Soooo….. funny story happened…..
I actually posted chapter 12 on tuesday…..
This is chapter 11. LOL
Also, the reason it’s coming out today is because we have another donation from an anonymous donor!
Although, I’m not sure if that was intentional. If you’d like to remain anonymous, that’s fine, but if you want to be mentioned please ping me on discord!
Thank you again!
After Lu Xingxue left, Jiang Ci returned to the piano room to continue working. Not long after, Xiao Chen came into the room: “Director Jiang, I will throw away the coffee cup.”
Jiang Ci: “Thank you.”
Xiao Chen took the paper cup, but didn’t leave, she hesitantly said: “…Director Jiang, someone brought us afternoon tea just now.”
Jiang Ci looked at her, Xiao Chen scratched her neck and said: “I just saw you downstairs at the window… No, Director Jiang, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean to peek.”
“Go on,” Jiang Ci motioned her to continue.
Xiao Chen’s expression was uncomfortable: “I saw you eating cakes together, and she also used your lipstick… Everyone has been gossipping recently that you are married and your relationship is so close, so is she your……?”
Since Xiao Chen took the initiative to ask, Jiang Ci did not lie to deny it, and nodded and admitted: “She is my wife.”
“!” The guess was confirmed personally, and Xiao Chen’s voice instantly rose: “I knew it! I knew it was like this! Hmph, the damn Director You, spread rumors everywhere, and you must be because your lover can’t handle you. I have been hiding it from everyone, either old, ugly, or poor!”
Jiang Ci: “……”
“Director Jiang, it turns out that your wife is so beautiful! The temperament is amazing, she is super gentle when she laughs! My heart beats faster when I look far away by the window! She is so familiar, is she a star? That’s why you want to keep it secret?… Ahem, Director You is really too much! It’s so bad that everyone is talking about you behind your back!”
Xiao Chen still muttered bad things about You Lu, Jiang Ci said helplessly: “Go and do things, otherwise it won’t be done today.”
“Oh oh!” Xiao Chen’s head was like a bobblehead. Before running out, she added the last sentence: “Director Jiang, you and your wife really match well!”
Jiang Ci: “……”
A good match?
The piano room became silent again. Jiang Ci sat in front of the piano, raised her hand to try a tone, and paused.
She fetched the lipstick out of her pocket awkwardly.
The scene of Lu Xingxue putting on lipstick was only a moment when it happened. Thinking back, it seemed like a slow motion movie, playing back frame by frame in Jiang Ci’s mind.
The arc of her eyeliner, her undulating breath, her slightly opened lips, her delicate and flawless skin…
She remembed every detail so clearly.
It’s obviously not the first day she met Lu Xingxue, but she suddenly discovered that this person not only has a good voice, but also seems to have grown in her own aesthetic points.
Jiang Ci put away her lipstick and went to Xiao Chen’s piano room to find her.
Xiao Chen was staring at the screen of the phone, pressing her finger on it quickly, Jiang Ci knocked on her door a few times: “Will we have dinner together after today?”
Xiao Chen: “Wow!!!”
After finishing the work, Xiao Chen proposed to eat barbecue. Another assistant named Li raised his hands in agreement, and Jiang Ci went to the barbecue restaurant with them.
Fat and thin pork belly creaked in the roasting pan. The barbecue shop was noisy. Xiao Chen talked a lot about the company’s gossip. She and Xiao Li laughed so hard tears came out, but Jiang Ci appeared absent-minded.
The mobile phone placed on the table suddenly buzzed and vibrated, and Jiang Ci subconsciously sat upright.
Xiao Chen: “Director Jiang, is your wife looking for you?”
Jiang Ci flashed her eyes and looked down.
“It is, isn’t it?” Across the table, Xiao Chen had already glanced eagerly at the phone screen.
Jiang Ci picked up the phone, got up and left the seat: “My mother.”
The phone connected, Jiang Lin said: “Ah-Ci, your Aunt Ning and I are visiting the mall right now, come on too.”
