After Saving My Possessive Best Friend, I Couldn't Escape (GL) - Chapter 40

“You watch things here, alright? I won’t be in the shop today.”

Fang Zhile had just put on her uniform and hadn’t even touched the milk tea machine when Wei Youqing hurriedly grabbed her bag and ran outside.

“Aren’t you working?” Fang Zhile called out.

Wei Youqing, who had just reached the door, backed up a few steps, as if remembering something. She leaned against the counter and beckoned Fang Zhile with a finger, “Come here for a second, I want to ask you something.”

Fang Zhile approached, confused, “What’s with all the secrecy?”

“Last time, when you went shopping with Zhishu… cough cough, what did you say to her?” Wei Youqing’s voice was hesitant and mumbled, making it hard to hear clearly.

It took Fang Zhile a while to figure out what she was saying. She replied speechlessly, “We weren’t shopping. I had something to find her for, and she just asked me to help her pick something out along the way.”

As she said this, Fang Zhile remembered the ‘rainbow’ incident. Her eyes scanned Wei Youqing up and down, and she quietly took a step back. “Let me make it clear, your couple’s fun has nothing to do with me. I didn’t recommend it, and I didn’t trick you.”

“No!” Wei Youqing’s face flushed bright red with embarrassment and anger. “I wasn’t asking about that!”

Fang Zhile was suspicious. “Really?”

“What is constantly going through your mind!” Wei Youqing sighed to the heavens halfway through, then suddenly paused. “Wait, what do you mean, you didn’t trick me?”

Fang Zhile blinked her eyes innocently.

“You knew she was going to trick me?” Wei Youqing asked faintly.

Fang Zhile kept her smile, then shook her head. “I don’t know anything.”

Wei Youqing narrowed her eyes.

“I just asked her to help me look up a few people. Her company can analyze massive amounts of data, right?” Fang Zhile explained very seriously.

“Look up what?” Wei Youqing leaned closer again. “Can you tell me a little bit?”

Fang Zhile instantly dropped her smile and sent a message to Ye Yu with a straight face. “No. Does the boss have anything else to say?”

“You’ll have your salary deducted with that attitude towards your boss,” Wei Youqing threatened.

“What exactly do you want? Just say it.” Fang Zhile was annoyed. “Customers will be here soon.”

Seeing that subtle hints weren’t working, Wei Youqing decided to be direct. “Well, it’s just that, I haven’t seen Zhishu this energized in a long time. The last time she was so enthusiastic about work was when the company was first established. She’s been so excited and full of energy these past few days…”

Fang Zhile felt herself guiding her thoughts towards the direction of “Zhishu’s busy work earns her spouse’s caring attention.” However, Wei Youqing’s character setting was carefree and a bit cowardly, and her initiative to care for her wife was clearly lacking.

Besides, this was a yuri story restricted to readers over 21, and the mosaic parts that the main characters couldn’t provide were enthusiastically supplied by the side characters.

Fang Zhile’s gaze at Wei Youqing instantly became meaningful.

“So, I’m… kind of avoiding her,” Wei Youqing’s voice became slightly muffled again. “Right? If Zhishu calls you and asks for my whereabouts, just say you don’t know.”

“I don’t know.” Fang Zhile glanced at the little radish and thought, Sure enough, the world setting doesn’t lie to me.

Wei Youqing felt relieved after getting a positive answer. She carried her small bag and bounced out the door.

She was even in a good mood and greeted Ye Yu, who was walking in at the same time, “Good evening, little beauty, have fun, oh.”

Ye Yu: …

Where did this strange auntie come from?

“Doesn’t she have to stay in the shop every day?” Ye Yu walked over and asked.

Fang Zhile was struggling with the blue Stitch pendant on her chest. Hearing the question, she raised her chin, signaling Ye Yu to look at the little radish on the counter.

“She’s a big boss, but she insists on sitting in the shop every day, even lying down in the shop, just because her wife said she must go out to work and work for at least two hours a day.”

Ye Yu knew the purpose of the radish from the last time and felt quite speechless upon hearing this.

“Wow, working for two hours, 120 minutes, must be so hard for her,” Ye Yu said. “So she has a day off today?”

“No, she’s just starting an uprising.” Fang Zhile smiled. “They’re a young couple, it’s normal to have a little fight. My boss is passively protesting by refusing to work for two hours a day.”

Ye Yu didn’t quite understand. “That’s her protest?”

