Miss Wheelchair - Chapter 25.2

“Gu Ci, you forgot your keys. Auntie Wang asked me to bring them to you.”

“Gu Ci, you forgot your keys. Auntie Wang asked me to bring them to you.”

“Gu Ci, you forgot your keys. Auntie Wang asked me to bring them to you.”

Excellent. Smooth and impeccably logical.

Just as she was about to knock, a strange voice came from behind her:

“Excuse me, ma’am, what are you doing here?”

Tan Xin shuddered. Turning around, she saw a restaurant waiter.

Dressed in a traditional Thai uniform, he wore a textbook, soulless smile, but his eyes were narrowed with a distinct edge of warning.

[Purple +10]

Purple = Contempt.

This guy actually looked down on her?

Tan Xin straightened her spine and explained, “I’m looking for someone.”

The waiter offered a skin-deep smile. “But you were just sitting in the room next door, claiming you were here to eat.”

Tan Xin pushed back, “Yeah, I’m looking for someone to eat with.”

“And who exactly are you looking for?”

“Gu Ci.”

“President Gu? She isn’t someone you can just see whenever you want.”

“I know. I’m her girlfriend.”

The kind that was officially announced on the internet counted, right?

Ding!

[Purple +20]

He actually didn’t believe her!

Tan Xin was forced to pull out her trump card. “How about this: I’ll open the door and greet her, and then you’ll see.”

The waiter remained unmoved. “While guests are dining, we intercept all uninvited guests to prevent any disruptions.”

“An uninvited guest? Me?”

“There’s no one else here, ma’am.”

“No, I really am her girlfriend. I came to bring her keys. If you don’t believe me, I have her phone number.”

“Last week, a paparazzi even managed to recite President Gu’s ID number.”

“You!”

Anxious and irritated, Tan Xin gripped the doorknob and jiggled it several times, but it wouldn’t budge.

The waiter explained:

“Ma’am, during dining hours, this door cannot be opened from the outside by anyone else.”

Deflated, Tan Xin slumped against the door.

“Then how am I supposed to contact her? Besides, this practice of yours is very dangerous. What if she runs into trouble inside? How am I supposed to—whoa!”

She had been leaning against the door arguing righteously, when suddenly, the panel behind her gave way as it opened from the inside. Her entire body collapsed backward.

With a loud thud, she landed squarely on her bottom. Gasping from the pain, she twisted her head around. The copper-yellow glow reflected off the Thai-style murals. And bathed in that golden light, Gu Ci slowly approached in her wheelchair.

Kneeling on the floor, Tan Xin blinked once, then twice, and offered a perfectly obedient:

“Sawatdee ka.”

The ride home was exceptionally quiet. The air inside the car was completely stagnant; if not for the occasional tapping sound from a tablet, one might genuinely mistake it for a hearse.

Tan Xin sat properly in the back seat, her hands clutching her trousers over her knees. Her lips were pressed into a straight line, her eyes darting sideways from time to time. All she could see were slender, elegant fingers illuminated by the glow of the screen.

After a long, long time, the frequency of the screen taps slowed down. Discerning that Gu Ci had wrapped up her business, Tan Xin offered a trembling explanation:

“I told you, I just came to deliver the keys.”

The words lacked any real conviction. Whether she came for the keys or used them as an excuse to spy, she knew better than anyone.

But right now, a [Red 10] was already hovering over Gu Ci’s head. How could she dare confess the truth and say, I just wanted to see what exactly is going on between you and that news director?

Gu Ci swiped through the monthly report on her tablet, flipping page after page without looking up once. She merely spared a fraction of her attention to ask:

“Does delivering keys require sneaking around like a thief?”

Thud!

In her mental world, Tan Xin was pierced right through by a sharp arrow.

“Well, I wanted to walk in openly, but that waiter wouldn’t let me.”

Left with nothing to do, her fingers began to pick at a loose thread on her knit sleeve.

“If you wanted to be open about it, why didn’t you call me?” Gu Ci still didn’t look up, and the red emotional value above her head didn’t decrease by a single point.