Jiang Ci said inexplicably: “Now? I haven’t—”
She didn’t finish a word, and the person on the other end of the phone changed to Ning Shuyue: “Ah-Ci, it’s me. I’m shopping with your mother. I haven’t seen you for a long time. Have you finished your work now? Come and chat with Auntie, okay?”
Jiang Ci: “……”
Jiang Lin really knew her, and knew she would find a reason to refuse, so she directly asked Aunt Ning to speak.
Just after eating, Jiang Ci touched up her makeup in the mirror. She stopped when she opened the lipstick cap and rotated the paste to apply to her lips.
Her lips are clearly reflected in the small makeup mirror. The mirror surface moved, Jiang Ci looked into her own eyes.
…What are you hesitating about? Doesn’t Huo Zhenzhen often use her new lipstick to test colors? She never minded.
Persuading herself so, Jiang Ci took a paper towel and gently wiped it on the top of the lipstick and the part that touched Lu Xingxue’s lips.
After that, she went back to the barbecue restaurant to check out, explained a few words to Xiao Chen and the others, and left first.
She is not far from that shopping mall, and it’s only five or six stops on the subway. Jiang Lin and Ning Shuyue were shopping for baby products. As soon as Jiang Ci appeared, Jiang Lin pulled her into the rows of shelves.
“Where did you come from?” Jiang Lin sniffed, and said with a wrinkled nose, “There is a strange smell?”
Jiang Ci does smell like the barbecue restaurant, but it is an exaggeration. Jiang Lin loves to tell her such things. Jiang Ci let her go.
Standing in front of the shelf, Jiang Lin picked up a pair of small socks: “Look at how delicate things are for the baby.”
“There is also this little hat. Oh, it’s so soft. You have to buy this. Ah-ci, pick it quickly. Which color is good?”
Jiang Ci asked her: “Who do you want to buy it for?”
Jiang Lin slapped her arm: “Who else can you buy it for? Are you pregnant? Or Lu Xingxue?”
If you still don’t understand Jiang Lin’s intentions, Jiang Ci has been her daughter for 25 years.
Simply pretending that she couldn’t understand Jiang Lin’s overtones, Jiang Ci pointed to the pink top embroidered with cartoon carrots: “Wen Nian might like this one.”
“Pink?” Jiang Lin shook her head.
Ning Shuyue chose a few baby onesies, and when he was approaching them, Jiang Lin raised the volume: “The baby is definitely a male treasure, we have to pick blue.”
Jiang Ci: “……”
Ning Shuyue listened to her with a smile on her face: “I don’t know yet, let Nian Nian check it out. She always says she is busy. ——Ah-Ci, have you seen Nian Nian recently?”
Jiang Ci: “I saw her during the Mid-Autumn Festival.”
Ning Shuyue said: “She is thin, right? You also persuade her-I change the dishes every day, I think she can eat a few more mouthfuls, but she is good, she often even forgets to eat at work.”
Jiang Lin clicked her tongue: “This can’t work, no matter how important work is, it can’t be compared with her body!”
They were chatting and choosing, and they were fancying a few sets of baby bedding. For the time being, they couldn’t think of what else to prepare. Jiang Ci asked the attendant to wrap everything up and was about to settle the bill. Ning Shuyue stopped her: “We are the ones who came out to chat with you. We cannot make you pay the bill.”
Jiang Lin pulled Ning Shuyue aside: “Okay, but why do you have so many opinions?”
Ning Shuyue: “This is too much to buy…”
Jiang Lin: “Listen, I’ll be angry if you do this again!”
Ning Shuyue gave in after a few words: “That’s OK, Ah-Ci, let Nian Nian thank you after this.”
