A Fishing-Type Omega Always Wants to Possess Me - Chapter 15

Yu Mianzhou pretended not to understand the implication.

Her eyelashes trembled slightly as she continued smiling at Joyce.

“This one looks good too, but the previous dress suited you better.”

Gu Wanlan had not noticed what was happening nearby. She saw only the smile at the corner of Jiang Zhi’s lips and assumed Jiang Zhi approved of her decision.

She said eagerly, “Either is fine. Wherever you want to go, I’ll accompany you.”

“You?”

Jiang Zhi let out a brief laugh.

It was as though a blizzard had descended into her eyes, freezing her pupils until they were perfectly still.

“I wouldn’t want to see a news report about the Gu family’s eldest daughter being so afraid of heights that she dropped to her knees ten thousand meters above the ground.”

The smile on Gu Wanlan’s face stiffened.

The light in her eyes dimmed, leaving her visibly humiliated.

Before she could say anything, Jiang Yingqiu’s expression had already collapsed.

She spoke coldly to Jiang Zhi.

“Jiang Zhi, what kind of thing is that to say? Wanlan went to such trouble to plan your honeymoon, yet this is how you trample upon her intentions? Apologize to Wanlan immediately, or go kneel in the isolation room!”

The voice that was ordinarily as emotionless as a machine now fluctuated with rare anger.

It appeared her mother was genuinely furious.

Jiang Zhi smiled.

“What’s wrong? Did I say something incorrect?”

She slowly turned toward Jiang Yingqiu, directly meeting her bone-chilling gaze that tolerated no defiance.

“What isolation room? I don’t have time for that today.”

Jiang Yingqiu’s face turned ashen.

Mother and daughter confronted each other amid the rigid atmosphere.

The air seemed to solidify until it became inexplicably suffocating, as though every breath were being forcibly squeezed from their lungs.

The servants and staff members nearby nearly buried their heads in the floor.

In the end, it was Gu Wanlan who spoke.

She smiled again, though this smile was no longer as natural as before. It was somewhat stiff as she defended Jiang Zhi.

“Aunt Jiang, Zhizhi is only concerned about me. Please don’t be angry. I really am… a little afraid of heights.”

Her admission made both Yu Mianzhou and Joyce glance at her.

Jiang Zhi, however, appeared satisfied.

She curved her lips at Gu Wanlan and uttered two words.

“Good girl.”

Only then did Gu Wanlan belatedly realize that Jiang Zhi’s earlier smile had not meant she approved of the honeymoon plans.

She had been angry.

But what was she angry about?

Had Gu Wanlan done something to offend her this morning?

Before Gu Wanlan could figure it out, Jiang Zhi had already pointed toward the outfit worn by the model.

“That one. There’s no need to change again.”

After leaving those words behind, she rubbed her temples, rose, and headed upstairs.

“I’m tired. I’m going back to my room.”

Jiang Yingqiu seemed not to have been angered this severely in a long time.

Her normally bland, mechanical face had become increasingly terrifying, making everyone’s heart tremble.

She appeared ready to order Jiang Zhi to stop, but some concern ultimately kept her silent.

Not long afterward, she also left with an icy expression.

Yu Shu hurried after her to offer comfort.

Gu Wanlan was briefly left standing awkwardly in the living room, uncertain what to do.

After considering it, she headed upstairs as well, apparently toward Jiang Zhi’s room.

Before leaving, she glanced at Yu Mianzhou again.

Yu Mianzhou noticed but had no intention of thinking too deeply about it.

The living room was soon left with only her and Joyce.

The atmosphere finally seemed able to breathe again.

The manager and staff providing the at-home service were being escorted out in an orderly fashion by the butler.

Watching the commotion, Joyce gradually shuffled closer to Yu Mianzhou and lowered her voice.

“Elowen, what is the isolation room?”

“It’s where disobedient members of the Jiang family are sent to kneel as punishment,” Yu Mianzhou answered.

Remembering the atmosphere earlier and Jiang Yingqiu’s attitude, Joyce inexplicably began to feel sorry for Jiang Zhi.

