My Idol Turns Out To Be My Ex-Girlfriend - Chapter 43

Lin Sanyuan’s finger still felt a lingering, sticky texture. She instinctively rubbed her fingertips together, and realizing what she had just done, her face flushed red. She quickly buried her head in the pile of snacks, fished out a carton of yogurt, and handed it to the other woman along with a straw.

He Wenyu took the yogurt, doubling over with laughter.

Qiao Lian remained very quiet during the ride.

About halfway through the trip, they pulled over at a service area. Sanyuan had eaten too many oranges and salty duck tongues, and after chasing them down with two cartons of yogurt and a bottle of Yakult, her system was protesting. She needed a restroom.

She invited Qiao Lian to join her. Qiao Lian, her head topped with fluffy little curls, barely moved. She flicked her gaze toward the window, her butt not budging an inch.

“Not going. I’m a mature adult, I’ve long since passed the age where I can’t hold my bladder.”

Sanyuan was shocked, “Are you serious? It was just one comment, and you’re holding a grudge for the entire trip?!”

Coming out of the restroom, she saw Tang Hengzhi leaning against the car door to get some fresh air, tilting her head back to stretch her neck.

“Neck sore?” Sanyuan asked.

“A little.”

Sanyuan pondered for a moment, “Should we let He Wenyu drive?”

“She can’t. She had beer at lunch.”

Well, it seemed Wenyu was just as carefree as her brother. Sanyuan sighed inwardly. After hesitating for a long time, she said tentatively, “If you trust me, do you want me to drive?”

The car was extremely expensive. While sitting inside earlier, Sanyuan had secretly looked up the price, it cost as much as a small villa. How did someone like this end up dating her? Did the great Tang Hengzhi have some kind of “poverty fetish”?

Hengzhi was surprised, “You know how to drive?”

Sanyuan scratched her head, “Yeah, I’ve had my license for over half a year. You’ve probably been driving for more than three years, right? If you’re in the passenger seat, I’m allowed to drive on the highway.”

Her driving skills were decent, she had been driving her tiny “pickled pepper fish head” car for six months, after all. But for some reason, Hengzhi’s expression looked utterly incredulous.

“If you’re not comfortable with it, never mind. This car is really pricey.”

Hengzhi let out a soft, wistful laugh and opened the door for her, “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just think you’re amazing.”

In her memory, Lin Sanyuan was timid, she was afraid to get her ears pierced, and she’d be scared to sleep alone after watching a horror movie. Her constitution wasn’t great, she was a picky eater, and she became very quiet when she felt carsick.

In Hengzhi’s mind, Sanyuan was someone to be pampered. She had never even considered letting Sanyuan drive. Driving was exhausting, and Hengzhi had always assumed she would take Sanyuan wherever she wanted to go. Sanyuan only had to sit in the passenger seat, eat snacks, and do whatever she pleased.

She hadn’t realized that the little girl in her passenger seat had grown up. Even without a pampered life, she wasn’t doing badly, she seemed perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

It was a deeply sentimental thought, but it left Sanyuan speechless. She was twenty,four years old. It was just driving a car, not a tank or a plane. Was this really something worth praising? This kind of blind, parental praise was a bit much.

Sanyuan had never driven a Maybach. The gear shift in a luxury car like this was different from a standard vehicle, but luckily, once they were inside, Hengzhi carefully walked her through the details.

Sanyuan’s legs weren’t as long as Hengzhi’s, so she silently adjusted the seat. She shifted gears, stepped on the gas, and steered the car out of the service station, maintaining a steady pace in the middle lane.

Hengzhi sat in the passenger seat, sipping water and watching Sanyuan drive. Sanyuan was incredibly focused, it was clear she was a bit nervous about her first time on the highway. She didn’t dare take her hands off the wheel for a second, and she ignored the cars overtaking her, simply maintaining a safe distance from the vehicle in front.

Her intense concentration lacked the effortless, charming grace that Hengzhi possessed. Yet, the sight of the girl who had slowly grown up over the years was enough to freeze every frame into Hengzhi’s memory.

Sanyuan was overly cautious. A drive that should have taken an hour and a half ended up taking two and a half hours. By the time they got home, her back was aching and she was exhausted. She took a shower, changed into comfortable pajamas, and sprawled out on her bed to zone out.

“Want to watch a movie?” Qiao Lian, also in pajamas, stood at the door of Sanyuan’s small room, offering an invitation.

Sanyuan rolled over on the bed, “Why the sudden urge for a movie?”

Qiao Lian said, “We only watched half of that horror movie last time. Don’t you want to finish it?”

Sanyuan muttered under her breath, “Was it really that good? It’s been so long, and you’re still thinking about it?”

Qiao Lian rarely made requests, so Sanyuan pulled up the movie on her phone. They had to watch it in the larger room, the small room didn’t have enough space for the projector.

They drew the curtains and turned off the lights. The only thing moving was the eerie, flickering images from the projector on the wall. Sanyuan huddled under the covers, her sleepiness partially scared away. She rubbed her eyes and said, “I’ll just sleep here with you tonight, okay?”

Qiao Lian had actually brewed herself a cup of tea. She sat elegantly against the headboard, blowing on the steam and staring at the projector as if she were deeply engrossed in the film. But she wasn’t processing a single thing.

Sanyuan gave her a light nudge, puzzled, “Why are you ignoring me?”

