“Who said you could come in!!” Ye Tianxie’s face was black as coal, and anyone who saw the look on it would have felt a chill go straight through them. Even fighting to hold himself in check, he could barely contain the fury threatening to boil over inside him… Everyone has a thing they cannot bear to have touched, and what Su Feifei had done, driven by her curiosity, was very nearly a hand laid on a dragon’s inverted scale.
“I—”
“Get out!” Ye Tianxie forced the rage down and barked it, cold.
Su Feifei, who had never been shouted at like that in her life, felt a deep, wounded ache. She realized she had done something badly wrong, and she didn’t dare push back and provoke a Ye Tianxie who now frightened her. Her mouth pulled flat, and she defended herself in a small voice. “I was just curious, I only wanted to look. Why are you being so awful…”
“Get out!!!“
The tears came, dropping from her eyes one after another. She lowered her head, fighting desperately to hold them back, and walked out on unsteady feet like a young wife suffering some enormous injustice.
Ye Tianxie leaned back against the door, tilted his head up, closed his eyes, and let out a slow breath. That room was forbidden ground; he permitted no one to set foot in it. Because her scent was preserved there, whole and intact — the last trace she had left behind when she went… He would allow no one to walk in there, to defile it. Anyone who dared disturb a single thing in that room would regret it for the rest of their life…
She was the only person in this world who could strip him of his reason like that, and drive him to that kind of madness.
…
…
He shouted at me… because I went into that room… because of the girl who used to live in it…? Su Feifei ran back to her own room, buried her face in the quilt, and finally couldn’t hold the hurt in any longer, weeping in small, muffled sobs. She had done everything so well — tidying and scrubbing every corner of this place, making him three meals a day, nagging him to change his clothes and take a shower… Why had he treated her like that?
Her tears soaked a small patch of the thin quilt. Ye Tianxie, appearing behind her at some point she hadn’t noticed, held his hand up in midair — and couldn’t bring it down. From the fury he’d felt at seeing her step into that room to the calm that had followed, he knew that what he’d said to her had gone much too far… After all, she had only done what curiosity drove her to do, with no malice at all. How could she have known what was inside, or how much it meant to him?
Over these few days she had begun, in his heart, to occupy a place that grew clearer by the day. Sometimes he even wondered: if she suddenly left, would he still be willing to go back to the way he used to live… With no one to tidy the house for him, no one to cook for him, no one to talk to him with that perpetually smiling face… He was slowly growing used to her presence, and slowly coming to understand what a rare, good girl she was — without a trace of the arrogance, the laziness, the temper that any ordinary rich man’s daughter would have had…
He really shouldn’t have hurt her.
“Feifei…” Ye Tianxie’s hand came down after all, patting the shoulder that hadn’t stopped shaking. He had always called her Miss Su — and now, for the first time, he used something far more intimate.
The sobbing stopped. Su Feifei buried her head deeper in the quilt. “Get out… You get out. Who said you could come into my room…”
“Because this happens to be my house.” Ye Tianxie bent down and said it close to her.
“You… you get out. I hate you. I never want to see you again…”
Ye Tianxie would have had to be an idiot not to know that actually walking out now… would make him a genuine idiot. But his repertoire for coaxing girls was impoverished in the extreme. After a long, strangled pause, all he could manage, softening his tone, was: “Feifei. The most beautiful, most hardworking Feifei. I was wrong. Don’t be angry anymore, all right?”
Coaxing a girl for the first time in his life (Guoguo was, at most, a small brat, and an entirely different genre of coaxing), Ye Tianxie felt awkward from head to toe, and very nearly broke out in goosebumps.
“You… promise me one thing, and I won’t be angry.” After a moment, Su Feifei’s voice came out from under the quilt, still carrying the catch of her tears.
“…All right. What is it?”
