Ji Jiayu endured it, and endured it again.
The first time he glanced over, he even suspected something was wrong with his own eyes.
How could Li Tangli possibly be this calm, this indifferent? The person she liked had another woman entangled with him right in front of her—shouldn’t she look disbelieving, devastated?
He’d just been thinking that if Li Tangli got too upset, he’d find an excuse to take her away early.
But not a single reaction he’d anticipated showed up.
Amid the laughter and horseplay, Shu Ran tentatively looped her arm through Ji Jiayu’s. When he didn’t pull away, she felt a secret thrill—but one glance at his face and her heart sank.
Because Ji Jiayu hadn’t even looked at her.
His face was turned slightly to the side, barely noticeable. But his eyes were blatant, fixed unblinkingly on that mediocre, good-for-nothing Li Tangli.
Li Tangli had indeed seen their intimate contact.
Her pupils trembled twice, then quickly shifted elsewhere.
If you had to stretch it into sadness, there was some of that too.
But a more fitting description would be the involuntary shock of someone who’d accidentally stumbled onto something they weren’t supposed to see.
Ji Jiayu thought, could she really not feel jealous at all?
Didn’t she like him?
Soon, everyone noticed Ji Jiayu had gone quiet.
His fine-featured face, normally a pleasure to look at, now made it obvious to anyone with eyes that his mood was foul.
A knot of gloom gathered between his brows. Those who knew his temper felt their hearts pounding, unsure what kind of fit this young master was about to throw this time. Even Shu Ran wisely withdrew her hand.
Ji Jiayu really couldn’t hold it in anymore.
But he didn’t want to blow up in front of everyone—it would make it look like he actually took Li Tangli seriously.
He tossed out a stiff line: “Something’s come up, we’re leaving.”
As he stood, he unexpectedly seized Li Tangli’s wrist and hauled her bodily up off the sofa.
Shu Ran, nearly at a loss for words, blurted out on reflex: “Wait, Jiayu—”
He didn’t look back, paid no mind to the stunned expressions of everyone behind him, and left Shu Ran’s plea for him to stay entirely out of his head.
It was raining outside. He covered the distance in a few quick strides, pulling Li Tangli through the raindrops and into the car.
The moment the door shut, he immediately demanded, “Who have you been flirting with all night?”
His words dropped like a blow, leaving Li Tangli stunned.
It was simply that with the sky dark and rain falling, Gu Zhi had asked how she was getting home, whether he needed to pick her up, and she’d said a bit more on the topic, that was all.
He’d made it sound so ugly that her face flushed red, unable to bear the slander: “It was just an ordinary conversation, I wasn’t doing whatever it is you’re implying!”
“Ordinary conversation?” — BlackLotus Translation | black lotus novel
Would an ordinary conversation make her wear that expression?
Ji Jiayu’s face turned livid, his eyes boring straight into the phone clutched tightly in her hand. The urge to snatch it from her and look through it was abnormally strong.
But he couldn’t bring himself to act like some jealous, resentful husband pawing through her phone, hunting through the lines of text for any trace of some other man trying to seduce her.
Wouldn’t that be as good as admitting he cared about Li Tangli—cared to the point of anxious, obsessive insecurity, enough to want to check her phone?
Him, caring about Li Tangli? What a joke!
Women like her—you could grab a handful of them out of any crowd. Her looks, her figure, her personality, none of it stood out. What was there about her worth caring about?
The moment this possibility crossed his mind, discomfort crawled over his whole body, as if he’d been caught red-handed with evidence against himself.
He forced himself to look away and asked instead, “You know Shu Ran?”
Li Tangli answered honestly: “I met her once before, when I was working at the restaurant.”
Anger surged up in him: “So you didn’t see her plastered against me just now? Are you blind? No reaction at all?”
“I saw it.”
Even a clay figure has a few parts fire in it, and being humiliated by a string of ugly words from him left Li Tangli, this time, genuinely unable to guess at his mercurial moods.
“So how am I supposed to react? What am I supposed to do? If I say something, will you stay away from her?” Her heart was full of confusion. “And besides—didn’t you say we already broke up?”
