After Mistakenly Marking My Ex’s Older Sister, the Disabled Alpha Stood Up - Chapter 40

*“I wish you were still in my room—love me one more time before I leave.

Perhaps it’s because love is too precious, that it makes you unwilling to let me go.

That whispered ‘I love you’ I overheard—

without dialogue, without response,

in this empty room,

for whom did your tears fall?”*

—[1]

Yen Qingruo had vanished.

Jin Yunxi searched every corner of the Atlans airport, yet found no trace of her. For the first time, she used her authority as Secretary-General to check the records—yet not a single “Miss Yan” had departed the country.

Could it be that the international travel permit was only a smokescreen? Was Yan Qingruo still in China?

Jin Yunxi scoured every possible place she might appear, nearly turning the entire city upside down.

Even after the Yalan Television Station received her resignation, they could not reach her. Lu Ge knew nothing either.

It was as if Yan Qingruo had evaporated into thin air.

As dusk fell and the city lights flickered on, Jin Yunxi dragged her weary body back home.

Her eyes burned with dryness. Without Yen Qingruo, could the Jin residence still be called a home?

Dim light cast a haze over every corner of the house.

She climbed the staircase slowly. Though her legs had long recovered from her disability, light and strong as the wind, every step now felt weighed down with lead.

When she pushed open the bedroom door, Yan Qingruo’s scent still lingered faintly in the air. Yet the empty room swallowed her whole—darkness and silence merging into suffocating emptiness.

Her gaze fell on the bed where they had woken countless times in each other’s arms. The sheets were perfectly smooth, untouched, as though Yan Qingruo had never lain beside her, never tangled with her in passion.

Jin Yunxi pressed her lips together. Her glasses misted over. Hastily she removed them, walking to the bed, sitting down. Her fingertips brushed lightly over the sheets, desperate to find a trace of warmth—only coldness answered.

Closing her eyes, she could still hear the woman’s soft gasps, her intoxicating moans, the fevered sounds of that night’s entanglement echoing in her ears.

She saw it again—Qingruo’s hair sliding against her cheek, warm breath spilling at her ear, the two of them clinging in every possible way, as if fusing into bone and blood.

Those fervent kisses, tender caresses, collisions that seared into the bloodstream—the unforgettable touch of skin against skin. Now, every memory cut like a knife.

Her departure felt so real—like waking from a dream.

Yunxi had rehearsed countless times what might happen if Qingruo regained her memory. If she cursed her, Yunxi would explain earnestly. If she panicked, Yunxi would kneel and confess her heart. If she struck her, Yunxi would endure it in silence.

She had considered every outcome—except this: Qingruo leaving her without looking back.

The closet stood half-open. The few clothes Yen Qingruo kept here were gone, leaving only empty hangers.

At the vanity, her cosmetics remained untouched. Yunxi walked to the window, pulled open the curtains. The city glittered brilliantly outside, but to her it was unbearably harsh.

In her hand was a single slip of paper, covered in cold, careless scrawl.

Don’t come looking for me again.

Her fingers traced each stroke as if caressing Qingruo’s gentle face. Suddenly, a tear fell onto the page.

Startled, she hurriedly dabbed at it with trembling hands, terrified that the only thing Qingruo had left behind might blur into nothing.

________________________________________

All of Yacheng knew: the day Secretary-General Jin was miraculously cured of her disability, she stood tall again—but her once sharp aura seemed wrapped in an inexplicable bleakness.

She resumed her dosage of psychiatric medication, for insomnia plagued her nightly.

Yaqi, unable to bear her sister’s decline, searched abroad with Liu Yuan for any trace of Yan Qingruo. Every time a possible clue appeared, Yunxi became frantic, clinging to hope like a woman possessed.

She was thinner than ever.

Haunted by self-blame and longing, Yunxi revisited all the places they had gone together. Even the spring restaurant where she, Qingruo, and Shu Xiyue once dined became precious, because Qingruo had set foot there.

Sometimes, she rented the entire restaurant just to sit in their old seat, silent, for an entire afternoon.