“So even though the goddess looks so radiant onstage, her life at home is actually so… oppressive?”

She had initially wanted to say suffocating, but remembering that she was still inside the Jiang residence, she chose a different word.

Yu Mianzhou did not respond.

Her gaze remained fixed upon the empty staircase, no one knowing what she was thinking.

After worrying about Jiang Zhi, Joyce began to worry about Yu Mianzhou too.

“Then you…”

“I’ve never been sent inside.”

Joyce breathed a sigh of relief and patted her chest.

“That’s good. It seems the Jiang family really does treat you fairly well.”

Was that so?

Did they treat her well?

Or did they simply believe she was unworthy of being punished there?

Yu Mianzhou did not continue the subject.

She told Joyce, “I’m going upstairs to pack some things. We’ll go look at the apartment afterward.”

She had remained in this place for more than long enough.

When she reached the second floor, the corridor was vast and quiet.

Yu Mianzhou was about to continue to the third floor when she encountered a maid carrying a tray.

It was the same maid who had called her before.

Yu Mianzhou stopped.

The maid immediately stopped as well, bowed slightly, and lowered her head.

“Second Young Miss.”

“When it rained last time,” Yu Mianzhou began, though her gaze remained unfocused, “why was Jiang Zhi punished and sent to the isolation room?”

The maid remained silent for two seconds before answering quietly:

“The Eldest Young Miss… talked back to Madam.”

“Is that so?”

Yu Mianzhou suddenly smiled.

“Talking back to Madam is enough to have someone sent to the isolation room?”

The smile was faint, yet it inexplicably sent a chill through the maid.

She did not understand what Yu Mianzhou meant and could only stand silently to one side, not daring to ask questions or leave.

Many times, she actually thought the Second Young Miss and Eldest Young Miss were remarkably similar.

They were clearly unrelated by blood, yet the smiles upon their faces seemed like two halves of the same mask—

Soft and perfectly measured, making it impossible to distinguish truth from falsehood.

Yu Mianzhou did not look at her again.

She continued directly to the third floor.

One step at a time.

The stairs beneath her feet were thick and silent, while the curve of her lips gradually fell with every step until it disappeared entirely.

So Jiang Zhi had long been able to refuse the isolation room whenever she wanted.

Had she still not grown tired of playing these teasing games?

Her thoughts were chaotic by the time she reached her bedroom door.

She turned the handle and pushed it open.

The instant the door moved, a rich and familiar fragrance flooded her nose.

Yu Mianzhou frowned and instinctively prepared to turn around.

Click.

A figure emerged from the shadows, trapping her tightly between the door and her own body.

Behind her, the door slammed shut and locked.

A cold body pressed against hers.

In the next instant, a frenzied kiss descended.

Rather than a kiss, it was closer to biting.

Jiang Zhi caught Yu Mianzhou’s lower lip between her teeth, repeatedly licking, grinding, and tearing at it with enough force to suggest she wanted to skin her and swallow her bones.

She did not stop until the faint taste of rust spread between their lips and teeth, the scent of blood mixing with their breaths, sharp and scorching.

Even then, Jiang Zhi continued.

Her tongue attempted to pry open Yu Mianzhou’s teeth.

Yu Mianzhou shoved her away.

Her breathing was unstable, and reproach entered her voice.

“Jiang Zhi, you’re getting married.”

Jiang Zhi allowed herself to fall against her, pressing their foreheads and the tips of their noses together.

Despite the intimate and suggestive position, there was not the slightest affection between them.

There was only a heavy, suffocating danger.

It felt as though Yu Mianzhou had been wrapped tightly inside an airtight net.

Jiang Zhi raised her hand.

Her lustrous, jade-like fingertips were slightly cool as she gently pressed the pad of one finger against Yu Mianzhou’s injured lower lip, where a bead of blood had formed.

She lightly smeared it.

The crimson stain spread, coloring Yu Mianzhou’s lips an even richer shade—unnatural, vivid, and piercing.

