Chapter 7

The inhibitors Gu Xin had bought were the safest, least-likely-to-go-wrong mint flavor. One sniff was enough to clear the mind and refresh the senses.

While Yan Shuangshuang was checking them, she saw that the receipt was still left in the bag. They had actually been bought from the pharmacy at the entrance of the residential compound, and Gu Xin had bought three whole boxes at once. Anyone who did not know better would think her susceptible period had arrived.

Gu Xin said, “As for clothes, if you don’t mind, you can wear mine.”

Yan Shuangshuang finally turned back. She nodded politely. “Thank you for your kindness, but there’s no need.”

Gu Xin had not expected to be refused. She knew very well how annoying paparazzi could be. When they were downstairs, she had instinctively chosen to protect Yan Shuangshuang, and afterward, she had even offended the paparazzo. Her main approach had simply been: not afraid of trouble.

But after all that, the person involved herself did not seem to mind?

Had she caused trouble for her instead?

For a moment, Gu Xin found the situation somewhat tricky. However impressive and domineering she had been in front of the paparazzo earlier, that was how choked up she felt now.

As if seeing through her thoughts, Yan Shuangshuang comforted her, “I’ve already retired from the industry. They can write whatever they want.”

Gu Xin wanted to say that was not how things worked. Now that Yan Shuangshuang had retired, they might write even more easily, and it would be even more convenient for them to suck her blood and make money from traffic.

But the moment she opened her mouth, Gu Xin swallowed the words back down. She did not want to sound too preachy or annoying, so she only said gloomily, “Okay. Then be careful.”

Yan Shuangshuang looked at her intently, making Gu Xin uncomfortable all over. An inexplicable dejection circled in her heart, though Gu Xin kept her face very calm. But Yan Shuangshuang’s gaze still did not withdraw. Gu Xin could not hold on anymore and was just about to flee back to her room when Yan Shuangshuang suddenly walked over and gave her a hug.

Gu Xin instantly stiffened in place.

The hug lasted only two short seconds. It felt very long, but in reality, it was very brief. The warm, soft body soon gently pulled away.

Yan Shuangshuang said, “Thank you.”

Her warm breath brushed against Gu Xin’s cheek. Almost instantly, crimson spread from Gu Xin’s earlobes to her face.

Her physiological reaction was one step faster than her mind. Yan Shuangshuang abruptly smelled the scent of flowers, but when she tried to confirm it again, it vanished just as suddenly, so quickly it seemed like an illusion.

Looking at Gu Xin, whose face had flushed beyond recognition, and seeing her completely at a loss, Yan Shuangshuang could not help laughing.

In that instant, it was like ice and snow melting, all living things reviving, and spring flowers blooming wildly across the plains.

Yan Shuangshuang had not laughed so easily in a very long time.

Gu Xin’s heart thumped wildly, so loud she suspected the person opposite her could hear it too. In an attempt to cover it up, she cleared her throat and said loudly, “You’re welcome. It’s what I should do.”

After Yan Shuangshuang finished laughing, she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and smiled as she said goodbye. “Then that’s that. Goodbye, Gu Xin.”

“G-goodbye.”

After Yan Shuangshuang left and the sound of Read on BaiLianTales the door closing rang out, Gu Xin could not hold back. She stood in place and threw two fierce punches at the air.

While pressing the back of her hand against her burning-hot face, she thought dizzily, How did I end up stuttering at the end? The whole scene collapsed!

Unconsciously, Gu Xin compared those two seconds of being hugged with the hug she had taken the initiative to give Yan Shuangshuang downstairs. In the end, she came to a conclusion—

Although Yan Shuangshuang’s face was as cold as frost, her body was truly soft. She also smelled pleasantly of lime, the same scent as her pheromones.

Such a beautiful person was her ex-wife.

The person she had once loved deeply enough to enter marriage with.

Yan Shuangshuang went to the underground parking lot and drove out the red sports car Gu Xin had once liked most.

Because the license plate was unfamiliar, the paparazzi lying in wait at the entrance of the residential compound, wanting to make Yan Shuangshuang suffer, did not realize that Yan Shuangshuang had pulled a switch.

Yan Shuangshuang drove on, her gaze indifferent as she passed by the paparazzi and headed straight for the calligraphy studio on the Third Ring Road. That was Yan Shuangshuang’s father’s territory.

