I nagged Changxia for quite a while longer before this older sister finally agreed to ask around for me the next day.
I thought she would go alone, but the next day she drove over to Liang Ze's building and said we were going together.
I blinked in confusion when I saw her walk around to the passenger side.
"Is a driver coming?"
"What driver? You're driving, I want to play on my phone."
"I don't know how..."
"What? You..."
Sister Changxia had no choice but to walk back to the driver's side. As she watched me climb into the back seat, she asked coldly, "Did you really take me for your chauffeur?"
I resignedly climbed back into the front passenger seat.
Watching us swap positions back and forth left Liang Ze, who was on his way downstairs for work, completely dizzy.
"Sorry to trouble you with Zhi staying at your place all these days, Liang Ze," Changxia said very gently to him.
"No trouble at all, we're good brothers," Liang Ze replied with a smile before heading off to work.
The vibe between these two was a bit strange.
When we reached the villa, Qin Di came out to open the door for us.
As soon as she saw Changxia, Qin Di pulled her into her waist and kissed her on the cheek, but upon seeing me, she merely gave a nod.
After going inside, Qin Di said she had a remote meeting to attend and told us to find a guest room to rest in.
Changxia familiarly headed straight for a room, but I stopped her.
"This is the master bedroom, let's find another room," I said.
"What master bedroom? This is the most ordinary guest room in her house."
"How can that be? The morning after I stayed here that night, I was beaten awake in this room. I would absolutely never forget this balcony."
When I got beaten up that morning, I had been dragged from the bed out onto the balcony. The layout of this balcony and the view looking outside were completely identical to what I saw that day.
After I said that, both of us fell silent.
I thought of something, and I wondered if Changxia was thinking the same thing.
Staring at each other in silence, we both pulled out our phones, but we both knew our minds were elsewhere.
Qin Di finally finished her meeting. As soon as she walked into the room, she paused.
That made me even more certain that my suspicion was correct.
"Xiaxia, my house has better guest rooms than this, why did you pick this one?" Qin Di asked tentatively.
"This room is the closest to the door, so I picked it," Changxia replied indifferently.
"...Right, what was it you said you wanted me to do again?"
Getting down to business, the two of them went off somewhere else to talk, leaving me alone in the room where I had taken a beating.
My thoughts were a bit scrambled, revolving around Liang Ze and Changxia, Qin Di and Xu Zhi.
Amidst my wild imagination, I distinctly heard the voices of two women talking.
Yet I was clearly alone in a room with the door closed.
The conversation was simple: Changxia stated her purpose, and Qin Di said she didn't know the person in question, but offered to help look into it.
When the two women shifted to other topics, the system spoke up.
"Host, aren't I amazing?"
"Huh?"
"To be able to hear things so clearly from this far away..."
"Is this because of you?"
"Yep," Little System said, sounding exceptionally proud.
That conversation in the obstetrics department, and now this conversation between the two women—so that was how it worked.
"Awesome!" I didn't hold back my praise.
Little System happily hummed a few songs again.
By the time I finished listening to Little System's songs, Changxia came in.
Changxia looked a bit strange, though I couldn't quite put my finger on the feeling.
"Let's go back," she said, her voice a little hoarse.
"Okay." Since I had already heard that Qin Di was willing to help investigate, I had no intention of lingering either—I still had quite a bit of trauma from that room.
Qin Di didn't come out to see us off. After Changxia brought me outside, she called for a driver to pick us up.
"Why didn't we just drive back?" I asked.
"Didn't feel like driving." Changxia was in a somewhat exhausted state, and once she got into the car, she looked ready to drop off to sleep.
I glanced unconsciously in her direction and noticed that one of the buttons on her shirt was missing.
My inner monologue went wild: could these two women have fought and ended up wrestling again?
Changxia had the driver take us to Liang Ze's place, and my inner voice chimed in again, wondering if Xu Zhi was about to be betrayed by his best friend and his wife.
While my imagination was busy generating millions of words of melodramatic pulp fiction, we arrived at Liang Ze's place.
When getting out of the car, Changxia's legs seemed a bit weak. I gave her a steadying hand, and she practically collapsed into my arms.
I half-carried, half-supported Changxia into the room; Liang Ze hadn't come home from work yet.
Men really are strong—when we reached the doorway, I casually scooped her up in a bridal carry without any effort at all.
When Liang Ze came home from work and learned that Changxia was sleeping in the bedroom, he tiptoed around to cook dinner.
The kitchen was open-concept, completely unobstructed from view. I alternated between looking at my phone and looking at Liang Ze.
With steaming rice, fragrant dishes, and eye candy all in one, it was the ultimate indulgence.
I figured that if I had met a man like this in my past life, I probably wouldn't still be single at 30.
Especially since this man kept dishing food onto my plate from time to time, occasionally looked at me with tender eyes, and didn't even make me clean up or wash the dishes after eating.
Ah, ah, ah... I was about to sink into a bed of gentle comforts.
"Host, this is your bro." Little System's comment was terribly untimely, but it quickly brought me back to reality.
I was a man with a wife, and the person right now was my good brother.
Reality really is harsh.
"You guys are done eating already? Why didn't you call me?" The words were soft, spoken in a tender tone that could soften even an iron-willed tomboy like me.
But Changxia wasn't saying this to me; she was saying it to Liang Ze. Why did I suddenly feel a faint green glow hovering over my head?
"I left food for you in the pot, it's still warm," Liang Ze said calmly.
Changxia pouted. "Big Brother A-Ze, won't you get it out for me? I'm a bit tired."
Liang Ze glanced at me. Fine, whatever—who else was going to play the husband?
I took the food out, set the bowls and chopsticks, pulled out a chair, and told Changxia to come eat, but this chick acted like it was all entirely natural.
I endured it. After all, a husband being good to his wife is only right and proper.
Liang Ze was washing the dishes while Changxia ate, and the atmosphere instantly turned quiet.
As a 30-year-old with social anxiety, I decisively used taking a shower as an excuse to slip away.
To stall for time and eavesdrop on the whispers, I turned the water flow down low.
Then, through the sound of water like pattering drizzle, the conversation rang out clearly once more.
"Big Brother A-Ze, you're always so cold."
"What's wrong with being like this to a brother's wife?"
"You know full well I don't love him."
"He loves you, and you're married."
"Married? If he hadn't pulled those tricks..."
"Alright, you've been married for over two years now, isn't it better to just live a good life?"
"Big Brother A-Ze, I miss you, we used to..."
"Enough. Stand there, don't come any closer. A-Zhi is my brother, and I don't want to carry the infamy of seducing my brother's wife."
"We'll just keep it quiet, without him knowing, okay?"
"No!"
"Do these two have a backstory?" Little System actually came out to gossip as well.
"A-Zhi, it's been a while, you okay in there?" Liang Ze called out from outside the door.
"I'm fine, almost done!" I wrapped things up at lightning speed and came out.
As I stepped out, I saw Liang Ze just entering his room, while Changxia sat at the dining table, her gaze following Liang Ze the entire time.