Sweetheart, It's Time To Pay Your Debt - Chapter 5

The next morning, when Bo Liye was awakened by her biological clock, the sky was just beginning to brighten.

The swelling in her ankle had mostly subsided. She reapplied her medicine, noticing traces of Qin Mingyan’s use in the bathroom, though the girl herself was nowhere to be seen. As she stepped out, she happened to run into Auntie Wang coming upstairs to deliver breakfast.

Bo Liye stopped her, yawning lazily as she asked, “Auntie Wang, is my classmate in the guest room?”

Auntie Wang looked at Bo Liye in surprise and said, “No. Didn’t that little girl sleep in your room last night? She even asked me for an extra quilt.”

After going upstairs last night, Qin Mingyan had been cold and indifferent to her. Bo Liye, exhausted from a day of coaxing, simply stopped bothering. She showered, applied her medicine, muffled herself in her blankets, and ignored everything.

She hadn’t expected Qin Mingyan’s mouth to be so stubborn that she’d rather not sleep in a bed than simply ask.

“Maybe I just slept too soundly.” Bo Liye glanced at the time; it wasn’t even seven yet. “When did my classmate get up?”

“When I woke up at five, the lights were already on.” Auntie Wang pointed toward the study. “I thought a thief had broken into the house.”

Bo Liye burst out laughing. Seeing that Auntie Wang was holding breakfast for two, she reached out for it. “Give it to me, I’ll eat with her.”

When she pushed open the study door, Qin Mingyan was already at the desk doing homework. She sat perfectly upright, her long hair tied back in a ponytail. Her face bore its usual coldness, and her long eyelashes cast a faint shadow over her lower eyelids.

Her gaze was incredibly focused. Even as Bo Liye approached, her attention didn’t waver. She truly was a model student who loved learning.

Bo Liye kicked the corner of the table twice. “Where did you sleep last night?”

Qin Mingyan didn’t stop her pen until she finished writing a complete chemical equation. “The sofa.”

“There was a bed and you didn’t sleep in it? Are you trying to make people think I’m abusing you?”

“The sofa is big enough to sleep on.”

Bo Liye slammed the tray onto the desk and sneered, “Fine. Since you like the sofa so much, you can sleep there from now on.”

Qin Mingyan remained as steady as a mountain, her voice calm. “Fine.”

Having said that, she continued writing on her test paper.

Sometimes Bo Liye really wanted to pry open Qin Mingyan’s brain to see how a person could be so boring. She didn’t need entertainment, didn’t need friends, and didn’t even change her expression when being taken advantage of. She was like a natural learning machine, immune to all distractions.

She tapped the table. “Eat breakfast. It’s going to get cold.”

Qin Mingyan glanced at the breakfast meant for two and said, “You eat first. I’ll have the leftovers.”

“Auntie Wang said you’ve been up since five doing homework. Don’t go blaming me if you faint from hunger,” Bo Liye said crossly.

Qin Mingyan’s lips were pale, clearly suffering from low blood sugar. It made Bo Liye feel awkward about losing her temper over the sofa incident.

Qin Mingyan insisted, “I want to finish quickly so I can help you with the questions you don’t understand.”

Qin Mingyan was wearing a new T-shirt that Bo Liye had never worn. Her hair carried the scent of Bo Liye’s favorite shampoo. Bo Liye leaned in and sniffed a few times, her voice softening. “What does a little more or less matter? Didn’t my parents spend money just to have you accompany me?”

The excessive proximity finally made Qin Mingyan feel uncomfortable. She leaned her head back slightly and said, “Your parents will look at your exam results.”

Bo Liye didn’t care. She picked out two dishes she liked and pushed the rest toward Qin Mingyan. “Eat quickly. Even if it’s not to your taste, you must swallow it.”

Qin Mingyan gave Bo Liye a deep look, pushed her papers aside, and began her breakfast.

Auntie Wang had prepared a popular style of sushi with various grilled meat and seafood flavors. Each piece was cut precisely and garnished with brightly colored fish roe, looking very appetizing.

