"It's too late. Let's wash up and go to sleep first, we can talk tomorrow. There's no particular rush," I said gently to Changxia.
The injured beauty nodded, her head drooping. I wanted to comfort her a little more, but not wanting to raise any expectations in her, I had to let it go.
In the dead of night, after the four of us finished washing up, Liang Ze and I slept in separate guest rooms, while Qin Di and Changxia took the master bedroom.
Late at night, between sleep and waking, I heard some faint, suppressed gasps, too indistinct to make out.
Bruised, sore, and exhausted, I drifted off into a deep sleep.
When I saw Changxia during the day, her mouth had only been swollen at the corners last night; now her entire mouth was swollen.
"Xiaoxia, your whole mouth is swollen. Do you want to go see a doctor?" I worried a little that this might be an aftereffect of my own excessive vigor.
"None of your business. Xiaxia is coming to stay at my place for a while, and when she comes back to see you depends on your performance," Qin Di shot me a disdainful look, then grabbed Changxia and headed out.
"Zhi, I..." Liang Ze's voice rang out, and I turned to look at him.
"I made breakfast, and I need to get to work now. You..." Liang Ze seemed somewhat worried about me.
"Thank you for getting up early to make breakfast. Work comes first, you should go ahead and take care of it."
Liang Ze looked at me for a moment and said, "All right. Call me if anything comes up."
I nodded. "Okay, be careful on the way."
As I ate breakfast, remembering that I still hadn't asked Qin Di if she had managed to find anyone named Qu Songhe, agitation welled up inside me again.
Time flies like an arrow: spring when I arrived, autumn in the blink of an eye.
Along the way, Xu Zhi had said nothing more, and when I asked Little System, that little thing went back to its usual game of feigning complete ignorance.
Not knowing how to bring up Qu Songhe with Qin Di, I enlisted the influence of Father Xu, Mother Xu, Xu Dayong, and Xu Group to search for him, but unfortunately, all to no avail.
With zero progress on what I needed to do in this new space-time, I alternated between acting like a slacker in the Xu Family's company and letting out heavy sighs.
"President Xu, there's a group of female models walking the runway right now. Would you like to go have a look?" my male assistant asked with a leering smile.
Having been a man for several months now, aside from Liang Ze, the men around Xu Zhi were either somewhat or extremely womanizing—truly birds of a feather with a piece of work like Xu Zhi.
Still, watching female models was quite interesting; beautiful things are always pleasing to the eye.
Arriving at the stage, a group of female models was walking the runway. I glanced at them, and one girl looked familiar, as if I had seen her somewhere before.
My assistant was quick on the uptake. Seeing me stare fixedly at a particular girl, he whispered a few words to the director nearby.
Before long, that vaguely familiar girl appeared in my office.
"Care to introduce yourself?" I said to the girl.
"Y-yes, President Xu. My name is Mou Ling, and I'm twenty-five this year." Mou Ling looked a bit nervous, constantly tugging at the clothes around her waist.
"I feel like I've seen you somewhere before," I said, catching a glimpse of my assistant trying to hide a smirk.
"..."
Mou Ling didn't answer, nervously pulling down the hem of her top, which kept riding up and failing to cover her navel.
Judging by this nervous demeanor, plus the fact that this was the very girl who had resigned right after I finished looking her over, Xu Zhi's reputation was truly rotten to the core.
"Got it. You can go back to what you were doing." Being a woman myself, I could understand her panic.
"Alright, President Xu." Seeing me grant her leave, Mou Ling quickly backed out of the office.
"Such long legs—" Seeing the half-smile playing on my lips, the assistant immediately shut his mouth.
At lunchtime, I went to the cafeteria of the modeling agency under Xu Group.
Amid the "gazes of attention" from quite a few people, my assistant and I casually found a table and sat down.
I wasn't throwing my weight around as company president out of pretension.
It was just that back when I was Qiu Zhi in my past life, I had never managed to get into a "big corporation," so today I came specifically to taste what a corporate giant's cafeteria was like.
I have to admit, a big corporation really lives up to its name—the dishes were varied in style and reasonably priced.
Most importantly, it was genuinely delicious.
Look, not far away on the left, a girl was taking photos for her Moments, while a few guys and girls on the right seemed to be doing a live mukbang stream.
One of the guys on the right—was that him?
Yang Hui?
I felt the blood in my entire body surging. How long had it been since we last saw each other?
"President Xu?" The assistant noticed my abnormality and called out to me in a low voice. "Is something wrong? Those people over there..."
"Do you know that tall, thin guy?" I desperately fought down the turmoil in my heart.
"Him? He's the head of the photography department," the assistant replied after taking a close look.
"What's his name?"
"Yang Hui."
I have no idea how I made it back to Xu Zhi's place.
Despite the chilly autumn weather, I couldn't help taking a cold shower, desperately trying to calm myself down.
Yang Hui was the only boy I had ever liked in my past life.
Before I came to this space-time, we hadn't seen each other for many years.
He was my neighbor and older brother figure, two years older than me, with top grades, good looks, and a great personality, pursued by countless girls.
When I was twenty-four, he said, "Xiaozhi, this is my girlfriend. You two should get to know each other."
That day was bright and sunny, the couple smiling brilliantly, while only my heart was withering away.
Years of unrequited love and wistful hopes ultimately came to nothing.
After that, we never met again.
Reborn in a new space-time, I had actually run into him once more.
Were they the same person? Was he single? Did he still remember Qiu Zhi?
...
I had countless questions I wanted to ask him face-to-face.
"Host, please bear in mind that you are Xu Zhi now, and your own affairs have made no headway whatsoever," the system administered a rude awakening.
At that moment, I finally remembered Mou Ling—she was his girlfriend.
I had become a man, and he already had a beloved partner; no matter what, there could never be any outcome for us.
Waves of chill washed over me, so I took another hot shower to warm my body up.
That night, I spent it alone in Xu Zhi's home, my mind remaining in a complete fog.
The next day, I caught a cold.
Judging by the time, Liang Ze should be at work, so I made a phone call to ask Changxia for help.
After all, I still hadn't asked Qin Di about Qu Songhe.
I was quite gratified that I could still think to do this while half-delirious.
When she answered my call, Changxia said nothing.
"Xiaoxia, I know I was in the wrong before, but I really didn't mean it. Will you forgive... *cough*, me, *cough*... please?"
Under the dual assault of my coughing and "pleading," Changxia's heart softened after all.
The end result was that Qin Di didn't trust Changxia to be alone with me, even though I was already sick, so she arranged for the Qin family driver to come pick me up and take me to her home.
After examining me, the Qin family doctor said that taking a cold shower followed immediately by a hot one had caused my blood vessels to constrict and dilate abruptly, triggering the cold. She would prescribe some medicine for me to take first and see how things went, advising me to avoid running a fever if possible, lest my body suffer even more.
I nodded and thanked the doctor.
After the family doctor left, Qin Di, who had been watching coldly from the sidelines, spoke up: "Taking a bath like that—did you deliberately make yourself sick to win sympathy?"
My body was utterly exhausted, so I didn't bother to respond. After taking the cold medicine, I fell fast asleep.
I don't know how long I slept, but I woke up feeling terribly thirsty, my throat itching uncomfortably.
A cup of water went down, and my throat felt much better, while my brain seemed to clear up a bit as well.
My body was weak and I didn't want to do a thing, so I crawled back under the covers to play dead.
As soon as I got into bed, drowsiness crept over me again. While my mind was completely blank, I heard the sounds once more.
Seductive gasps, rising and falling—so utterly reminiscent of the gasps from the night Changxia and I had our argument.