“Jiang Yu! Do you have any idea what time it is?!”
“Why aren’t you back yet to cook? Are you trying to starve Mom and me to death?! The dishes from last night’s dinner still haven’t been washed, and the floor hasn’t been mopped. Are you expecting me to do all these chores? This is your home, and I’m at least a guest here, aren’t I? My brother really married a ‘wonderful’ wife!”
Even though the phone wasn’t on speaker mode, the voice blaring from the receiver was so loud and shrill that if Jiang Yu hadn’t been certain she was holding the latest model from a major domestic smartphone brand, she would’ve mistaken it for a crackling, leaky old-fashioned loudspeaker.
Even through the phone, she could practically feel the spray of the other person’s spit hitting her face.
At the moment, she was standing in a lingerie store filled with lace, mesh, and fluffy designs. Several sales assistants nearby cast sympathetic glances her way.
Sometimes, shopping alone could feel utterly helpless.
Frustrated yet unable to vent, she could only temporarily ignore the awkwardness and subtly move the phone a little farther from her ear.
The person on the other end of the line was her sister-in-law, who was temporarily staying at her place.
To be precise, it wasn’t really “temporary”, considering no one “temporarily” stays at someone else’s home for half the year. She had practically turned Jiang Yu’s house into her own.
She was living comfortably and used her “guest” status as an excuse to shirk all household chores. Once this opportunity was gone, she’d never find another sucker like Jiang Yu again.
Just look at this: Jiang Yu hadn’t even been home for dinner last night, yet the task of washing the dishes still fell on her.
After a long pause, a gentle, reproachful voice came through the receiver: “Huaiyu, Jiang Yu is part of our Qin family now. If you have something to say, say it nicely.”
Then, the gentle female voice took over the phone and said to Jiang Yu, “Huaiyu has always had a fiery temper. Please be patient with her. As for the household chores, Mom can help you with them, or we could hire a housekeeper.”
Jiang Yu brought the phone back to her ear, lowering her gaze and furrowing her brows.
Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law were merely two sides of the same coin. One wielded a soft knife, the other a hard one. It was hard to say which was more unbearable: the soft knife or the hard knife.
Her mother-in-law always criticized her sister-in-law in front of her, but she never truly took Jiang Yu’s side. The mother and daughter were just putting on a show for her benefit.
As usual, Jiang Yu replied in a soft, gentle tone, “Yes, Mom, I’ll be back soon.”
The store manager returned to her side with a neatly packed paper shopping bag. Seeing that she had hung up the phone, the manager handed the bag over with both hands, offering a comforting smile. “Madam, the items you reserved have been packed in advance for you.”
“Thank you.”
Jiang Yu took the shopping bag and, with practiced ease, softened her voice into a delicate, innocent tone, returning a gentle, flower-like smile. Suppressing the irritation stirred up by the phone call, she hurried away in her elegant high heels.
“Hey, hey! Was that Jiang Yu just now? What did she buy?”
The store manager, who had just seen Jiang Yu off at the door, was suddenly stopped and questioned by two young women who rushed over. Startled for a moment, she quickly scanned the two women.
They were dressed fashionably, wearing masks and sunglasses, making it impossible to recognize them. They looked like celebrities fully geared up for a public outing.
Soon, she regained her usual professional smile. “I’m not sure, sorry.”
With that, she calmly returned to the store’s cashier counter.
The two young women didn’t leave immediately, instead engaging in hushed conversation.
“She’s already retired from the industry, how could I still run into her? Did you hear her voice just now? So fake it gave me goosebumps all over.”
“How could I not hear it?” The woman in the apricot-colored trench coat beside her adjusted her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose, curling her lip slightly. “I heard she retired to marry into a wealthy family. Must be living the good life.”
“Pfft, as if. ‘Marrying into a wealthy family’ sounds nice, but with such a mismatch in status, she’s probably just become an unpaid maid in someone else’s house.” Lin Shengshen’s disdain for Jiang Yu was practically overflowing. Rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses, she lowered her voice even further. “I heard from my cousin’s best friend’s aunt’s wealthy social circle that Jiang Yu probably latched onto some rich old man. Who knows if it’s even a proper marriage? No one in their circles has heard of any weddings in the past six months. She might just be someone’s mistress!”