Fang Zhile wiped the water stains off a cup. “Wei Youqing is a henpecked wife without knowing it. Sometimes, when her wife sends over a box of dumplings, she’ll refuse to eat the last one as a form of protest.”

Ye Yu imagined that scene and was extremely curious.

“What was her wife’s reaction?”

Fang Zhile said, “She ate quite a few.”

Ye Yu asked, “That’s it?”

“Well, what else?” Fang Zhile neatly placed the cups and leaned on the counter with her elbows. “When a normal person protests, if they have any backbone, they would definitely not touch a single bite.”

“You have a point,” Ye Yu was eager to learn and immediately became interested in studying. “What other ways are there to protest?”

“Not replying to messages, not answering calls, not going home at night…” Fang Zhile glanced outside the door, then belatedly started to laugh. “She wouldn’t really be protesting, would she?”

Fang Zhile was laughing with too much schadenfreude. She looked at Ye Yu, who was clearly holding back as well, her lips trembling.

As their eyes met, they both burst into raucous laughter, not knowing who started it first. They were both laughing so hard they couldn’t stand straight, completely losing their composure.

Silly laughter is like yawning; it’s a highly contagious virus.

After laughing for a good while, Fang Zhile covered her stomach and said, “I can’t laugh anymore.”

Ye Yu, who was usually elegant, was also trying to control the extent to which her cheek muscles lifted when she laughed heartily.

“It must be Friday, the mood is good,” Ye Yu rubbed the corners of her eyes, having laughed until she was worn out. “I swear, I wasn’t like this before.”

Fang Zhile tried several times to straighten the little Stitch plushie on her head but failed due to her shaking hands from laughing. She simply tossed it aside and didn’t wear it.

“Me neither,” Fang Zhile sighed. “I’m supposed to be very aloof.”

Ye Yu turned to look at her. “You stole my line.”

Fang Zhile silently recalled the character panel in the book. The female lead (bottom) was loaded with a bunch of random tags that clearly looked like the author had stuffed them in to chase trends and exposure.

Beautiful, crybaby, tsundere, contradictory, aloof, long black hair, manipulative…

Fang Zhile fixed her gaze on Ye Yu’s face, catching the sparkle of laughter in her eyes again.

“No, I can’t laugh anymore.” Fang Zhile held it in. “Ye Yu, I’m telling you, the door is open. If a customer walks in and sees two idiots, they’ll surely be scared away.”

Ye Yu slowly took a breath and said calmly, “Hmm, I think so too.”

Sometimes the atmosphere between people is just that strange. With some people, even if you don’t talk to them, just being in the same space can be incredibly awkward. With others, you just meet eyes and start giggling, babbling nonsense, and can’t stop laughing.

“Come in,” Fang Zhile opened the small side door, allowing Ye Yu to enter the back area. She sat down next to the small coffee table that Wei Youqing often used and poured her a cup of plain water. “You drink some water first. After I sell a few cups of milk tea, I’ll use the leftover fruit to make you some fruit tea.”

Ye Yu took out her phone. “I’ll scan the code to order.”

“No,” Fang Zhile stuck to her principles. “Don’t miss any opportunity to take advantage of the boss, and absolutely don’t let the boss earn a single cent from you.”

Ye Yu understood and immediately put her phone away. “Then I’ll do my homework, freeloading off your space, table, and water.”

“You can also freeload off,” Fang Zhile pinched a small cherry and held it to Ye Yu’s mouth. “Fruit.”

Ye Yu paused for a second, stared at the small, ripe, and lovely cherry, and gently opened her mouth.

The juice burst in her mouth, sickly sweet.

The remaining red juice stained Fang Zhile’s fingertip, which she wiped on a clean, soft white paper, leaving a faint red smudge.

Ye Yu gently lowered her eyes, her mind settling for a long time before refocusing on the homework in front of her.

Then she looked closely: it was a math test.

Ye Yu quietly picked up the paper, folded it, and put it into her backpack. Just as she was about to zip it up, a hand stopped her.

“Do math first,” Fang Zhile’s voice sounded devilish. “If you want to raise your score, trust me, math is the fastest way.”

Ye Yu found it hard to agree. “Why?”

Fang Zhile’s tone was very natural. “Math is easy to understand. If you understand one problem, you can do a whole series of them.”

“Trust me,” Ye Yu repeated her words. “For me, raising my math score is the slowest way.”

