After My Flash Marriage with the Movie Queen - Chapter 45

Because her wife needed to study for her finals, Zhao Xunyin didn’t dare to tease her little sweetheart too much. After a few playful touches, she let Shi Nanbei go back to her books, while she herself sat lazily on the sofa—like a scumbag who forgets their lover the moment they put their pants back on—listening to her wife recite and eating breakfast.

Ah, right—since Zhao Xunyin had told her assistant to find them a housekeeper who could cook, the assistant had done a fine job. After about half a month, they finally hired a discreet, tight-lipped auntie. Today was her first day on the job, officially marking the end of the couple’s miserable takeout-dependent lifestyle.

But there was one tiny problem.

“Could you not?” Shi Nanbei, flustered under Zhao Xunyin’s heated gaze, finally snapped, “The auntie’s still at home!”

Being thirteen years older—and thoroughly shameless—Film Queen Zhao simply waved it off. “She’s in the kitchen.”

Her wife’s voice, soft yet focused as she recited her medical notes, somehow felt even more enticing than when she moaned in bed. After listening for a while, Zhao Xunyin realized with horror that she might actually be turning into a pervert.

She couldn’t resist whispering her wicked thought to Shi Nanbei—who, instead of refusing, only told her to “behave a little.”

Which, in Zhao Xunyin’s mind, obviously meant permission granted.

Smiling, she patted the spot beside her on the sofa. “Come sit next to your wife.”

Shi Nanbei: “…”

Pervert.

But she still went over.

The moment she sat down, Zhao Xunyin leaned in, lowering her voice. “Be a good girl and recite for me, hmm?”

Shi Nanbei gave her a flat stare. “…”

It was the kind of expression that said she had long lost the words to describe her wife’s degeneracy.

Zhao Xunyin, unbothered, pressed on with all the shamelessness that came with age. “Come on, hurry up.”

Shi Nanbei flipped open her thick blue medical textbook and said dryly, “Are you sure you’re not sick? Maybe I should check if there’s a cure for you in here.”

Clearly, coaxing wouldn’t work, so Zhao Xunyin switched tactics. “Fanfiction.”

Shi Nanbei: “…”

Shi Nanbei’s expression immediately twisted. She couldn’t fight back—she had been caught red-handed reading fanfiction of them last time. After a long moment, she forced herself to coo, “You’re so bad.”

Zhao Xunyin’s heart skipped a beat.

(And from there, we’ll skip roughly three thousand words of Jinjiang-forbidden content. Let’s just say that if I wrote what really happened, I’d probably corrupt more than a few adults. So, dear readers, use your imagination. The only thing I can say is that by the end, Zhao Xunyin had hauled Shi Nanbei upstairs in a rush, leaving the housekeeper shaking her head in the kitchen, muttering, “Ah, young people, newlyweds, indeed.”)

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Now, Zhao Xunyin was shameless, yes—but Shi Nanbei was still a college student, a medical student at that. So almost the instant they finished, Shi Nanbei rolled over, bare and disheveled, to retrieve her book from the floor.

Studying was good, of course, but studying now—well, it did bruise Zhao Xunyin’s ego a bit. Narrowing her eyes, she asked, “Do you really have to work this hard?”

Shi Nanbei flipped through the pages, checking what she hadn’t memorized, and replied with the calm authority of an elder lecturing a child, “If you don’t work hard when you’re young, you’ll regret it when you’re old. Understand?”

Zhao Xunyin: “…”

Then she suddenly turned, face full of innocence. “Ah, sorry—I forgot you didn’t finish your correspondence degree.”

The smile froze on Zhao Xunying’s face. “…”

Was that something a person should say? It was bad enough to remind her she hadn’t finished college—did she really have to emphasize correspondence?

So, what if she had a dual-degree medical track? Big deal.

Alright, fine. It was impressive.

Still, Zhao Xunyin knew her little wife wasn’t trying to mock her. That straightforward, blunt personality of hers didn’t have a mean bone in it. And to be fair, Zhao Xunyin had gone a bit overboard earlier—especially with how she’d gotten a little too enthusiastic and even used tools, leaving Shi Nanbei unable to hold back and accidentally biting her shoulder hard enough to leave teeth marks.

Thinking back on her own depravity, Zhao Xunyin decided not to argue.

If her wife wanted to study, so be it. It was a good thing, really.

So, she sprawled back onto the bed, watching the naked girl sitting at the foot of it and said lazily, “Alright then. Study hard, Doctor Shi. Earn lots of money in the future—our household will depend on you.”

Shi Nanbei replied with mock solemnity, “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you.”

After a while, when Shi Nanbei finished reviewing, they lay together chatting. Zhao Xunyin suddenly remembered she’d brought something with her yesterday.

“What did you pack?” she asked curiously.

“My instrument,” Shi Nanbei said, playing with a strand of Zhao Xunyin’s newly dyed hair. “My roommates won’t let me practice in the dorm, and it’s almost finals, so I brought it home.”