Back when Jiang Yu had just skyrocketed to fame with one drama, before the series even finished airing, she announced on social media that she was getting married in a whirlwind romance and retiring from the industry, catching everyone off guard.
If what Lin Shengshen said was true…
Song Ke’s mouth turned down completely. “Then her brain must have been squeezed out by her vocal cords.”
—
Outside, a light rain began to fall.
There were restaurants upstairs in the mall. Office workers from nearby commercial buildings often came here for lunch. It was lunchtime now. The small plaza outside was gradually filling with people.
The car to pick up Jiang Yu was already waiting by the roadside. She hadn’t brought an umbrella when she went out, so she clutched her handbag tightly with one hand while using the other to shield her head, jogging across the plaza.
The plaza’s tiles were already smooth and slippery. With the rain, the risk of slipping increased dramatically. Jiang Yu, who had always been accident-prone since childhood, sensed trouble after just a few steps.
The sense of danger had just flashed through her mind when her heel stepped on something slippery. Her whole body slid forward while tilting backward.
“Thud—”
A dull pain shot through the back of her head. Stunned, she trembled as she reached back with her hand, her fingertips touching something sticky. The scent of blood mixed with the earthy smell of rain filled her nostrils.
Of all the luck, she had hit the edge of a raised section of the ground.
Damn! She had an ominous feeling she was about to die young.
Screams began to rise around her—
“Ah!!! Someone slipped on dog poop!”
“Which dog owner has no public decency, not even picking up their dog’s poop?! And it was soft stool!”
“She’s bleeding so much! What… what do we do?!”
Passersby gathered around, looking at Jiang Yu’s pitiful state. Though they wanted to help, no one dared to actually step forward and do anything.
Hitting your head was serious business. Even a slight movement could be fatal.
Jiang Yu lay on the ground in an undignified position. Though she couldn’t move, she could hear everything, and her eyes could still shift around. From the chatter around her, she now understood the full extent of her miserable situation.
The physical pain was nothing.
Her heart ached.
Before, at worst, people called her a foolish vase who had squandered a winning hand1useless pretty fool. But from today onward, whenever she was mentioned, she might earn the title of “Number One Person with Shit for Brains”2dumbest person imaginable.
Oh, and it might even be a posthumous title3Given after a person’s death.
Not only was she going to die, but she was going to die in the most humiliating way possible!!!
Then a calm, steady woman’s voice reached her ears: “I’m a doctor. Please step aside and ensure the injured person has proper air circulation.”
“This is the North Plaza of Xinguang Shopping Center. Someone has fallen and is injured, with a severe impact to the back of the head and bleeding.”
The young woman squeezed through the crowd with her phone wedged between her shoulder and ear, quickly explaining the situation as she pulled a hair tie from her wrist and casually tied her long hair into a low ponytail. She then crouched beside the pitiful Jiang Yu, checking her breathing and pulse one after another.
Jiang Yu could hear the woman beside her continuously updating the emergency dispatcher about her condition. The voice sounded vaguely familiar. But with her head severely injured, she couldn’t quite place it among the people she knew.
A doctor arrived to help, and the surrounding onlookers calmed down a bit. Soon, however, their attention shifted from Jiang Yu’s injuries to Jiang Yu herself.
The good news was: Thankfully, she had fallen so badly that no one recognized her.
The bad news was: Someone had already noticed the scattered paper bags nearby.
“Are those her things?”
“I think so?” Someone seemed to have deliberately walked over to the open paper shopping bag, glanced inside, and couldn’t help but blurt out a certain green plant’s name, followed by a loud cry, “My eyes!!!”
Everyone present was immediately drawn to the commotion, turning to see the suggestive, scant pieces of “fabric” that had spilled out of the bag.
Jiang Yu strained to move her eyes, barely catching sight of the bag she had just picked up from the lingerie store lying not far away.
For a moment, her breathing grew uncontrollably rapid.
Her almost-never-home wealthy husband was due back in a few days. The bag contained the “battle attire” she had pre-ordered and carefully prepared to break the deadlock in their practically nonexistent marriage.
A creeping sense of shame quickly overwhelmed her muddled mind. At that moment, she had only one thought: She absolutely could not suffer social death twice in the same place!!!
Her life of just twenty-three years flashed before her eyes like a revolving lantern.
