Xue Ning picks up her phone again.
After reading an article that removed years off her life, her finger hovers over the load comments button. Should she? Didn't some philosopher claim that knowledge is power or something similar to that?
It's better to know what people online are saying, she rationalises to herself. That way, she won't be caught unaware when someone decides to yell mean things at her in broad daylight.
She holds her breath, and begins reading the comments.
+2131566 I bet that woman is pregnant! That's why Sun Jingwei is so panicky - he's afraid he lost the baby!
+35265 Sister, you're onto something here. Just think, he had so many women, and he kicked them all to the curb so easily! A baby would make sense!
+6734 This woman is so smart, using the baby to trap him!
+503 Please like he'll actually take responsibility. He'll most likely make her abort the baby, or keep the baby and throw her out.
+726 Brother you've been watching too many CEO dramas. No man who wants to abort the baby would be so stupidly desperate!
'Baby? What part of this makes sense? Have their brains been replaced with soft poo?' Xue Ning thinks angrily to herself.
The other comments were not much better.
+239585 How can a mere bartender be good enough for Sun Jingwei? Wanna bet this is a passing fancy and he's gonna dump her like a hot potato the moment he sees her in daylight!
+32586 What are you talking about? Sun Jingwei is a drunk wastrel - a bartender's wife is perfect for him!
+4630 There's someone for everyone no matter how shitty… So where is mine?
+1204 Sister I feel your pain…
+20149 Her xxx skills must be fucking godly then, for him to care so much about her!
+3201 Maybe he really is in love with her? Who knows?
+8201 Yeah right. If this is true, I'll become Jesus
Now they were speculating on her nonexistent bedroom skills! She wanted to throw her phone on the floor, but she was actually reading this garbage on his phone, and she definitely did not have the money to replace it.
(Her bedroom skills weren't entirely nonexistent, they pleasured one person - herself! The most important person! Who even cared about Sun Jingwei's pleasure! She certainly didn't. She never would!)
"Hey, don't read the comments," Jingwei snatches his phone back. She makes an offended noise, but he gives her a serious look. "It's really not worth it, take it from someone who's been there. People write nonsense all the time."
"Bastard. This is all your fault." The insult slips out of her mouth before she can stop it, even as her voice begins to shake. In anger, or fear, she's not too sure.
"People never even noticed me enough to write nonsense about me - and now? They think I seduced you? That I trapped you into our nonexistent relationship with our fictional baby?" Her voice rises at the end, in outrage and incredulity.
She glares at him and he briefly recoils at the venom in her gaze.
"You. You'd better find a way to fix this mess. Immediately."
"I will! Don't worry about it -"
"How can I not worry? This wouldn't have happened if you weren't so distracted by that woman's cleavage!" She slaps the table attached to the hospital bed. Now that she recalled the entire night, she remembered how the two women worked together to spike his drink.
"Well I - " Jingwei splutters, but she's not finished.
"Have you ever seen cleavage before? Couldn't you just search it on the Internet! You dumbass! Don't you know it's important to be alert and aware when drinking?" She rants in a flourish, fingers clenching into a fist that she longs to fly into his face. She closes her eyes to calm down.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Think of peaceful things. Like puppies and kittens. And tiny babies. Babies that the netizens think she's having.
She opens her eyes. This method of calming down is regrettably a failure.
"How can you speak to me this way? Ever since I was born, no one has lectured me like this!" Jingwei complains, leaning closer to her to intimidate her with his height.
As though she's the one in the wrong for calling him out.
Xue Ning scoffs at his bullshit words and pulls him closer by his shirt collar. If she's already pissing him off, she might as well just go all out.
"Are you sure? Your father just called you to tell you to go home and you're telling me no one lectured you before? Maybe you just weren't listening!"
"You -" Jingwei's face turns red in anger.
A cough distracts both of them. Tianwei was still there standing at the side, now holding his phone that Jingwei left half-heartedly on the couch when they both started arguing.
The phone that still had his father on the other end of the line.
Both of them startle and spring apart, as though they were caught doing something more scandalous than arguing. Xue Ning feels her face redden. Great, she said all this while his father was still listening!
Not that she regretted her words, but there was a time and place for everything.
"Sorry to interrupt," Tianwei says smoothly, secretly amused at how the both of them were hellbent on ignoring each other when they looked close enough to kiss a few seconds ago. If he hadn't made his presence known, they'd probably be angrily making out - and that would not solve the problem.
Now that he has got their attention, Tianwei continues.
"As things have progressed to this state, I would advise Miss Li to stay at one of our houses just for the time being, to evade the paparazzi."
"Wouldn't that be worse? I'd be labelled as some kind of… kept woman!" Xue Ning exclaims. "And I still need to go to work. Can't we just ignore this mess? Eventually people will stop talking about it, right?"
"Do you mean your job as a martial arts instructor for children?" Tianwei asks. Xue Ning blinks in surprise.
"How did you know?" She asks, before realising it was a stupid question. Of course they had someone look into her background.
"My family did research on you," Jingwei casually brags about their legalised stalking. "Had to make sure you weren't a golddigger.
"Are you sure I'm not a golddigger? I'm poor enough to be one." She argues anyway, just to wipe that smug look off his face.
"Oh please if you were a golddigger, you'd be a piss-poor one. How would you possibly not know who I am in the first place? I'm the biggest pot of gold in this place!" He retorts.
She scowls at him, having no proper comeback for that. Truth be told, if she was a golddigger, she wouldn't need to work two jobs.
He smirks, pleased that he's got the upper hand.
"As I was saying," Tianwei cuts in, with a pointed look at his younger brother to please hold his tongue, "while we understand that you wish to work for a living, our family could employ you instead."
"As what?" Xue Ning and Jingwei both ask at the same time. To their surprise, it's not Tianwei, but his father who answers.
"As my son's bodyguard."