Chapter 6

Gu Xin brought Yan Shuangshuang back into the elevator hall. After making sure the camera could no longer capture them, she finally let go of Yan Shuangshuang.

“I’ll go out and handle it.” Gu Xin tapped on her phone, and a string of numbers was sent to Yan Shuangshuang’s WeChat. “I changed the password last night. 363104.”

Receiving the message, Yan Shuangshuang abruptly snapped awake, as if she had suddenly been pulled back from a beautiful dream no one knew about into cold reality. The air in the elevator hall was very cool, and the only warmth seemed to come from Gu Xin’s words.

Gu Xin thought she had been frightened, so she patted Yan Shuangshuang’s shoulder comfortingly, then turned and went out.

Yan Shuangshuang looked at Gu Xin’s back, pressed the up button, and stepped into the elevator.

The memory had been too beautiful, making everything that came afterward seem all the more cruel. Did people change in a single moment, or little by little over time? Yan Shuangshuang could not answer. Melancholy mixed with regret, and with a tasteless emptiness, she entered the password.

After she pressed the final digit, Yan Shuangshuang suddenly felt that this string of numbers looked very familiar.

In just that short span of time, the paparazzo who had been lying in wait had already realized he had been discovered. By the time Gu Xin went out, the paparazzo was standing openly in the middle of the road.

Seeing Gu Xin stride over in a hurry, he even raised a hand leisurely in greeting. “Hi.”

Very few people knew that Gu Xin had a pair of sharp brows. When the gentleness on her face was stripped away, those fierce brows became impossibly noticeable, enough to make anyone who saw them feel their heart tremble.

Gu Xin walked over and reached out without the slightest courtesy. “Hand it over.”

The paparazzo’s camera was hanging in front ​bailiantales.com​of his chest. With a cynical smile on his face, he spoke in an irritating, mocking tone. “Oh, miss, did you get something wrong? This is my camera, not yours.”

For once, Gu Xin smiled, though that smile carried endless ridicule. “Playing dumb in front of me? You’re the one who got something wrong. I’m informing you, not discussing it with you.”

Even though Gu Xin’s expression looked fierce, every part of her body seemed to have the word “harmless” written on it. The paparazzo judged that she was probably a Beta, because Alphas and Omegas in a rage could not control their pheromones.

Someone like Yan Shuangshuang really could only find a Beta. After all, only Betas could tolerate Yan Shuangshuang’s aggressively sharp pheromones as an Omega. They were famous for being dull to such things.

While calculating how much money he could make by selling this news and how much traffic would swarm in, the paparazzo provoked her carelessly. “Playing dumb? Miss, you’re the one playing dumb, aren’t you? What are you trying to do by blocking me? Illegal detention?”

The moment his words fell, domineering pheromones rushed straight toward the paparazzo’s face. Everyone’s pheromones were different. Even if the scent was similar, the feeling pheromones gave off often represented the deepest layer of a person’s personality.

Gu Xin’s pheromones were unexpectedly vicious. Flowers were supposed to be beautiful living things, yet at this moment, the rich floral scent stabbed mercilessly toward the person opposite her like a blade. Her pheromones launched a precise ambush against the paparazzo’s five senses, as if forming a cover around his head in the air, viciously intent on strangling him inside a flower bud.

Caught completely off guard, the paparazzo’s five senses short-circuited. When he came back to himself, the camera in his arms was already in the other person’s hands.

After taking it, Gu Xin fiddled with it for a moment and quickly figured out how the camera worked. She directly began flipping through the photos.

There were no frontal shots of Yan Shuangshuang in the camera, but there were many ambiguous side profiles of her coming out together with Gu Xin.

There was no substantial evidence, but photos like these were more than enough for paparazzi to make something out of nothing and stir up trouble.

Gu Xin looked through them very quickly, skipping all the way back to previous dates.

The paparazzo flew into a rage. Thinking read the original at bailiantales.comshe was deleting the photos, he reached out to snatch it back. “You’re actually an Alpha?! Randomly using pheromones in a public place is illegal!”