“How will you know if you don’t try?” Fang Zhile rolled up her sleeves, bent down closer, gently pulled the test paper out of Ye Yu’s hand, and spread it on the table. “Do the multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions first. You can leave the rest blank, but you must score high on these two sections.”

Fang Zhile had showered this morning. She carried a pleasant sea salt scent, the kind from the most common bath salts, with a fresh, moist air that felt like the breath of the sea washing over her.

Ye Yu rested her chin on the table and watched her, her gaze following Fang Zhile’s slightly round fingertips upwards, lightly brushing over her smooth forearm revealed by the rolled-up sleeve, her short hair near her collarbone, and her slim-fit purple bunny uniform.

“How about you teach me how to guess the answers?” Ye Yu suddenly suggested. “Like that one trick, ‘choose the longest one if there are three short options and one long’?”

Fang Zhile paused for a few seconds, then crooked her finger and knocked Ye Yu’s forehead. “Study seriously. Don’t think about those crooked little tricks. Do you think the teachers who set the exams aren’t keeping up with the times?”

Ye Yu rubbed her forehead, displeased. “The devil finds a way, the priest finds a better way.”

“They are the priest,” Fang Zhile bent her waist a little more and used a pen to circle a few questions. “There, little Devil Ye, do these questions.”

Ye Yu looked at her mournfully. “Okay.”

Fang Zhile turned away without hesitation.

A customer had arrived, and Fang Zhile was busy for a while, a slight smile always playing on her lips.

She could feel the accusing, dissatisfied gaze shooting from behind her. Ye Yu’s math was like Fang Zhile’s handwriting—both were their life-long enemies.

Some people’s knack wasn’t in studying. Some people’s knack was a little biased, given to one subject, while the others were completely ignored.

Ye Yu was okay with humanities subjects, but absolutely hopeless with STEM subjects.

But Fang Zhile knew that if Ye Yu pushed herself, she could still score seventy, which was forty points higher than her current average of thirty!

That’s dozens of points above the four-hundred-point passing line!

Even if her Ye Yu was a calligraphy art student, she had to be the best in math and have the highest culture score among the art students!

Ye Yu couldn’t understand Fang Zhile’s obsession, merely thinking she was out of touch—why doesn’t she eat meat, is it because she doesn’t like it? Why doesn’t she use math to boost her score, is it because she disdains it?…

“Don’t drift off,” Fang Zhile was scooping ice from the freezer and said without turning her head. “Do your work seriously.”

Ye Yu was shocked. How could she know even that?

So she stubbornly didn’t turn her head, staring intently at Fang Zhile’s back. As she stared, she realized Fang Zhile’s waist was indeed quite slender, and perhaps because she worked standing up every day, her hips were perky, and the line between her waist and hips was wonderfully graceful.

“Ahem,” Fang Zhile raised a hand and knocked on the tea dispenser above her head. “I can see you.”

Ye Yu looked, and the tea dispenser had a glossy metal surface, acting like a curved but clear convex mirror.

“Oh.” Ye Yu reluctantly turned back and thought hard over the math problems.

But Fang Zhile’s figure kept popping up in her mind: the sound of her walking, the sound of her pouring tea, the sound of her taking customers’ orders, and even the subtle friction sound when she pulled a plastic cup from a stack—all sounded as if they were amplified by a megaphone and pressed against her ear, increasing by more than a dozen times.

It made her heart restless and hard to calm.

“I’m finished,” Ye Yu said. “I don’t know the rest.”

Fang Zhile craned her neck to look at the paper and burst out laughing. “That’s good. Put the paper down. I’ll take it back and look it over for you.”

Fang Zhile didn’t ask her to do the remaining parts of the test, and Ye Yu simply chose the questions she liked and finished most of them.

One of them made milk tea, and the other did homework.

For a time, the gurgling sound of running water and the rustling sound of test papers being turned combined magically and harmoniously, much like a comforting white noise.

Fang Zhile loved moments like this. Being with Ye Yu, not having to do anything, or both doing their own thing without bothering each other, but always sensing the other’s presence. With a turn of her head, her peripheral vision could catch the person’s figure.

It was a power that brought stillness.

“Ye Yu, I have a slightly presumptuous question,” Fang Zhile leaned back against the counter with her hands, facing Ye Yu but not looking directly at her. “Um, if you don’t feel comfortable answering, you don’t have to.”

Ye Yu stopped writing, her attitude serious. “Go ahead.”

