched his lip, and he winced in pain.
Then he said, "It’s nothing. I just slipped and fell."
Qin Jiao’s expression hardened. "Do you take me for a three-year-old? You think I’m that easy to fool?"
Shen Yi quickly confessed. "I was at the entrance and saw that bastard Shen Feng pestering you. After you left, I went and beat him up."
Shen Yi had been trying his best to control his temper. Besides, he would never hit a woman, which was why he hadn’t laid a hand on Li Man in the cafeteria, even when she was deliberately causing trouble.
But Shen Feng was a different story.
The two of them had a long history of bad blood, both new and old. On top of that, the guy had come to bother Jiao Jiao. Of course Shen Yi wasn’t going to stand for that.
Qin Jiao sighed. She quickly took a bandage out of her bag and applied it to his wound. "Are you hurt anywhere else?" she asked.
"Nope, not at all. He’s in much worse shape than I am."
"..." Qin Jiao said in exasperation, "You’re so childish."
Shen Yi squeezed her hand and said earnestly, "Men are boys until the day they die. Besides, Shen Feng and I have way too much bad blood between us. One fight can clear some of that away."
Qin Jiao didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ’Can he really justify it like that?’
While things were lively on their end, not far away, a bruised and swollen Shen Feng was sitting in his rented apartment. He hadn’t even gone back to campus—and looking like he did, he probably couldn’t have, anyway.
That evening, Lin Nian left an employee to mind the shop and came home. The moment she flipped on the light, she saw Shen Feng sitting on the sofa, which made her jump.
"Ah Feng, what happened? Who did this to you?"
Lin Nian put down her things and immediately sat beside Shen Feng, only for him to shove her away.
Shen Feng stared at her coldly. "Lin Nian, why do you always have it in for Qin Jiao?"
’Lin Nian had been like this back in high school. She’d even instigated someone to kidnap Qin Jiao’s sister!’
’Thinking back on it now, every single thing had been Lin Nian’s deliberate attempt to target Qin Jiao!’
’Especially that incident at the guest house!’
Lin Nian was stunned. She knew Shen Feng had been in a foul mood for days because of the toxic situation at his home, and she had been doing her best to appease him.
But she never expected him to suddenly bring up Qin Jiao.
"I..."
"You what? Back when we went to that competition, you were the one who deliberately arranged for Qin Jiao and Shen Yi to end up in bed together, weren’t you?" Shen Feng suddenly recalled the fragments that had been appearing in his dreams these past nights.
’If it hadn’t been for that incident at the guest house, Qin Jiao would never have gotten entangled with Shen Yi. And in that case... would she have become his girlfriend?’
The moment he considered that possibility, the negative emotions that had been building inside Shen Feng for days erupted. He shot his hands out and grabbed Lin Nian by the throat!
One moment, Lin Nian’s heart pounded with the fear that Shen Feng had discovered something. The next, she was beginning to suffocate.
She struggled in a panic. "Ah Feng, listen to me! Let go! Just listen... COUGH, COUGH..."