Qiao Lian took a sip of tea, her voice smooth. She suddenly asked, “Why didn’t you come back last night?”

“Huh?”

Sanyuan stared blankly for a long time before realizing what she meant. Qiao Lian asked it so casually. She hadn’t asked in the morning, she hadn’t asked while they were fishing, and she hadn’t asked while they were picking oranges. But now, in the dead of night, she dropped the question out of nowhere.

It felt like… an accounting after the fact.

Sanyuan wrapped the quilt tighter around herself, feeling bewildered, “Didn’t Teacher Tang have an allergic reaction last night? I had to stay and look after her.”

She knew that, didn’t she?

Qiao Lian looked at her and smiled, “Does allergy medicine really take that long to work? You had to stay the whole night.”

Sanyuan suddenly realized that Qiao Lian didn’t actually want to watch a movie tonight. “Why are you suddenly sounding like my mom?”

Was she really being this serious about a curfew? Sanyuan hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, okay, technically she had done something “wrong.”

“I just think…” Qiao Lian smiled charmingly, “Teacher Tang has a very good bite.”

“Is… is that so?”

Qiao Lian suddenly reached a hand out from under the covers, leaning slightly toward Sanyuan. Her fingers brushed Sanyuan’s neck, and her eyes flicked toward Sanyuan’s lips. Her voice was light, barely a whisper:

“Don’t you know? On people with very fair skin, marks left on the body are very obvious.”

Sanyuan’s face heated up, burning as if it were over a fire. “You…”

Sanyuan was completely inexperienced in this regard. After washing up, she hadn’t put on any makeup, so she hadn’t hidden anything. Her mind raced, trying to find an excuse.

Qiao Lian cut her off, “There are no mosquitoes in mountain hotel rooms in autumn. There’s only a ‘Qiu Feng’.”

She didn’t call her Teacher Tang anymore, she used the name Qiu Feng.

Sanyuan was utterly stunned. Oh, right. Qiao Lian often followed her livestreams at night, she had watched the moment “Qiu Feng” was unmasked. In that chaotic explosion of internet traffic, she had been a front,row spectator.

She had seen Qiu Feng’s real face, yet when she met Tang Hengzhi at the ski resort, she had been far too calm. This high school girl was… eerie. She was like an AI.

Sanyuan swallowed hard, unable to make an excuse. But Qiao Lian wasn’t planning on letting her off the hook: “Why did Teacher Tang bite you?”

Even though Sanyuan looked like a soft rice ball and Qiao Lian sometimes felt like taking a bite herself, she only ever thought about it. Why would someone actually dare to do it?

Sanyuan’s shoulders slumped, “You high schoolers are just obsessed with gossip.”

Keeping this sudden, absurd secret bottled up was actually quite frustrating. Anyone who dealt with the cliché “ex with amnesia coming to settle the score” trope would feel like their world was ending. Sanyuan had only vented a little to He Ye, and even then, she had to be secretive about it.

She didn’t dare tell him that the person involved was a woman, and that the “female lead” was Tang Hengzhi. She had no one to talk to, and the pressure was getting to her. When Qiao Lian stepped up to act as a sounding board, Sanyuan realized her emotions hadn’t just been building up over the last two days.

Ever since she left He Wenyu’s house, the stifling emotions from the past half,month felt like a flood breaking through a dam.

“So you’re saying that Teacher Tang is your ex-girlfriend, but you don’t remember her?”

The movie reached its horror climax, but the two people on the bed weren’t affected by the plot at all. As she let the words out, Sanyuan’s heart wasn’t steady. She sniffled, feeling a bit pathetic.

She remembered when Qiao Lian first moved in, Sanyuan had complained about how she couldn’t figure out how to date guys. Qiao Lian had asked her if she wanted to try dating girls instead. At the time, she had righteously claimed her sexual orientation was “straight.”

As it turned out, despite having zero interest in girls, she had a three,year dating history with a woman—and she had forgotten the whole thing. Three years. That’s a long time. Usually, Sanyuan felt like she had ants in her pants after sitting through a three,hour blind date with a guy.

As a top,tier socially anxious introvert, how on earth had she lived and cohabited with a powerhouse like Tang Hengzhi for three years? Sanyuan couldn’t wrap her head around it.

Qiao Lian set down her teacup, shocked for three seconds before she regained her composure. “Wait. Isn’t this an incredible fantasy? Why did you accept this as fact so quickly?”

Sanyuan thought Qiao Lian’s mental strength was impressively robust.

“It is quite bizarre.”

Looking at everything that had happened, Hengzhi’s subtle attitude toward Sanyuan over those two days finally made sense.

“Right, right?” Sanyuan shivered under the covers, her brow furrowed with anxiety. “Why does such a dramatic thing have to happen to me? I feel like I’m going crazy, or maybe I was so starved for love that I hallucinated this whole person.”

Qiao Lian’s expression softened, her gaze tender, “Are you… starved for love?”

Sanyuan slapped her on the back, “Hey, is that the point? It’s just an expression! Look, if Teacher Tang were a guy, wouldn’t this be like one of those trashy ‘overbearing CEO’ web novels coming to life?”

It was lucky she was a woman, otherwise, after three years of living together, they’d probably have a couple of kids by now. Then it really would be a melodramatic “wealthy family” romance novel, complete with a husband and children in tow.

Sanyuan couldn’t stand that kind of drama.

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