Gu Xin shifted her steps and easily dodged the paparazzo’s hand. She realized that this paparazzo was specifically following Yan Shuangshuang, especially recently. He had been following her and taking photos almost every day. All kinds of Yan Shuangshuang slid before her eyes—clear, blurry, ones Gu Xin had seen before and ones she had not, appearing one by one.

Over a hundred photos were quickly flipped through. In the final two seconds, Gu Xin directly pulled out the memory card—

And snapped it in half.

In one beautiful freeze-frame, Gu Xin stuffed the camera into the paparazzo’s hand just as he happened to reach for it. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

The paparazzo’s hand had just happened to be raised in front of Gu Xin. His empty palm was suddenly stuffed with a heavy object, and he nearly failed to hold on to it.

Gu Xin took a step back and kindly reminded him, “This is the tool you rely on to earn your living. You should protect it well.”

The paparazzo slowly withdrew his hand and wiped away his sweat. The sun was very strong today. Having to ambush someone inside a residential compound in weather this hot was quite hard work too. He watched helplessly as the fruits of his labor were destroyed, his expression dark and frightening. But very soon, as if he had remembered something, he became bright again.

“What use is snapping it now? Everything that should’ve been uploaded was uploaded long ago.”

“Mm.” Gu Xin tossed the fragments of the memory card into the nearby trash can, her tone light and airy. “It’s enough to make you work for nothing today.”

The paparazzo finally broke down. He pointed at Gu Xin angrily and said, “As an Alpha, you used pheromones to attack a citizen at will, and you destroyed private property. That’s illegal!”

Gu Xin found it rather unbelievable. “You’re a paparazzo who photographs people’s privacy, and you’re talking to me about the law?”

The paparazzo sneered. “So you admit you used pheromones to attack me?”

“How strange. Who attacked you? Are there witnesses? Is there physical evidence?”

Just as the paparazzo was about to open his mouth, he suddenly discovered that the pheromones, which had been so rich they nearly suffocated him, had vanished without a trace.

…That level of control!

“Fine, fine! Count me unlucky for running into a tough one. You and Yan Shuangshuang really are cut from the same cloth. Impressive.” The paparazzo forcefully made a slicing motion across his neck. “We’ll see what happens from now on!”

Gu Xin smiled sweetly. “Then you should come with me first. This is a private residential compound. How did you get in?”

When Gu Xin returned, more than an hour had already passed. Yan Shuangshuang was looking at the flowers she kept on the balcony.

“This pothos of yours is about to dry to death.” The soil in the pot had already cracked. Yan Shuangshuang smoothed back a strand of her long hair that had fallen down. “Where’s the watering can? I’ll water it for you.”

While changing shoes, Gu Xin said, “I don’t know how to take care of them. Rather than letting them keep stumbling along and suffering with me, it’s better to settle it once and for all now.”

“You’re going to give them away?”

“Of course I’m throwing them out.” After placing a bag of inhibitors into the fridge, Gu Xin sat down on a chair facing Yan Shuangshuang. Rarely nervous, she licked the corner of her mouth. “I memorized that paparazzo’s face and sent him to the security room, but he definitely isn’t the only one. When I came out, I heard him talking to someone on the phone. If you go out now, there’s a high chance his accomplices will notice you.”

Yan Shuangshuang froze for a moment. She looked at Gu Xin’s expression, as if the other woman found it difficult to speak, and a strange feeling rose in her heart.

“You…” What did that mean?

Gu Xin did not hear the single syllable that slipped from Yan Shuangshuang’s moving lips. She was focused only on staring nervously at the floor. “So if you don’t mind, you can stay at my place for two days first. The decor isn’t very good-looking, but at least it’s clean. And y-you don’t have to worry about anything else either. I bought inhibitors. They’re in the fridge. If there are any, cough, symptoms, you can inject me at any time.”