Jiang Zhi’s beautiful eyes were now covered by layer after layer of dense mist.

Something scorching seemed to be rapidly extinguishing and dying in their depths.

Her sticky, cold gaze resembled spiderwebs covered in droplets within the rain and fog.

“How heartless you are, Yu Mianzhou,” she said.

It was impossible to know whether she meant Yu Mianzhou had been heartless for pushing her away or for breaking her vow and preparing to abandon her.

…

The room was dark.

Only sunlight from the garden entered through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting two elongated shadows across the floor.

Yu Mianzhou lowered her eyes and met Jiang Zhi’s gaze directly.

A smile clearly rippled within them, yet their depths contained nothing but resentment and hatred.

Hatred?

Yu Mianzhou turned the word over inside her mind.

What right did Jiang Zhi have to hate her?

Yu Mianzhou should have been the one who hated Jiang Zhi.

She had not been this heartless from the beginning.

During her first six months abroad, Yu Mianzhou had nearly driven herself insane.

She attended classes during the day and suffered nightmares at night, repeatedly awakening in the early hours.

She obsessively revisited the past like someone neurotic, taking a magnifying glass to every movement, every sentence, and every shift in Jiang Zhi’s voice, desperately trying to find among those frozen fragments a single piece of evidence that Jiang Zhi had once loved her, even slightly.

She tortured herself with those memories while masochistically refreshing the listings for flights home again and again.

She looked at those flights day after day but never truly purchased a ticket.

She could not understand.

Where exactly had she gone wrong?

What had she failed to do well enough for Jiang Zhi to abandon her so completely?

Why had Jiang Zhi sent her somewhere so far away?

Hadn’t she done everything precisely as Jiang Zhi told her?

That thought resembled an enormous, inescapable storm hanging above her every day, reducing her to a walking corpse.

Then, six months after she went to Country Y, Yu Shu sent her a message.

It began with ordinary pleasantries, asking how she was living abroad.

When Yu Mianzhou did not respond, Yu Shu sent several photographs.

They showed Jiang Zhi standing with another woman, smiling as beautifully as a flower.

Before Yu Mianzhou could even lift a finger to touch the woman’s face, the photographs were withdrawn three seconds later.

They were replaced by a simple reminder telling Yu Mianzhou to take good care of herself abroad.

That night, unusually, it did not rain in Country Y.

Yu Mianzhou sat on her bed and looked through the window.

On a plane tree, amid the biting winter wind, two small birds who had lost their mother huddled together neck to neck inside their nest, trembling.

She picked up the sleeping pills from the bedside cabinet, poured a handful into her palm, and swallowed them.

The cold wind continued blowing outside, striking the windowpane.

She closed her eyes and went to sleep.

The next day, the sun rose as usual.

Yu Mianzhou awakened in the afternoon.

After opening her eyes, she sat in bed for an entire half hour.

Then the first thing she did upon getting up was replace the nest outside with one that was larger and warmer.

The new nest would be enough to ensure the two birds could grow safely throughout the coming rainy season.

The birds circled and fluttered above her head.

She did not know whether they were thanking her or blaming her for interfering.

The two birds were not the only ones whose thoughts were unsettled.

Yu Mianzhou stood beneath the tree and watched the sunlight pass through the gaps between the leaves, casting mottled golden shadows across her palm.

She remembered the decision she had made the night before.

If she still awakened, she would live her life again from the beginning.

She would stop trying to interpret the deeper meaning behind any of Jiang Zhi’s words or actions.

She would live like the artificial intelligence she had personally created, relying upon a predetermined program.

That would be her way of being reborn.

The facts proved that this rule was effective.

During the following two years, the wound inside her body—so deep that bone was visible—never healed, but it gradually became numb.

Even after returning home, it showed no sign of festering again.

Yu Mianzhou raised her gaze toward the nearby wall.

The snow-white surface reflected against her face, making her complexion appear equally pale.

She repeated the same words.

“You’re getting married.”

“Miss Gu loves you very much. You should treat her properly.”