For the past week, ever since Yan Luqing had asked that question of “Normal Person A transmigrates into Mentally Ill B,” she had begun reporting to Gu Ci’s room on time every day. She probably thought she hid it very well, thought she was utterly without trace, thought that Gu Ci was still a person with quite poor eyesight…

So he would not notice her flushing medicine in the toilet of his room.

Gu Ci had heard many times her bodyguards suspect that “Miss Yan” had suddenly stopped taking her medicine, but none of them could do anything.

He had also heard many times that youth called Little Black say he thought “Miss Yan,” though ill, was really very good, only to be lectured by Big Black: she may indeed be fine now, but you cannot expect her to always be fine.

A sudden change of temperament could be acted, could be pretended.

But what would happen if a severe mental patient stopped taking medicine?

The result varied from person to person, but no matter what happened, it could not possibly be like Yan Luqing.

—Normal life, normal schedule, normal actions, joking with others like an ordinary person. Making fun of herself for being mentally ill, words and deeds sometimes excessive, but showing no pathological manifestation.

She was extremely guarded, so guarded that she would not flush medicine in her own room but would run to his room to flush it.

Yet she swallowed the medicine he gave her without the least defense.

From this moment on, Gu Ci could no longer define this person’s behavior as “acting.”

…

Before, because of her constitution, Yan Luqing had never experienced the feeling of being drunk. So to her, everything she was undergoing now felt rather unfamiliar. She felt it hard to concentrate her mind, and the strongest, most direct thing left was only her subconscious.

And in her subconscious, she did not feel that her actions just now had any problem.

She felt her face was too hot, and Gu Ci’s hand pressing against it was actually very comfortable; she felt that his look when he leaned close to her was really fucking good-looking, worthy of being the paper man she loved; she also felt these glasses of his absolutely should not be therapeutic glasses, but should debut as decorative glasses, then invite Gu Ci to be the model endorser, surely to explode in popularity.

Her thoughts jumped here and there, even feeling… that what Gu Ci had just said, that scene, was quite like a father earnestly educating his daughter, very much an old father.

Only, his actions were especially not old father.

Very aggressive, very A¹ “A” in slang, meaning dominant, strong, or attractive., very much making one’s legs go weak.

Yan Luqing was made especially want to laugh by her drunk, trampoline-like jumping train of thought, but her face was imprisoned between his fingers, so she could not laugh.

“Eh, why are you pinching my face so tightly…”

Perhaps because she was half drunk, the words Yan Luqing spoke were clearly normal phrases, yet when heard they actually sounded like she was acting spoiled.

The maiden’s voice, touched by wine, became very soft, and the breath she brought out as she spoke also scattered onto the skin between Gu Ci’s fingers. In fact, the warmth was no more than a little, but it was inexplicably scalding.

Gu Ci’s fingers loosened slightly.

Yan Luqing took the chance to move her facial muscles, and in his hand made a flower-like smiling face: “Gu Ci, do you know, just now you were especially like a father scolding his daughter not to casually trust bad people, pu hahahaha…”

“I will ask you again.” Gu Ci completely ignored her teasing, and had none of the emotion he had when speaking earlier. He looked at her very coldly and indifferently: “Whoever gives medicine, you dare to eat it, is that so?”

“Of course not!” Yan Luqing answered in a second, “Big Black, Little Black, Black Bodhisattva—if they give it, I never ate it.”

Black Bodhisattva was the new nickname she gave that newly arrived chatterbox bodyguard.

Gu Ci released his hand, liberating Yan Luqing’s face. He nodded expressionlessly: “Then what was that just now.”

Yan Luqing was puzzled: “…Just now the three of them didn’t make me take medicine. What I ate wasn’t what you gave me?”

“……”

Gu Ci pressed against her, as if staring at an idiot.

Yan Luqing finally reacted: “Oh—so you mean to ask, why did I eat the medicine you gave me?” She asked, then immediately answered in a bright tone, “Of course because I trust you.”

“……”

Trust.

What kind of person would say the word “trust” so easily.

Although Yan Luqing’s mind was not particularly clear, she felt he had read Gu Ci’s gaze—We are very familiar?

Indeed not familiar, and indeed trusting.