“The situation was urgent at the time.”

Finding a tiny hole in the knit fabric, she picked, picked, picked, picked.

“Then why were you crouching at the door?”

“My stomach was upset.”

The hole grew larger. Pick, pick, pick, pick.

“If you had been upfront from the very beginning, would he have stopped you from entering?”

“Yes.”

The thread snapped. She stopped picking.

Gu Ci snapped her tablet case shut and looked up, finally fixing her gaze on the person currently busy destroying her own sweater. Her patience thoroughly exhausted, she demanded:

“Tan Xin, do you have a single shred of honesty in you when it comes to me?”

This single question triggered a wave of defiance in Tan Xin.

The meekness from moments ago vanished instantly, replaced by a surge of annoyance in her chest. Turning the tables, she accused:

“What about you? Are you honest with me?”

Gu Ci knit her brows. “What did you say?”

Tan Xin listed out her grievances one by one:

“You talk about a business dinner, but last time at the KTV and this time in the private room, it was with the exact same person, wasn’t it? Fine, if you refuse to tell me who it is, so be it. But why wouldn’t you even let me come along? I am your officially announced girlfriend. Even if it’s just in name, I still have that status to the outside world! What kind of person is so secret that you can’t even eat with your girlfriend present? Why do you always—”

Her pent-up fury transformed into an endless torrent of denunciation. Heavily borrowing a sudden surge of courage from who-knows-where, Tan Xin suddenly became a defense attorney fighting for her client in a courtroom, passionately and stirringly listing the other party’s transgressions.

That was until she abruptly turned her head and slammed right into Gu Ci’s gaze. The accusing finger she had thrust out froze mid-air, remained rigid for a few seconds, and then snapped back as if she had received an electric shock.

“It’s just.”

Like a bloated balloon letting out its air, her deflated skin wrinkled up like stretch marks, left without a single shred of support.

“I also just wanted to know if you were getting really close to someone else.”

To go from cowardly to puffed-up and back down again in a matter of minutes—even with Gu Ci’s vast experience with all walks of life, she had never encountered anyone with such a volatile psyche.

Gu Ci stared at her for a long while before a hint of helplessness finally surfaced on her cool face. Letting out a sigh, she shook her head:

“Tan Xin, who on earth are you?”

Tan Xin only dared to scream in her heart: Who I am doesn’t matter, but you can only be my wifey!

Outwardly, she just mumbled and grumbled, unable to squeeze out a coherent syllable for the longest time.

In the end, the matter concluded in a completely muddled fashion. Gu Ci’s anger levels peaked several times, but strangely enough, her favorability rating stood tall, firmly anchored at [0].

At first, Tan Xin wondered if Gu Ci was already falling for her.

She must like me, right? I barged right into her dinner gathering and didn’t even get penalized. Last time, she docked 20 points straight away. This time, she probably thinks I’m different from other people, right? If that isn’t love, what is?

The moment this thought popped up, it was instantly slapped into oblivion by the objective, realistic version of Tan Xin inside her mind:

Stop, stop, stop right there, Tan Xin. You’re starting to sound a bit greasy.

It was a flat 0 right now, not 100. Where was she getting all this grand romance from?

But exactly why did Gu Ci choose not to hold it against her?

Harboring a question that had no answer, Tan Xin headed off to work at the Medical University.

That’s right. As an officially hired assistant, she had to work five days a week.

Normally, when it came to a workday, she only needed to tap the “Work” button within the system interface, and time would skip directly from morning to evening clock-out. This didn’t just filter out mindless, unproductive filler scenes; it also saved system time and enhanced the overall user experience.

But that day, the “Work” button never appeared.

When things deviate from the norm, a demon is bound to be at play.

Before leaving the house, Tan Xin hid a fruit knife in her bag, just in case.

And then it was promptly confiscated by the subway security checkpoint.

Refusing to admit defeat, Tan Xin bought another one the moment she exited the station, and while she was at it, she bought a pair of nunchucks too. She refused to believe that if a sudden martial arts side-quest triggered, she wouldn’t be able to hold her own.