She ordered investigation teams to scour for leads, even using her palace connections to cast a net across industries and cities.

“Even if you find her,” Su Yuening once asked, “what then?”

The question pierced deeply. Yunxi fell silent, then whispered: “Nothing, for now. I just want to see her. To stay by her side.”

Even if not like before.

She wanted to pursue Qingruo again, to say sorry—to admit she never should have taken advantage of her amnesia and entered her life that way.

Even if Qingruo had been the one to ask for it.

She had failed to control herself, mistaking amnesiac tenderness for genuine love, drowning again and again in Qingruo’s boundless charm.

She had told herself to resist, to stay strong—yet clung to false hope, forgetting that before the accident, Yan Qingruo had never liked her at all.

________________________________________

Since her confinement, Yunhan had watched her elder sister grow frail and gaunt. With a sigh, she realized: rather than “winning her sister’s heart,” she only wanted her sister happy.

And her sister’s heart—without a doubt—belonged to Yan Qingruo.

Even after Yunhan kidnapped Qingruo, hurting her so badly, Yunxi never sent her to prison. For that, Yunhan felt only gratitude—and her own feelings finally faded away.

Now, all she wanted was to help Yunxi manage the Jin Group.

Thanks to Su Yuening’s arrival as professional manager, with her velvet-gloved but iron-fisted methods, Jin Hua’s influence within the company was gradually marginalized.

Yunhan distrusted Yuening—smiling on the surface, but harboring schemes as deep as the sea.

Though Yunxi refused her request, she wasn’t entirely merciless—she arranged for Yunhan to serve as Yuening’s assistant, keeping her away from the company’s core affairs.

________________________________________

“Ruoruo Flower Shop?”

Yunxi froze before the storefront. A sliver of light pierced her chest. Anything connected to Qingruo could stir her easily—even if, in truth, it had nothing to do with her.

The shop sold not only flowers, but also fruit.

She stepped inside, inhaling the mingled fragrance. “Do you have night-blooming jasmine?” she asked, though her nose told her no.

“Sorry, we don’t,” replied the clerk, whose bright eyes seemed oddly familiar. Yet the mask hid too much.

“Then I’ll take a basket of these.”

Later, she sat alone at her dining table.

Biting into a peach, the sweet fragrance rose to her nose—peach-like, just as Qingruo’s pheromones had been that night amid the intoxicating bloom of night jasmine.

It was as if the distant, elusive scent of her pheromones had returned, vivid and tangible on her tongue, in her hands, at her lips.

She missed her desperately—missed her scent most of all.

It is said that smell and taste linger longest in memory.

Mouthful by mouthful, she savored the peach, each bite unlocking nerve-deep memories of embraces and kisses.

They say that in moments of extreme pain, the memories one most longs to forget return strongest.

And so it was now.

Buried beneath grey dust, one truth rose again: Qingruo had not only left behind a note—she had rejected her outright, blocked her number, deleted her on WeChat.

Still, Yunxi continued to send messages, pouring her heart into the void as if into a hollow tree. Even if Qingruo never saw them—if she did, would she laugh at her? Call her a shameless fool who refused to let go?

________________________________________

Back to the day of Qingruo’s departure—after countless calls went unanswered, dozens of messages ignored, Yunxi grew desperate:

“Yan Qingruo, if you’re ignoring me on purpose, I’ll search the ends of the earth to find you!”

On the Rhine’s icy banks, her own words haunted her again:

“Yan Qingruo, I have too many questions. If you don’t answer me today, I will—”

She would die of grief.

Qingruo, hearing her childish threats, had answered coldly:

“So what if you care? So what if you don’t? Secretary-General Jin—does it matter anymore?”

After sending that final reply, she removed her SIM card, staring out the airplane window expressionless for a long time.

When she finally turned back, Shu Xiyue noticed her eyes looked different, and asked quietly:

“You still can’t let her go, can you?”

She hadn’t named anyone—but who else could it be, if not Jin Yunxi?

“No,” Qingruo said with a faint smile. “How could I possibly… not let go of an enemy?”

An enemy who had never chosen her.