Fang Zhile grabbed a handful of hair, rubbed her nose, and finally adjusted her tie. After running out of things to do, she cleared her throat and looked up at the ceiling and down at the floor. “That engagement with the Zhou family, how exactly do you see it?”

Perhaps the atmosphere was too good, or perhaps the Ye Yu in front of her was too well-behaved; an impulse struck Fang Zhile, and she asked the question.

Fang Zhile had thought about this question many times. She had tried to keep Ye Yu within her sight these days, but ever since Ye Yu had that meal with the Zhou family, Fang Zhile had run into her and Zhou Meize together several times.

Even though it was only the two of them, according to the plot of the book, as long as there weren’t a bunch of ‘numbers’ around Zhou Meize, Ye Yu’s personality wouldn’t turn paranoid.

Ye Yu’s turn to paranoia hinged on whether she lost something she cared about.

From the current situation, her Ye Yu had a strong sense of self-awareness, and her degree of attachment to Zhou Meize wasn’t enough to make her turn dark.

But Fang Zhile was probably just an over-anxious mother hen who worried too much whenever it concerned Ye Yu.

Ye Yu’s personality was quite “faint.” Calling her sensitive might not be quite right; it should be described as a form of self-confinement to an extremely severe degree of narrow-minded selfishness.

Yet, Ye Yu was also kind. This might sound contradictory. Sometimes, Fang Zhile couldn’t describe Ye Yu with simple words. Having grown up with Ye Yu all these years, she could somewhat sense Ye Yu’s true personality.

To put it simply, Fang Zhile knew that Ye Yu was never stingy with her kindness to others, but she easily placed everyone at a minimal standard of human nature, meaning: we’re getting along fine, but if you suddenly turn against me one day, I won’t be shocked or care, because I already expected it.

At the same time, Ye Yu wasn’t prone to holding grudges, because anyone she truly hated, she never forgave.

Wearing a veneer of goodwill, but with an inner core of cold detachment, Ye Yu, with Fang Zhile’s companionship, lived peacefully and without any major setbacks.

However, the Ye Yu in the book had arrived in this world earlier than her. She had either experienced the female lead (bottom)’s traumatic past or had merged with her memory. The current Ye Yu hadn’t had Fang Zhile’s companionship during her growth, making it hard to imagine what kind of change she might have undergone.

Fang Zhile didn’t want Ye Yu to follow the female lead (bottom)’s path under the influence of the plot, so she just spoke her mind directly. “I don’t mean anything else. I’m just asking if you have any thoughts about your own life or anything like that.”

She became tongue-tied whenever a serious matter came up. Fang Zhile couldn’t help but grab her hair, nervously waiting for Ye Yu’s reply.

“Actually, this engagement was set by me.” Ye Yu dropped a bombshell. After saying it, she turned her head away to avoid Fang Zhile’s expression, her pen point poking the test paper repeatedly, performing this mechanical action.

Amidst the tearing sound of the pen tip hitting the paper, Ye Yu spoke again. “I remember I told you that I have a bit of ‘face blindness.’ It’s hard for me to remember anyone, and I can only briefly remember people I see often. If those people don’t appear for a long time, I forget them all.”

Fang Zhile’s expression instantly darkened. She understood that this was the original book’s consciousness at work. In the female lead (bottom)’s world, there was only the female lead (top), and Ye Yu was inevitably affected.

“Later, I pretended that I couldn’t remember anyone. Even if I ran into them on the street, I wouldn’t interact,” Ye Yu gently let out a breath, as if suppressing the stuffy restlessness in her chest, and chuckled lightly. “I didn’t expect that doing so would actually help me remember.”

Fang Zhile listened quietly, deep in thought.

“There were many strange things in my childhood,” Ye Yu got to the main point. “Liking Zhou Meize was one of them.”

Fang Zhile couldn’t help but sit down on the chair in front of Ye Yu, sitting up straight and nervously watching her.

Ye Yu smiled, her voice a little tired. “Perhaps it was because no one was with me when I was little. After leaving the old family house, I was still a child, and I followed Zhou Meize all day long. She was a ringleader, she would protect me, buy me all sorts of delicious things, and drag me around every day. The closeness created a preference in me, so I told my parents I wanted to marry her.”

