Chapter 4
“Zhao Xuning, if you keep this up, I’m seriously going to get angry!”
The video showed Zhao Xuning’s stern profile. She was wearing light-colored, long-sleeved loungewear and a pair of thin, gold-rimmed glasses that concealed the beauty mark beneath her eye and her beautiful, narrow eyes, making her look rather stiff and dull.
She was holding a medical textbook thicker than her arm, and she didn’t even look up when she heard Shen Hui speaking.
“Ah Hui, can you wait until I finish reading this?” Zhao Xuning softened her voice, sounding remarkably gentle. If Shen Hui hadn’t recorded the video herself, she would never have imagined that Zhao Xuning could speak in such a tender tone.
The camera shook as Shen Hui reached out to tug at the pristine book in her hands. She’d just finished cutting some fruit, and her fingertips were still stained with the magenta juice of dragon fruit. When she pressed a finger against the bottom-right corner of the book, it left a mark that looked like a fingerprint.
Zhao Xuning finally looked up and practically ground out her name through clenched teeth. “Shen Hui.”
“What?!” Shen Hui refused to back down, spreading her palm in front of Zhao Xuning. “Look how thoughtfully I cut fruit for you, and you’re still yelling at me! Being mean to me! What kind of girlfriend treats her girlfriend like that?”
Her voice was as bright and lively as could be, with a sweetness that bordered on coquettish.
“Ningning, my darling wife, you don’t love me anymore, do you?” Shen Hui was an expert at acting pitiful. “I knew it. The longer we’re together, the more our feelings fade. Our love is like sand. Even without the wind blowing…”
Before she could finish, Zhao Xuning lunged forward and covered her mouth, her eyes full of warning. “Don’t say things like that.”
Shen Hui kicked her feet. “Mmf, mmf, mmf!”
You’re feeling guilty!
“I’m not feeling guilty.” Zhao Xuning glanced conflictedly at her book, then back at Shen Hui, and said seriously, “You keep saying I don’t love you. I don’t like hearing that.”
Using her less-than-clean hand, Shen Hui pried Zhao Xuning’s fingers away from her mouth one by one. “Then tell me you love me! Say it loudly enough for the whole world to hear! Say it ten times a day. No, a hundred times!”
Zhao Xuning: “…That’s childish.”
Shen Hui glared at her. “Oh, you’re not childish? Then who was calling me Sister yesterday? Ningning, darling wife, you’re really not being good. The moment we get out of bed, you stop being…”
Before she could finish again, Zhao Xuning’s face flushed bright red, the color spreading from her ears all the way down her neck. She still hadn’t gotten used to Shen Hui’s complete lack of restraint when speaking to her.
There was no difference between how Shen Hui behaved in bed and out of it. She coaxed Zhao Xuning just as shamelessly outside the bedroom as she did inside.
Zhao Xuning, on the other hand, would occasionally say embarrassing things when she was overcome with passion in bed and Shen Hui coaxed them out of her. But the moment she got out of bed, she transformed into a prudish, abstinent old-fashioned official who seemed to wish everyone in the world could reproduce asexually.
Zhao Xuning released Shen Hui’s mouth and turned to get a wet wipe. “I’ll watch it with you. But we have to agree on one thing first. You’re not allowed to have nightmares tonight.”
Shen Hui pouted. “You’re being completely unreasonable. Since when can I control my dreams? If I could, wouldn’t I dream about the two of us losing ourselves in pleasure every night? I’d just spend every day lying in bed with you…”
Zhao Xuning held her fingers apart and carefully wiped every inch of them with the wet wipe. Hearing those words, her temples began throbbing. “You’re letting pleasure distract you from your responsibilities!”
Shen Hui turned around and sat on the sofa with her knees bent, obediently leaving her left hand in Zhao Xuning’s care while deliberately waving her other hand in front of her eyes. Her two fair, delicate feet were painted with pale nail polish, which Zhao Xuning had applied for her two days earlier while frowning the entire time.
As she’d painted them, she’d muttered on and on like Master Tang, listing all the dangers of nail polish.
But that hadn’t stopped her from applying it meticulously. She’d even given Shen Hui a foot mask afterward, then brought over some warm water so she could soak her feet.
When Zhao Xuning was drying the water from her feet with a towel, Shen Hui had even stretched a foot toward her face. “Smell it. Does it stink?” Zhao Xuning tucked her feet beneath the blanket. “Stop fooling around.”
“How am I fooling around?” Shen Hui persisted, wrapping her arms around Zhao Xuning’s neck and kissing her cheek. Zhao Xuning tried to pull away, but Shen Hui only hugged her tighter. “I just asked you to smell them. You washed them so thoroughly yourself, but you won’t even give them a sniff? Do you think I stink?”
