After Failing To Tame The Scumbag - Chapter 21

“If she refuses you.”

An hour later.

Ji Jin successfully made a fortune off her “rival in love” and managed to ensconce herself in the house once again.

Though she wasn’t particularly happy about it.

“A-Xiu…” Ji Jin walked into the master bedroom with practiced ease, her voice trailing off as she prepared to flop onto the bed. But before she could get into character, her eyes were snagged by something, and her mood took a sudden dip.

“Are you smoking again?”

“Ah, I just lit it,” Yun Chuxiu glanced at the half-finished cigarette Ji Jin was staring at. Her long, freshly washed hair hung damply over her shoulders, soaking the robe draped over her body.

Separated by a pane of glass, she tilted her head, her expression softening. “I’m not really used to this way of venting emotions anymore.”

“Doesn’t that still mean your mood was affected?”

Ji Jin rolled around on the bed, burying her head in the pillow as if trying to hide something. Her voice came out muffled. “If I hadn’t come over tonight, were you planning on telling me nothing again?”

…What did she mean by “again”?

Yun Chuxiu thought about it and realized Ji Jin was still hung up on previous events. She tapped the glass three times with her knuckle and offered a deliberate explanation: “There’s no need to make you unhappy over something that doesn’t even require processing.”

Ji Jin looked at her, clearly displeased.

The bright incandescent light of the bathroom cast a ghostly, cool hue, hanging right above Yun Chuxiu’s head. It made the already aloof woman look even more distant, as if she were draped in a hazy veil of moonlight.

As Ji Jin watched, her heart suddenly skipped a beat.

Before her brain could react, her body was already driven by its most primal emotions. She scrambled off the bed and quickly circled around behind Yun Chuxiu.

Yun Chuxiu looked at the person who had suddenly appeared in the mirror and blinked. “What are you…”

“I’m here to dry your hair,” Ji Jin carefully gathered the uncombed strands. Looking at the person in the mirror, she felt an inexplicable, irrepressible surge of heat.

She looked down, trying to divert her attention. “Can I sleep while holding A-Xiu tonight…?”

Her gaze unconsciously drifted to the skin below the neckline that the robe failed to fully cover.

Ji Jin cleared her throat with forced restraint. “Besides just holding you, can we also do some…”

“Shut up.”

Yun Chuxiu raised her hand and covered the mouth that was starting to spout nonsense.

Her already fair arm seemed to be plated in cold light under the lamp. Ji Jin blinked, and in the next second, she honestly let go of the hair and grabbed Yun Chuxiu’s wrist.

…It was a faint scent of lemon.

“Ji Jin,” Yun Chuxiu’s ears, hidden under her hair, turned red, but her voice remained calm.

Her tone was no different than the way she usually called her name.

Ji Jin instinctively responded, not sensing anything amiss. “What is… ow?”

A gentle sting easily pulled her drifting thoughts back to reality.

Yun Chuxiu looked into the mirror. Her hand, which had been loosely covering Ji Jin’s mouth, slowly tightened. She pinched the soft flesh of Ji Jin’s cheek and gave it a counter clockwise twist.

“Take your unsightly gaze and get out.”

Ji Jin: “…I actually wasn’t thinking about anything.”

Yun Chuxiu’s gaze landed on her unnatural expression. She didn’t say a word, only letting out a faint, mocking laugh.

“…Fine.”

Ji Jin stubbornly finished drying the last bit of damp hair. She raised both hands toward the ceiling in a gesture of surrender and retreated in slow motion.

And then…

Her head hit the glass door with a dull “thud.”

Yun Chuxiu: “…” It really had been a long time since she’d seen such flustered behavior.

Yun Chuxiu listened to the other woman’s exaggeratedly loud intake of breath this time, she didn’t even bother to look.

…In the end, nothing actually happened.

Ji Jin talked a big game, but once they were actually in bed, she simply curled up and held the other woman in her arms. Before long, she closed her eyes to the sound of Yun Chuxiu’s steady breathing.

A night of peaceful sleep.

Then, the next morning, she was ushered out the door, bowl and all.

“First of all, you haven’t even stepped out of this door yet. Second, that’s your breakfast,” Yun Chuxiu sternly corrected her pitiful choice of words, feeling slightly exasperated. “If you don’t head over now, you’re really going to be late.”

“…Can I come back today then?” Ji Jin wedged herself against the doorframe, blatantly angling for benefits. “I haven’t slept this soundly in a long time. I even dreamed about you.”

Yun Chuxiu: “Thanks… but I don’t really want to know what specifically you dreamed about to make you nuzzle against my arm like that.”

It was as if she had changed species.

Yun Chuxiu sighed, having grown accustomed to her occasionally clingy nature. She gave her a firm shove out the door. “I have a planned trip today and likely won’t be back to sleep. If you insist on staying here, it makes no difference to me.”

Ji Jin: “…”

Ji Jin looked at her with a resentful expression: “So, while we were sleeping in the same bed… A-Xiu was actually thinking about how to leave me?”

Yun Chuxiu: “.”

Yun Chuxiu looked away and walked outside, demonstrating her resolve not to participate in the “performance” through action.

“A-Xiu.”

After she turned her back, Ji Jin’s demeanor suddenly turned serious. She followed up with a soft, lingering question: “Is it really just because of your plan?”

Yun Chuxiu paused and glanced back at her. Sensing the faint, hidden insecurity in those words, she remained silent for a moment, ultimately deciding not to let the question dissipate into the wind.

“Yes,” she replied. “It’s just the plan.”

She had no intention of avoiding anyone.

…At least, not for now.

Having said her piece, Yun Chuxiu continued toward her destination. That clingy gaze followed her back for a long time, even without turning around, she could guess the shifting expressions on the other woman’s face.