Yunxi’s love had always been for her younger sister, Yen Qingmei—her true white moonlight.

And more than that—Qingruo’s mother’s family had been destroyed by Jin Yunxi’s ruthless ambition. Her mother had been forced to marry Yan Zhen to save the family business. Their once-whole family shattered: her grandfather dead in anger, her grandmother sick with grief, her father driven to suicide, her mother broken inside and out.

If not for Jin Yunxi, she would never have been dragged into the Yan family, forced into the role of their false, humiliated “eldest daughter,” enduring years of scorn.

Her mother had revealed the truth to her one day. By then, Qingruo had already met Yunxi.

Her mother said their family could have stayed happy together forever—if not for Jin Yunxi’s desperate power grabs, her reckless acquisitions, including her family’s company.

At first Qingruo couldn’t believe someone so young could have done it. But faced with the evidence her mother presented, she had no words.

Her amnesiac days with Yunxi—every touch, every tender moment—had been nothing more than a wild, chaotic dream.

Qingruo laughed at herself.

On her lap lay a scarf still warm with her scent. She wrapped it lightly around her neck, the fabric brushing her glands—like Yunxi’s earnest gaze, her fevered touch.

Coldly, she pulled it away.

“…Ruoruo…”

After receiving Yan Qingruo’s rejection text, Jin Yunxi drowned herself in alcohol. Lin Ruxi came looking for her, but she lay in bed the entire day.

Even though Yan Qingruo had already made her stance painfully clear, Jin Yunxi’s body still remembered her. Every night, in her dreams, they were still bound together as they once had been.

Yan Qingruo would call her Ah Yun, would tease her, would look at her with eyes brimming with affection.

It felt to Jin Yunxi as if, when Yan Qingruo left, she had carried away a piece of her very soul.

On the private jet bound for Country A sat Song Mei, Shu Xiyue, the pilots in the front cabin—

And Yan Qingruo, silent and alone in the corner.

Shu Xiyue couldn’t understand. Their plan was about to succeed; they were one step away from victory. So why was Yan Qingruo in such a hurry to leave?

What truly broke Yan Qingruo free from amnesia and the hypnotic suggestion that she “deeply loved Jin Yunxi” was not the special antidote, but Jin Yunxi’s own confession, which Shu Xiyue had carefully set up.

Now, with her memories restored, Yan Qingruo looked wan and weary. Her crimson lips moved faintly as she rubbed her temples.

“I’m just tired,” she murmured.

In the back of the plane, Song Mei was hysterical. Shu Xiyue could only smile bitterly.

“Auntie thought your relationship with Jin Yunxi was nothing but a façade—that everything was to capture the Jin Corporation, to tame her. That’s why she agreed to come back to the country with you, not knowing the truth.”

The greater the hope, the deeper the disappointment.

Shu Xiyue didn’t know what Yan Qingruo was thinking. But she noticed the pale gray scarf resting on her lap—an uncommon style, not something Qingruo usually wore.

Yan Qingruo tugged it closer, a little awkwardly.

“The air on the plane is chilly.”

She toyed absently with the fringe, propped her chin on her hand, and gazed out the window. Behind her, Song Mei’s mental state was unraveling again, cursing and ranting, lamenting past misfortunes—all of which, in her eyes, stemmed from Jin Yunxi.

Shu Xiyue studied the pocket watch in her hand for a long while, then sighed.

“Qingruo, haven’t we already succeeded?”

Before boarding, her sources had told her that Secretary Jin was frantically searching for someone. No one knew who. Judging by the commotion, one would think she was after a foreign spy.

What Shu Xiyue couldn’t understand was this: Yan Qingruo had successfully captured Jin Yunxi’s heart. Why not strike while the iron was hot?

“Don’t tell me… you’ve actually fallen for her?”

Her hypnosis skills were superb. She had always assumed that under suggestion, Yan Qingruo had only mistakenly believed herself in love with Jin Yunxi.

After all, a year of nominal marriage hadn’t won Jin Yunxi over. Only in the final month had they dared such a gamble.