“At that time, my father’s position wasn’t yet stable. Hearing me say that, he went to negotiate with the Zhou family. Zhou’s mother liked me very much and agreed as if it were a joke.” Ye Yu lowered her eyes. When mentioning the past, her tone was light and somewhat airy, like she was narrating some obscure memories.

It was the chaos remaining in her memory. Her entire childhood was like the shoddiest, most tattered woven cloth, draped over a grey sky. Every step she took smelled of dust and decay.

And she felt like a big hand was pushing her from behind. The force was great, the direction was accurate, pushing her to be terrified and treading on thin ice.

Her hand was suddenly grasped by another. Fang Zhile took the fountain pen, whose tip Ye Yu had already poked askew, and gently placed Ye Yu’s hand on her own lap, patting it lightly, rhythmically. “What happened after that? Since it was a joke, how did it turn out like this?”

“Later, I started elementary school, then middle school,” Ye Yu felt a sudden heat surge from where Fang Zhile’s touch met her hand, like the embers of charcoal falling in winter, bringing a taut, burning sensation. In that heat, Ye Yu spoke softly with a bewildered self-doubt, “Every Lunar New Year, I would repeat this request until I was fourteen. My parents arranged the engagement, and the business empires of the Ye and Zhou families merged again, becoming inseparable. Zhou Meize and I officially became each other’s fiancées.”

Fang Zhile felt an indescribable mix of sourness and frustration.

It was like swallowing the peel of a large lemon, mixed with the remaining sour and bitter lemon juice, leaving a mouth full of unswallowable bitterness.

“And now?” Fang Zhile asked. “The past is in the past. What are your thoughts now? Do you still want to marry her?”

Ye Yu subconsciously wanted to say no.

But for some reason, at the moment this thought arose, her heart suddenly jolted.

That voice, which had long been absent because her mood was good and her mind was active recently, resurfaced.

The resentful, sorrowful sound seemed to float up from the ground, crashing from her eardrum and temples straight into her fragile brain nerves, echoing with a mournful, heartbreaking cry that went deep into the bone marrow.

It said, Ye Yu must marry Zhou Meize.

It was like a magical curse, luring her to fall further and further down.

Ye Yu’s lips seemed glued together, and a large patch of cold sweat suddenly broke out on her body, her palms trembling unnaturally.

“Ye Yu?” Fang Zhile gripped her hand tightly, reaching out to tap her sweat-soaked, pale cheek, her voice anxious. “What’s wrong?

“Wake up, Ye Yu, are you uncomfortable? Ye Yu, can you hear me?”…

Fang Zhile didn’t know what had happened. Ye Yu suddenly looked like she had lost her soul, her body in an extremely uncomfortable state of emergency response. She couldn’t hear Fang Zhile’s voice and couldn’t respond to her.

Fang Zhile pulled out her phone to dial 911, but just as she was about to call, the person beside her suddenly slumped sideways, and then, finally, woke up.

Meeting Fang Zhile’s worried gaze, Ye Yu shook her head and smiled. “I’m fine. I just had a little low blood sugar.”

Low blood sugar wasn’t a severe condition, but Ye Yu’s reaction was truly frightening.

Fang Zhile no longer had the mind to think about engagements. All her attention was focused on Ye Yu, afraid of missing any slight reaction.

“Can you see clearly? Are there white spots or shadows?”

“Are you dizzy? Do you feel sick to your stomach?”

Fang Zhile nervously checked repeatedly to confirm whether she needed to go to the hospital, only to be met with Ye Yu’s firm refusal.

Low blood sugar, by definition, requires sugar replenishment. Fang Zhile quickly checked the syrups in the shop and simply mixed her a cup of pure sugar drink.

“You haven’t been eating properly lately,” Fang Zhile scrutinized Ye Yu’s physique as she handed the drink over, her brows furrowed. “You don’t look like you’ve changed much. Are you too tired from studying lately? Too much exercise?”

Ye Yu took a sip of the cloyingly sweet drink and refused to drink more. “What is this? It’s so sweet it tastes bitter.”

“I haven’t been exercising, and studying… look down at my test paper,” Ye Yu tried to soothe the agitated person in front of her. “How could I be tired from studying? I just hadn’t eaten tonight, that’s why I had low blood sugar. If you’re okay, hurry up and close the shop. When it’s time, we’ll go get a late-night snack.”

Fang Zhile immediately wanted to push Ye Yu out the door or pry open her mouth to feed her. She was so angry she shouted, “You’re not eating again!”

