Chapter 173: Senior, Are You Being Kept by a Rich Woman?

Chapter 173: Senior, Are You Being Kept by a Rich Woman?

Wu Chen and Song Xuan had agreed to meet at two in the afternoon.

Song Xuan arrived half an hour early. She sat in a corner of the café by the window, looking distracted, though what she was thinking nobody could have said. Sometimes her lips pushed out in a small sulk; sometimes her eyes lit with excitement, as though she held some extraordinary hope for the future.

Car keys in hand, Wu Chen came into the café and swept his gaze across the room.

He looked around the instant he was through the door. It seemed casual. In fact he was searching for someone, and with so few customers he found her at once.

Song Xuan sat by the window in the north corner. The person Wu Chen was looking for sat diagonally in front of her, facing north, only four or five meters away, with an aisle between them.

An ordinary-looking young woman of twenty-four or twenty-five, plainly dressed, wearing heavy makeup.

She looked exactly like the sort of entirely unremarkable girl you could see anywhere on the street.

But Wu Chen knew her name was Bai Ling, and that she was an extremely capable professional bodyguard. Highly trained.

She was Wu Yurong’s. For the past year she had been one of the bodyguards Wu Yurong had stationed secretly around Song Xuan, rotating with other women to protect her without her knowing.

Song Xuan did not like bodyguards trailing her. She had said as much: if they did, she would never have any friends.

Wu Yurong respected her daughter’s wishes, and still had people follow her in secret. To keep Song Xuan from noticing, she changed them often. No female bodyguard who came close enough to be seen ever stayed long enough for Song Xuan to notice her, or to think her face looked familiar.

Bai Ling was one of them.

“Senior!” Song Xuan spotted Wu Chen at the entrance and waved. As usual she wore a mask and a baseball cap, and her voice came out muffled.

Wu Chen raised a hand in answer, then walked over, smiling, pulled out a chair, and sat.

“It isn’t time yet, is it? You’re early.” He tugged his suit cuff back, glanced at his watch, then looked up and smiled at her. “Still more than ten minutes to two.”

“Can’t I want to see you a little sooner?” Song Xuan pulled off her mask and gave him a sweet smile. The words were distinctly open to interpretation.

“That impatient?” Wu Chen smiled and looked her over.

Song Xuan was genuinely stunning when she smiled. She was the kind of girl who gave any man the feeling of a first love, who could send him abruptly and unreasonably into wanting to fall in love with her.

It was subtle.

Once a woman was beautiful enough, her pull on men could be extraordinary.

Wu Chen was admiring Song Xuan. Song Xuan was looking at him too, but something in her expression was off.

“You changed suits, Senior…”

“Hm?” Wu Chen glanced down at himself, then smiled at her again. “Isn’t changing clothes fairly normal?”

“No, what I mean is…” Her expression grew stranger. She picked her words with care. “Senior, this suit is really expensive, isn’t it? I know the brand. It isn’t bespoke, but it still costs more than most high-end custom suits…”

It was a strange thing for Song Xuan to say. With her family, why would she care what brands other people wore? However expensive their clothes were, could they be more expensive than hers?

Wu Chen, however, knew exactly what she was thinking.

“Expensive, I suppose… a hundred-something thousand?” He looked down again at the silver-gray suit he had changed into at noon, sounding unsure. Then he smiled at her. “Maybe. I don’t actually know. I didn’t buy it.”

“Your girlfriend bought it?” Song Xuan asked quietly.

“Mm-hm.” He nodded.

“And your watch, Senior… a Patek Philippe… It’s only a standard model, not a limited edition, but that’s still over two hundred thousand, isn’t it?” She had not noticed his watch yesterday. She had noticed today, because he had just pulled back his cuff to check the time.

“Is it? Maybe.” He glanced at his watch again, still sounding unsure.

“Did your girlfriend buy that too?”

“Right.” He nodded again.

“And… the car…” Song Xuan’s eyes went to the keys he was holding without thinking. Then she turned sharply to look out at the street. Of course she knew a Lamborghini key, and she spotted the blue Lamborghini parked outside at once.

She turned back quickly and asked, low, “Senior, the Lamborghini… did your girlfriend give you that too?”

“No. The car isn’t mine. It isn’t in my name. I’m just driving it for now,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

Song Xuan’s expression grew stranger still.

He had denied that Li Ruobing gave him the car, but he had not said whose name it was in. Song Xuan concluded at once that it belonged to his girlfriend, who had simply let him drive it without transferring the title.

Which fit her theory perfectly.

“Senior… you…” She looked at him as though there were something she wanted to say. Her eyes held a complicated mixture—sympathy, regret, even a trace of exasperation at a man failing to live up to himself.

“What?” Wu Chen asked, smiling.

“Senior… your family runs a little restaurant, don’t they?” she asked. Then, as if afraid he might take it badly, she hurried on: “I asked some classmates. That’s what they told me…”

That morning Song Xuan had not even known what Wu Chen’s family did. She had only known his background was ordinary. After speaking with Li Ruobing at noon and settling a time and place with Wu Chen, she had asked classmates for more.

“Yeah. A ramen shop in a small county town.” Wu Chen looked entirely at ease, as though he had no idea where she was going.

“Then…”

“Then what?”

“Then, Senior… how old is your girlfriend?” She was still circling it.

“How old do you think?” Wu Chen asked instead, smiling. “You’ve spoken to her on the phone. Couldn’t you tell?”

“I felt…” She looked as though she did not know how to put it. She hesitated, then said, “At first she sounded fairly young, but the way she talks is so forceful, so cold, and really mature…” She paused, then finally looked at him and made her guess outright. “Forty?”

“She sounds forty?” Wu Chen laughed.

“No, no!” Song Xuan explained in a rush. “Her voice is young. And it isn’t as though every middle-aged woman’s voice gets worse—my mom’s voice is even nicer than mine. It’s just… your girlfriend… the longer I talked to her, the more frightened I got. It felt like talking to my mom…”

When she finished, she gave him that very strange look again.

“What is it you’re trying to say? Just say it.” Wu Chen kept smiling.

“Then I’ll say it… Senior, don’t be angry.” Her tone was cautious.

“I won’t.” He nodded.

She seemed to gather her courage, working herself up for a moment, then spoke very quietly and very fast.

“Senior, are you being kept by a rich woman?”

Wu Chen’s smile turned peculiar, but he was not surprised in the slightest.

“Senior, you’re still smiling.”

Seeing that he did not answer at once and was even smiling, she spoke with exasperated concern. “Look at you. You’re so young, you’re handsome, and you have all this talent. Why would you stay with some old woman just for money?”

Having started, she poured out everything in one breath.

“Senior! Is she controlling you? Is that icy tone how she normally talks? She’s so forceful and domineering—it’s frightening! Are you afraid of her? Senior, don’t be afraid. You have this much talent, and your song is already a hit. You absolutely can leave her. You can have a life of your own. Believe me! You don’t have to wrong yourself like this! Making you take a shower in broad daylight—she really is… shameless!”

“Senior, did you ask such a high price for the song because you’re trying to earn enough to get away from her? You don’t even dare let her find out… Senior, you have to believe me! Don’t be afraid! You can get away from her! I can help you!”

The more she said, the more worked up she became. On “I can help you” she caught hold of his hand.

The café table was small enough that she could reach.

Across the aisle, a few meters diagonally in front of Song Xuan, Bai Ling had just lifted her coffee cup to drink.

She stopped.

Her eyes flicked toward the pair of them.