The intimate sounds from the ceiling finally ended at three in the morning.
Gu Kaiyang had long entered dreamland, while Ji Mingshu lay on the other side of the bed, wrapped tightly in her small blanket, eyes closed, yet still unable to fall asleep.
At six o’clock, the alarm rang punctually.
Gu Kaiyang sat up in bed, yawned, then grabbed her phone to order breakfast delivery.
Today was the monthly magazine deadline day, requiring her to arrive early. No matter how sleep-deprived she was, she still needed to get up to wash and apply makeup.
After getting herself ready, Gu Kaiyang glanced upstairs and saw Ji Mingshu slowly sitting up in bed, leaning against the headboard.
While wiping off excess lipstick, she asked, “Why are you up so early? Did my alarm disturb you?”
“No.”
Because she hadn’t slept at all.
Gu Kaiyang didn’t ask further, checked the time, and hurriedly instructed, “I ordered breakfast, there’s soy milk, fried dough sticks, and soup dumplings on the dining table. If they get cold, just heat them in the microwave for thirty seconds. I’ve left the door card on the table too. Remember to eat breakfast, okay? I’ve got to go to work now.”
“Mm, you go ahead.”
Ji Mingshu responded, hugging her knees and resting her chin on them, her heart beating rapidly from the sleepless night.
Hearing the door “bang” shut, she didn’t move, just quietly closed her eyes.
Two days had passed since the incident. Compared to her initial emotional turmoil, her heart had now returned to calmness.
Yet it was in this calmness that she felt an unprecedented confusion about her future life.
When she mistakenly thought Cen Sen was having an affair with Zhang Baoshu, she had already felt lost: if she got divorced, how would she live?
Later, when hesitating about whether to participate in the show, she had seriously considered Gu Kaiyang’s advice to develop a career. But having lived comfortably for over twenty years, it was difficult for her to plan far ahead while in a secure position, to live life like playing Go—thinking ten steps ahead for each move.
Although in her current situation, she was still joking with Gu Kaiyang, unwilling to face the reality that she couldn’t divorce and that she was truly helpless without Cen Sen, in the quiet of the night when she couldn’t sleep, she thought and reflected a lot.
Wondering if Cen Sen would apologize, compromise, and take her home.
Wondering if, now that she understood her feelings for Cen Sen, she could still be satisfied with maintaining their former plastic husband-and-wife lifestyle, resigned to never gaining his affection and respect;
And also wondering if the root of all this was because she wasn’t good enough.
From summer solstice to winter solstice, daylight hours grew shorter. The autumn’s end and winter’s beginning meant it stayed dark until seven-thirty in the morning.
Outside, the hustle and bustle of a new day began. Gu Kaiyang’s little Beetle had already joined the traffic flow. Ji Mingshu slowly turned to her side with her eyes closed, then curled up into a ball, falling into a drowsy sleep.
This sleep lasted until two in the afternoon. When Ji Mingshu woke up, the sun outside was already quite hot.
She went downstairs and checked her bank statement on her phone. Yesterday’s casual purchases of skincare products and household items had already consumed nearly 100,000 yuan.
She looked at the message from the “Designer Home” program producer. She hadn’t noticed before that the payment for her participation had already been processed.
The key issue was that she hadn’t cared about this small amount of money back then, and the card she’d filled in wasn’t brought with her, wasn’t linked to her phone, and she didn’t know where it was.
So now she only had the last 100,000 yuan from Jiang Chun.
She sat quietly for a while, then took the door card, changed her shoes, and went out.
The magazine where Gu Kaiyang worked wasn’t far from Star Harbor International. Ji Mingshu packed an afternoon tea from a nearby café and headed straight to “Zero Degrees.”
Today was the deadline day, and everyone at the magazine was very busy. People were rushing back and forth with their work, having no time to pay attention to her.
She spotted a familiar assistant and stopped her to ask, “Where’s your deputy editor-in-chief?”
The assistant knew Ji Mingshu was Gu Kaiyang’s close friend. She pushed her glasses up and said with difficulty, “Sister Gu… she’s now in the editor-in-chief’s office, probably getting lectured.”
She said the last part very softly, almost in a whisper.
Ji Mingshu: “Why is she being lectured?”
The assistant carefully said, “Yesterday, Sister Gu requested leave suddenly and didn’t hand over her work properly. There was an accidental issue, which made today’s deadline particularly troublesome. The entire layout had to be changed urgently, so…”
Ji Mingshu was stunned.
The assistant added, “Miss Ji, if you’re looking for Sister Gu, perhaps you should wait in her office?”
“No need,” Ji Mingshu suddenly handed the packed afternoon tea to the assistant. “You all eat this. Don’t say it’s from me, and don’t tell your deputy editor that I was here.”
“Huh?”
The assistant watched Ji Mingshu’s back as she turned and walked away, completely confused.
In the capital’s autumn and winter, daylight came late but darkness fell early. By six o’clock, the sunset was already gone.
On the way from the horse farm to the club, Zhou Jiaheng was reporting to Cen Sen about the progress of the follow-up work in Star City.
Cen Sen leaned back in his seat with his eyes closed, pretending to doze, not responding.
After finishing his report, Zhou Jiaheng paused slightly, then changed the subject without any change in tone: “Today, Madam left at two-thirty in the afternoon, bought some snacks at a café. At three, she arrived at ‘Zero Degrees’ magazine and left at three-ten. She walked along Huainan Third Road to Lusende Supermarket at the intersection of Huainan Second Road and East Scenery Street, and bought a bag of groceries. At four-thirty, she returned to Star Harbor International and hasn’t come out since.”
Cen Sen still didn’t respond, only changing the position of his lowly folded arms.
The Bentley drove to the Yong Club. Today, Jiang Che returned to the capital to meet a professor from a chip research and development team, and had arranged to meet Cen Sen there.
Jiang Che was currently in the midst of a passionate romance, feeling proud and somewhat eager to give advice.
Seeing that Cen Sen, who rarely drank during private meetings, had ordered a bottle of whiskey, he suddenly said, “Have you noticed you have a problem?”
Cen Sen slightly raised his eyes.