“Oh, I just, I forgot,” Ye Yu stood up, tugging at the strap sticking out from the back of Fang Zhile’s uniform, casually. “Your voice is too loud, my ears hurt.”

Fang Zhile nearly fell backward in frustration.

“I’m talking about you, don’t change the subject,” Fang Zhile snatched back her strap and glared at Ye Yu, her anger flaring up, yet she couldn’t bear to say anything too harsh. “Did you like dieting during your adolescence?”

Ye Yu pouted, calling her petty. Seeing her like this made Fang Zhile even angrier. She remembered an incident when Ye Yu was eighteen and loved drinking sparkling water but refused to eat, resulting in anemia and hospitalization. She grabbed Ye Yu’s shoulders, her eyebrows raised, and her commanding presence emerged.

“I’m talking to you, listen carefully,” Fang Zhile’s tone became stern and domineering. “I don’t care how your engagement with Zhou Meize came about. I’ll just tell you one thing: your own life is the most important. Even if you might, perhaps, possibly, have a tiny little liking for Zhou Meize right now, you must put yourself first. Eat seriously, study seriously, and treat your feelings seriously. Don’t waste your time, energy, and emotions on people who aren’t worth it. Got it?”

Her grip was strong, her knuckles digging in. Ye Yu’s shoulders were seized by her, her path blocked, and all Ye Yu could see and hear was Fang Zhile.

The words were heartfelt. Ye Yu couldn’t utter a single “no.” She was stunned for a long time, her pale complexion slowly regaining color, then gradually turning a faint red.

Ye Yu quietly said, “I got it.”

Fang Zhile pointed a finger at her, then turned around to clean up the counter.

Ye Yu stood still for a moment, then squatted down to pick up the test paper, and sat back down by the small coffee table to work on her homework.

She tried to awaken that voice again, telling herself in her mind that she wanted to leave Zhou Meize.

Then, logically, starting from her heart, her whole body went numb and cold, but the symptoms were much milder than before.

Ye Yu’s expression brightened. It seemed the attempt was effective.

Just as she was planning to continue experimenting without Fang Zhile’s knowledge, three packets of coconut milk biscuits were shoved into her hand.

“Eat quickly,” Fang Zhile whispered. “I found them in the boss’s little drawer. Only three packets, they’re all for you.”

The coconut milk biscuits were likely a foreign brand. They were incredibly rich in coconut milk flavor, and the crispy texture was very thick. One bite left a lingering fragrance in her mouth.

Ye Yu couldn’t stop eating one after another.

After the crunching sound lasted for a while, a cup of warm water was offered to her mouth, and Ye Yu drank it immediately.

The hunger in her stomach was slightly alleviated, and the recovery of her physical strength made her power to fight the voice inside her much stronger.

She hadn’t had time to eat dinner for a reason. After school, she found Sun Yangyang to ask her to pass a book to Zhou Meize and kindly expressed her hope that they would have a pleasant weekend outing.

Zhou Meize went out every weekend, and this time was no exception. Sun Li was also present at the time, her expression extremely unpleasant.

Afterward, she received a message from Fang Zhile saying Wei Youqing was leaving the shop, asking if she wanted to come to the milk tea shop.

She happened to be near the school, so she came over on the way and forgot to eat.

Ye Yu’s problem of “easily fainting when she hears the voice in her head” was only diagnosed by the doctor as “low blood sugar.” She hadn’t cared before, but seeing Fang Zhile’s reaction, it was time to find an opportunity to fully regain control of her body.

“The boss isn’t coming back for sure,” Fang Zhile sent off the last customer, looked up at the clock, and walked towards the changing room while untying her uniform apron. “Time to clock out, not one minute more.”

Ye Yu packed her school bag. By the time she had organized all her test papers, Fang Zhile also changed into her school uniform and came out.

It must be said that Fang Zhile had an excellent bone structure. At 1.7 meters tall, with long limbs, her waist was still slender. When she turned and twisted her waist, the fabric clung tightly to her back, outlining the fresh and toned body lines of a young girl.

Fang Zhile smiled, her lips red and her teeth white, looking clean and sunny. “Let’s go. I’ll take you to eat and send you home.”

Ye Yu suppressed the urge to whistle and nodded obediently.

Due to Ye Yu’s persistence, Fang Zhile couldn’t successfully enter any restaurant. Instead, she accompanied Ye Yu to a street corner selling sugar-coated chestnuts, standing out of the wind, where they finished a whole bag of chestnuts, one for you, one for me.

