Chapter 98: Don’t get my hopes up for nothing.
After the crowd dispersed, stillness settled in the tea room, pierced only by the sound of flowing water from the pool. Pei Zhen was still holding Xu Si’s hand, but he had moved it from under the table to rest openly on top. His cool fingertips rested on her wrist bone; a little pressure made the skin flush slightly. Her skin was fine-textured and delicate, smooth as satin to the touch.
"It’s so beautiful," he murmured, gazing down to admire it for a moment longer before releasing her arm. He was careful not to injure it and deliberately kept his distance, lips curving into a smile. "President Xu, everyone has left. What did you want to tell me? Is it something I’d like to hear?"
Transparent glass walls surrounded them, offering a view of the rockery and stream outside, where delicate grass and robust trees grew side by side.
Xu Si casually picked up the oil lighter from the table. It still bore the fingerprints of the woman from Hong Kong Island who had used it. Pursing her lips into a smile, she asked, "What do you like to hear?"
His thin lips curled. "For instance, that mixed-race man—how did you two end up together again? I heard he confessed his feelings to you?"
"You really do know everything." Xu Si wiped the fingerprints off the lighter, her voice laced with amusement. "He did confess to me, but I rejected him. Did you know that?"
Pei Zhen tilted his chin up slightly, his grey eyes cold and sinister. "Mm, I knew. If you hadn’t rejected him, we wouldn’t be sitting here so peacefully. You would have had to die for love with me."
"You’re really crazy." Xu Si suddenly looked up at him, a laugh tingeing her words. "But to tell you the truth, I’m a bit infatuated with this kind of craziness, and with you."
At that moment, the air in the tea room seemed to have been vacuumed out, growing so thin it was suffocating.
Xu Si never lacked the courage to be honest. As she spoke, she found the words weren’t as hard to say as she’d imagined. The world didn’t end, and the great wall of morality and ethics didn’t crumble because of it.