Chapter 353: Utterly, Utterly Absurd!

Chapter 353: Utterly, Utterly Absurd!

“Um, Senior, this…” Song Xuan looked as though she had no idea how to put it. She was genuinely embarrassed, and the words would not come.

“Miss Li made a bet with me…” An Menglan spoke up instead. Wu Chen was bound to find out sooner or later, so there was no sense in waiting, and they could hardly leave the air in the room frozen like this.

“About what?” Wu Chen asked, turning to her with a smile.

“Miss Li said I was going to fall in love with you, Mr. Wu. She also asked me when I planned to sleep with you,” An Menglan said, smiling, her voice rich and magnetic.

She was perfectly composed. The more Li Ruobing suspected her, the more composed she became. Her conscience was clear. And given her standing and the life she had lived, there was very little she would not dare say aloud.

The private room went quiet again.

“Is that so…” Wu Chen paused, then asked with a smile, “And what exactly did you wager?”

“On whether I’d fall in love with you. I said I wouldn’t. Miss Li said I would,” An Menglan replied, still smiling. “If I lose, I’ll kneel down and apologize to Miss Li.”

Wu Chen’s eyebrow rose again.

Li Ruobing had copied his playbook wholesale.

Wu Chen knew An Menglan’s character, so he had to admit Li Ruobing had handled it with real skill. She had actually goaded An Menglan into accepting a wager like that.

“And if Ruobing loses?” Wu Chen asked.

“The same stake,” An Menglan said. Then she changed tack and looked at Li Ruobing. “Though Miss Li seems to misunderstand me very deeply. She raised the stakes herself. If I don’t fall in love with you, Mr. Wu, then she won’t only kneel and apologize to me. She’ll do it in public. A public apology.”

Li Ruobing looked at An Menglan.

An Menglan looked at Li Ruobing.

Their eyes met.

Sparks seemed to pass between them.

Yet a smile still hung at the corners of An Menglan’s mouth. She could say all of this with Wu Chen sitting right there and feel not the slightest embarrassment. Her composure was formidable.

“Oh, and one more thing,” An Menglan added suddenly. “Miss Li set a time limit on the wager. One month.”

Her smile widened when she had finished.

Absurd.

An Menglan had thought the whole thing absurd from the start, but saying it out loud made it more vivid still. It was utterly, utterly absurd.

She admired Wu Chen’s talent. That was all. In all these years she had never once said she had fallen in love with anyone. Why would Li Ruobing imagine she would fall in love with Wu Chen?

The wager alone was ridiculous. And she had dared to attach a deadline that short, that inconceivable?

She would fall in love with Wu Chen inside a month?

An Menglan could not tell whether Li Ruobing had lost her mind or the whole world had.

Li Ruobing watched An Menglan, taking in the shifts in her face as she finished speaking. Slowly the corners of Li Ruobing’s own mouth curved upward.

She could read exactly what An Menglan was thinking.

Absurd, as An Menglan had said?

Only because she had no idea what Wu Chen had done.

She did not know what he had done with Su Qingying.

Or with Wu Yurong.

“The two of you really are bored out of your minds,” Wu Chen said with a laugh.

“Bored?” Li Ruobing said. She glanced at him, then turned to An Menglan. “Miss An, I think I ought to warn you. My Mr. Wu truly is extraordinarily popular with women. Extraordinarily charming. If you want to win, you’d do better not to see him at all for the next month.”

That was practically handing An Menglan an assist.

Words like that were obviously going to set off An Menglan’s contrary streak.

Li Ruobing was doing it on purpose.

She wanted to win.

And sure enough.

“Miss Li, I really do think you’re worrying far too much,” An Menglan replied. “Mr. Wu and I are going to be working together. How could we possibly not see each other? I’m sure we’ll work very well together. But that is all it will be. Isn’t that right, Mr. Wu?”

And at the end she smiled and put the question to Wu Chen.

The business had not soured her on him. Li Ruobing’s claims were so overblown that An Menglan felt Li Ruobing was the one behaving irrationally, not that there was anything wrong with Wu Chen.

“To a successful partnership,” Wu Chen said with a smile, and nothing more.

“Um… why don’t we eat? The food’s going cold…” Song Xuan finally spoke, trying to ease the strange situation and the stranger atmosphere.

Just then.

Creak.

The door of the private room opened.

Wu Yurong walked in, her brows penciled and her lipstick fresh, and said at once in her soft, sweet voice, “My, what a lively dinner. Miss Li, you’re having dinner with my daughter and you didn’t tell me?”

“Mom? Why are you here…” Song Xuan asked on instinct, getting to her feet. She was a little nervous, like a child caught out by her mother.

