After Failing To Tame The Scumbag - Chapter 35

“She is not wrong.”

“Miss Yun,” a strange, raspy voice drifted from behind her.

Yun Chuxiu’s right eye twitched. Before she could even turn her head, the person had already pushed their luck and leaned in close to her ear.

“I thought I wouldn’t be able to get a big scoop,” the person said, their voice intentionally lowered. “I didn’t expect to run into you here again. Isn’t this kind of chance encounter an opportunity given to me by heaven? Even Ji Jin… surely she couldn’t find any fault with this, right?”

“You have the nerve to corner me, so why not be a little bolder?”

Yun Chuxiu lowered her eyes, a faint curve appearing at the corners of her mouth as if she were smiling. “I never said I wouldn’t let you ask.”

“Don’t be nervous, Miss Yun. I don’t want to ask anything,” the reporter from Sunshine Entertainment let out a forced laugh, trying to maintain her composure after being exposed. She paused, attempting to regain control of the conversation. “Since fate has brought us together here, why don’t we have a dance? What do you say?”

“Using a dance to dissolve the tension between us so that Miss Yun can enjoy the rest of her night, there’s no better deal than that, is there?”

“So, you’re threatening me,” Yun Chuxiu said in a flat tone. She pressed one hand against the hat obscuring her face, her smile deepening.

“If that’s how Miss Yun wants to see it, then… Huh?!”

Yun Chuxiu suddenly yanked off her hat and leaned sideways against the sofa. Her eyes, adorned with faint purple shimmers at the corners, flicked upward, her gaze slowly traveling from the bottom up to land on the reporter.

The Sunshine Entertainment reporter froze. Even though she was the one standing, she felt like an ant in that instant. Her eyes trembled, and she instinctively pulled her own hat down to hide her face.

“Miss Reporter,” Yun Chuxiu’s habitually cold tone rose slightly. “Weren’t you planning to secretly film a video to make a small fortune? Why have you stopped?”

Her gaze darkened, and she calmly finished her thought. “As for which one of us is the one who truly dares not show their face… it seems you already have the answer in your heart.”

“How was it?” Chu Cheng, completely unaware of what had happened, strolled over holding a glass of wine. Her hair was messy and her makeup was a bit smudged. She asked curiously, “Why aren’t you wearing your hat anymore?”

“It’s a bit hot,” Yun Chuxiu replied vaguely. She leaned back with one side of her coat open, picked up the mask that had been neglected on the table for a long time, and said with a light laugh, “But, it was quite a nice experience.”

“That’s great then,” Chu Cheng patted her chest, looking relieved and happy.

To this, Yun Chuxiu took a shallow sip of her sweet fruit juice, smiling without a word.

An hour later, the two returned to the hotel. Separated by a single wall, Chu Cheng showered and fell into a tired sleep, but Yun Chuxiu looked at herself in the mirror over and over. Holding the mask with the bar’s logo, she found the most exquisite angle and took a photo.

As if determined to cut something away, her back was half-exposed, and her eyes were half-hidden behind black gauze, yet her gaze was like pale moonlight breaking through the night, not forceful, yet impossible to ignore.

The moment she posted it, her phone felt like it had entered vibration mode. Messages crashed in one after another, ringing incessantly.

The corners of Yun Chuxiu’s mouth curled. She put the phone on silent and ignored everyone’s messages.

She stretched her arms against the light. After doing all this, she actually felt refreshed and slept soundly until morning, only to be woken up by Chu Cheng pounding on her door.

“Oh my god, oh my god!” Chu Cheng was still in her pajamas, her collar unbuttoned and open, buzzing around her like a bee, her face full of wonder. “Oh my god, what have you done!”

“Alright…” Yun Chuxiu’s consciousness was still a bit blurred. She reached for her phone to check the time, only to be greeted by a screen full of missed calls.

They were from business partners she vaguely recognized, people who usually only sent greetings during holidays. They were certainly not close enough to call her repeatedly like this.

As for who was behind those numbers, it was painfully obvious.

9:00 AM.

Yun Chuxiu ordered hotel breakfast to be sent up and sat on the sofa to handle some important messages. Chu Cheng sensibly fell silent, sat nearby for a while, then picked out some food she liked and quietly slipped back to her room.

As soon as the door closed, Yun Chuxiu immediately switched screens, calmly waiting for the press conference to start.

Ten minutes later, the live stream began on time.

A ring of security guards stood around the perimeter to maintain order. Only after the scene was settled did the true protagonist walk out. Her face was pale, and she looked haggard, appearing as though she hadn’t slept all night.

Several entertainment reporters craned their necks. Before Ji Jin could even speak, flashes of light went off one after another.

She seemed to have changed.

Looking at Ji Jin through a screen, Yun Chuxiu felt as if a lifetime had passed.

Not long ago, they were lying in bed fantasizing about how to spend their anniversary. Now, one was frostily explaining their “peaceful breakup” to the public, while the other was silently allowing herself to end this beautiful illusion in a less-than dignified manner.

