After Being Transmigrated as the Cannon Fodder Scum Alpha, She Relies on Acting Cute to Survive - Chapter 9

“You find it uncomfortable? What do you have to be uncomfortable about? It’s not your daughter who got slept with.”

Mother Lin rolled her eyes so hard they nearly vanished into her skull.

“…” The Alpha had no desire to start a shouting match, so she simply said, “I came here to find Lin Shu. Since she’s not here, I’ll be going.”

Seeing her actually turn to leave, Mother Lin finally panicked. She even took a step forward, attempting to grab Ruan Ci’s sleeve. “Don’t go, Miss Ruan! We can discuss the wedding details slowly, I—”

The butler swatted the woman’s wrist away instantly, warning her with a dark, glowering face, “Try touching my Young Lady one more time and see what happens.”

“…Sleeping with someone and then refusing to take responsibility… your Young Lady is quite something.”

Ultimately cowed by the murderous intent on the man’s face, Mother Lin withdrew her hand and flinched back two steps, though she continued to mutter under her breath.

Ruan Ci had never been manhandled like that before. She looked at her wrist, which had turned red from just a single tug, feeling a bit helpless.

Luckily, the butler had blocked her; otherwise, Ruan Ci really wouldn’t have known what to do.

“Let’s leave first. I’ll find a way to have someone investigate later…”

“No rush,” Ruan Ci shook her head. “My relationship with Director An is decent enough; a couple of days’ delay won’t matter.”

The butler sighed in resignation.

As luck would have it, just as the two reached the stairs to head down, Lin Shu happened to be coming up from below.

Ruan Ci: “Oh! You’re back! I—I couldn’t reach you, so I thought I’d come find you…”

Lin Shu looked up coldly. “Mhm.”

Ruan Ci was happily about to bring up the scripts when she heard the woman behind her let out a shrill scream: “What did you come back for?! You disgraceful thing! Played with and slept with, yet nobody wants you—don’t come home and corrupt Tao Tao!”

“…” Ruan Ci watched, dumbfounded, as the woman turned to grab a broom. She then looked at Lin Shu, who stood there with an expression half-mocking and half-frozen. “This…”

She thought Mother Lin was just putting on a show, but when the woman—completely ignoring Ruan Ci caught in the middle—actually tried to hurl the broom at Lin Shu’s head, Ruan Ci blanked for a second. Then, reacting with lightning speed, she grabbed the broom handle and stared the woman down. “You dare hit me?”

“…I’m disciplining our Lin Shu. You have nothing to do with her, Miss Ruan, so why are you meddling?”

Mother Lin let out a “yo” and suddenly jerked the broom back toward herself.

—Something on the broom handle pricked Ruan Ci’s hand, making her hiss in pain.

Seeing this, Mother Lin clamored: “I didn’t hit her! Let’s get this straight—I was disciplining my daughter, she’s the one who reached out. Who can she blame if she got scratched?”

No matter how good her temper was, Ruan Ci was finally annoyed by this succession of sharp, ear-piercing tones. She frowned and said, “I’m not blaming you. I am Lin Shu’s friend; I cannot stand by and watch you hit her for no reason.”

“No reason?! Someone like her…”

“If you’re just going to say those things again, I won’t listen.” Ruan Ci dodged the butler’s hand as he tried to grasp her wrist to check the injury. “I know exactly what kind of person Lin Shu is. I am very happy and honored to be her friend.”

After saying that, she had the butler block Mother Lin while she walked up to Lin Shu, biting her lip sheepishly. She understood that her arrival had caused Lin Shu trouble; the apology on her face was impossible to hide. “I’m sorry. I… I didn’t know it would be like this.”

“Do you want to go out and grab a cup of tea or something first? Come back once your mother has cooled off? Or I could…”

“It’s not because of you.”

Those cold eyes swept over Ruan Ci’s face. Lin Shu looked indifferently at the still-cursing Mother Lin, then turned and walked back downstairs.