Seeing that he still did not speak, Yan Luqing began to tease again: “What, why are you so tangled up about this… were you just now planning to poison me?”

Gu Ci still looked at her calmly, as if the person who had pinned her down moments ago to make her spit out the medicine were not him.

He tugged at the corner of his mouth, half-smiling, half-not: “Then why do you think I made you spit it out?”

Yan Luqing did not answer the question.

She said something completely unrelated to the present: “I may not look especially clever or especially shrewd, but ever since I grew up and became sensible, I have never been wrong in judging people.”

Gu Ci’s brow lifted slightly, “So?”

“So, do you want to bet with me.”

“Bet on what?”

Thinking back to the first day she arrived, Yan Luqing had even been cautious and nervous when trying to show goodwill to him. How long had it been, she was already speaking to Gu Ci with such provocation.

Was this also considered “moving earth on Tai Sui²Tai Sui (太岁): a celestial deity tied to Jupiter’s orbit and Chinese zodiac; by extension, an idiom for someone powerful and dangerous, not to be provoked.’s head”?

“I’ll bet Big Black and Little Black with you.” Yan Luqing looked at the “Tai Sui” whose face became increasingly stunning under the light, looked at his eyes gradually recovering, “I’ll bet… that the medicine you just brought for me to eat and then made me spit out is a medicine that whether eaten or not has no effect on me.”

When these words landed, that corner of the bathroom fell into a long silence.

Perhaps struck dumb by the first half of her sentence, after about half a minute, an expression finally appeared on Gu Ci’s face—the faint edges of sharpness dissolved and softened, like the sky clearing after snow.

He returned to his usual look.

Gu Ci smiled slightly as he opened the nearby door, his words also the kind of mildly sarcastic gentleness he was good at: “Those two people, you should keep them to yourself.”

He did not answer whether to bet or not, and afterward, no matter how much Yan Luqing teased him, Gu Ci remained unmoved.

He lifted her arm with one hand and took her upstairs, which counted as “sending” her to her door.

When Gu Ci turned to leave, Yan Luqing suddenly could not help but call after him.

“Gu Ci.”

He stopped, turned his body, and looked at her.

Yan Luqing leaned a hand against the doorframe, and the playful expression she had worn all the way faded.

“You may not believe it when I say it, you may think it strange, but…” She inhaled deeply, then as if suppressing something for a long time, exhaled again, “I still want to say it.”

Yan Luqing’s eyes were moist. When she looked at people seriously as usual, she always gave the feeling that, through these eyes, one could see a soul especially lively, not suppressed within this body.

Gu Ci looked at her as she stared at him seriously, and said word by word: “If I cannot even trust you, then my life right now truly has very little meaning.”

After she finished speaking she smiled again.

“Gu Ci, good night.”

*

Early the next morning.

Yan Luqing woke to a mechanical female voice that seemed to call souls back.

“Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria wake up… Maria, data shows that in half an hour you will miss the best post-drinking meal time; your gastritis has a ninety percent probability of relapsing today…”

Yan Luqing was dead annoyed and sat up at once, facing the robot: “If you hadn’t been given the code name Maria to remind me to be kind, you’d just be a lump of scrap metal, you know?”

Although annoyed at it, what it said was indeed not wrong. Yan Luqing not only had a headache now, her stomach also felt bad.

Before, with a healthy body, drinking wouldn’t cause this kind of suffering. Complaining as she was, Yan Luqing supported her head and got out of bed. After washing, she quickly had someone bring in stomach-nourishing porridge and a sobering soup.

She drank while absentminded; the scenes from last night floated before her one after another.

When she reached the scene at the room door at the end, when what she had said to Gu Ci—words that made no sense—finally became unbearable, she slammed the spoon into the bowl—

Damn.

Why are women who are drunk so melancholy and sentimental.

Why!!! Those words sounded like I was confessing to him ahhhhh!!!

Yan Luqing was mortified.

Even without Gu Ci picking at it, she had already used her own toes to pick herself apart and excavated the Qin Shi Huang Terracotta Army plus a Barbie fantasy castle.

She absolutely dared not imagine what Gu Ci’s reaction would be to hearing those words.

While Yan Luqing tossed and turned in bed, she suddenly heard intermittent electrical buzzing from the robot.

She was startled, but when she looked steadily, the room returned to silence.

