The Years I Flirted with the Villainess - Chapter 3

Q: What type of person does Teacher Li like?

A: A good person who obeys the law, respects others, stays positive, and is kind-hearted.

An open magazine lay on the table, printed with stills from a recently aired drama. The Goddess in the photo wore lavish robes, her expression full of compassion—aloof yet gentle, like a divine miracle descended from heaven but forever out of reach.

The Q&A section next to it, however, was filled with the mundane charm of a joking mortal.

Li Mengjue lived alone. She cooked for herself, preferred light flavors, and liked sweets that weren’t too sweet (though she couldn’t eat much to maintain her weight). Aside from acting, her hobbies were gardening and reading…

Her bottom line for a partner was simply “a law-abiding good person.”

Scattered next to the magazine was a pile of bulk hard candies. The wrappers were all different, but they shared one similarity: they were all pink.

Ruan Qingxiao had ordered her private assistant to buy them.

Ruan didn’t remember the brand of the candy wrapper Li Mengjue had opened; she only knew it was pink, strawberry-flavored, sold in bulk at supermarkets, and cheap. Although the assistant was puzzled, they didn’t ask questions and immediately scoured every major supermarket in the city.

The various pink hard candies all tasted more or less the same—a cloying blast of artificial flavoring.

Ruan Qingxiao knit her brows and glanced at the wrapper. Suppressing the urge to spit it out, she simply bit down hard. She sat there with a wooden face, crunching the candy loudly, thinking to herself that Li Mengjue really wasn’t a picky eater at all.

If this were the Ruan household, her father would have scolded her for “lowering her status,” being “unrefined,” and “an embarrassment,” before ordering her to retake various connoisseurship classes.

But that was a memory from her childhood.

There were three siblings in the Ruan family. The eldest brother and Ruan Qingxiao were full siblings, and the former was the designated successor. As for the youngest “brother,” a half-brother born out of wedlock, he was their father’s pride and joy.

Ruan Qingxiao had been favored for a time as a child. But after her mother, who was part of a political marriage, passed away, her maternal family lost influence. When the illegitimate son was brought home, everything turned upside down.

The eldest brother saw the favored illegitimate son as his greatest rival and began a frantic “hustle,” at one point even considering sending his underage sister off into a political marriage. Meanwhile, the illegitimate son used their father’s favor to act arrogantly in front of the two siblings every day.

The older Ruan Qingxiao grew, the more rebellious she became. Upon turning eighteen, she inherited the shares her mother had left her. Since then, she had become increasingly reckless, even giving up the chance to study at a prestigious university abroad to become an actress.

Initially, the family was furious, feeling it was a loss of face for an elite socialite to become a “player” in the public eye. Only the illegitimate brother supported her—mostly to fan the flames and get her out of the way. Their father eventually gave in. The eldest brother tried to drag her back to the “righteous path,” but after Ruan Qingxiao smashed every collectible in his office, he sullenly shut his mouth.

One common trait among the Ruans was their obsession with “face.”

It was for the sake of “face” that Father Ruan never dared to marry his “true love” (who came from a disreputable background) into the family, nor did he dare let anyone know he neglected his late wife’s children. Similarly, the eldest brother didn’t want anyone knowing he tried to trade his only sister for profit.

By comparison, the Eldest Miss Ruan becoming an actress—and a successful one at that—was hardly a scandal.

Ruan Qingxiao had no qualms. After smashing the illegitimate brother’s head open with a vase at a family dinner for an insulting remark, she successfully moved out of the Ruan house to live alone.

In a sense, Ruan Qingxiao had attained freedom. However, she was still a pampered heiress; she never lacked money, nor had she truly severed ties with the family. Her life remained one of luxury and being pampered by those around her.

She had always looked down on cheap things.

Ruan Qingxiao frowned, wanting to sweep the remaining hard candies into the trash. But as her hand reached out, she hesitated. Finally, she grabbed an empty fruit plate from under the coffee table, swept the candies into it, and stuffed the plate into the storage compartment of the table.

Out of sight, out of mind.

The next page of the magazine featured an interview with another trending idol. Ruan Qingxiao glanced at it, then reached out and flipped back to Li Mengjue’s page.

Just as she was staring dazed at the compassionate Goddess in the magazine, her assistant knocked on the door and whispered a reminder: “Qingxiao, Young Master Tang is here.”

Without looking up, Ruan Qingxiao said coldly, “Tell him to get lost.”