Bo Liye played with her phone while eating. After replying to a few WeChat messages, she received a video call invitation from her older cousin.

Her cousin was four years older and was currently a senior in college facing the daunting task of the civil service exam. With time being tight and the pressure high, she had ignored the expensive professional courses and instead turned to Bo Liye in desperation.

“Good sister, quickly help me look at these few essays for this week. Our training class has a quiz next week, and if my grades aren’t good, my allowance will be cut off.”

Bo Liye glanced in Qin Mingyan’s direction and slowly bit into a piece of sushi. “High schooler, low seniority, I don’t know how.”

Her cousin coaxed her, “Just a few glances, okay? I’ve already had the teacher at the training center correct them once. Just look over them for me.”

Bo Liye: “I have a parent-teacher meeting after the midterms.”

Her cousin immediately agreed, “I’ll go to the meeting for you.”

Bo Liye raised an eyebrow and began looking at the essay her cousin sent over. After eating two more pieces of sushi, she spoke slowly: “The policy of cadres supporting enterprises isn’t just about visible, tangible hardware changes, there must also be invisible changes in ideology.”

“When proposing solutions, use ‘we should’ as the terminology, otherwise, it’s easy to lead the grader into the mistake of just providing examples.”

In just ten minutes, her cousin was taking notes at lightning speed. Bo Liye couldn’t help but say, “Sister, didn’t you write argumentative essays well in high school? Why have you regressed in your senior year?”

Her cousin rubbed her nose guiltily. “You remembered wrong. My Chinese was very average before.”

A top 100 liberal arts student in the college entrance exam, average?

Her cousin pulled Bo Liye to look at a few more, but Bo Liye turned the camera toward Qin Mingyan and shook her head playfully. “Sister, I have a timed tutor here. I’ll help you look after my class is over.”

Her cousin didn’t mind the wait, praised her a few times, and hung up happily.

Flattered by the praise, Bo Liye curled her lips into a smile and winked at Qin Mingyan, mouthing the words: Am I amazing or what?

Qin Mingyan had been quietly observing Bo Liye. The girl who had just woken up with half-closed, listless eyes had suddenly become radiant when dealing with the administrative essays.

Bo Liye had chosen the same subjects as her, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology and didn’t seem like someone who excelled in Politics or Chinese. It wasn’t until Bo Liye hung up the video that Qin Mingyan snapped back to reality.

Seeing Qin Mingyan lowering her head to drink milk without looking at her, Bo Liye didn’t mind. She smilingly pulled up her cousin’s other essays to find more flaws.

She waved the edited text on her phone in front of Qin Mingyan’s eyes and sighed casually, “If it weren’t for my age and lack of degree, I feel like I could go take the civil service exam myself.”

Qin Mingyan set her finished plate aside and picked up her chemistry paper again, her gaze calm. “Finish your breakfast so you can do your homework.”

Bo Liye kicked Qin Mingyan under the table. “Aren’t you even curious?”

Qin Mingyan: “The college entrance exam doesn’t test that.”

Bo Liye leaned over, directly covering Qin Mingyan’s paper, insisting on an explanation: “It’s because I’ve seen too many of my mother’s reports since I was a child. It’s always the same routine.”

This time, Qin Mingyan finally reacted. She frowned and pressed against Bo Liye’s shoulder. “You are very capable. But now, please sit back.”

Bo Liye looked at Qin Mingyan’s hand. She must be crazy this morning to expect a compliment from her.

“And if I don’t?”

Qin Mingyan frowned.

Bo Liye snatched Qin Mingyan’s paper and shook the pen in her hand. “Want to write?”

Qin Mingyan reached out to grab it but failed. Her gaze flickered past Bo Liye’s upturned lips and fixed firmly on the paper. “Give it to me.”

Seeing that she finally got a reaction, Bo Liye hooked her finger with interest. “Come a little closer.”

Qin Mingyan half-stood and leaned over.

The shadow she cast enveloped Bo Liye entirely, but Bo Liye was so focused on changing Qin Mingyan’s attitude that she didn’t notice.