Just as Yan Luqing was about to call Big Black to check, the door was lightly knocked three times, and Big Black came in.

His steps were somewhat hurried. He walked to her bedside and said, “Miss Yan, Yan Fengming’s car is parked in the courtyard; he says he will pick you up to go to the main family’s house for a meal.” He paused, perhaps remembering her current state, and Big Black added, “Yan Fengming is your eldest brother, the Yan family’s first son.”

Yan Fengming?

This name also did not appear in the original book.

Since she had transmigrated, at last a family member had come to contact her in person; to be disliked by everyone to this extent was truly not easy.

Yan Luqing was moved for a moment, got out of bed, and began to dress.

Since people were already waiting outside, she certainly could not refuse. Besides—

She happened to not know how to face Gu Ci; this eldest brother was truly timely rain.

Before leaving, Yan Luqing remembered the robot’s earlier glitch-like behavior and turned to instruct the two door gods, Big Black and Little Black: “Oh, by the way, the robot in my room seems to have a problem, there’s a buzzing sound; you two remember to have someone check it.”

Then she turned and walked toward the white sports car parked in the courtyard.

Big Black and Little Black both stood frozen behind her.

Watching the white sports car speed off leaving dust behind, Little Black asked in a trembling voice, “Brother, Miss Yan’s room… wh—when did it ever have a robot?”

Big Black’s tone was a little firmer than Little Black’s, but only just a little: “…Don’t think too much, maybe it’s some kind of toy.”

Even as he said this, he could not help pulling out his phone and flipping to the psychologist’s number.

*

Yan Luqing had no idea that one careless sentence of hers had frightened the two children of the household again. Right now her mind was full of doubt.

This eldest brother called Yan Fengming had the setting of being a man of very few words.

When she had just gotten in the car, she had called him once “big brother,” and Yan Fengming replied with a single “mn,” then it was silence as he drove.

When Yan Luqing tested by asking why he suddenly came to pick her up to go to the main family for a meal, Yan Fengming actually replied: “Father and Mother told me to come.”

One could not tell if this should be called cold, or if the sibling relationship was just poor.

Along the way, Yan Luqing casually found topics to talk with him, for example asking why the new bodyguards at home had been sent from the main family to her villa, or sharing that she had just recruited a new bodyguard with extremely high combat ability—what she understood as family talk.

But Yan Fengming suddenly diverted the topic to ask her: “I heard from Yu Xi that Gu Ci is with you?”

Yan Luqing froze for a moment, then nodded: “Yes.”

The original host in the book had concealed it from everyone, because she was perverse—she wanted to imprison Gu Ci.

But Yan Luqing was not, and she had no need to hide it.

Yan Fengming seemed somewhat surprised by her straightforward answer. He turned his head and glanced at her, then looked straight ahead again, his tone finally carrying a trace of change, as if suppressed anger: “Fine, later you can explain it yourself to Father and Mother.”

Yan Luqing: “…”

I really can’t read this man.

This city’s red lights were rather long. At a red light lasting three hundred seconds, the sports car slowly stopped, and Yan Luqing finally found an opportunity.

She pulled out her phone, skillfully opened her own QR code…

“Big brother, I realized I still don’t have your WeChat.”

And so, just like that, she added Yan Fengming.

Yan Luqing quickly entered their chat box, fixed her eyes on Yan Fengming’s avatar, and five seconds later she saw a continuous stream of blue bubbles pouring out of his avatar.

Goodness, quite a lot of bubbles!

As expected, a person’s cold exterior didn’t mean they had no thoughts inside. Adding him on WeChat was truly the right move.

Yan Luqing began tapping those blue bubbles. She wanted to see just what this big brother was feeling in his heart at this very moment—

“She’s far too abnormal today.”

“When Yan Luqing is this happy, it’s definitely no good thing.”

“What did she do?”

“She couldn’t have… already killed Gu Ci, could she?”

Yan Luqing: ?

Yan Luqing: ??? So all your silence was spent thinking this???

Footnotes

• 1
  “A” in slang, meaning dominant, strong, or attractive.
• 2
  Tai Sui (太岁): a celestial deity tied to Jupiter’s orbit and Chinese zodiac; by extension, an idiom for someone powerful and dangerous, not to be provoked.