“Ah, all gone,” Ye Yu chewed her last chestnut incredibly slowly, as if cherishing the last bit of flavor and savoring every bite, feeling unsatisfied. “I still want more.”

Fang Zhile reached out to touch her stomach, then pressed higher on her tummy, an exasperated look on her face. “I told you to eat a proper meal, but you wouldn’t. Chestnuts are hard to digest, they don’t fill you up and are easy to cause indigestion.”

“Then what should I do if I still want more?” Ye Yu suddenly acted like a child, taking advantage of the person in front of her indulgence, throwing a completely random and childish problem to the opposite person without reservation.

Fang Zhile sighed, put her hands in her pockets, looked around at the closed and darkened shops, then turned to look at the longing Ye Yu. “Can you hold your craving until tomorrow morning?”

Ye Yu blinked, sensing a different meaning. “Depends. What are you going to do?”

“How about I buy raw chestnuts and stir-fry them for you?” Fang Zhile calculated that Lu Yixian was proficient in all kinds of cooking methods. It wouldn’t be hard to take some time to have him write down the process for making sugar-coated chestnuts.

Ye Yu was shocked, her eyes wide. “You can?”

“I can learn,” Fang Zhile said helplessly. “Since all the sugar-coated chestnut shops are closed now, and buying them back isn’t as good as fresh-fried.”

Ye Yu had never experienced having her wishes met so carefully before. Now, she was so happy she wanted to jump on the spot.

Acting on impulse, Ye Yu wrapped her arms around Fang Zhile’s neck, jumping up and down excitedly for a few seconds, cheering, “Okay, okay, I’ll bring the chestnuts to find you tomorrow!”

Fang Zhile was confused by her actions, but her body reacted faster than her brain. The moment Ye Yu got close, Fang Zhile couldn’t help but smile. Seeing her jumping up and down happily, Fang Zhile felt an indescribable sense of satisfaction in her heart.

Ye Yu should be like this: happy and carefree.

“I’ll let you eat your fill tomorrow.”

It was past ten o’clock when Fang Zhile returned home.

The water heater was old and broken, and the water stopped halfway through her shower. It took her a long time to finally finish washing up.

Fang Zhile sat in front of the computer, wiping her hair. The old computer took three minutes to boot up, surpassing 0.1% of the country’s computer users. When the stock market page loaded, she had, as expected, gained another few tens of thousands of yuan.

After hesitating for a moment, Fang Zhile still couldn’t bring herself to spend it, transferring all of it into a ‘future’ card.

This card was meant for Fang Zhile and Ye Yu’s life together in the future. The family couldn’t be relied upon, and the Ye family was a viper’s nest. Fang Zhile remembered the subtle words used to describe the Ye family in the book, and how strange Ye Yu’s parents were. If Ye Yu stayed in the Ye family, she might want to run away one day, and Fang Zhile had to find the right time to pull her home.

She sold off a portion of stocks that had no appreciation value, bought a few new shares, then counted the mutual fund’s profits, and transferred 100,000 to an anonymous account.

Three seconds later, the black avatar on the forum lit up.

Fang Zhile inquired about the investigation progress.

No whereabouts of this person across the entire network.

Has face-matching been done?

The Asian region is complete.

Go to South America. I’ll give you a list of countries to focus your search on.

Understood.

The Sun family made their fortune through real estate. At that time, Jing City hadn’t yet developed into the coastal treasure basin it would become, and a wave of land development was sweeping the country. Sun Li’s father moved into Jing City during that time, acquiring land-use rights at a low price for development. Project after project, the money flowed into the Sun family’s account, becoming the capital accumulation that made the Sun family rich.

This didn’t go smoothly, of course, especially in land development projects, where there were always people unwilling to sell and competitors trying to snatch the projects from the Sun family.

So, the Sun family chose to collaborate with people on the gray edge of legality. A distant nephew of the Sun family ran a debt collection agency, often helping the Sun family deal with uncooperative sellers and competitors. At first, the Sun family thought he was just using some unethical tactics to force compliance.

Later, a certain transnational human trafficking group was completely dismantled, and many companies in Jing City were seized and affected. At the same time, the Sun family discovered that their distant nephew’s company was also on the list of seized companies, and he had completely fled, with no news whatsoever. Only then did they realize they might have stepped into a dangerous area years ago.