The path from the North Gate to the laboratory building was quite a distance, taking ten minutes by bike. Just as she pushed her bicycle into the non-motorized parking area, she spotted a familiar silhouette in the bushes ahead.

Xu Qiuxin.

What is she doing here?

Tan Xin instantly activated her defense mode.

Ding-dong!

The system materialized out of thin air, and a line of crisp, standard Song-font text appeared right in the center of the light screen.

[You have a real-time choice mission. Please select.]

[Tail Xu Qiuxin] [Meet Professor Zhou]

Did a scenario this plain and simple even require a choice?

Tan Xin reached out and tapped [Tail Xu Qiuxin] without hesitation.

She wanted to see exactly what this wicked woman, who had only just been released on bail, was plotting.

“Wicked woman”—the highest tier of insult Tan Xin’s vocabulary could currently conjure.

Xu Qiuxin was waiting for someone, and the person she was waiting for happened to be none other than Gu Peisheng, who was currently walking out of the parking garage.

What were these two up to?

Didn’t their company already file for bankruptcy? What kind of trouble were they trying to stir up now?

This was Professor Zhou’s laboratory building. Did they have a collaboration with Professor Zhou? Why come here?

Tan Xin hid behind a pillar and extended half of her phone. In the frame captured by her front-facing camera, Gu Peisheng and Xu Qiuxin slunk stealthily into the basement elevator lobby.

According to the system’s timeline, Tan Xin had already been on the job for over a month. In reality, however, she bypassed the vast majority of her shifts by using the system’s rapid clock-in, rarely actually stepping foot inside the laboratory building.

Faced with this situation, anyone else would probably find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Unfamiliar with the layout of the laboratory building, following them inside risked getting caught red-handed, while retreating risked losing them entirely.

But Tan Xin was different.

She loved to read. Even a book like Five Years in the System, Three Years of Simulation—which Zhang Huiqian had stamped as “mind-numbingly boring”—was something she flipped through every single day. As the plot advanced, the contents of Five Years in the System, Three Years of Simulation would update periodically.

And that data included the blueprint of the laboratory building’s basement.

Beyond the entrance lay a long corridor; one had to walk all the way to the corner at the far end to reach the elevator lobby.

Tan Xin held her ground. Only after confirming the duo had entered the elevator lobby did she step lightly through the entrance, crouching low as she made her way to the end of the corridor, pressing her ear to the wall to eavesdrop.

“Hubby, do you think Gu Ci will sue us? It is hospital data, after all,” Xu Qiuxin asked.

Data?

Tan Xin’s heart leaped into her throat.

Gu Peisheng let out a cold laugh. “What is there to fear? How is Gu Ci going to prove the data belongs to the hospital? I had someone swipe the lab logs along with it. As long as we have the logs and the data, this research breakthrough belongs to us.”

Despicable! They actually stole Gu Ci’s lab data!

No wonder Gu Ci had been so swamped these past few days. No wonder she hadn’t found the time to pay her any attention. Turns out this old married couple had stolen the hospital’s lab data.

Utterly detestable!

Inside, Xu Qiuxin still harbored doubts. “What about Professor Zhou then? What did he say? He’s always collaborated with Gu Ci on this project. If we approach him with the data, won’t he just turn around and report us?”

Gu Peisheng dismissed her concerns carelessly. “He won’t. I called him yesterday and he spelled it out: whoever holds the data is the one he collaborates with.”

“Really? Hubby, you’re amazing!”

As the two chimed back and forth in the elevator lobby, Tan Xin, having overheard the entire conspiracy from the corridor, clenched her fists in sheer rage.

How dare they bully Tan someone-or-other’s precious wifey! Just you wait!

By the time Tan Xin rushed toward the laboratory from a separate elevator, Gu Peisheng and his wife had already headed into Professor Zhou’s office.

At the same time, Professor Zhou summoned his most capable doctoral student.

Before long, the Senior Sister came out of the office, leaving the three of them inside to conduct their discussions.