Shen Hui could be remarkably stubborn at times, especially when it came to making Zhao Xuning do things. She loved watching Zhao Xuning pinch her nose or frown while doing something. Because Zhao Xuning was so meticulous by nature, even if she really didn’t want to do something, once she agreed to it, she would carry it out with the utmost care.
Shen Hui thought she really must be a pervert. Why did she enjoy making things difficult for Zhao Xuning so much?
But Zhao Xuning was genuinely stubborn.
Shen Hui kissed her cheek, but Zhao Xuning refused to give in, keeping a straight face without saying a word.
So Shen Hui kissed her lips, her chin, her neck, and her collarbone, pestering her until Zhao Xuning was completely helpless. “I don’t think you stink.”
“Then smell them.” Shen Hui stretched her two fair, delicate feet toward Zhao Xuning. They were pale with a healthy pink flush.
Zhao Xuning cupped her feet in her hands, her expression so serious that she looked almost devout.
Shen Hui simply started recording a video. Zhao Xuning turned to look at her. “Why are you recording this too? Are you planning to preserve it as a family heirloom?”
“Of course.” Although she knew Zhao Xuning was only teasing, Shen Hui proudly lifted her chin like a peacock showing off its feathers. “One day, I’ll burn all these videos onto discs and show them to your daughter. I’ll tell her she has to learn how her mother treats her wife. If she can’t find someone like her mother, then she shouldn’t get married.”
Even the tips of Zhao Xuning’s ears turned red, though her tone remained perfectly serious. “You’re talking about something that hasn’t even happened as though it’s already real.”
“What hasn’t happened?” Shen Hui asked. “Burning the discs, or having your daughter?”
Zhao Xuning: “We’re both still studying. Are you already planning to get pregnant?”
Shen Hui shrugged. “Who knows? If I accidentally got pregnant one day, would you make me get an abortion? That’s illegal.” “I wouldn’t,” Zhao Xuning replied with firm sincerity. Shen Hui asked, “You wouldn’t make me get an abortion, or you wouldn’t get me pregnant?”
Zhao Xuning: “…”
After a moment of silence, Zhao Xuning said, “I won’t get you pregnant. I’ll restrain myself. After temporarily marking you, I won’t go on to release my pheromones and bond with you.”
Shen Hui: “Then wouldn’t that mean I wouldn’t get to feel good?” Zhao Xuning: “…I’ll look for contraceptive medication.”
Shen Hui had originally just been joking around to tease Zhao Xuning, but seeing her expression grow increasingly grave and serious, she couldn’t help bursting into laughter. “Are you planning to find some for me or for yourself?”
“Of course, for myself,” Zhao Xuning said. “Your health is so delicate. You got sick three times last winter.”
Shen Hui puffed out her cheeks and gazed at Zhao Xuning with smiling eyes. Unable to resist, she reached out and poked her cheek. “You love me that much, Ningning, darling wife?”
Zhao Xuning didn’t speak. Ever since Shen Hui had slipped her feet out from under the blanket, Zhao Xuning had been holding one of them, absentmindedly playing with it as they talked.
Shen Hui’s feet weren’t large. She wore a size 36, which was rather petite for her height of 169 centimeters.
Zhao Xuning could easily hold one foot in a single hand, with room to spare. By now, she’d also warmed Shen Hui’s previously cold foot.
She was still thinking about which contraceptive medications available for Alphas might be best when she heard Shen Hui wheedle, “Come on, give me a smile. I want to poke your dimples.”
Zhao Xuning: “…” She couldn’t force herself to smile and merely looked at Shen Hui helplessly.
It was such an ordinary gesture, yet it sent Shen Hui into peals of laughter.
Shen Hui buried her head against Zhao Xuning’s shoulder, shaking with laughter. Zhao Xuning had no idea what was so funny. She lowered her head and looked at the foot she’d been holding all this time.
So fair, so pink, so adorable, so beautiful…
Zhao Xuning lowered her head and gently bit the top of her foot. Shen Hui’s laughter stopped abruptly, and she even let out a soft gasp.
Coming immediately after her sudden silence, the sound was particularly conspicuous.
Zhao Xuning, however, reacted as though she’d done something terribly naughty. Her entire body flushed bright red, from her cheeks to her neck, while her ears turned so crimson they looked ready to bleed.
Shen Hui rubbed her foot lightly against Zhao Xuning’s palm, wrapped both arms around her, and leaned close to her ear. “You bit me.”
Zhao Xuning didn’t know how to explain herself, but Shen Hui made another request. “Don’t bite me this time. Give it a kiss, okay?”
Zhao Xuning became even more flustered. She was always like this around Shen Hui. Whenever she thought she’d taken a sufficiently outrageous step, Shen Hui would inevitably have an even more outrageous one waiting for her.
