Accidentally Becoming a Green Tea Goddess Everyone Loves - Chapter 27

“Do you really have to wait until you’re soaked to the bone before you’re willing to come to my house?” Qi Yan arched an eyebrow.

Shen Shirou sat huddled in the corner of the sofa. The tips of her hair were still damp, and rainwater was tracing slow lines down her clothes, dripping onto the floor. In a way, the novel’s plot had finally come true: she looked pathetically bedraggled.

“I’m only staying here temporarily for a few days,” Shen Shirou corrected her in a low voice. “Once I find a suitable place to live, I’ll leave on my own.”

Qi Yan brewed a cup of hot coffee. “I didn’t call you just to have you stay for two days and then let you run away again.”

Just then, the butler arrived, having been instructed by Qi Yan to prepare a set of brand-new clothes for Shen Shirou. Unlike Jiang Peixing’s villa, Qi Yan’s home was vast but far from lonely; besides the butler, the house was teeming with servants.

Qi Yan took the clothes from the butler, inspected them for a moment, and then dismissed him with a satisfied wave. She held the new outfit out to Shen Shirou. “Take these.”

“I brought my own clothes,” Shen Shirou replied. They were right there in the suitcase she had dragged along.

“You mean the ones you brought from Jiang Peixing’s villa?” Qi Yan let out a soft sigh. “I’ve already had them thrown out. What a shame.” She tilted her head playfully. “Are you going to keep wearing those wet rags all night?”

Shen Shirou: “?”

Fine. A villainess is always a villainess! She knew Qi Yan was up to no good.

To maintain her “reluctant” facade, Shen Shirou held out for a brief stalemate before finally taking the clothes. Qi Yan seemed to have predicted her surrender; she watched with a knowing, silent smile.

After a hot shower, Shen Shirou changed into the provided outfit. When she stepped out of the bathroom, Qi Yan had already arranged a room for her. Qi Yan studied her in the new attire. “Not bad. They fit much better than those old things you brought.”

Shen Shirou disagreed. She suspected Qi Yan was looking through tinted glasses—harboring a bias against anything remotely associated with “Jiang Peixing.”

Qi Yan led her on a tour of the newly prepared bedroom. Every necessity was accounted for; even the curtains had been freshly installed on short notice. It was a comprehensive setup, easily rivaling the standard of a thousand-dollar-a-night five-star hotel.

“Do you like it?” Qi Yan held up a key. “If you can’t get used to sleeping here, I can move you into my room next door anytime.”

“No need,” Shen Shirou rejected her without a second thought.

Qi Yan shrugged, looking somewhat disappointed. Before the key was handed over, Shen Shirou remembered something and made a declaration: “I don’t have any money.”

The subtext was clear: even if she was staying here, she couldn’t pay a cent in rent.

Qi Yan gave a dismissive laugh. “You can pay me back in other ways.” The hint was heavy with implication. She pressed the key into Shen Shirou’s palm and added, “I’m right next door. If you need anything, remember to knock.”

In this regard, Qi Yan was the polar opposite of Jiang Peixing. With her, Qi Yan seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of patience.

Once Qi Yan left, Shen Shirou lay on the bed of her new room. Staring at the ceiling, she tried calling out for System 888 again.

Silence.

Shen Shirou let out a heavy sigh. She stood up and wandered around the room to familiarize herself with the layout. When she reached the wardrobe and slid the door open, she expected it to be empty. Instead, it was full of clothes.

And they looked very familiar.

Shen Shirou took one out to examine it closely. In a heartbeat, she recognized it as one of the outfits she had packed in her suitcase from the villa.

Didn’t Qi Yan say she threw them all out?

She had been played by Qi Yan again!

Life at Qi Yan’s house was even more idle than before. Back at Jiang Peixing’s villa, there were no servants, so Shen Shirou had to do everything herself.

Here, not only was her room cleaned on a schedule, but if she so much as went downstairs for a coffee, the butler would intercept her and have someone brew it and deliver it to her room. Even the passing servants would bow and greet her. After only half a day, Shen Shirou realized that the life of the wealthy was indeed “unpretentious and boring.”

Qi Yan’s only restriction was that Shen Shirou couldn’t leave the house without her accompaniment. Indoors, however, she could go wherever she pleased. In other words, her world was currently the size of this mansion.

Feeling cooped up, Shen Shirou sat in the living room, staring absentmindedly through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the courtyard. Suddenly, she heard hushed voices.