The assistant turned around, went downstairs, and politely relayed the Eldest Miss’s sentiments to the visitor. Moments later, the assistant hurried back to Ruan’s door.

“Qingxiao, Young Master Tang says he’s here to talk about the engagement.”

—The dissolution of the engagement.

“Tell him to wait downstairs,” Ruan Qingxiao changed her mind.

After the assistant went back down, Ruan Qingxiao stared at the magazine for a few more seconds before finally closing it and placing it in a dedicated display cabinet.

Downstairs, the man sitting on the sofa was already losing his patience. He turned to question the assistant, only to receive a perfunctory reply. Ruan Qingxiao intentionally lingered upstairs for a while before making her way down.

Tang Qingyun was just pulling a magazine from the shelf to kill time when he heard the movement. Seeing the late-arriving Ruan Qingxiao, his face darkened.

The assistant brought tea, trying to smooth things over by asking if Ruan was finished with her work.

“Not quite,” Ruan Qingxiao said. “But I couldn’t just leave a guest hanging out here in the cold.”

At least she gave a formal excuse. Tang Qingyun’s intended interrogation was stifled; he could only express his dissatisfaction with a glare and a cold snort before turning to drink his tea.

He was still organizing his thoughts, wondering how to negotiate with Ruan. Meanwhile, Ruan Qingxiao, who had just claimed to be busy, sat with her head down, unhurriedly blowing on her hot tea, waiting for him to speak first.

In an atmosphere where the first person to speak felt like the loser, Ruan had no intention of losing ground. Moreover, this “fiancé” was the one asking for a favor.

Tang Qingyun was two years older than Ruan. The year she was born, the elders of the two families had arranged a “baby marriage.” Originally a joke, it had become a reality driven by mutual interests. As children, they had been childhood sweethearts, never questioning the arrangement. But as they grew older, they found each other increasingly intolerable.

Tang Qingyun was a genuine “Sea King” (a player). Armed with good looks and sweet talk, he had started dating since elementary school—at one point dating three classmates at once. By high school, his ex-girlfriends could have practically surrounded the entire campus.

The Tang family didn’t care, simply saying he was young and would settle down eventually. After university, Tang Qingyun did indeed “settle down.” He found his “Destined Woman.”

Supposedly, she was a “Little White Flower” junior from a poor background, but her unyielding spirit captured the Tang heir’s heart. From that day on, the gossip about Young Master Tang never ceased: fighting with ex-girlfriends for his true love, buying the restaurant where the White Flower worked so she only cooked for him, taking over the school’s broadcast room to declare his love…

Ruan Qingxiao didn’t actively follow the news, but busybodies always made sure the information reached her. Their engagement was an open secret in their circle, and the Tangs had repeatedly stated they only recognized Ruan Qingxiao as their daughter-in-law.

Furthermore, the Eldest Miss Ruan was not known for her patience. If provoked, she was bold enough to humiliate her own father in public. The onlookers were disappointed, however; while Tang’s scandals with his true love reached a fever pitch as their third anniversary approached, Ruan Qingxiao remained silent.

No condemnation, no scene, not even a hint of dissatisfaction. She seemed to be playing the role of the “magnanimous primary wife” perfectly.

Only the parties involved knew the truth.

As a child, Ruan might have thrown a tantrum over someone trying to steal her “property,” but now she felt that having someone take this piece of trash off her hands was an act of charity. She wasn’t a garbage bin that accepted everything. Her silence wasn’t about being the “primary wife”; she just had no attachments. The engagement wasn’t what she wanted, but it had its uses.

Currently, she was the perfect “victim.”

Tang Qingyun was much more desperate than she was—his true love had recently discovered she was pregnant and was waiting for him to marry her. But the engagement to Ruan stood in the way. If he dared to marry his true love openly, his parents would never agree, and the Ruans would be the first to erupt in fury.

Regardless of the Ruan family’s internal dynamics, Tang Qingyun publicly breaking an engagement for a “wild weed” would be a direct slap to the entire Ruan clan’s face. Tang knew his own limits; he could never abandon his wealth to elope.

The only solution was for Ruan Qingxiao to take the initiative to break it off. Yet, Ruan, who usually never suffered a slight, had become a stoic mute, refusing to snap even when the fiancé and his true love flaunted their relationship in her face.

Tang had tried to provoke her. If it had worked, he wouldn’t be sitting here now with a dark expression. Finally, being the one who wanted something, he lost his nerve.