Ultimately, this was her own failing. She had momentarily forgotten that this blunt knife hovering over their relationship never aimed its edge at her alone.

Yun Chuxiu leaned against the steering wheel, looking up at the overly bright scenery outside the window. Today’s sunlight felt particularly piercing.

It was scorching, brilliant, and possessed an indescribable stubbornness.

She pressed her dry lips together, her mind wandering back to those eyes staring intently at her. Subconsciously, she reached for her phone to check something, only to set it back down when she saw the empty screen.

Because of this, she missed yet another instance of someone’s “feigned compliance.”

After waiting patiently for Yun Chuxiu to drive away, Ji Jin sneakily skipped the work shift she had promised not to be late for. With a clear goal in mind, she sped off in the opposite direction.

From time to time, she kept an eye on her messages, constantly rehearsing her words in her head, terrified that Yun Chuxiu might see her location and call to question her.

Ji Jin knew for a fact she couldn’t lie to her face, yet she was unwilling to turn off her location sharing.

She could only pray that Yun Chuxiu wouldn’t find out too soon.

After all, if Yun Chuxiu knew where she was going, she would likely be ordered to turn back immediately.

As her destination drew closer, Ji Jin’s lips pulled into a straight, firm line.

Half an hour later.

She calmly knocked on a door that had already begun to feel like a stranger in her memory.

“…Eldest Miss?”

The servant who came to check the door froze. Before a polite smile could even form, the person in front of them had already brushed past like a gust of wind, heading straight into the house with singular purpose.

Madam Ji, who was sitting in the garden drinking tea, was genuinely startled.

“Ji Jin!” Madam Ji frowned, setting her teacup down with a cold clatter, her tone displeased. “Is this how you treat your mother? Where is your upbringing? Have you forgotten everything you were taught?!”

Ji Jin leaned against the table, offering a polite smile. “I’m just in a bit of a hurry, Mother.”

Madam Ji immediately began her lecture: “No matter how much of a hurry you are in, you shouldn’t…”

“Shouldn’t act first and report later?” Ji Jin interrupted her. Her tone remained calm and steady, though her anger was simmering just beneath the surface. “But it seems Mother does the same thing.”

She pierced through the thin veil of pretense. “Yesterday, you brought Gu Yili back to interfere between A-Xiu and me. If it weren’t for A-Xiu’s magnanimity, I probably wouldn’t be able to discuss this with you so calmly right now.”

Madam Ji’s eyes widened slightly, seemingly surprised by this confrontation. Her expression became complex. “You ran all the way here just to confront me over this?”

“Ji Jin, do you know what you are doing?” Her tone deepened, her eyes indifferent, as if scolding a wayward child. “Your behavior only proves that I am right.”

“Does Yun Chuxiu know you’re here? Does she know that for the sake of an outsider, you show absolutely no respect to your own mother?”

Madam Ji found her answer in Ji Jin’s silence.

She instantly relaxed, seizing back the initiative. Her tone became light and airy, like she was tapping the nose of a reckless young deer. “Ji Jin, you aren’t a child anymore. How can you still be so driven by your emotions?”

“Driven by emotions?”

Ji Jin looked at her deeply. The fragmented light in her pupils trembled for a moment before settling into a bottomless silence.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been calmer than I am right now.”

“I cannot leave her,” Ji Jin declared with finality before Madam Ji could speak. “I am here today to notify you: in a few days, I will be proposing to her.”

“I hope that when that time comes, you won’t do anything ‘driven by emotions’ either.”

“…Proposing?”

As if she had heard something utterly bizarre, Madam Ji slowly narrowed her eyes, finally looking at her daughter with genuine focus.

After a long silence, she let out a cold laugh. “How much time has passed, and you’ve already become this puppet-like creature… Ji Jin, you truly disappoint me to the core.”

Disappointment again.

Ji Jin calmly ignored the dull ache in her heart and lifted her chin slightly. “Then be disappointed,” she said, letting out a very soft laugh, feigning indifference. “Anyway, I can’t live my life for your ideas forever.”

“Are you accusing me?” Madam Ji laughed out of sheer anger. “As a daughter of the Ji family, you…”

“Which Ji family?”

Ji Jin interrupted her once more, looking down, feeling a wave of exhaustion. “The Yucheng Ji family, or the Haicheng Ji family? You and Father always love to compete for dominance, but what about this time?”

“The things I’m doing… do you see a reflection of yourself in them? Or do you find it so repulsive that you absolutely must cut me off and push me away?”

Madam Ji suddenly fell silent. Those cold, mocking eyes clearly reflected the person in front of her for the first time, not as a subordinate daughter, nor as ‘President Ji’ laden with expectations.

Just Ji Jin.

Only Ji Jin.

“My opposition has become useless,” Madam Ji said, suddenly calming down. She stared at Ji Jin’s exceptionally serious expression for a long time, as if looking through this shadow to another time, placing her gaze upon another person entirely.

Heh.

In that case…

“Then let’s make a bet,” Madam Ji’s lips curled. A corner of something hidden deep in her heart, something intense yet broken, revealed itself.

“I won’t interfere with your plan. I can even help you deal with the obstacles from your father,” she said. “But the prerequisite is that Yun Chuxiu must accept your proposal.”

“If she refuses you…”

“That’s not a possibility,” Ji Jin resisted strongly at first, then remembered the current situation and softened her tone. “…Continue.”

“I hope you can maintain that confidence later.”

Madam Ji maintained her smile as if she had already foreseen the ending. Her tone turned sharp and decisive. “If she refuses you.”

“Then you must accept our arrangements and continue with the blind dates we have selected for you.”