You Should’ve Said Earlier that you’re Such a Little Flirt! - Chapter 14

The weekend arrived quickly, marking the time for their pre-arranged meeting with Ye Jianguo.

The driver took the wheel while Xu Qingqiong and Lin Konglu sat in the backseat. Their destination was in the suburbs, making for a somewhat long journey. Xu Qingqiong leaned back, staring at the scenery racing past the window, while Lin Konglu remained busy, head down as she reviewed documents.

Halfway there, Ye Jianguo sent another message asking where they were and if they needed to be picked up. Likely scared after the last time he was scolded, his tone was now cautious and subservient.

Staring at the message, Xu Qingqiong couldn’t help but let out a mocking laugh. She marveled at how the old man could be so flexible with his dignity; his thick-skinned nature was truly a sight to behold. He was the definition of a “two-faced” person.

The memories of her childhood remained vivid. After her mother passed away from a difficult labor, her grandmother had kicked him out of their residence immediately. Having lost his source of income, and being someone who spent money like water—accustomed to the life of a “pretty boy” living off his looks—he fell into a period of pathetic ruin. Even the mistress he had been keeping turned her back on him.

After stumbling around for a while, he turned his greedy eyes toward Xu Qingqiong. He spent all his energy scheming on how to squeeze more inheritance out of her grandmother. He likely felt that since Xu Qingqiong carried half of his blood, she was naturally destined to be on his side.

At first, he tried to approach her privately after school. He thought that because she was young, she would have no sense of right and wrong and would be easy to manipulate. Ye Jianguo put on the arrogant air of a parent, demanding she follow him.

Xu Qingqiong didn’t indulge him. With a cold, stern little face, she didn’t say a word to him and instead called over a teacher, saying there was a “strange uncle” bothering her. The primary school teacher didn’t dare take any risks and called the police immediately, nearly sending him on a seven-day “tour” of the detention center. Because of that incident, school security was upgraded, leaving him with almost no chance to get near her again.

Seeing that strategy fail by the time she was in middle school, Ye Jianguo started playing the misery card. He began making excuses about how a child couldn’t grow up without a father.

Did he truly want to raise her? If so, how could he have managed to completely ignore her existence from birth until then?

To say Xu Qingqiong never longed for parents as a child would be a lie. Her peers were always picked up by their parents after school. Her grandmother treated her well and would always make time to pick her up if she wasn’t too busy with work, but that already dictated that she was a “different” kind of child.

Being different meant being special, which meant drawing attention, which meant she was… an outlier. The gaze of other children was constantly fixed on her; she was perpetually being watched.

Children are the most simple, but their malice is also the most pure. Her differences made her feel out of place, ultimately leading to isolation and discrimination. Her tough exterior was a survival mechanism, a form of bluffing. She was curious about why she didn’t have parents and even felt a bit of an inferiority complex.

But Ye Jianguo never saw any of that. In his eyes, there was only profit and schemes to get his hands on the grandmother’s wealth.

Later, after his schemes failed and his frustration turned to rage, he used a mix of threats and enticements, trying to take her away by force. He actually succeeded once—and only once.

He took Xu Qingqiong, planning to move her to a neighboring town where no one could find them, intending to use her as leverage against her grandmother. However, because he was driving too fast, they nearly had a head-on collision with another car on the highway. The fuel tank leaked, and the car caught fire. Because the rear door was deformed from the impact and couldn’t be opened, he immediately abandoned the teenage Xu Qingqiong and fled the scene.

To this day, Xu Qingqiong still has a scar on her arm from that accident. It is deep and long, which is why she rarely wears short sleeves in the summer.

Speaking of scars, she suddenly remembered the one on the back of Lin Konglu’s shoulder. It was quite similar to her own. Both were depressed scars caused by trauma, nearly identical in width and even following a similar path.

She suddenly recalled a plot from a TV show she watched as a kid: a father and daughter were separated during a war after receiving a continuous wound across their palms; they eventually reunited by matching the identical scars on the backs of their hands.

Feeling bored, she glanced at Lin Konglu’s profile. Seeing her focused on her documents, Xu Qingqiong’s imagination began to run wild. She quietly pulled up her sleeve to reveal her scar and stretched her arm out behind Lin Konglu’s shoulder, thinking: Maybe Lin Konglu and I are like the TV show—we knew each other before, got separated, and can finally recognize each other now.

But to create a scar like that, she would have had to be holding Lin Konglu in her arms. Not only that, Lin Konglu would have had to be willing to lie in her embrace.

Sigh, a high-difficulty maneuver indeed.

Just as she was seriously studying her arm, Lin Konglu suddenly seemed to sense something. She looked up, her gaze searching as it landed on Xu Qingqiong.

Xu Qingqiong quickly pulled her hand back and sat up straight. “It’s nothing!”

Lin Konglu’s fingers unconsciously toyed with the edge of a page as her eyes lingered on the scar on Xu Qingqiong’s arm for a moment. It was slightly recessed, uneven, and a bit wrinkled—clearly different from the surrounding skin.

It was ugly.

Feeling self-conscious, Xu Qingqiong was about to pull her sleeve down to hide it. However, Lin Konglu reached out to stop her. Her fingers brushed over the scar as she leaned in closer. Her gaze was so focused and earnest, tracing every inch, that the area she looked at began to turn red and feel hot.

Xu Qingqiong didn’t know if Lin Konglu had some specific fetish for this scar; she seemed to love it, often kissing it when they were in bed. But right now, Xu Qingqiong felt like she was about to go up in flames. She yanked her arm back and hurriedly pulled down her sleeve.

She looked at Lin Konglu defensively and said with absolute determination, “You can’t.”

Lin Konglu hadn’t quite snapped out of it yet; her expression was quiet, her eyes shimmering like rippling water. “Hmm?”

Under that gaze, Xu Qingqiong completely forgot her vow to be the dominant one. Blushing, she glanced around at the car interior. “Doing it in a place like this is too scandalous… let’s talk about it when we get home.”

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