Yet when she heard Shen Hui’s soft, coaxing voice and met those eyes overflowing with love whenever they looked at her…
Zhao Xuning felt that even if Shen Hui asked for the stars in the sky, she’d at least try to get them for her. So what was kissing the top of her foot in comparison?
Zhao Xuning lowered her head and kissed it with solemn devotion. A shiver shot through Shen Hui’s entire body as though she’d been struck by electricity, leaving even her tailbone tingling.
She clung to Zhao Xuning as though she had no bones. “Wifey, you love me so much. You even kissed my little foot.”
Zhao Xuning pressed her lips together, then lowered her head and kissed it again. “It’s soft, very cute, and smells nice too.”
Shen Hui had just had a foot mask and applied an expensive moisturizer, leaving behind a faint jasmine fragrance.
Zhao Xuning was an extremely principled clean freak. If someone had told her long ago that one day she’d kiss another person’s feet, she would certainly have rolled her eyes and called them insane.
But after meeting Shen Hui, her principles seemed to have gradually become Shen Hui herself.
Shen Hui was always making her break her own rules. Zhao Xuning felt like a frog being slowly boiled in the clear pool of water that was Shen Hui, until she no longer had the slightest inclination to resist.
The video ended there. What happened afterward was something neither Zhao Xuning nor Shen Hui would ever record.
They had a mutual understanding when it came to such matters. They could record moments from their everyday lives together as keepsakes, but anything that happened in bed was never to be saved.
In the internet age, who knew when something stored on a phone might be leaked? Such recordings could easily be used against them.
Shen Hui tapped back to the beginning of the first video.
Right after Zhao Xuning accused her of letting pleasure distract her from her responsibilities, Shen Hui’s playful voice could be heard saying, “What do you mean, letting pleasure distract me from my responsibilities, baby? I obviously just want to play with you.”
In the video, Zhao Xuning suddenly leaned toward the camera. “Are you deliberately trying to make me angry so you can record proof of it? Then, the next time you want me to do something, you can use this video to threaten me?”
Shen Hui burst out laughing. “Baby, how could you think that of me? Look at your beautiful, elegant, gentle, adorable wife. Do I look like that kind of person?”
Zhao Xuning snatched the phone from her hand, and Shen Hui saw her own face appear in the video. She was smiling so brightly that her eyes had narrowed, her soft hair falling loosely around her shoulders. Back then, her hair had reached her waist. She’d never liked washing it herself, so she usually went to a salon. Occasionally, Zhao Xuning would wash it for her instead.
The complete washing and blow-drying service Zhao Xuning provided was no worse than what she’d receive at an upscale hair salon, especially since Zhao Xuning had even gone out of her way to learn massage techniques.
As a medical student, Zhao Xuning had memorized the locations of the body’s acupuncture points thoroughly. Shen Hui didn’t know why someone studying clinical medicine would be interested in traditional Chinese medicine, but then again, she was a genius. She could become proficient at anything with just a little study.
It had been a long time since Shen Hui had seen herself smiling like that in the mirror. Seeing it again, she couldn’t help sighing to herself that time was a butcher’s knife, and every cut brought another sign of aging.
“You’re not,” Zhao Xuning replied in a muffled voice. She finally set the book she’d been holding on the coffee table and agreed to watch a horror movie with her.
Before they started, Zhao Xuning even made her promise that she absolutely wouldn’t have nightmares that night.
Knowing perfectly well that such a promise was impossible to keep, Shen Hui made it anyway. Then she curled up in Zhao Xuning’s arms to watch the movie she’d always wanted to see but never dared to watch alone.
Less than a minute into the movie, there had already been three terrifying scares. Zhao Xuning’s heartbeat barely fluctuated, while Shen Hui screamed several times and trembled in her arms. At one point, she even accidentally pinched Zhao Xuning.
Looking utterly defeated, Zhao Xuning paused the movie. “Do you really still want to watch?”
Shen Hui nodded. “Of course! There’s nobody else who’ll watch it with me but you. Hurry, turn off the lights. Don’t ruin the atmosphere.”
The video ended abruptly there.
At the time, Shen Hui had been afraid that her phone might suddenly ring and frighten her half to death, so she’d turned it off.
Zhao Xuning had never been in the habit of recording videos.
However, Shen Hui remembered that she and Zhao Xuning had finished watching the entire horror movie together. During the second half, Zhao Xuning had simply gathered her into her arms, occasionally covering her eyes with one hand.
Whenever an especially intense scene approached, or Zhao Xuning anticipated a frightening moment, she’d cover Shen Hui’s eyes in advance.
The entire evening had been absolute torture for Zhao Xuning.
Shen Hui, on the other hand, had posted on her Moments: [I’m amazing! I actually finished watching a horror movie! Thanks to my girlfriend\~ Love you, mua!] She’d attached a photo she’d taken of the movie’s ending.
Comments 0
You must be logged in to comment.
No comments yet. Be the first!