And the best way to pull someone into a role… is to forget everything yourself and believe.

Yan Qingruo hadn’t fully immersed herself, so Shu Xiyue had hypnotized her into becoming the character.

Originally, she had planned to orchestrate a staged “car accident” to help Yan Qingruo lose her memory. By a twist of fate, Qingruo had actually been attacked outside a supermarket, saving Shu Xiyue the trouble.

When reports of the two women’s deep, wifely affection began circulating in the media, Shu Xiyue, abroad, grew worried Qingruo might be at a disadvantage. She deliberately posted online to lure Qingruo into contacting her.

Once back in the country, she felt reassured: nothing substantive had happened between the two yet, and everything was still following the script.

But now… what was Yan Qingruo doing?

Since she already had Jin Yunxi wholly devoted to her, why not use that position to penetrate the Jin Corporation? As her partner, she would have countless opportunities to exploit its weaknesses.

—

In Country A, Shu Xiyue settled the mother and daughter into a house on Huisheng Street.

Song Mei had recovered her clarity and grew even angrier. She had only agreed to return from abroad because Shu Xiyue had privately assured her that everything was part of Yan Qingruo’s grand plan.

Now that success was within their grasp, Yan Qingruo dropped everything, claiming she was “too tired” and needed to recuperate.

Her daughter had always been quiet and withdrawn, and she was no different now.

Unwilling to give up, Song Mei knocked on her door.

Receiving only the answer that her daughter refused to use such methods, she flew into a rage.

“Didn’t Jin Yunxi use underhanded tricks when she forcefully acquired your grandfather’s company?”

Yan Qingruo said nothing, only mentioned that she and Shu Xiyue had already set up a technology company in advance.

“Mom, I refuse to use such tactics. If I truly want revenge, I’ll take back what my grandparents lost fair and square.”

When Song Mei left, Yan Qingruo felt all strength drain from her. She turned on her phone. She had already blocked Jin Yunxi’s calls, but had forgotten to block her texts.

Jin Yunxi seemed to think she couldn’t see them—yet she still sent one every single day.

In the dim light, Yan Qingruo’s frosty profile was faintly outlined. She gripped her phone tightly, lips pressed together, and scrolled back to her last reply to Jin Yunxi.

Every word was like the slash of an ice blade, sharp and merciless.

[President Jin, we were never true partners. The ink on the divorce papers you signed hasn’t even dried. What is it? Just because we slept together a few times, you think I’d fall for you?]

[President Jin, don’t forget our agreement. You’re not young anymore—you’re the Secretary-General, for heaven’s sake. Stop being childish. If you keep clinging like this, what will the people of Atlans think?]

Her expression remained cold, utterly unshaken. Those heartless words had been typed by her own hand, each stroke cutting off any retreat. Once received, Jin Yunxi would surely believe her ruthless.

And yet—her nape still throbbed. The gland Jin Yunxi had marked not long ago stirred restlessly, defying her will, aching for that Alpha’s kiss and touch.

The mark burned like a brand, flooding her body with heat. Yan Qingruo bit down hard on her lip, struggling to suppress the hunger that had once been sated.

Her body trembled faintly in her own embrace, primal instinct clamoring for release, demanding satisfaction.

Her eyes fell helplessly on the scarf at her side—Jin Yunxi’s scarf, faintly scented with cedar.

Her breath quickened. After a moment’s hesitation, she lifted it, running her fingers along its weave, then raised it to her nose. The familiar fragrance enveloped her. She buried her face in it, her body curling, squirming with aching need.

Her long fingers trembled as they untied her skirt, slipping slowly into the heat pooling between her thighs.

Wet, slippery sounds filled the air—yet it was never enough. In her mind flashed the image of Jin Yunxi’s body over hers: the Alpha’s smoldering eyes, sweat dripping down a sharp jaw, taut abdominal lines pressing into her, and the final, shuddering crest they had reached together.

“Ah Yun… Ah Yun…” she whispered, breathless, her voice tinged with moans that echoed through the room.

