Chapter 136: If We Both Stay, Who Will You Sleep With?

Chapter 136: If We Both Stay, Who Will You Sleep With?

Night had fallen, and beyond the windows ten thousand lights were burning.

In the brightly lit living room the television was on, playing the evening news.

The smell of cooking filled the apartment.

Mu Qianqian, hair a mess from being washed and left uncombed, wearing nothing but the robe, was coming out of the kitchen with a steaming plate in her hands—a dish straight off the heat.

Behind her came Su Qingying in nothing but a blue pajama top and matching trousers, carrying a large bowl of soup, still steaming.

“Miss Mu, slow down. Careful you don’t fall,” Su Qingying said.

“Hot, hot, hot—” Mu Qianqian only walked faster, hurried to the dining table, set the plate down, and clapped both hands to her earlobes.

An extraordinarily bizarre sight.

Either woman alone would have been nothing at all. But when had Su Qingying arrived? How had they ended up cooking together? Where had this oddly harmonious atmosphere come from?

Wu Chen’s hand, halfway through pulling the door shut, paused. He stared into the room, surprised, brows drawing together slightly—and then a faintly peculiar smile appeared on his face.

“Wu Chen, you’re back!” Mu Qianqian spotted him as she turned around.

Between the television and the kitchen, neither of them had heard the door.

Su Qingying turned toward the entryway and said, “Perfect timing. Dinner’s nearly ready.”

“When did you get here, Qingying? Why didn’t you call ahead?” Wu Chen pulled the door shut and asked with an easy smile.

“Half an hour or so. Not quite forty minutes.” Su Qingying smiled, then hurried toward the kitchen. “Go wash your hands, honey. There’s one more dish. It’s almost done.”

“You’re already calling him honey?” Mu Qianqian muttered, watching Su Qingying disappear into the kitchen.

While Wu Chen was changing his shoes at the door, she came over quickly and whispered, alight with excitement, “What is going on? When did you get together with Eldest Miss Su?” The question out, she glanced back toward the kitchen doorway as though afraid of being overheard.

Wu Chen looked at her.

He could imagine it: the two of them meeting unexpectedly and not falling into conflict, and Mu Qianqian’s curiosity, given her nature, going off like a bomb. Before he got home she had almost certainly tried every roundabout, digging, insistent question she could think of on Su Qingying.

And from the care she was taking now, afraid Su Qingying might hear—

She had gotten nothing out of her.

When Su Qingying did not want a little girl like this to know something, there was no chance of her finding out.

“‘Get together’—what a way to put it,” Wu Chen said with a smile, and finished changing into slippers and walked in.

His manner made it clear: this was staying a secret.

“Just tell me…” Mu Qianqian hurried after him, pressing in a low voice.

“Ask Qingying. See whether she tells you.”

“That’s the whole problem. She won’t say a word. Her lips are sealed.”

“Then isn’t it a bit unfair, asking me?”

By then they had reached the dining table.

Wu Chen glanced over the dishes and headed for the bathroom. Passing the sofa, he shrugged off his suit jacket and tossed it down. In the bathroom he ran the water and washed his hands and face.

Mu Qianqian followed him the entire way like a tail, whispering question after question.

“Wu Chen. Brother Wu! Good brother! Darling! Just tell me…” She had descended to wheedling.

The thing was simply too astonishing. It gave Mu Qianqian the sensation of stumbling onto some colossal celebrity scandal.

“Take a guess,” Wu Chen said, smiling, brushing her off.

He was washing his hands at the basin, with Mu Qianqian right beside him.

“Tell me…” She decided to be shameless about it. She caught his hand to stop him washing, then wound her arms around his neck and kissed his face several times. “Good brother, just tell me…”

Good brother was something Mu Qianqian had called him a great many times before—on their first night together.

“Why are you so curious? What difference does it make whether you know?” Wu Chen asked, smiling helplessly.

