My Marriage Partner is a Crazy Mermaid - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Curiosity

Feeling that warm breath against her, Meng Ke couldn’t quite describe the sensation; she simply closed her eyes instinctively.

When those words were finished, Meng Ke breathed a small sigh of relief, but the proximity was far too intimate. She felt uneasy no matter how she shifted, yet Xie Yuhan didn’t seem to share the sentiment—she even took a greedy breath.

She was sniffing Meng Ke’s neck like a puppy.

Unable to take it, Meng Ke retracted her neck and used the momentum to back out of the other woman’s reach. She had no idea what Xie Yuhan meant. Her scent was good?

Meng Ke actually disliked strong fragrances, so she never used perfume. Her shampoo and body wash were all extremely light, fresh scents. There wasn’t much of a scent on her at all, so how could it be “good” or “bad”? Meng Ke’s intuition told her that Xie Yuhan was playing with her.

“Miss Xie, what is the meaning of this?” Meng Ke said. “I find it a bit impolite.”

“Miss, I’m back!”

Xie Yuhan’s young assistant skirted around the chattering crowd, shaking water droplets from her hands as she came trotting over. The assistant’s whirlwind energy stood in stark contrast to Xie Yuhan’s cold indifference; it was a mystery why someone with Xie Yuhan’s personality would hire such a lively assistant.

Wouldn’t she find her annoying?

With this interruption, Meng Ke had no way to press for an answer.

The assistant ran up to the two of them and flashed a sweet smile: “Beautiful sister, thank you.”

After speaking, the assistant took over the wheelchair. “Miss, we should head back. The doctor will send me the results once they’re out.”

“Aunt Zhai’s poached sliced meat is delicious, but it’s just too spicy…”

The assistant was muttering to herself, and Meng Ke caught the gist of it. The wheelchair turned a corner and disappeared at the end of the corridor. Meng Ke raised a hand to touch the side of her neck.

Xie Yuhan’s hands were icy, but her breath had been scalding. Even after all this time, she felt as if she could still feel that burning heat.

“What’s wrong? You don’t look so good.” Luo Miao came upstairs only to find Meng Ke standing by the door in a daze. “Is it because of my brother? Ignore him. That’s just how he is—overly cautious.”

Meng Ke remained silent.

Luo Miao asked, “Is there a problem with the test results?”

“The results aren’t out yet. They said we have to wait until tomorrow,” Meng Ke replied listlessly.

“Then all we can do is go back and wait. Once they’re out tomorrow, I’ll have my brother ask and send them to me directly, then I’ll let you know.”

Leaving the hospital, the two walked toward the parking lot. Meng Ke said, “I want to rent an apartment. I can’t keep staying in a hotel; it’s inconvenient.”

Previously, she hadn’t thought about renting because she was genuinely tempted by the terms Xie Yuhan had offered. If she had agreed, she would have gone straight to Singapore, saving her the trouble of renting. Now, it seemed that plan was likely dead in the water.

“It’s still early. Should I take you to see some places now?” Luo Miao suggested.

Meng Ke hummed in agreement, looking down at the phone in her bag. Several new WeChat messages had popped up from Meng Yingxue. They had been friends on WeChat for at least seven or eight years; while they had a tacit agreement to block each other’s posts, they surprisingly hadn’t deleted each other.

“Sister, to celebrate your return, we plan to hold a welcome banquet for you. Three days from now at ‘Feng Hua Xue Yue,’ 7:00 PM.”

The message was brief and clear, without a single wasted word. Meng Ke clicked her tongue and locked her phone.

“What is it?”

“The Meng family is throwing me a welcome banquet.”

“At ‘Feng Hua Xue Yue’.”

“They’re certainly willing to spend a fortune. If Meng Yingxue eats at ‘Feng Hua Xue Yue’ once, she brags about it twice—once for every six months.”

Meng Ke knew of ‘Feng Hua Xue Yue’; it was one of the premier banquet venues in Tan City, twelve stories high and owned by the Sun family. The Suns operated the majority of the restaurants and hotels in Tan City and were quite smooth-talking, making sure never to offend anyone.

“The only thing the Meng family is lucky for now is that they didn’t publicly kick you out back then,” Luo Miao scoffed. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have the chance to stir up trouble today.”

They weren’t being kind or reluctant to kick her out; they simply couldn’t.

In Meng Ke’s memory, that was the beginning of all the original host’s misfortunes. She had just started her first year of high school when an accident resulted in a fractured lower leg. The heavy bleeding required a transfusion, and the moment the Meng couple heard, they dropped their work to come see her.

That was the first time Meng Ke had seen both parents appear before her at once. At the time, she was so full of joy she couldn’t even feel the pain of the wound.

But later, when the blood types were verified, the sky fell. The Meng couple, looking grim, never appeared in her ward again.

After she recovered, she heard snippets—something about the blood types not matching. She was sixteen then, not an age where she understood nothing; she simply felt it was impossible. How could the parents she had lived with for over a decade suddenly not be her biological parents?

It wasn’t just the Meng couple’s world that had collapsed.

Initially, the Meng family didn’t think the children had been swapped. Meng Chengliang assumed Ruan Yalan had been unfaithful and the child belonged to someone else. The two of them fought daily over it.

Ruan Yalan knew she wasn’t a saint—the methods she used to pursue Meng Chengliang hadn’t been entirely honorable, but her relationship with him had been so good then, and she was desperate to bear him a son to inherit the family business. There was no way she would have cheated at that time. Besides, as a woman, wouldn’t she know if a child was her own?

Seeing that Meng Chengliang intended to find evidence of her infidelity to force her out of the house with nothing, Ruan Yalan spent a fortune investigating the hospital where she had given birth. Only then did she discover that someone, jealous of her, had secretly swapped her baby.

It took a year to find Meng Yingxue. That year, Meng Ke had just started her second year of high school, and Meng Yingxue transferred in to join her.

Knowing she wasn’t biological, Meng Ke threw herself into her studies. Meng Yingxue, however, having never lived the life of a rich young miss, became extravagantly wasteful. Every day was spent wearing beautiful dresses, donning expensive jewelry, and eating costly snacks.

Unkind voices gradually began to appear at school: how the “real” heiress of the Meng family wasn’t as good as the “fake” one; how growing up in a different environment meant the real one wasn’t as smart as the fake, and so on.

Meng Yingxue went home to cry to Ruan Yalan. From then on, Meng Yingxue targeted Meng Ke at every turn. In their senior year, during the university application period, she swapped Meng Ke’s admission letter and had her packed off abroad.

It wasn’t that the Meng family didn’t want to kick her out then, but public opinion had them backed into a corner. For the sake of their reputation, they had to let her stay. Back then, Luo Miao had promised to go to the same university as her, but… there was no “afterwards.”

“Do I have a scent on me?” Meng Ke asked out of the blue.

Luo Miao sniffed the air, looking around. Aside from a faint woody incense in the car, there was nothing. “No. Why?” Luo Miao asked, puzzled.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me more about Xie Yuhan in detail.”

She was suddenly interested in her.