The Jiang family had nearly gone bankrupt. She had fallen from being a glamorous socialite into the mud. Half a year ago, to secure the Qin family’s promised 50 million yuan investment for the Jiang family, she married into the Qin family without even a wedding…
Finally, her mind replayed the drudgery of the past six months of marriage on a loop. Just moments ago, she had been subjected to another round of emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and sister-in-law…
The pent-up frustration from all this time suddenly burst its banks.
Summoning her last ounce of strength, she reached out toward the embarrassing paper bag and shouted with the loudest voice she could muster: “My mother-in-law bought those for my sister-in-law… They can’t be lost…”
“!!!”
The crowd was momentarily stunned.
“Mother-in-law bought… that for her daughter?”
“Mother-in-law and daughter… know how to have fun?”
“Willing to die protecting the in-laws’ kinks? She’s oddly kind, isn’t she?”
“Yikes. That’s a lot to unpack!”
Even the woman who claimed to be a doctor, crouching beside Jiang Yu, froze for a moment before slowly turning to look at the lacy mesh lingerie and what seemed to be a furry ear-like accessory scattered from the bag.
Some wealthy families… truly defy expectations.
After uttering those final words, Jiang Yu truly had no strength left to move. She slowly closed her eyes, thinking: Indeed, it’s better to disgust others than to suffer indignity oneself.
Though she was on the verge of death, a faint sense of satisfaction from having settled a great score lingered in her heart.
The female doctor crouching beside her seemed to notice her rapidly deteriorating condition and began performing CPR, occasionally patting her cheek and urging in a hushed, urgent tone, “Jiang Yu, don’t fall asleep!”
“Jiang Yu! If you die, Senior Qin will be mine!”
“Don’t worry, I’m a doctor. I can definitely save you!”
The voice that reached Jiang Yu’s ears was accompanied by a strange, buzzing hum, unbearably noisy. Yet, she suddenly remembered who the voice belonged to.
It was Ji Nian, a junior from the same university as her husband, Qin Yan, though from a different department.
Rumor had it that the two of them had been a well-known campus couple back in the day.
She had even once bumped into Qin Yan having dinner with Ji Nian.
Though she didn’t understand why this person now seemed so desperate to save her…
With her last shred of consciousness, she thought miserably: Yes, you are a doctor. But you’re a proctologist4a.k.a colorectal surgeon. A medical specialist focused on diagnosing and treating disorders of the anus, rectum, and lower intestinal tract! Sure, the brain and intestines both have grooves and folds and look somewhat similar, but… how the hell am I supposed to feel reassured?
Not only was she not reassured, but the last effort she made for herself before passing out was to clench a certain private area tightly.
The ambulance arrived. Ji Nian followed along to the hospital.
The Qin family driver, who had come to pick Jiang Yu up, belatedly arrived at the scene. Staring at the still-uncleaned bloodstains on the ground, he nervously clutched his phone and dialed a number, his voice filled with guilt.
“Secretary Fang, is Mr. Qin available? Something… has happened on my end.”
This driver was usually only responsible for transporting the Qin family members. When he said something had happened, it typically meant one of the troublesome Qin family members had caused trouble again. It’s nothing major, right?
So, Secretary Fang dismissed it as usual: “Mr. Qin is still in a meeting. Let them handle it themselves. We’ll talk about it when they get back.”
“Wait!” The driver, afraid the other would hang up, hurriedly added, “It’s Madam who’s in trouble. I’m afraid that by the time Mr. Qin returns in a few days, Madam will be gone…”
Secretary Fang: “???”
What did you say?
Who’s gone?
A few minutes later, the tightly shut door of the conference room at Qin Group’s Lucheng branch was pulled open from the outside. Secretary Fang, clutching his recently hung-up phone, hurried over to the man exuding a low-pressure aura at the head of the conference table. Leaning in, he whispered a few words only the two of them could hear.
The man’s previously gloomy expression suddenly twitched, then returned to its usual sternness. He stood up and strode out, tossing a hurried remark to the executives in the conference room who had failed to meet his expectations: “Redo the proposal. The next meeting will be scheduled separately.”
The meeting was adjourned. He had to go collect a body first.
He’d heard his wife was gone.
Moonlit: It’s so chaotic! I don’t know what to feel. I feel like laughing, but also sad for our FL’s bad luck…
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Lucien On ABRWF Chapter 43.2