“I just want to know…” She kissed him on the mouth and gave him a small, imploring look that said plainly: Please. Just tell me.

One thing was worth noting: even knowing what Wu Chen and Su Qingying now were to each other, Mu Qianqian felt no jealousy.

Before anything happened between them, Wu Chen had already told her he had slept with ten thousand women.

This was not a romance.

Nor was what he had with Su Qingying.

“Honey… hm? Where’s Miss Mu?” Su Qingying’s voice came from the living room.

“In here!” Mu Qianqian called back at once from the bathroom. Then she gave Wu Chen one more pleading look. He only smiled and said nothing. There was nothing to be done. Annoyed, she wet her fingers and flicked water at his face, let go of him, and went out.

Not long after Wu Chen finished washing and came out—

Dinner began.

The spread was lavish: six dishes and a soup. There was no possibility of cooking all of that in half an hour. Three of the dishes were prepared food bought straight from the market; the other three, and the soup, Su Qingying had made herself. All simple things, and quick.

“Try this, honey…”

“And this one. Is it good?”

From the moment they sat down, Su Qingying kept putting food into Wu Chen’s bowl and watching him expectantly, asking whether it tasted good.

Across the table, Mu Qianqian narrowed her eyes, looking rather put out, her gaze traveling back and forth between the two of them.

Nobody would tell her what had happened.

The fire of gossip inside her was very nearly burning her alive.

This was explosive. If it got out, Donghai’s entire business world would boil over.

Su Qingying spoke mostly with Wu Chen, but she did not forget to urge Mu Qianqian to eat as well.

Not long into the meal, Su Qingying turned to serious business.

“Nothing went wrong at the board meeting?” Wu Chen asked. “I already know the outcome. What about how it went?”

“Nothing went wrong, honey,” Su Qingying said. As she turned her head to answer, she gave him a sweet, intoxicated smile, as though her eyes held nothing but love for him.

Of course, love was not the right word for the feeling. It was closer to a slave’s intoxication with the overwhelming power of her master.

“Good,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“Except…”

“Except what?”

“My mother. She cried… Honey, tell me—was what I did really right, or…”

“Of course it was right. If you want change, you have to go through this kind of growing pain. It’s good for your future, for the Su family, and for your mother’s future as well…”

The two of them talked on.

Mu Qianqian had no idea what they were discussing and could not join in. Her attention was not on the substance of it anyway.

She was watching them talk—their tone, their expressions, the way they were with each other.

Trying to work something out.

And she could work nothing out. She only grew more astonished, more bewildered. Su Qingying was not merely with Wu Chen. She seemed to love him down to the bone.

Mu Qianqian wanted their story so badly it hurt.

But Su Qingying gave nothing away, and Mu Qianqian did not dare be shameless with her. Being shameless with Wu Chen got her nowhere either.

“Wu Chen, are you really not going to tell me?” she said suddenly.

“Hm?” Wu Chen looked across the table at her and smiled. “Take a guess.”

Mu Qianqian was furious.

And on top of it she had to sit here watching the two of them make eyes at each other.

“If you won’t tell me… then I’m not going home tonight.” She thought about it and lifted her chin.

It sounded like a threat. But what kind of threat was that?

“Then don’t. There are enough rooms,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“What about you, Miss Su?” Mu Qianqian turned to her.

“I’m not going home,” Su Qingying said, her tone slightly odd. She could not see why Mu Qianqian had bothered to ask. Had she not made it obvious enough?

Mu Qianqian stood up and put the question to Wu Chen with great solemnity. “Wu Chen. If Miss Su and I both stay, who are you going to sleep with?”

Wu Chen went still.

So did Su Qingying.

It felt as though Mu Qianqian, now genuinely angry, meant to drive a wedge between them—or rather, meant to make trouble.

It did count as a kind of threat.

But the method was just so—

Wu Chen thought for a moment. His expression turned slightly peculiar, and then he smiled.

“Both of you.”