Ji Jin’s clarification was formulaic and aimed at saving face for both sides. Yun Chuxiu strongly suspected that these weren’t her actual thoughts; they were likely ghostwritten in advance.

Sure enough, the reporters also keenly noticed the discrepancies between her current words and previous statements, and they began to tear her story apart.

“President Ji, didn’t you say the breakup was because of a mistake you made? Why haven’t you mentioned it today?”

“You’ve come forward today to admit it was a peaceful breakup due to a clash of values. What specific values clashed?”

“I heard that before this, you rejected Miss Yun Chuxiu’s proposal. May I speculate that Miss Yun’s rejection of you also stems from this reason?”

The assistant maturely took over the situation, controlling the scene while signaling Ji Jin to stick to the rehearsed script.

Ji Jin fell silent. Her mouth opened and closed, but she couldn’t bring herself to say those words: “It was a spur of the moment emotional decision with no right or wrong. I respect her choice.”

She closed her eyes and finally prepared to speak, when a sudden question pierced through the crowd.

“Do you know that Miss Yun Chuxiu has already accepted an interview with Sunshine Entertainment? After you stood up for her, how do you feel about this?”

“…What?” Ji Jin froze completely, staring intently at the reporter who had asked. Even the assistant’s frantic blinking was useless.

Assistant: “…”

The assistant watched calmly as her CEO looked like her soul had left her body. She crushed the small snack in her pocket with one hand.

Haha, it’s over.

She could barely catch her breath and quickly signaled the live stream managers to act accordingly. She then shoved an unopened bottle of water in front of Ji Jin, emphasizing her words: “Drink some water first to cool down.”

Ji Jin took it, but her gaze didn’t shift. Under the reporter’s look, which seemed to see right through her, her heart pounded heavily.

“What did she say?” Ji Jin had already forgotten where she was. Her mind held nothing but Yun Chuxiu’s cold, distant eyes.

The reporter spoke calmly, her gaze gradually tinged with a faint pity: “She said your breakup wasn’t over a small issue like you avoiding marriage. It’s just that she’s already tired. She also told us not to listen to you taking the blame, you didn’t do anything wrong. Two mismatched gears, when forced together, will only wear each other down.”

“…’Isn’t that how many people break up? We aren’t anything special.’ Those were her exact words.”

The scene fell into a dead silence. The camera flashes continued to capture every micro-expression on Ji Jin’s face. But even without zooming in, one could see that this powerful figure, who had entered with a calm aura, now had her breathing and heartbeat, every obvious sign of being alive, completely shattered.

The live stream screen went dark.

Looking at her own reflection in the phone screen, Yun Chuxiu calmly took a sip of hot water, her downcast eyes dark.

Was she happy? Not really. Was she sad? There was no need to be.

Yun Chuxiu stared quietly at the air beside her. Those emotions flowed through her blood for a cycle and eventually failed to explode, vanishing even more silently than fallen flowers pressed into the soil.

Three minutes later, the phone rang again, insistently.

This time it wasn’t a business partner, but an unfamiliar string of numbers. It stopped and rang, rang and stopped. Yun Chuxiu watched it struggle back and forth three times before she finally reached out unhurriedly.

“A-Xiu,” as soon as the call connected, the sound of heavy breathing from the other side was obvious. One breath after another, like a muffled drum being swallowed. “Why would you say that…”

“Scold me, hit me, blame everything on me… none of that matters. That’s how it should have been.”

“But why did you have to deny everything between us like that? Yun Chuxiu, do you really think we’ve been heading in opposite directions? You said it yourself, the day before my twenty-sixth birthday, you said…”

“You said we would be soulmates, you said we would be together forever…”

“There was no second half to that sentence,” Yun Chuxiu was exceptionally calm, stripping away all unnecessary emotion to state the facts. “I chose to say those things the day before your birthday so that even if it failed, it wouldn’t ruin your actual birthday. I would still have a proper way to back out.”

“But you didn’t even give me the chance to say the second half.”

The moment Ji Jin saw through her thoughts, she had used a clumsy excuse to brush it off, cowardly acting as a deserter for the second time.

“Stop clinging to these things,” Yun Chuxiu opened her eyes fully, her finger hovering over the end call button. She let out a soft sigh. “Forget it all. Don’t beautify it, and don’t let yourself become hideous within your own memories.”

I can’t forget.

Ji Jin sobbed. In these few days, she had cried all the tears she had saved for years. she choked her own throat to stop herself from making a pathetic sound.

“Are you not even going to give me a chance to start over?”

“By saying those things to the reporters, are you taking away even the last possibility of us having a relationship?”

“Yun Chuxiu, how can you be so cruel? You clearly know that without you, I….”

Beep.

The call was disconnected even more cruelly.

Ji Jin gripped the completely black screen tightly. Her legs gave way, and she slid down the wall to the floor, her mouth pulling into a forceful, hollow grin.

Silent and weightless, her mouth was smiling, but her eyes were crying.