Yan Shuangshuang’s family was a very classic pairing of two Beta spouses. When Yan Shuangshuang had just been born, because her pheromones were far too domineering, the couple had always thought they had given birth to an Alpha.

But who could have imagined that Yan Shuangshuang, who should have entered her differentiation period at sixteen, would hit the jackpot and have her differentiation period arrive more than ten years late?

Yan Shuangshuang’s parents were not elderly people completely cut off from the internet. When they learned Yan Shuangshuang’s true sex from the trending searches, both husband and wife nearly blacked out. Fortunately, Yan Shuangshuang had called in time to soothe them. Otherwise, the two of them would have demanded that Yan Shuangshuang come home immediately and explain everything clearly.

Yan Shuangshuang’s father was a famous calligraphy master, while her mother was a well-known psychologist. But very Read on BaiLianTalesfew people knew that Yan Shuangshuang’s father could also perform handwriting analysis, with perfect accuracy.

After she arrived at the studio, an apprentice soon led Yan Shuangshuang inside.

Yan Shuangshuang’s father was named Lin Hao. Outside the family, Yan Shuangshuang generally addressed him the same way Lin Hao’s students did—as Teacher Lin.

Lin Hao had clearly been waiting for his daughter for a long time. The moment Yan Shuangshuang entered the calligraphy room, Lin Hao stood and gripped her shoulders, looking her up and down with reddened eyes. “You… how did you get so thin?”

Yan Shuangshuang revealed a sincere smile. “Teacher Lin, why are you crying? I’m fine. It’s all over now.”

Lin Hao could not help hugging his daughter tightly, and his tears still fell. “You child. If you weren’t doing well outside, why didn’t you say so earlier? It’s not as if your mother and I can’t support you.”

Yan Shuangshuang comforted him again. Only after quite a while did she finally manage to soothe her emotional old father.

“I came this time because I wanted Dad to help me with something.” Yan Shuangshuang took out the IOU from her pocket, with the name and ID number torn off, then pulled up a photo on her phone. “Were these two written by the same person?”

Lin Hao put on his glasses and narrowed his eyes to study them carefully. “They look like they were written by the same person. Do you not have the original for this photo?”

The photo showed a handwritten traditional Chinese medicine prescription. Yan Shuangshuang had accidentally found it in the trash can. At the time, she had thought it strange—why would Gu Xin copy out a prescription? But her intuition had made her take a photo of it. The original had long since entered the garbage station.

Yan Shuangshuang shook her head.

Lin Hao found it somewhat difficult. He took out his phone and said, “Send me a copy of the photo. I’ll take a closer look.”

“Thank you for the trouble, Dad.”

Lin Hao could not hold back. His tears fell again. “Every day, all you know how to do is be polite with me. If we hadn’t taken the initiative to ask you, were you planning to never tell us about your differentiation period?”

Yan Shuangshuang could only surrender. “Stop crying, Dad. If Mom sees this, she’ll say I bullied you again.”

“Dad really can’t help you with much, but if something happens, you can also look for your mother. She’s the professional in this area. But look at you. You didn’t say a single word to us. Your dad, I really…” Lin Hao miserably tugged out a tissue to wipe his tears. Yan Shuangshuang helplessly stood at the side holding the tissue box. She knew that once her father started crying, he was like a faucet with the valve opened; he would not stop for a while.

Only when Lin Hao had rambled on almost enough did his tears, like a faucet, shut off at once.

After wiping his face, he was once again the spirited Teacher Lin. He patted Yan Shuangshuang’s shoulder and said emotionally, “Since you’ve resigned from work, take some time to relax first. You were so busy before that you didn’t even have time to come home and visit us. Now that you’re free, if you don’t stay at home for a little longer, I won’t be happy. Oh, right. If you have time, bring Gu Xin back for a meal too.”

Lin Hao suddenly remembered something and slapped his forehead. “Is Gu Xin still doing confidential work at her unit?”

Yan Shuangshuang lied without blinking. “Yes. She just went to the capital two days ago.”

“You two, honestly. You don’t see each other for ten days or half a month at a time. Either she’s entered the research institute, or you’ve gone off to film. Marriage is about supporting each other. If the two of you can’t even see each other, how are you supposed to support each other? She wasn’t absent during your differentiation period too, was she?” Lin Hao was Yan Shuangshuang’s father, after all, and his words unconsciously carried a hint of dissatisfaction.