Zhao Xunyin had recently gotten a perm and dyed her hair a soft ash-blonde, which made her look more mature and irresistibly attractive. Shi Nanbei loved touching it so much that she couldn’t stop running her fingers through it. If she wasn’t afraid of her roommate, Wu Lili, getting jealous, she probably would’ve already posted a smug little selfie of the two of them on her social media.

“Instrument?” Zhao Xunyin frowned. She’d seen the piano in Shi Nanbei’s room when visiting her family before—her grandmother had proudly said she’d passed Level Ten. But yesterday, the thing she brought home was a rectangular case. Definitely not a piano.

“You play something else too?” Zhao Xunyin asked, genuinely curious. Music wasn’t her strong suit.

In fact, aside from being a mediocre student, she was also tone-deaf. Once, after winning Best Actress, her director had asked her to sing the movie’s ending theme—cheaper and great for publicity, he said.

Zhao Xunyin refused outright. But the director was persuasive and eventually dragged her into the studio.

She recorded it, sure—but the result was so tragically off-key that even a million-yuan sound engineer couldn’t save it. The song was never released.

Thankfully.

Because if it had been, the movie’s rating on Douban might have dropped straight to one star.

It was easy to imagine just how terrifying Zhao Xunyin’s singing must have been.

“Once you learn one instrument, the others come naturally. Music is universal,” Shi Nanbei explained while absentmindedly playing with her wife’s hair.

Come to think of it, Zhao Xunyin had never actually seen Shi Nanbei play an instrument before. So, she gave her a playful smack on the butt and said, “Why don’t you show your big sister a little of your talent?”

Shi Nanbei looked up at her, a faint gleam of excitement in her eyes. “Are you sure?”

Honestly, it had been years since she’d had a live audience!

“Of course,” Zhao Xunyin replied without hesitation, assuming her wife was doubting her sincerity.

“Then you can’t regret it later,” Shi Nanbei said, instantly perking up. Without another word, she jumped off the bed, still in her bathrobe, and went to the study to fetch the instrument she’d brought over yesterday.

She opened the case right in front of Zhao Xunyin—who froze as soon as she saw what was inside.

“A trumpet?”

So, what she’d just said was basically asking Shi Nanbei to blow her a trumpet tune? No wonder her college roommate hadn’t allowed her to play it in the dorm!

Serves you right!

“It’s a suona!” Shi Nanbei corrected indignantly. “Not a trumpet, okay?”

Zhao Xunyin: “……”

Honestly, whether it was a suona or a trumpet didn’t make much difference to Zhao Xunyin. This was not what she’d imagined. She had been expecting something like a saxophone, maybe a violin—or at least a flute. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought her wife would whip out a suona.

“Am I dead or something? Are you about to play me a funeral song?” Zhao Xunyin blurted out. It wasn’t that she had a personal grudge against the suona—it was just that, in her mind, this instrument only ever showed up at funerals.

“Why would you think that about the King of Instruments?” Shi Nanbei huffed. “The suona sounds amazing when played right!”

Zhao Xunyin folded her arms and stared at her flatly from the bed. “Does it now?”

“Of course! I’ll prove it to you,” Shi Nanbei said confidently. Then she paused and asked, “By the way, are your windows soundproof? I’d rather not have the property manager knocking in ten minutes.”

“They are,” Zhao Xunyin muttered through gritted teeth.

Reassured, Shi Nanbei proudly lifted her suona and began to play—of all things, the Japanese pop song Renai Circulation. The notes rose and fell with rhythm and energy. To be fair, it was a catchy tune. Zhao Xunyin had heard the song before, but never imagined it could sound this wildly intense on a suona.

It was like being hit in the face by 0.5x cultural refinement. And the one playing was her wife. She wanted to hit her—but couldn’t.

Zhao Xunyin: “……”

She regretted everything.

When the song finally ended, Shi Nanbei bowed dramatically and looked up at her, eyes shining. “Well? How was it? Did it change how you feel about the suona?”

Zhao Xunyin was silent for a long moment before saying, “It almost changed how I feel about you.”

Shi Nanbei: “?”

What was that supposed to mean? She’d even been planning to play this at their wedding!

Zhao Xunyin lovingly cupped her wife’s pretty face and asked, “Do you know what it feels like, listening to Renai Circulation played on a suona?”

“What?”

“It feels like watching Xie Guangkun and Da Jiao fall in love.”

Shi Nanbei: “……”

Finally, Zhao Xunyin asked with heartfelt curiosity, “Can you please tell me why you decided to learn this instrument?” She refused to believe it was some innocent suggestion from Shi Nanbei’s grandmother—this had to be one of Nanbei’s own weird whims.

Shi Nanbei looked adorably crestfallen, clearly noticing Zhao Xunyin’s lack of enthusiasm. “I just thought, the suona can play a person’s whole life, from birth to death, right? Back then I was worried I wouldn’t get into college, and if I couldn’t find a job, at least I could play the suona for others. I figured I’d never be unemployed.”

Among all instruments, the suona reigns supreme—used either for weddings or funerals.

Technically, she wasn’t wrong.

For the first time, Zhao Xunyin felt genuine gratitude for her wife’s good grades. “Thank goodness you did get into college,” she said earnestly.

Otherwise, she might’ve seriously reconsidered marrying her.