Jiang Ci did not answer, Jiang Lin said, “Why do you want to thank her for this? “
They came out with big bags and small bags, Jiang Lin was going to the bathroom, Jiang Ci and Ning Shuyue sat in the lounge chairs and waited for her. Ning Shuyue looked at the baby supplies she had just bought, and sighed: “I buy things bit by bit, and then I gradually gain a sense of reality. The little girl I held in my palm has grown up and is about to be a mother. I want to be a grandmother too.”
Jiang Ci doesn’t know what to say. She hopes Wen nian is happy, even if this happiness is not given by herself. But Wen Nian didn’t meet a good match, so Jiang Ci couldn’t say those blessings.
“Ah-Ci, your mother said that she would be a grandmother who wants to be a child. She said it several times, but she couldn’t laugh at me. It’s not easy for her to be a grandmother—Ah-Ci, you talk to Aunt Ning, what are you going to prepare? Is it time to have a baby?”
Jiang Ci: “……”
She knew there was an ulterior motive.
Jiang Lin implied it in a roundabout way, Aunt Ning played a straight ball, they deserved to be sisterd who have known each other for 20 years, and they cooperated perfectly.
Jiang Ci: “This matter, we will not consider it for the time being.”
Ning Shuyue raised her eyebrows: “Why? Lu Xingxue is 29 this year, right? She is a single seedling in the Lu family. Elder Lu is old and not in good health, so why don’t you rush her?”
The reminder should be reminded, Jiang Ci remembers Lu Xingxue mentioned it once. But they are married by contract, this kind of thing is not in the scope of discussion at all.
…Having a baby with Lu Xingxue, Jiang Ci stopped this association and said, “We are all too busy now to have children, so let’s wait a few years.”
Wen Nian is pregnant and busy all day long. Ning Shuyue knows the hardship, and her tone can’t help but soften a bit: “That’s true, you’re still young…”
Jiang Ci drove Jiang Lin’s car and sent her and Ning Shuyue back. After Ning Shuyue got out of the car, Jiang Lin turned over her phone and transferred a sum of money to Jiang Ci: “I will pay for the clothes.”
Jiang Ci didn’t accept: “No need.”
Jiang Lin said disapprovingly: “How much money can you make? I told you to stop doing it a long time ago. I told your dad to find you a position in the company.”
As she said, she sat forward: “Even if you don’t think about yourself, you have to help your brother plan, right? That’s your brother! I think your dad has been very concerned about the newly hired manager in the company recently. I wondered if he was looking at Tong Zhenni. — Think about it, he and Tong Zhenni are going to be together, what will your brother do? Your brother is only eight years old this year, and he will fight for more than ten or twenty years!”
Jiang Lin gets more and more excited when she talks about it, but Jiang Ci is indifferent: “Mom, you worry about so much, you’ll become old.”
Jiang Lin suddenly became angry: “Then why don’t you make me worry less? If you don’t make progress in your career, you can’t worry about marriage!”
Jiang Ci sighed.
She got used to it more often, and she said calmly: “Mom, all your thoughts and proposals, I didn’t fail to consider them seriously. But I like my current job very much, and Lu Xingxue and I are also very satisfied. The current state of life, I hope you can understand me.”
Jiang Lin “hum”, the mother and daughter did not communicate anymore for the rest of the time.
At No. 3 Songling Road, Jiang Ci parked the car in the parking space and returned the key to Jiang Lin and was about to leave. Jiang Lin pulled a face and turned off the car: “Your father is at home, why don’t you go in and say hello to him?”
Jiang Ci: “Next time.”
Jiang Lin’s face became more stinky, and she said fiercely: “You are waiting here!”
She stepped on high heels and disappeared before Jiang Ci’s eyes. After ten minutes, she came back with a bouquet of roses: “Take it back. I just cut it from the garden this afternoon.”
Jiang Ci knew that Jiang Lin was angry and didn’t want to upset her anymore, so she reached out and took the bouquet into her arms”….”
This answers a lot of questions that i had while i was rereading what i thought was ch. 11, like, where did those roses come from. LOL
Ah~ the interactions~ they’re getting better and better~
Anyways~!
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