“Her work is special. I’m already used to it. But don’t wrong her. During my differentiation period, she was with me.” Yan Shuangshuang did not lie with this sentence. She only cleverly hid some of the details.

For example, at the time, not only had Gu Xin not released pheromones to soothe her, she had even given her an inhibitor at the first moment. Under ordinary circumstances, an Omega in their differentiation period either had to be sent to the hospital for guidance, or have an Alpha release pheromones to comfort them. Injecting an inhibitor was the worst possible option. Clinical studies had proven that forcibly suppressing it would lead to endless future complications.

Yan Shuangshuang was lucky. She had only suffered hormonal imbalance for half a month, but she had been forced to turn down a very good audition.

Years of acting had left Yan Shuangshuang’s expression without the slightest flaw. Lin Hao believed [read the original at bailiantales.com]her easily and muttered, “At least she has some conscience.”

Yan Shuangshuang joked with Lin Hao for a few more moments, then finally said she still had to go to the company to handle some matters and prepared to say goodbye.

Before she left, Lin Hao said, “Visit your mother too when you have time. She’s been acting strangely lately. It feels like something is on her mind, but she won’t tell me.”

Yan Shuangshuang’s movement of putting down the tissue box paused. Then she smiled and said, “Okay.”

Gu Xin was looking at plane tickets to the capital.

Earlier, Gu Xin had checked online and found that the research institute was located between two universities. The landmark was obvious, and there were people on duty during weekends. If she went there, she should at least be able to obtain a few clues.

The earliest flight from X City to the capital was at seven o’clock that evening. If Gu Xin headed to the airport now, she could still make it.

Once she decided to do it, she did it. Gu Xin immediately bought the ticket, packed her important documents, and before leaving, she took the pothos that was about to dry to death with her.

Downstairs, the pitiful flowerpot hit the trash can with a clang and shattered into pieces, breaking completely. Gu Xin clapped her hands and was just about to set off when she caught sight of a neatly folded A4 sheet of paper exposed beneath the shattered flowerpot.

Gu Xin’s movements stopped. Suddenly, she had a very strange intuition, the same intuition that had appeared when she saw the divorce agreement. She reached inside, picked up the paper, and unfolded it.

The first thing she saw was the three characters of Yan Shuangshuang’s name.

Looking more closely, she discovered that it was actually Yan Shuangshuang’s differentiation test report.

In a flash of lightning, Gu Xin remembered where the greatest sense of wrongness [Read on BaiLianTales]had been when she saw the exposé—

The image released by the paparazzi had not shown the date of the test, while the report showed that the test had been conducted on March 25. That was only ten short days ago. Ten days ago, Yan Shuangshuang had only just gotten through her differentiation period.

Many people had mistakenly believed that Yan Shuangshuang had been an Omega from the start and had been pretending all these years. But her differentiation period had come so late that she had only completed differentiation at twenty-eight. It was practically unheard of in the world.

So why was the test report that could only be issued once here with her?

And why had she gone to such lengths to hide it beneath the potted plant?

Did the dirt in the paparazzi’s hands have something to do with her?

On the other end, while Yan Shuangshuang was on her way to Ms. Yan Chuxiang’s apartment, Lin Hao sent a message.

“I compared the photo and the note you gave me. They should have been written by the same person. But without the original, I can’t guarantee it. If you find any other originals, I can compare them again.”

Yan Shuangshuang’s originally relaxed mood abruptly sank.

She gripped the steering wheel hard, her knuckles turning white. She thought, How could that be? Those strokes, those outlines—she had traced them countless times. How could they belong to the same person?

But they really did belong to the same person.

Her lover was, sure enough, still the lover from the past.

Her conflict, her thoughts, her softness of heart—before her father’s message, all of them seemed like a joke.

The rearview mirror reflected Yan Shuangshuang’s cold, rigid side profile. Unknowingly, she gradually pressed harder on the accelerator. The navigation issued a warning that she was already speeding, but Yan Shuangshuang seemed not to feel it at all.

Yan Shuangshuang thought, If she could, she really wanted to go back to the day they got married and ask Gu Xin whether marrying her had been out of love or gratitude.

But now, the only person facing her was Gu Xin, who claimed to have lost her memory.

She had no way to ask.

And no way to hate her.