After Transmigrating to Become Lady Skylark - Chapter 15

Chapter 15

“Wuwu, I’ve never been so badly hurt in my life…”

Sitting under the eaves of her courtyard, Jin Chaoyan cried sadly into the phone. The thought of her three properties, which were unexpectedly lost and couldn’t be compensated for, filled her with overwhelming grief.

On the other end of the line, Chinatsu was comforting her with exceptional gentleness and patience. But after listening to her cry for nearly half an hour, he was so worried that he bought a train ticket to Namimori while urging her to drink some water. He warned that if she kept crying, her eyes might not go down by morning.

Jin Chaoyan was swayed by the latter part of the advice. She took her phone to the bathroom and saw that not only was her makeup a mess, but the delicate skin around her eyes was red and swollen like ripe fruit on a branch.

She forced herself to hold back, stifling her tears. But the after-effects of crying for so long began to kick in, and she couldn’t stop hiccuping.

As she came out of the bathroom to get a drink of water, she heard a polite knock on her door.

“Excuse me, Madam. There is something I need to inform you of.”

It was Tetsuya Kusakabe’s voice.

Chaoyan didn’t want anyone to see her in her current state, so she asked him what it was through the door. Kusakabe said that someone was interested in the properties that were attacked in Tokyo and wanted to take the opportunity to buy them from the owners at market price and then rebuild them.

The room door was instantly pulled open, leaving a small gap. The person inside didn’t show her face, but a voice, thick with a nasal sniffle, came out clearly, “R-really?”

Tetsuya Kusakabe quickly replied, “Yes, Madam. They’ve already had someone draft the contract and send it over. I’ve reviewed it for you. If you have no objections, you can sign it now.”

He handed the documents through the small opening in the door.

Chaoyan looked at the two copies of the contract and felt that the paper was still slightly warm. She flipped through the contents, her sadness disappearing completely. She borrowed a pen from Kusakabe and started signing, not forgetting to ask through the door,

“W-which idiot wants to buy my houses?”

She spoke in halting bursts because she was trying to hold back her hiccups.

Tetsuya Kusakabe outside the door: “…”

But Chaoyan took his silence as a sign that the buyer’s information couldn’t be revealed. She quickly handed the documents back, adding, “Can you get me the buyer’s contact information? The next time I have this kind of bad luck… good fortune, I’ll find them again.”

“…” Tetsuya Kusakabe was stunned and replied dryly, “I’ll try?”

Jin Chaoyan’s mood went from cloudy to sunny. She glanced at the jewel rings still on her fingers, and before Tetsuya Kusakabe could leave, she stopped him and took off the seven-attribute rings one by one. “I forgot to give these back to him just now. Please take them with you.”

The seven jewel rings and several documents were placed on the small office table in Kyoya Hibari’s study.

The man glanced at the pile of rings, none missing. A thought flashed through his narrow phoenix eyes. He didn’t ask why Jin Chaoyan hadn’t kept one. Instead, he simply pulled out the documents, flipped to the final signature page, and signed under the “Buyer” section. At the end, he suddenly asked,

“Is she still crying?”

Tetsuya Kusakabe was taken aback. He remembered the sobbing he could hear through the door when he went over earlier. His expression became hard to describe. Although he didn’t explicitly answer, Kyoya Hibari understood his look.

He raised his hand to check the time on his phone and let out a slightly sighing “Wow.”

“…”

Kusakabe Tetsuya thought his boss’s exclamation sounded just like those oblivious guys online who would reply “Awesome” when their girlfriend had a 40-degree fever.

For a moment, he suddenly felt that this couple, one who saw the other as an easy mark to rip off and one who made the other cry without a thought of comforting them, were a perfect match in a twisted way.

Meanwhile, the other protagonist of this anti-romance textbook, having cleared the gloom from her heart, was sharing the good news with Chinatsu. It wasn’t until he confirmed her mood had improved that the all-purpose butler hesitated to speak.

“Madam, there’s something I have to tell you…”

“Hold on, your tone doesn’t sound like good news.” Chaoyan quickly covered her chest, walked to the window, and took a deep breath. Just as she was preparing herself mentally, she saw a little yellow bird fly into the courtyard.

The bird landed on the windowsill and used its beak to preen its slightly messy feathers, not forgetting to call to her happily, “Chaoyan~ Chaoyan~”

“Hibird!”

During their hot spring trip, because she had to attend a family dinner, Chaoyan had asked Chinatsu to bring it back to Kyoya’s place in Tokyo ahead of time. As for her, who had an invitation from Kazuko to go shopping for a suitable outfit, she returned to her own apartment on the night the family dinner ended.

It was probably because so much had happened today. Even though it had only been a short time since they last met, she missed this cute little bird dearly. “Did you find this place yourself? You’re amazing!”

As someone who could get lost in this mansion, Chaoyan genuinely admired the little bird who could find its way from Tokyo to here. She gently used her fingertips to preen its feathers, and they cuddled for a long time before she remembered she hadn’t hung up the phone.

“Oh yeah, Chinatsu, I’m ready. Tell me the bad news now. I can handle it.”

The all-purpose butler let out a sigh of relief. “It’s about Hibird. It went out yesterday and didn’t come back at night. At first, I thought it was just playing, but it never came back, so this morning, I started worrying if something had happened to it—”

“Anyway, it’s great that it’s with the madam safely.”

Jin Chaoyan, who had almost had a scare herself, hummed twice, leaned in to kiss the fluffy little bird, and also sighed, “Thank goodness, wuwuwu, I thought I was going to lose money again. Hibird, you’re my lucky little bird that brings good fortune! Mommy loves you!”

After hanging up the phone, Jin Chaoyan carried Hibird around the room, asking about its well-being and trying to find it some food and water. But she belatedly realized that this place didn’t have the luxurious setups she had bought in Tokyo.