Bo Liye reached out and touched Qin Mingyan’s cheek, tilting her chin up slightly as if asking for a kiss, signaling for her to come even closer.

Qin Mingyan stopped moving. “You should write…”

Before she could finish, Bo Liye’s lips quirked up. Her two arms suddenly wrapped around Qin Mingyan’s neck, a cold sensation pressing against the skin, followed by the crisp sound of a metal buckle.

Click.

Qin Mingyan froze. The red lips that were inches away retreated instantly. Bo Liye’s cool fingertips hooked into the necklace at her throat and suddenly tightened.

The constriction of her throat caused Qin Mingyan to narrow her long eyes, a dark light swirling within them.

Bo Liye, seeing her sudden forward lean, laughed uncontrollably, her beautiful peach-blossom eyes curving. “Do you know what this is?”

She hooked her finger under the central diamond section. The hard diamonds pressed into Qin Mingyan’s throat; as they sank in, the skin grew redder.

Qin Mingyan: “A necklace?”

“It is a type of necklace, yes. It’s called a choker.” Bo Liye hooked the leather and leaned in slowly, letting her warm breath fall against the cold material, her voice gentle. “I specifically went to Hermès last week to pick it out. To properly regulate you, so you don’t disobey.”

Qin Mingyan’s face remained stern, her slender and thin frame exuding a cold sense of detachment. The black leather necklace didn’t seem to affect her poise, but the stark contrast between the deep black and her porcelain skin added an indescribable sense of danger and taboo.

Many celebrities had worn this style as an accessory, like a collarbone chain. The row of fine diamonds in the center was eye-catching enough that even on a red carpet, it wouldn’t provoke stray thoughts.

But when it was worn on Qin Mingyan’s neck, everything was different.

Qin Mingyan was wearing her clothes, her body carried the scent of her usual bath products, and now she was wearing this collar…

Bo Liye suddenly felt a bit flushed.

Relying on the fact that she was holding the choker and Qin Mingyan didn’t dare move, she stroked and teased the area around the necklace, determined to set the rules for her. “From now on, you have to listen to me, okay?”

Bo Liye leaned closer, her breath falling under Qin Mingyan’s ear, whispering, “For example, right now. Praise me.”

Qin Mingyan couldn’t see the scene at her own neck when she looked down. Just as she raised her hand to feel it, Bo Liye slapped her hand away.

She said coldly, “Take it off.”

Bo Liye reached out and shook a delicate small key in her palm, a version she had specifically asked Hermès to customize, making a slight modification to the clasp.

“I won’t. If you don’t praise me, you’ll just have to go to school wearing this.”

Qin Mingyan lowered her eyes, her pupils like a pool of deep water. “You are very capable.”

Bo Liye lifted her chin proudly. “What else?”

“Clear thinking, fluent logic, political sensitivity.”

Bo Liye: “What else?”

Qin Mingyan was silent for a moment, then asked word by word, “What else do you want to hear?”

Though the sentence had no inflection, the voice felt like invisible tentacles probing Bo Liye from all directions.

Bo Liye realized then that Qin Mingyan’s shadow had completely engulfed her. Without her noticing, Qin Mingyan’s hand had gripped her palm tightly, so tightly she couldn’t break free.

Bo Liye felt an involuntary flutter of panic. “Whatever you want to say! Just… hurry up and let go of my hand!”

Qin Mingyan’s eyes were dark, her tongue lightly pressing against her teeth.

She didn’t want to let go of Bo Liye’s hand.

But if she continued to hold on, Bo Liye would surely sense the abnormality. Bo Liye would not like the real her.

Qin Mingyan’s heart pounded rapidly, her blood boiling with restlessness. But in an instant, she suppressed it all. No trace could be found on her cold, pale face as she buried her long standing obsession deep within her eyes.

Feeling the tightening of the leather on her neck, finally, Qin Mingyan gently released her hand. It wasn’t time yet. It wasn’t the time to cross the line. She couldn’t scare Bo Liye so soon.

Only her nose twitched invisibly.

So fragrant.