CH 39

As the online controversy gradually subsided, the three people in the real world began to review the situation over a meal.

Peng Xiangzhi first pointed to Su Chang: “First, I want to know why you are here.”

And in her pajamas.

“I brought them back last night and it was too late, so I stayed over.”

“Reasonable,” Peng Xiangzhi raised her eyebrows at her before asking Xiang Wan, “Secondly, why did you send the pajama photo?”

Why wasn’t it sent by Yu Zhou?

“Last time, Yu Zhou took a photo of me and posted it online. Many people praised me so I personally thought that if I posted Ms. Su, she would be praised too,” Xiang Wan said.

“Holy shit, that sounds pretty logical,” Peng Xiangzhi said.

“I’m flattered,” Xiang Wan smiled.

“Do you always talk like this?” Peng Xiangzhi frowned.

Before Xiang Wan could answer, Yu Zhou, who was cleaning, said: “Wanwan, it’s not like that, you can’t just take pictures of others and post them on Weibo. Not just Weibo, actually… it’s best not to post them anywhere.”

“Then why can you post about me?” Xiang Wan asked, furrowing her brow. “Am I not ‘others’ to you?”

“Damn,” Peng Xiangzhi mumbled under her breath, watching Su Chang while holding back a laugh.

“She’s so good at it,” she mouthed the words to Su Chang.

“Ahem,” Yu Zhou cleared her throat, “It’s not about that, it’s just…”

“We two are different from others,” Xiang Wan said sincerely again.

“Stop talking,” Yu Zhou muttered, burying herself in cleaning.

What a tricky person, she thought. Xiang Wan must be saying those on purpose.

“Director Peng came here especially, probably because I caused some trouble. I apologize to Ms. Su,” Xiang Wan thought for a moment and said, “But I still don’t understand, why do those irrelevant people have to comment on our open friendship?”

“They’re not irrelevant, people care about you. And you’re a part of this industry, now you use online media for publicity and publishing works, it’s not like you can say, ‘Oh, I want all eyes on me when I’m promoting, but I want people to be deaf when there are rumors.’”

“Hey, everyone likes gossip.”

“But if someone spreads rumors, we’ll sue them.”

Peng Xiangzhi said a bunch of things that Xiang Wan seemed to half understand.

The sound of movement came from the carpet, kitten Wanwan suddenly sprang out from behind the sofa and stretched lazily on the floor.

Like many cats, Wanwan was also afraid of strangers. She had been hiding since she heard the noise from Su Chang yesterday, coming out from time to time to eat and then hiding back on the sofa.

So it was only now that Su Chang realized that there was a cat in the house.

Yu Zhou sat down on the sofa as Wanwan jumped into her arms. She rubbed Wanwan’s ears and chin.

Su Chang asked softly, “Keeping a cat now?”

As soon as she asked this, her heart seemed to pause. The furnishings in the room hadn’t changed and she was still wearing her pajamas, giving her a feeling of being back in the past. However, this illusion was broken by the intimate interaction between Yu Zhou and Wanwan.

“It’s so cute! What’s its name?” Peng Xiangzhi intervened.

“Wanwan.”

“Huh?”

“The bowl for eating, my sister named it. It is my sister’s cat. She went out of town, so it’s staying with me for a while,” Yu Zhou explained.

“I was scared! I thought they already had a love child,” Peng Xiangzhi murmured to Su Chang.

Su Chang furrowed her brow, looking somewhat helpless.

It was rare to see such a lively Su Chang as she even appeared quite adorable. Peng Xiangzhi looked at her with a smile while propping her chin on her hand.

Yu Zhou put Wanwan down and continued to vacuum the cat hair on the sofa.

“Oh, by the way,” Yu Zhou suddenly remembered, “Xiang Wan, Wanwan threw up yesterday. There’s a spot on the floor by the water dispenser. I did a simple clean up, but could you use the floor washing machine to mop it up? If you wait until after we leave and come back, it will be dry and hard to clean.”

Xiang Wan was about to reply when Su Chang stood up and said gently, “I’ll do it.”

Ah, that’s right, Peng Xiangzhi silently gave her a thumbs-up in her heart.

The floor washing machine looked similar to the vacuum cleaner. Su Chang checked that there was still water inside, so she directly carried it over. She lowered her head to find the power button and pressed it before pinching the handle, just like the vacuum cleaner. However, the floor washer didn’t make a sound.

She looked again, there were no other buttons besides the power switch. Moreover, the screen was already lit up, so it wasn’t because of a lack of power.

She poked at the screen, but there was no response.

She seemed a bit embarrassed when she saw Xiang Wan stand up and demonstrate, “You need to step on this surface with your foot, then pull the handle backwards to start it. Push it to sweep, and when the cleaning is finished, just stand the handle back up to stop it.”

Su Chang nodded and did as instructed.

But she suddenly felt very upset.