She decided to make it up to her precious baby immediately!

An hour later.

Jin Chaoyan, who had customized a “Hibari Mansion Navigation” service on the app, finally found her way through the maze and located some food and water for Hibird. Once she was back in the room, she started looking for nearby pet stores to order a luxurious villa, a fancy water and food bowl, and toys for her baby.

And then she tasted the bitter fruit of shopping in a hurry.

—The wooden villa that was supposed to be fixable to a tree needed to be assembled by hand?

The sunlight gradually slanted in the courtyard. As the sunset dyed the sky, the air in the courtyard still held the heat from the blazing sun.

The light-haired woman had her hair tied up casually. The sleeves of her expensive white dress were rolled up, and there were wrinkles on the skirt, but she didn’t care. She just sat under the eaves, looking at the blueprint with a pained expression, wondering, How did this extra piece of wood get here?

And as if an extra piece of wood wasn’t enough, why was there a whole extra bag of screws?

Hibird, who was pushing a ball with its beak on the wooden floor, stopped. It tilted its head, thought for a moment, and flew to the fruit bowl nearby, pushing a small apricot towards Chao-yan’s hand.

“Chaoyan~ Eat~”

“Okay, my darling!”

Chaoyan instantly dropped the frustrating handiwork. She washed her hands and happily ate the apricot. It wasn’t until the sky turned a deep blue that she got up to continue her battle with the wooden house.

She took the house apart and, following the blueprint, slowed down her steps for reassembly.

Seven in the evening.

The woman looked at the “luxurious, unstable structure” for the umpteenth time, with more and more boards coming off with each attempt at reassembly. She and Hibird fell into a shared silence.

“Forget it—”

She smiled at the little bird next to her. “It’s actually very dangerous to live up high, Hibird. How about you pick a tree you like, and we’ll just put this house at the bottom? You’ll save yourself the effort of flying. What do you think?”

“Jin Chaoyan~ Jin Chaoyan~” The carefree Hibird was very supportive of all her suggestions.

The moon and stars were bright. The night sky was clear for a thousand miles.

Kyoya Hibari went out in the evening and was returning when he ran into Tetsuya Kusakabe, who was about to go out. The moment he saw him, Kusakabe habitually began to report on the situation, saying that Jin Chaoyan’s personal butler had arrived, and he was just about to book him a hotel room nearby.

“Given her level of self-sufficiency,” the man said with a disinterested yawn, “she’ll cause trouble if she’s left unsupervised for a minute.”

Tetsuya Kusakabe was startled. “You mean, Chinatsu can stay near the madam?”

“Kyoya Hibari~ Kyoya Hibari~” At this moment, a few cheerful calls came from the courtyard.

The man in the suit lowered his hand and looked in the direction of the voice. A gentle light appeared in his phoenix eyes under his messy bangs, and he walked into the courtyard.

He finally stopped under a thick-trunked podocarpus tree whose branches had been trimmed to give it a commanding presence. He saw Hibird come out of a wobbly wooden house, with a pearl necklace around its neck that looked particularly brilliant in contrast to the precarious villa.

He half-crouched down, extending his right hand to Hibird. When the little bird, with its pearl necklace, hopped onto his fingertips and tilted its head to show him its new necklace, the smile in his eyes widened. He said, “Nice necklace, but who’s the artist behind this ugly house?”

“Chaoyan~”

Hibird answered every question, not knowing it had just sold out its mistress’s craftsmanship.

As expected, the man seemed amused by the answer and was in a better mood. The moonlight fell on him, coating his suit with a cool silver sheen, but his profile, against this cool backdrop, showed an unprecedented softness.

Chaoyan once again experienced the wake-up call of a happy little bird.

But after she washed up and changed, she was about to greet Hibird before heading out to learn how to drive. She walked around the courtyard but couldn’t find a trace of it.

In the end, the woman, who was still applying sunscreen, had to rely on her app to find Hibird’s whereabouts. She stood in the corridor, staring from a distance at the house that had been placed securely on the landscape podocarpus tree. She squinted. “Hibird, get over here.”

How did my unstable house get up on the tree?!

“Madam, good morning.”

A hurried Kusakabe passed by and greeted her. Jin Chaoyan stopped him. “Tetsuya Kusakabe, are there any ladders around here?”

“May I ask what you need it for…?” Although Kyoya was already waiting outside, Tetsuya Kusakabe stopped to help when he heard Chao-yan’s question.

“Hibird’s house isn’t built properly, and it’s too dangerous to be up there. I’m going to take it down.”

As Chaoyan said this, she suddenly saw Kyoya’s right-hand man smile. “Madam, please don’t worry. The little house has been repaired and is now very safe.”

“Oh, thank you.” She breathed a sigh of relief and instinctively thanked the most diligent person under this roof.

But Tetsuya Kusakabe waved his hands repeatedly. “It’s not my work. It was Mr. Kyoya who did it.”

Jin Chaoyan: “…?”

She slowly stopped applying sunscreen. She squinted at the house on the tree, thinking of how he had seen the unstable structure she had spent hours trying to build the night before. She was silent for a moment, her competitive spirit rising, and she looked for an excuse to be picky.

“He didn’t even look at the blueprint. Are you sure he did it right?”

“You can go up and check—”

At that moment, a cool voice came from outside the courtyard. Jin Chaoyan turned to look and saw the man who had returned at some point. He was in a suit, tall and upright, leaning in the shadow of the doorway, the light in his gray-blue eyes brighter than the dawn.

“Given our relationship, it’s not illegal for you to go up and touch it.”

Kyoya Hibari said this with a half-smile, not forgetting to tell Tetsuya Kusakabe,, get her a ladder.”

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