Turning her head, she saw the butler on the phone. Shen Shirou was sitting quietly in a corner, blending into the shadows. The butler, with his back turned, didn’t notice her presence and spoke freely. Shen Shirou heard the entire conversation.

Once he hung up, Shen Shirou stood up. The slight noise made the butler whip around, finally realizing she was there.

“Did the family chef take an emergency leave?” Shen Shirou asked. “Is there no one to make dinner?”

“You heard that?” the butler said. “Apologies, I was too focused on the call and didn’t realize I was disturbing you.”

He nodded. “Yes. But don’t worry, Miss Qi instructed us to treat you as an honored guest. We will have a superior chef here shortly to prepare dinner. It won’t delay your meal with Miss Qi.”

Shen Shirou had no intention of dining with Qi Yan. Nor did she care for “honored guest” treatment.

“Don’t bother hiring anyone else,” Shen Shirou said. “Could you show me to the kitchen?”

In the kitchen, Shen Shirou held a chef’s knife, focused on prepping the ingredients. Since she had nothing to do, making a meal felt like a way to repay Qi Yan’s hospitality—consider it rent, even if Qi Yan didn’t care about the expense.

A set of footsteps approached. Before Shen Shirou could turn around, a pair of slender arms wrapped around her waist. She tilted her head, shooting a sideways glance at Qi Yan. “Hands,” she warned.

“Hmm?” Qi Yan acted completely oblivious.

Shen Shirou stopped her movements. “Let go.”

Qi Yan smiled. “I’d rather not.” Her behavior was as shameless as it could be, showing no intention of being reasonable. She kept one arm around Shen Shirou while the other hand covered Shen Shirou’s hand on the counter.

“Why are you in the kitchen yourself?” Qi Yan asked. “I told them to prepare dinner. Did they disobey my orders—or are you being naughty?”

“Miss Qi, I’m just making a meal,” Shen Shirou said. It wasn’t exactly a battlefield.

Qi Yan looked down. “It would break my heart if these beautiful hands got a scratch from cooking.” She curled her lips. “Besides, wouldn’t it be better to save them for other things?”

Clang.

Shen Shirou’s hand slipped, and the knife hit the cutting board.

“Miss Qi, you’re distracting me,” Shen Shirou said, her patience thinning. “And you and I aren’t in that kind of relationship.”

Qi Yan played dumb. “Which kind of relationship?”

Shen Shirou felt that continuing this conversation was like playing a lute to a cow—completely futile.

She decided to simply go quiet.

But Qi Yan, standing right beside her, didn’t seem to think she had pushed far enough. Although she loosened her grip on Shen Shirou’s waist, she didn’t move an inch; she remained looming directly behind her.

“Darling, have you forgotten our agreement already?”

Shen Shirou genuinely didn’t recall making any sort of pact with her. “What agreement?”

“That once Jiang Peixing left you, you would accept my pursuit,” Qi Yan stated, as if it were the most natural fact in the world. “By all accounts, you should be considered my girlfriend now.”

She lowered her voice, a predatory purr. “Remembered yet, baby?”

Shen Shirou felt a sudden, sharp pang of regret. When she had moved in during that torrential downpour last night, why on earth had she been so honest with Qi Yan about the dissolved engagement?

Had she known better, she would have claimed she and Jiang Peixing had merely had a spat and she was staying here out of spite.

“That was your unilateral declaration,” Shen Shirou argued righteously. “I never agreed to it.”

In any case, she wasn’t about to admit to anything.

“But you’re already in my house,” Qi Yan countered. “Don’t you feel like a lamb that has wandered into a wolf’s den? There is no escape for you.”

As she spoke, she pressed even closer. She tilted her head, leaning in from the side as if to plant a kiss right against Shen Shirou’s ear.

Just as Shen Shirou was about to shove her away and deliver a stern lecture on her shameless behavior, a familiar mechanical voice suddenly rang out in her mind.

[“Warning: Green Tea character persona OOC (Out of Character).”] It was System 888.

Shen Shirou had spent all of last night calling for the system to no avail. Now, of all times, it decided to pop back up. It felt entirely deliberate.

Fine. She would settle her score with System 888 later. Since she couldn’t take a hard line with Qi Yan, she would just have to switch tactics.

Shen Shirou’s expression shifted instantly to one of profound grievance. Her eyes welled with redness, and tears began to fall in heavy, silent streaks.

“I knew it. It’s not just Sister Jiang who hates me, you do too. You only brought me back here because you wanted to bully me like this.”