The floor washer was bought when she and Yu Zhou were together. It had only been purchased shortly before they broke up and hadn’t been used many times, so she didn’t know how to use it. Besides, it looked quite similar to a vacuum cleaner, so she hadn’t paid much attention to how Yu Zhou had used it. Moreover, their communication had already dwindled at that time, so Yu Zhou wouldn’t let her use the floor washer to mop the floor.

But Xiang Wan knew how to use it.

They are always too proud, thinking that they still have plenty of time, but sometimes it is hard to tell which is longer, being together for more than three years or for just over a month.

As the floor washer hummed and operated, she cleaned the stains on the floor repeatedly, eager to restore the floor to its original pristine condition.

So she wiped it dozens of times.

Yu Zhou came over, wanting to speak but hesitated: “That’s enough.”

“Okay.” Su Chang stopped and put the floor washer back on the living balcony before asking her, “Do I need to dump this water?”

“No need, I’ll dump it all when the water in the tank is used up.”

“Alright.”

She went out and washed her hands in the bathroom.

She heard Peng Xiangzhi saying outside, “It’s past 11 o’clock, let’s go out. What are you treating us to, sis Chang?”

“What would you like to eat?” Su Chang dried her hands.

“Teppanyaki, is that okay? There’s a shopping mall nearby with a teppanyaki chain restaurant. I’ve been there before and it’s pretty good. Do you two want to eat that?”

“We’re both fine with it.” Yu Zhou said.

“Alright, let’s go change our clothes.”

After a while, they all changed their clothes. The clothes Su Chang wore yesterday were so smelly that she didn’t want to wear them, so she asked to borrow clothes from Yu Zhou. Yu Zhou told her to just take whatever she wanted. She opened the wardrobe where the “decent clothes” were kept and was taken aback.

“Um, Wanwan rolled around on the clothes. I haven’t taken it to the dry cleaners yet.”

“She has no money.” Xiang Wan said.

“Hey!” Yu Zhou wanted to say what are you doing, there were so many people around!

And Su Chang really looked at her with the kind of eyes that seemed to say her ex-lover was having a miserable life.

Feeling a little frustrated, she asked Su Chang, “How about the clothes in that wardrobe?” referring to those ordinary T-shirts.

“Okay,” Su Chang replied.

So she changed into Yu Zhou’s white T-shirt and jeans, which made Yu Zhou even more frustrated. Su Chang still looked so good, making the clothes look expensive. Why did her ex-girlfriend get better-looking as time went by, while she seemed to be getting more and more disheveled?

Was there anything worse than losing in a confrontation with an old flame? Yes, there was, like Yu Zhou being utterly defeated in every aspect.

The embarrassment was almost the same as that of Yu Zhou running into her ex-girlfriend when going downstairs to throw out the trash while yawning and not washing her hair.

As they were about to leave, Su Chang looked down and saw a bag of tied-up trash by the door. After thinking for a moment, she picked it up.

“Yo,” Yu Zhou was a little surprised.

The surprise was that Su Chang had never seen trash in the past. It wasn’t that she didn’t do chores, if you told her to take the trash with her when she went out and throw it into the recycling bin downstairs, she would do it.

But if you didn’t say anything, she would never see the trash when she went out.

Sometimes, holding the trash in her hand, Su Chang would walk and reply to WeChat messages, even carrying the garbage all the way to the car.

She wasn’t lazy, she just didn’t register housework. Perhaps it was due to the rhythm of her home life, where a cleaning lady would come every other day. When it was especially dirty, she’d have a cleaner over every day.

So, even after moving in together with Yu Zhou, she didn’t pick up this habit. At first, Yu Zhou didn’t think it was an important matter, that whoever noticed the chores should do it. But later, Yu Zhou found that constantly asking Su Chang to take out the garbage was tiring as it was easier to handle it herself.

Su Chang had suggested hiring a housekeeper, but Yu Zhou didn’t want to since she didn’t like strangers in her home.

In fact, there were many such trivial matters. For example, when Su Chang ordered takeout at home, she liked to order four or five dishes but only took a bite or two of each.

After finishing, she might make a phone call or be held up by something else, leaving the dishes on the dining table without putting them in the refrigerator.

During the hot summer, the food had gone bad by the time Yu Zhou came back at night. Often, Yu Zhou would check whether the food was still edible while regretfully discarding the barely touched dishes.

But when it came to asking Su Chang not to order so much, Yu Zhou felt that it was also unfair to Su Chang since she had always lived this way. Yu Zhou had tried to remind her to wrap the leftovers in cling film and store them in the refrigerator. Su Chang sometimes followed this advice, but other times seeing Yu Zhou cleaning up, Su Chang would come forward to help while apologizing and saying she forgot.

There was not much guilt in her apology as she truly didn’t think that wasting food was an exceptionally evil issue. Her apology might stem from the fact that Yu Zhou was upset.

However, Yu Zhou was not one to harp on such issues. After mentioning it a couple of times, she stopped altogether. Perhaps Su Chang never even realized there was a problem.

Thinking about this, Yu Zhou felt a bit melancholic as she watched Su Chang holding the trash bag.