The car’s lights were off. In the darkness, Ji Jiayu’s breath came short and ragged.
What a good excuse—just because they’d broken up, she’d stopped liking him this fast.
His tangled emotions climbed to their peak, and then, strangely, he went still.
After a long moment, Ji Jiayu’s mouth curved. “Li Tangli. Well done.”
Right. There’s nothing you can do. Everything’s fallen apart—it’s his fault.
The car drove on through the murky, rainy night, raindrops the size of soybeans crackling against the roof.
Since they’d already broken up, since she cared this little—then what was she still doing by his side, swallowing humiliation? Did she think someone was begging her to stay?
He suddenly said to the driver, “Stop the car.”
“Here?” The driver hesitated, then eased onto the brake.
The car rolled to a slow stop. Ji Jiayu turned his face toward her and said, ice-cold, “Get out.”
They were still some distance from the busy part of the city. Through the mist fogging the window, there was no one in sight in any direction—not a single passing car on the road besides theirs.
It was deep into the night now, and apart from the sound of the rain, the surroundings were frighteningly silent.
Li Tangli’s face slowly went pale, and at last, the disbelief he’d wanted to see all evening surfaced on it.
But strangely, he didn’t feel the slightest bit satisfied.
He repeated himself: “I don’t want to say it a third time. Li Tangli. Get out.”
Li Tangli looked at him, her eyes no different from that time before she’d jumped into the pool.
Under her gaze, Ji Jiayu again felt his chest tighten, his breath catch.
He swallowed down a mouthful of sour, cold air. In a flash, a thread of a thought cut across his mind, too fast for him to catch.
But somewhere deep down, something kept urging him, ordering him, insisting there wasn’t much time left—he had to remember!
But at that crucial instant, Li Tangli lowered her eyes, cutting off his train of thought.
Her voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible, laced with exhaustion: “…Ji Jiayu. You’re always like this.”
Staying any longer would be pointless.
She pushed the car door open.
Ji Jiayu hadn’t expected that Li Tangli wouldn’t even offer a single word of pleading surrender—she simply got out of the car. Along with her, his lingering gaze was severed without a shred of reluctance as the door swung shut.
Wind and rain poured down on her. She walked forward step by difficult step, and not once during that time did she look back.
The car was silent. The driver glanced through the rearview mirror, but it was too dark to make out Ji Jiayu’s expression clearly.
Three minutes later, Li Tangli had already walked a short distance away. The driver called out to him carefully: “Young Master Ji?”
Ji Jiayu clenched his fists. His chest felt as if a stone were pressing down on it, wave after wave of nausea rolling through him.
But in the end, spite won out over everything else. He pulled his eyes away from that figure.
Ji Jiayu said, “Drive.” · BlackLotus Novel Reading | black lotus novel
His car passed by Li Tangli, splashing up water.
Li Tangli swayed side to side in the wind and rain. She wiped a hand across her face; the knit dress she wore was gradually soaked through, and as the cold wind cut past, she shivered, a chill more bone-deep than before rising up inside her.
The rain grew heavier. She walked a few more steps forward. The raindrops struck the ground like blooming flowers, dazzling her until she couldn’t see the road ahead, and her foot caught on something—she fell to the ground.
This stretch of road had no village behind and no inn ahead. Trapped in the rain, she sat crumpled on the ground, unsure for a moment where she should even go.
She was tired and cold and in pain, and she didn’t want to do anything.
She only wanted to go home. She wanted to see her mother again, just once more.
Li Tangli’s fingertips trembled with cold. She unlocked her phone, but the drops of water on the screen kept multiplying no matter how she wiped at them.
There were only a handful of people in her contacts. With no other choice, she dialed one of them.
The man’s voice came through: “Hello?”
Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
Sharp enough to catch the sound of rain, the person on the other end quickened his speech: “Li Tangli, are you outside?”
Right after came the rustle of fabric, as if he were putting on a coat.
“Do you need me to come get you?”
“Li Tangli.”
He called her name again and again, patient without end: “Li Tangli, say something.”