Ruan Ci opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again futiley.

Ruan Ci later discovered that Lin Shu was waiting at the entrance of the residential area—they ended up going to a fast-food joint nearby.

The frown between the butler’s brows was deep enough to crush a fly. Before entering the shop, Ruan Ci stopped him and told him to wait in the car.

“…” The butler froze, looking somewhat hurt. “Are you annoyed that I talk too much? My apologies, I…”

“No, no, I’ll be right out,” Ruan Ci said hurriedly. “Just a few words.”

The butler’s body remained stiff, a trace of inexplicable stubbornness in his eyes. “I’ll just wait right here at the door.”

“…That… that works too.”

Ruan Ci gave a couple of dry laughs and scratched her cheek.

Lin Shu hadn’t eaten yet. She ordered two dishes and a soup, all vegetarian.

There weren’t many people in the shop at this hour. When the small bowls of food were brought out, they didn’t look particularly appetizing—it looked like they had been sitting out for a long time.

Back home, Ruan Ci used to cook for herself whenever possible. There was a period where she worked so hard that her stomach became very fragile; eating out usually resulted in a stomach ache.

However—Lin Shu had so many things she couldn’t help, and Ruan Ci couldn’t stand on a high horse and judge her for relying on this occasionally. That would be far too detached from the hardships of the real world.

Splitting her chopsticks with practiced ease, Lin Shu asked calmly, “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I don’t have your number,” Ruan Ci said in a tiny voice. “I forgot to ask.”

They lived in the same villa, yet they were separated by worlds. Getting a single word out of Lin Shu in a day usually meant the other woman was in a particularly good mood.

“…”

The person opposite her didn’t seem to care at all that her expensive skirt was resting on a plastic bench where countless people had sat. There wasn’t a hint of rejection or disgust for the surroundings in her eyes—it was as if the high-and-mighty Miss Ruan ate in places like this all the time.

She gazed at Lin Shu earnestly and cautiously. The emotions shining in her eyes were clean and burning—somewhat like the person in Lin Shu’s memories, yet entirely different.

Lin Shu’s expression remained bland, her tone unreadable. The tips of her chopsticks poked at the slightly hard rice in her bowl. “So you just came to my house without saying a word?”

“…” Ruan Ci lowered her head, her apology louder than before. “I’m sorry.”

Those three words should have been alien to her.

Lin Shu’s slender fingers tightened around her chopsticks, letting the silence stretch across the table.

After a while, Lin Shu suddenly asked, “Do you have a twin sister?”

“Huh? No.” Ruan Ci blinked, not understanding why the topic had jumped to that.

“…”

Lin Shu lowered her gaze. “Oh.”

Ruan Ci cleared her throat and said formally, “Regarding today…”

“You’ve already said ‘sorry’ plenty of times.”

“…” Ruan Ci, whose little thoughts were seen through instantly, wilted. “Sigh.”

Lin Shu found the sigh inexplicably a bit funny. Her eyelashes flickered; she pursed her lips for two seconds before relaxing them. “I looked at the scripts. They’re good.”

Ruan Ci: “!”

Ruan Ci: “Hehe, I’m glad you like them. Director An asked if you have time in the next couple of days…”

“Anytime tomorrow.”

“Great, great, I’ve got it.”

Lin Shu ate slowly, her movements possessing an indescribable grace. “Nothing else to say?”

“…Well, there is one thing,” Ruan Ci spoke sincerely. “Once you get the payment for this role, you could rent a studio apartment. The environment would be better, and… uh, there wouldn’t be so many upsetting things.”

“You can have other plans too, hahaha. The most important thing is that you live well yourself; everything else is secondary.”

Living in such a suffocating home—how could a person not be affected?

Even if Lin Shu became powerful later in the plot, she was currently just a fragile Omega. One couldn’t imagine her to be omnipotent just because she would be strong in the future.

Lin Shu: “…”

Lin Shu: “I know.”