The body under the quilt went abruptly still. Ye Tianxie certainly couldn’t see her expression right then, but the voice that came out from under the covers was working very hard to suppress its own smugness and stay level. “Go change your clothes. I want you to come out with me… And don’t ever come in here again.”
Ye Tianxie stepped back on cue, retreating obediently, shutting the door behind him — and then shook his head with a faint smile. Are women really this easy to coax?
Going out… He supposed it was about time he got out for a bit himself. He was in the habit of holing up at home, and she must have been going stir-crazy. She’d probably just never brought it up for fear of disturbing him, and she didn’t dare go out alone… At that thought, a thread of guilt worked its way through him. He went back to his room and changed into something presentable.
The lunch Su Feifei had made was all cold dishes — enormously appetizing in this oppressive heat. He was just reaching for a piece of fruit from one of the plates when her door opened, and when Ye Tianxie looked up, the room seemed suddenly brighter.
Whatever her reasoning, Su Feifei had put on a close-fitting purple top, and a fall of glossy black hair like soft satin set off the clean line of her throat and a face that was elegant and refined with, at the edges of it, something faintly and unmistakably alluring. A white skirt, black stockings, and a pair of small cream-colored strappy sandals completed it, and the overall effect was, frankly, devastating.
Ye Tianxie’s gaze traveled, and the dryness in his mouth told him this was what people meant by the phrase.
Su Feifei was watching his reaction out of the corner of her eye, and feeling his attention on her, she basked in it with quiet triumph, deliberately slowing her steps as she came closer, then pressing her skirt down with one hand and sitting carefully across from him.
“Hmph. Hurry up and eat, then we’re going out. You promised, so no backing out!” Her pouting lips announced that she wasn’t entirely over it yet. In truth, the moment he’d called her Feifei, every scrap of her anger had evaporated, replaced by a private, inexplicable delight. But a woman’s pride, a woman’s reserve… she had to make him work for it a little.
Ye Tianxie didn’t look away. The corner of his mouth curved into a smile. “You look beautiful.”
A flush of red spread across Su Feifei’s face, and the warmth of it made her drop her head without meaning to. Those three words, sincerely given, were more than enough to satisfy her completely.
“…Er. You’re going out like that? Not worried about flashing someone?” Ye Tianxie glanced at the shortness of her skirt and asked with a perfectly straight face.
Su Feifei reflexively pressed the skirt down a little harder. “Hmph. I’m wearing safety shorts. Not everyone’s a great big lecher like you, always looking where they shouldn’t.” Then she dipped her head slightly and said, very quietly — whether to him or to herself was unclear — “I only wear skirts like this for myself, anyway. I never wear them out.”
“…”
After lunch, Su Feifei carefully put on a light layer of makeup. It was her first time going out with Ye Tianxie — her first time, really, going anywhere with a man for company rather than trailed by a squad of bodyguards, and without having to live in the constant fear she used to. The excitement in her had been quietly boiling over all along.
His hand on the door handle, Ye Tianxie didn’t open it right away. Instead he said, smiling, “Miss Su, the sheer scale of your popularity is really quite enviable. Care to bet that the moment you step out this door, someone will be there to welcome you?”
Su Feifei looked confused at first, then said without the slightest fear, “I ran off and came to live here on my own, so it’d be strange if nobody had eyes on me. But with you here, I’m not the least bit afraid of them… hee.” She laughed, apparently remembering that night, then went ahead and pulled the door open herself, walking out without a trace of fear.
Ye Tianxie hadn’t been trying to frighten her, and he hadn’t been joking either. Two or three days ago he had noticed several groups of people deliberately keeping watch on the place. And there was only one possible reason: Su Feifei. Su Luo’s enemies were beyond counting, and well over half of them concentrated their efforts on his daughter. To an outsider, Su Luo’s daughter looked like a girl who had fallen out with her father in order to move in with some man — and who now didn’t have a single bodyguard at her side. What opportunist would let a chance this perfect slip past?
(End of Chapter 125)