When it was over, Yan Qingruo’s face was flushed, her hair damp with sweat and clinging to her cheeks. Her lips parted, drawing shallow breaths, eyes clouded with both fleeting satisfaction and shame.

She couldn’t believe she had sunk so low. Anger and humiliation rose—this insatiable craving, born of the mark, disgusted her. Hastily, she adjusted her clothes and switched on her phone.

At once, a flood of messages from Jin Yunxi poured in—the latest sent just moments ago.

The words were jumbled, chaotic, clearly from a drunken hand. Yet even through the screen, the intoxicated breath of longing and love seemed to spill out.

Her usual composure had crumbled completely, leaving only raw, maddening affection.

[Yan Qingruo, I miss you so much. I miss your soft lips, I want to kiss you right now. I miss your snowy breasts, your wild little garden, your tender depths… This is the first time I’ve said such things to you—you must think me shameless.

But the words you once whispered to me were far bolder, far more reckless. Wife, you can’t set fires and forbid me a spark. You always wanted me to call you ‘wife’—is it too late now? If I call you so again, will you answer me, acknowledge me? Where are you?]

[There was a moment when I selfishly regretted not fully marking you. That way, you could never accept anyone else but me. I’m ashamed of how much I crave your body, but most of all, I crave your heart. Hate me if you want, despise me if you must—I’ll still think of you. I think of you so much I end up pleasuring myself to the thought of you. I hate myself for it. Do you ever… do the same? I know you don’t. If you read this, will you hate me even more? Then hate me all you want—I’ll take your hatred, as long as you never forget me.]

Each unrestrained line burned hotter than the last. Yan Qingruo’s face grew fevered as her fingers slipped, nearly dropping the phone. The drunken words seemed to scorch right through the glass.

When had Jin Yunxi learned to speak so shamelessly?

And to think—she had just finished touching herself, only to receive such a message at that exact moment.

Did that mean she and Jin Yunxi had been… doing the same thing… at the same time?

Yan Qingruo’s eyes brimmed with both fury and embarrassment. Her teeth sank into her lip as Jin Yunxi’s drunken question echoed endlessly in her ears—“Do you ever… think of me while touching yourself?”

Panicked, she quickly blocked Jin Yunxi’s messages, pressing anything she could grab over her burning face.

That hateful woman.

Absolutely mortifying.

She completely forgot who it was that had been moaning “Ah Yun, Ah Yun” just minutes earlier.

Then she realized, with horror, that what she’d used to cover her face was none other than Jin Yunxi’s scarf—the one she had inexplicably taken with her when leaving Atlantis.

Every fiber still carried Jin Yunxi’s cedar scent. Flustered, she flung it aside and replaced it with a pillow.

Yet before bed, after much hesitation, she picked the scarf back up and set it on her nightstand.

In the dead of night, restless in her sleep, her pale arm reached out unconsciously, pulling the scarf to her chest. She wound it tightly around herself, clinging as though to an embrace, curling into the familiar scent that had already seeped into her blood.

Her lips parted in dreamlike murmurs, soft and plaintive:

“Ah Yun… closer… mmh, closer still…”

—

The next day, Jin Yunxi awoke with a pounding hangover. She stared at the flood of feverish confessions she had texted Yan Qingruo, massaging her temples. Calling again only brought up the blocked notice, and she exhaled in relief—Yan Qingruo hadn’t seen them.

But then tension gripped her chest. If she hadn’t seen them, that was worse.

At the intelligence bureau, agents sat around the long table, barely daring to breathe.

“So—how do we trace this number’s location?” Jin Yunxi asked, her hand clenched so tightly around her phone that the veins stood out, her usual composure cracked by rare agitation.

The chief intelligence officer and a hacker they had brought in gave their report.

“Secretary-General, as long as the other party actively sends you a message—or even replies once to yours—we can lock onto the signal and locate them.”

Before he could finish, Jin Yunxi shot to her feet.

“Good. Very good.”

Her gaze fell to the phone screen, brows knitted. How could she coax Yan Qingruo into contacting her, even just once?

No matter the ends of the earth, no matter what nets she must cast—she would find her. Yan Qingruo would never escape again.