Even though the matter was done covertly, Sun’s father insisted he was deceived, but Fang Zhile thought: Believe him, my foot.

The Sun family, from top to bottom, had a kind of ‘delinquent’ gene. Otherwise, why would they raise Sun Li to have a personality that took bullying for granted?

The best way to deal with Sun Li was to uproot the Sun family entirely.

This way, Sun Yangyang and Sun Li would be like rootless duckweed, posing no further threat to Ye Yu.

The person Fang Zhile asked the black avatar to investigate was one of the girls. The girl’s family at the time refused to sell their house, saying the grandmother was in the hospital with late-stage cancer, and they wanted to move her back to the old house she had lived in all her life in another month.

Dying in the old house was an elderly person’s most simple wish. It was the home she had lived in all her life, where she married, had children, and spent her life with her husband. So the family insisted they wouldn’t sell until the grandmother passed away.

The Sun family’s project couldn’t afford to wait for someone to die. They immediately sent their nephew to handle it. They didn’t know what methods the nephew used, but a few days later, the grandmother passed away in the hospital. Just as the Sun family wanted to tell their nephew to stop, they heard the family’s daughter had gone missing.

With the old woman gone and the daughter missing, the family was immediately drained of all spirit and signed the contract with heavy hearts.

This incident was reported by a journalist who was hospitalized at the time and even appeared in the newspaper. The family’s likeness was still printed there.

Fang Zhile remembered that the end of the book described the downfall of many families, and one of the pieces of evidence against the Sun family came from this little girl who was trafficked to a foreign country but eventually escaped and returned home to expose the Sun family’s crimes and avenge her grandmother.

She should still be trafficked right now, either in South America or South Asia. Since she hadn’t appeared in Asia, the search should start in South America.

As long as she finds this little girl, she will have a chance to expose the Sun family’s scandal and completely bring them down!

As for Zhou Meize… Fang Zhile felt a headache coming on.

Zhou Meize was the female lead (top), the core of the world’s consciousness. Plus, aside from being a philandering woman who often crossed the moral and ethical lines of society in relationships, she hadn’t broken any legal lines.

She was a difficult person to deal with.

Especially… seeing Ye Yu’s reaction today, she clearly still had feelings for Zhou Meize.

Forget it. Zhou Meize had grown up with Ye Yu since childhood. Fang Zhile suppressed the inexplicable feeling that rose in her heart and did some self-counseling: If others don’t offend me, I won’t offend them.

Ye Yu’s happiness is the most important.

There’s no need to seek trouble with Zhou Meize, even though in my opinion Zhou Meize is self-serving, incredibly stupid, and can’t be considered a decent human being…

“Damn it!” Fang Zhile kicked the trash can at her feet, unable to hold back a furious shout. “I can’t take it!”

“Even if I, as a modern good best friend, can tolerate and forgive convincing my best friend and her partner to break up a million times only to ultimately end up at their ridiculous wedding, I won’t allow Zhou Meize, this jinx who is linked to Ye Yu’s car accident, to exist in Ye Yu’s world!”

“Without her, Ye Yu will have peace for a lifetime!”

“Why, Ye Yu, you still haven’t, damn it, broken off, the engagement, with Zhou Meize!” Fang Zhile sighed to the heavens.

Then she suddenly sat up straight, her thinking beginning to diverge. “Should I make Zhou Meize voluntarily break off the engagement with Ye Yu? That’s a bit hard. Zhou Meize isn’t crazy to give up such a good fiancée.”

“Should I surround Zhou Meize with more gentle little beauties, making her so happy she forgets everything else… No, that’s just creating more ‘numbers.’ What if Ye Yu becomes paranoid?”

“Then should I wait until I earn enough money, throw a huge pile of cash in Zhou Meize’s face, and make her leave Ye Yu?” Fang Zhile thought this method was feasible, but she withered the moment she checked her bank balance. “Why couldn’t I have come a few years earlier!”

“I would have had a chance a few years ago!” Fang Zhile angrily punched a pillow, chugged two big mouthfuls of water, and then choked.

After a thunderous fit of coughing, Fang Zhile put on a whole dramatic play by herself, found no solution, and almost died of anger.

Finally, she collapsed onto the bed and quieted down.

Before falling asleep, Fang Zhile’s mind was still full of Ye Yu’s affairs.

“Don’t rush, don’t fret, don’t leap in recklessly…”

Fang Zhile murmured in her sleep and drifted off, without a dream.