Chapter 134: Both “Friends” with Wu Chen?

Chapter 134: Both “Friends” with Wu Chen?

Su Qingying truly did freeze. For a moment she was simply dumbfounded.

There was someone in Wu Chen’s apartment.

A girl.

A girl Su Qingying knew.

And more to the point, she was wearing—

Mu Qianqian stared back just as blankly.

She had not, in fact, set out that day intending to come to Wu Chen’s place. She had been drifting around outside since morning.

She had been miserable, thoroughly unhappy; the more she turned things over, the more wronged she felt. She had left home before noon and wandered from place to place, and nothing held her interest. After nearly a full day walking the streets alone, she had somehow ended up in Wu Chen’s neighborhood.

Which made her think of Wu Chen. So she had gone to his door, sat down on the stairs outside it, and only then called him.

He told her where the spare key was and told her to wait inside.

Once in, she had sat on the living-room sofa a while. But after a day of walking she was sticky and uncomfortable, so she took a shower—and afterward, instead of putting her own clothes back on, she took something off the drying rack on the balcony, from among the freshly washed laundry, and put it on.

It was Wu Chen’s robe.

On Mu Qianqian it was enormous. On him the hem fell below the knee; on her it nearly reached her ankles.

Su Qingying and Mu Qianqian looked at each other.

Su Qingying studied her carefully, up and down. She remembered that robe. Yesterday she had stuffed it into the washing machine herself, and when it was done she had slipped it onto a hanger with her own hands and hung it on the rack.

Mu Qianqian’s hair was still damp. Anyone could see she had just showered.

Her eyes were red, too, as though she had been crying not long ago.

“Miss Su?”

“Mu Qianqian?”

The look in both women’s eyes was very strange.

Mu Qianqian had finished her shower only minutes earlier. She had been curled on the sofa with her legs tucked up, waiting for Wu Chen, when she heard noise at the door—the sound of someone working a key, except not quite; more like a key that had stopped fitting, as though no amount of effort would turn the lock. Click, click, click.

So she had gone over and opened it.

And found a man in a black suit who looked like a bodyguard, a piece of wire in his hand. She realized at once he was picking the lock—and before she could even wonder whether he was a thief, she noticed Su Qingying standing beside him.

Su Qingying wore a black fitted floor-length dress today, the kind one wore to a banquet, the neckline low enough to leave her fragrant shoulders bare. Formal, and at the same time intensely feminine, and superb on her figure.

Add the long waves of her hair and that face, flawless from nearly any angle—

She looked like an immortal maiden with beauty enough to topple a city.

And yet!

This immortal maiden was carrying plastic bags, several of them, large and small, brimming with the business of ordinary life. Through them you could make out all manner of vegetables and meat, and one long green onion stuck out of a bag entirely.

A fairy home from the wet market. That was the precise, absurd impression.

After that mutually bewildered exchange of greetings, the two of them stood staring at each other for a good ten seconds more without either finding anything to say.

“Miss Mu, why are you at Wu Chen’s home?” Su Qingying spoke first, her voice soft and sweet but freighted with confusion and hesitation. “Is Wu Chen… home?”

She was thinking of what Li Ruobing had said—that Wu Chen was busy. Could he have been busy at home, with another girl?

“No—no, he isn’t. He told me to wait for him. I used the spare key to—” Mu Qianqian’s own look was odd, and she faltered. She broke off before finishing and asked instead, “Miss Su, what are you… doing?”

As she said it, she glanced at the bodyguard.

She did not even know how to frame the question.

There was too much wrong with the picture.

Why was Su Qingying here? Su…