“Ruan Qingxiao!” Tang Qingyun looked exhausted. “What do you want to let us go?”

“The way you say that, Young Master Tang, makes it sound like I’ve done something wrong to you,” Ruan Qingxiao glanced at him, her expression shifting to one of dissatisfaction.

“I… I didn’t mean that.” Tang Qingyun forced a twisted smile. “It’s just that you don’t like me either. Wouldn’t breaking the engagement be a happy ending for everyone?”

“And let people say behind my back that I was a failure who couldn’t even keep her fiancé’s heart?” Ruan countered coldly.

“Ruan Qingxiao!” Tang’s face cycled through colors before he finally grumbled, “Then what do you want? There’s no point dragging this out. Speak plainly, stop talking in circles!”

“Haven’t I said it already?” Ruan looked at him with surprise, as if doubting he had early-onset dementia. “Just a small percentage of shares. It won’t affect your voting rights; it just lets me collect more dividends.”

“I can tell my father that I don’t like you and insisted on the breakup. That way, the story isn’t about how you played ‘forced love’ with your true love in public and got caught on camera—photos that were sent to me, the ‘primary wife,’ for blackmail.”

The calmer Ruan’s tone, the more distorted Tang’s face became.

“I paid to settle that!” Tang couldn’t help but shout.

“Yes. But who knows if they kept the negatives?” Ruan said. “Anyway, I’m not the one losing face. At most, people will just call me pitiful.”

Tang Qingyun was speechless. He bit his teeth and spat out: “You really are a money-grubber. Are you so short on cash, Miss Ruan?”

Ruan Qingxiao didn’t care about his sarcasm, but looking at his twisted face for too long was getting boring. Her expression grew cold, her gaze like ice shards piercing her “fiancé.”

“Do I look like a pushover?” Ruan said icily. “My willingness to handle this privately is a courtesy to our past. If this blows up, the first thing your parents will do is drag you to the Ruan’s doorstep to kowtow in apology. Do you think your ‘true love’ will still be able to enter the Tang family peacefully then?”

“You’ve had a lot of fun privately complaining to your parents about my bad temper and poor character, haven’t you? How much longer can you maintain the ‘kind, pure, and considerate’ image you’ve painstakingly built for your true love?”

“It’s just some dividends. Compared to a ‘greedy, mercenary woman’ like me, is Young Master Tang really unwilling to give up even a bit of worldly wealth for the person he loves?”

“Enough!” Tang Qingyun finally couldn’t stand Ruan’s contemptuous gaze. He slammed the table to interrupt her. “Let’s talk about the share transfer.”

Ruan Qingxiao’s lips curved almost imperceptibly. She turned to her assistant. “Yun He, go to the study and bring the transfer contract.”

She had been fully prepared all along.

Tang Qingyun glared at her weakly, but his mouth opened and closed without words. No amount of bargaining would work. In the end, he signed the contract.

Ruan Qingxiao flipped through it three times. Confirming there were no issues, she laid the contract down with satisfaction and gave Tang his first smile of the day.

“Once the procedures are complete and the transfer is official, I will ask my father to go to the Tang house to break the engagement.”

“By the way, I wish Young Master Tang a smooth wedding.”

—It sounded more like a curse.

Ruan didn’t care what color Tang’s face turned. She stood up to return the contract to the study upstairs. The assistant stayed behind, asking if he wanted more tea.

“No, I’m leaving.” Tang Qingyun set down his cup irritably and grabbed his coat. As he rose to leave, he noticed something had slid off the sofa.

He looked down and paused. “Li Mengjue?” he muttered, startled.

Hearing that name, Ruan Qingxiao also stopped in her tracks and instinctively turned to look at him.

Lying on the floor was a poster that had come as a gift with a certain magazine. It was of Li Mengjue. Tang Qingyun knew fans liked to collect these things; the folded poster seemed to have fallen out of the magazine he had pulled out earlier.

“You like Li Mengjue?” Tang blurted out.

“It’s just a magazine gift,” Ruan found an excuse by reflex.

Tang Qingyun didn’t notice anything unusual. He stared at the photo for a moment, then let out a scoff.

“I almost forgot you ran off to be an actor too. But then again, how could the Eldest Miss Ruan ever look at a ‘plebeian’ like her?” Tang said mockingly.

“Back in university, you seemed to especially hate her.