“Am I not allowed to come?” Wu Yurong glanced at her daughter without explaining. Then she looked toward Wu Chen. “Student Wu is here too.”

“Ms. Wu.” Wu Chen greeted her with a smile.

Li Ruobing simply ignored her. She could guess that some meddlesome bodyguard had called Wu Yurong, which was why she had come.

“Miss An, we meet again.” Wu Yurong greeted An Menglan as well.

“Ms. Wu.” An Menglan rose, somewhat surprised, and smiled as she shook her hand again.

An Menglan held Wu Yurong in high regard. She was Donghai’s foremost female business leader and a nationally known entrepreneur. After lunch with her earlier that day An Menglan respected her more still. Wu Yurong was simply the kind of woman who made people feel extraordinarily comfortable in her company.

A long table against the north wall of the room held spare place settings.

Song Xuan went over, fetched a set for her mother, hurried back to the table, laid it out, and even pulled out her chair.

She looked exactly like someone with a guilty conscience.

After Wu Yurong appeared the atmosphere in the room grew far more harmonious. She asked her daughter nothing. She simply talked with An Menglan as though nothing were amiss, and when she learned that Wu Chen and An Menglan would be working together she even showed some surprise and asked a few more questions.

Dinner went on amid pleasant conversation.

But gradually Wu Yurong sensed that something was wrong.

She could feel that something serious had happened between Li Ruobing and An Menglan. Their tones were off whenever they addressed each other. Every sentence seemed to carry a second meaning underneath, and the looks they traded had a faintly confrontational edge.

What had she missed?

More than ten minutes later.

“Excuse me, I’m going to the restroom.” Wu Yurong stood as she said it, and gave her daughter a meaningful look.

Song Xuan knew there was no escaping it. Her mother was certainly going to question her.

Though she felt a little panicked, she stood anyway and said, “Mom, I’ll come too.”

The two left the room one after the other.

A few minutes later they returned and sat back down.

By then, however, there was an intriguing new light in Wu Yurong’s expression.

She knew.

Outside, she had not scolded her daughter. She had only asked what had happened. Song Xuan, already feeling guilty, had not dared keep anything back and had told her everything, the wager included.

Even Wu Yurong had not expected Li Ruobing to be that direct.

She could guess well enough what Li Ruobing was thinking.

“Come, let’s have a toast. To a smooth collaboration between Miss An and Student Wu,” Wu Yurong said, raising her glass.

Li Ruobing had no wish to talk to Wu Yurong, but that did not mean she would refuse a drink. Wu Chen was there, after all. She raised her glass too.

Everyone drank.

Then the conversation resumed.

The subject still circled around Wu Chen and An Menglan’s collaboration, lyrics and composition and the rest. Wu Yurong had a great deal to say on that. She had received formal professional training and had studied music in her day.

Before anyone noticed it was half past seven in the evening.

Song Xuan had drunk too much. Her small face was flushed red. She sat without speaking, already beginning to nod off.

She rarely drank in the first place, and her tolerance was worse than her mother’s. On top of that her feelings had been tangled all day, and after her mother arrived she had been even less willing to speak. Whenever anyone raised a glass she raised hers too, and before she realized it she was drunk.

“Xuanxuan, why don’t you go home and rest? I’m here.” Wu Yurong leaned close and asked after her daughter quietly.

“Mm… all right…” Tipsy, Song Xuan looked up and nodded without much thought. She was already muddled.

She truly had drunk too much and felt unwell. She wanted to sleep.

Seeing her daughter agree, Wu Yurong looked up and called, “Xiaoyan!”

She summoned her female bodyguard Chu Yan and told her to take Song Xuan home. Wu Yurong walked them to the door of the room, murmured a few more instructions to Chu Yan as she supported Song Xuan, then turned back.

Song Xuan left first.

The door closed.

Wu Yurong returned to her place but did not sit down. Instead she picked up her place setting, circled the table, and said in her naturally soft, sweet voice, “I’ll change seats.”

Li Ruobing was sitting on Wu Chen’s right.

Wu Yurong set her dishes down on the table to Wu Chen’s left and pulled out the chair. As she turned to sit, she leaned over and kissed him squarely on the cheek.

Mwah.

It came without warning.

Only after kissing him did Wu Yurong settle into her seat, as though nothing at all had happened.

An Menglan had been watching her change seats. Now she simply froze.

Her eyes went wide, the shock written plainly across her face. She even lost her grip on her chopsticks.

Clatter.

They fell onto the table.

Even Wu Chen felt a little helpless.

Wu Yurong!

She was stirring things up too!