Tan Xin couldn’t afford to miss this opportunity. She rushed forward and asked, “Senior Sister, what’s going on?”

The Senior Sister hesitated. She scanned the surroundings, but everyone had gone off to run experiments, so there was no one else around. Only then did she lean in and tell Tan Xin:

“Professor Zhou might be changing partnership targets.”

Knowing that this soon-to-be-replaced target was none other than Hongkang Hospital under Gu Ci’s management, Tan Xin asked frantically:

“Why? Hasn’t everything been going smoothly before this?”

The Senior Sister pulled her onto the balcony and lowered her voice:

“I’m telling you this, but you absolutely cannot repeat it to anyone else.”

Tan Xin spun a blatant lie without blinking: “Don’t worry, Senior Sister!”

As everyone knows, there are no actual secrets in this world.

Yet, the person spilling the secret never seems to realize this. In particular, the Senior Sister—who poured her entire soul into scientific research—never browsed entertainment news. She had absolutely no idea that Tan Xin was Gu Ci’s officially announced girlfriend, and had always assumed she was just an eager-to-learn, inquisitive junior classmate.

Pulling this poor, supposedly oblivious junior classmate aside, the Senior Sister figured that since Tan Xin wasn’t in research, there was no risk of a data leak anyway.

“Regarding that project with Hongkang, for some unknown reason, Gu Peisheng and his people managed to produce the results.”

“Huh?” Tan Xin squeezed out a look of pure astonishment to amplify the theatricality of the gossip. “Gu Peisheng and his team do R&D too?”

“They don’t. That’s why I suspect Hongkang’s data might have been leaked.”

“Isn’t data usually classified? How did it leak?”

“You probably don’t know this, but Gu Peisheng has ties to Hongkang.”

“What kind of ties?”

“Here’s a hint: Gu Peisheng and Gu Ci both share the surname Gu.”

Meeting her Senior Sister’s enigmatic expression, Tan Xin fully committed to the bit. She forced a shocked reaction, her eyes widening into perfect saucers.

“Are you saying he would go as far as to steal data from his own biological daughter?”

The Senior Sister slapped her arm. “Keep your voice down! That’s just my speculation, it’s not verified. You must not spread rumors.”

Tan Xin nodded dutifully. “Mm, okay! But Professor Zhou wouldn’t actually collaborate with Gu Peisheng, right? It’s stolen data, after all. Doesn’t the scientific community absolutely despise plagiarism?”

At this mention, the Senior Sister shook her head, exasperated by the harsh reality. “Sigh. That is Professor Zhou’s biggest flaw. Whoever holds the data is the one he collaborates with. Besides, Gu Peisheng’s company has already filed for bankruptcy. In order to cling to Professor Zhou’s thigh, he emptied out all his personal savings to invest in this pharmaceutical trial.”

Tan Xin couldn’t believe her ears. “He still has money?”

The Senior Sister looked puzzled. “What do you mean? Is he supposed to be poor?”

“No, no.” Tan Xin quickly corrected herself. “I mean, didn’t you say he went bankrupt? How does he still have money?”

“The company went bankrupt. Entrepreneurs like him easily have personal assets worth tens of millions.”

The more the Senior Sister spoke, the more pity she felt. This kid is usually quite nimble with her chores and has a solid grasp of professional knowledge, so how is her grasp of basic social common sense so lacking?

How tragic.

And then, while this “tragic” Tan Xin was helping her Senior Sister receive data, the computer magically suffered severe water damage.

A fierce, crackling electrical sound surged through the study room a couple of times, and the computer began emitting a burnt, singed odor.

When the Senior Sister walked in, it looked as if her entire world had collapsed.

“Ah! Junior Sister, what happened?”

Tan Xin had already used essential balm to induce a torrent of tears. Fully adopting her drama-queen persona, she threw herself into her Senior Sister’s arms:

“Waaah, I don’t know either! It was perfectly fine, and then it suddenly just blew up! The data is all gone too, I’m so sorry, Senior Sister, waaah.”