Li Tangli finally spoke: “Mr. Gu.”
Her voice broke: “I’m so cold…”
Gu Zhi went still.
It took him a moment before he could get words out through the sound of her crying: “Tell me where you are.”
Navigating to the location she sent, Gu Zhi rushed downstairs at once and drove the whole way at breakneck speed.
The headlights cut through the dim visibility, and at last Gu Zhi saw her.
The girl had her arms wrapped around her legs, curled up by the roadside. Her head was buried against her knees, soaked through completely, her thin, frail spine trembling in the wind like an abandoned cat.
Alone, with no one to depend on—just looking at her from a distance was enough to make his heart twist with an ache he couldn’t control.
The endless rain overhead suddenly stopped. Li Tangli, dazed, lifted her head, and only then did she realize—Gu Zhi had come.
The man held an umbrella over her, looking down at her.
His gaze was heavy, fixed on her reddened eyes, love and hatred twisting together over and over in his heart, impossible to tell which held the upper hand.
Here it was again.
The same thing playing out over and over—how many more times would he have to watch her get treated so carelessly by Ji Jiayu, while he could only stand by as an outsider, watching helplessly as she cried?
Gu Zhi gritted his teeth.
The thought he’d always forcibly suppressed deep in his heart suddenly broke free of its restraints in that moment.
He thought: since Ji Jiayu didn’t even like her, then what right did he have to be her boyfriend?
Li Tangli was stung by his gaze, as if she’d wronged him. She lowered her eyelids uneasily, noticing that his usually gleaming leather shoes were now spotted with mud and water.
The next second, a coat dropped over her, landing exactly where it should.
As the umbrella fell to the ground, a strong arm hooked around Li Tangli’s waist, while the other arm wrapped around the backs of her knees.
Gu Zhi lifted her up off the ground.
Li Tangli only let out a startled gasp at first, and offered no further resistance.
She even obediently raised her two soaked arms and looped them around his neck, letting her face settle against Gu Zhi’s broad, warm shoulder.
From behind, all that could be seen was the top of her head and her two calves dangling and swaying outside the crook of his arm.
She closed her eyes, and the familiar woody scent of him filled her senses, like returning to a safe harbor.
Gu Zhi carried Li Tangli into the car first, then got in from the other side.
Li Tangli thought that would be the end of it, but those arms reached for her again, and before she could react, Gu Zhi had already gathered her sideways into his arms once more.
Next to him, Li Tangli made a small, small bundle, curled up in his hold.
Gu Zhi felt the illusion that she’d been born just to fit the shape of his embrace.
Since the coat only covered half her body, Gu Zhi kept one arm around her shoulders while his other hand rested on her leg. He ran his hand slowly from her knee down to her ankle—cold from the rain, like a piece of cold jade.
He held her calf in his grip. There was nothing suggestive in his mind at all—he only wanted to cup this piece of jade in his palm and warm it as quickly as possible.
He asked quietly, “Still cold?”
The heat of his palm gave her a small start, and she instinctively tried to pull away, but the man held her firmly in place. Belatedly, she thought—at this point, pulling herself free in time was already impossible.
The car stopped at Qiyue Yunzhu, the closer of the two places, and Gu Zhi carried her straight to his bedroom.
Li Tangli changed out of her wet clothes in the bathroom first, putting on a dry bathrobe.
The heat in the room was turned up high. She sat on the edge of the bed cradling a cup of hot water while Gu Zhi held a towel, rubbing dry her dripping hair. | Black Lotus Novel Site | black lotus novel
After a moment, Gu Zhi spoke: “He dumped you halfway there.”
It wasn’t a question.
Li Tangli stared at the steaming cup of water and said briefly, “Mm.”
Gu Zhi’s movements stilled, the hand holding the towel dropping to his side.
At last, unable to hold it back, he asked her: “Why didn’t you fight back against him? Did you not want to, or did you not dare to?”
Her chin was gently tilted up, until she met his expressionless face.
Gu Zhi gazed at her and said, low and heavy: “Look at me. Do you really like Ji Jiayu this much?”
Li Tangli’s breath trembled faintly.
