Pretending To Be Affectionate [Transmigration] - Chapter 57

Laughter shimmered in Gu Qing’s ice-blue eyes. Combined with the faint cool fragrance surrounding her, she didn’t actually look particularly lecherous or sleazy.

At least, Ling Yu narrowed her eyes and scrutinized Gu Qing’s beautiful face several times without finding the slightest trace of deliberate flirtation.

But Gu Qing was a lawyer who always chose her words with meticulous precision, and she had just moaned, “Mm… ah,” directly in front of Ling Yu.

It was impossible to stop the indecent thoughts surging through Ling Yu’s mind.

Although she didn’t believe Gu Qing harbored any intentions toward her, she still had the strange feeling that she had been violated.

Especially now, when Gu Qing stood there with lowered eyes, seemingly in an excellent mood.

So… had that moan been intended to test Ling Yu’s reaction?

Ling Yu narrowed her eyes as she suddenly understood Gu Qing’s thought process.

Only a week ago, they had parted on terrible terms in Jiangcheng. Ling Yu had repeatedly declared that she never wanted to see her again.

Yet barely a week later, Gu Qing had left Jiangcheng, and Ling Yu had immediately followed her to Gangcheng.

There had been too many coincidences. It was difficult not to become suspicious.

And Gu Qing had always been exceptionally calculating. She probably didn’t believe that their countless, repeated encounters were all accidents.

Perhaps she was imagining that Ling Yu had engineered today’s meeting because she still wanted to throw herself at her.

If that breathy little moan had been a deliberate test, then everything made sense.

Oh. You want to see my reaction?

In harmony with its owner’s thoughts, Ling Yu’s fist clenched as if it possessed a consciousness of its own.

“Attorney Gu must have performed terribly in elementary-school language classes. ‘Mm… ah’ isn’t pronounced like that. It’s an interjection used to express misery.”

Ling Yu smiled sweetly and stared directly into Gu Qing’s eyes.

“Shall I teach you?”

As soon as she finished speaking, she mercilessly swung her fist at Gu Qing’s face.

Like a firecracker igniting at the slightest spark, tiny flames resembling exploding fireworks leaped through her dark pupils.

She was breathtakingly beautiful.

Ling Yu probably didn’t realize that, in Gu Qing’s eyes, her usual smiling, smooth, worldly facade wasn’t attractive at all.

It was as if she wore a thousand masks, tightly concealing her most beautiful self.

Ling Yu was actually a thorned white rose. Her true nature was arrogant, rebellious, and untamable.

She had never needed to disguise herself as a delicate cotton rose. Her natural force of personality was already enough to display her allure in its entirety.

Gu Qing stared into Ling Yu’s glass-marble eyes and resisted the urge to touch her.

Just before Ling Yu’s fist struck her cheek, Gu Qing exerted some effort and narrowly dodged.

Fang Jia had already approached. She forcibly inserted herself between them and first scolded Ling Yu with the mild authority of a parent.

“Yu Yu!”

Only then did she turn her accusing gaze upon Gu Qing.

Fang Jia was formally dressed today and wore ten-centimeter heels, allowing her to face Gu Qing without looking upward.

The fine lines at the corners of her eyes deepened slightly as she frowned and scrutinized Gu Qing.

“Yu Yu is still young…”

Gu Qing straightened and brushed away the strands of hair that had fallen across her cheek when she awkwardly evaded Ling Yu’s attack.

Looking over Fang Jia’s shoulder, she glanced at Ling Yu.

The latter still had her fist clenched, while one tuft of her bangs had sprung upright.

The sight softened every sharp edge in Gu Qing. The anger that had risen moments ago vanished without a trace.

Sometimes, she wondered: did a little liar like Ling Yu really possess such power?

Yet after Ling Yu disappeared completely from her world, Gu Qing’s mood had passed from confusion to discomfort. Then one day, she abruptly realized that something was missing from her dull, flavorless heart.

Only then did she understand what Ling Yu meant to her.

But she still didn’t know when or why she had fallen in love.

Ling Yu was heartless and outrageously promiscuous. She flirted indiscriminately and had numerous exes and backups who remained hopelessly devoted to her.

For a time, Gu Qing had been unable to make sense of her own abnormality and attributed it to Ling Yu’s acting ability.

But one evening after work, she discovered that every drawer in her home had somehow become filled with candy.

On her days off, she could stare at their chat window for an entire day.

For reasons even she didn’t understand, she began confronting her disorder. She sought medical treatment for her lack of empathy.

She even suppressed her emotions and stopped entering the laboratory, refusing to touch the mice in the basement that she had once used to vent her madness.

After that, both her reason and her thoughts gradually developed minds of their own.

Gu Qing finally realized that she truly had fallen.

Her memories contained Ling Yu confronting her with claws bared, along with the young woman’s temper whenever her endless antics met resistance.

Gu Qing couldn’t remember the appearance of Ling Yu’s false, smiling facade.

Yet every expression Ling Yu had deliberately concealed was engraved into her mind.

So now, watching Ling Yu with a rebellious tuft of hair sticking up, spoiled enough to want to punch someone, Gu Qing felt no incongruity whatsoever.

In her eyes, this was precisely what Ling Yu was supposed to look like.

Unfortunately, Gu Qing couldn’t obey her heart and behave too intimately.

She had originally planned to resolve the mess before her and only then return to pursue Ling Yu, even if winning her future wife back proved difficult.

Ling Yu’s arrival in Gangcheng, however, had been entirely unexpected.

A week ago, Gu Qing had already put her plan into motion, luring the snake out of its hole. At the Gu family’s jewelry exhibition on June fifteenth, her identity as the Gu family’s eldest young lady would be announced publicly.

She would openly confront those people.

It would be the most dangerous stage of her plan.

Gu Qing knew perfectly well that she couldn’t meet Ling Yu, much less display any unnecessary concern for her.

Even the smallest gesture had to be strictly forbidden.

Unfortunately… with Ling Yu standing directly before her, certain actions refused to obey reason.

Gu Qing concealed the emotions suppressed in her eyes and slowly exhaled.

Pretending indifference, she withdrew her gaze and turned toward Fang Jia.

“She hits hard enough. I truly can’t see what part of her is little.”

The words were addressed to Fang Jia, but her tone carried a distinctly passive-aggressive accusation.

Fang Jia paused.

Gu Qing sounded so natural. Her eyes were narrowed, making it impossible to tell whether she was angry, but dissatisfaction colored every word.

It was almost as though Gu Qing hadn’t been the one who provocatively moaned in the first place.

Ling Yu laughed in anger. Raising her fox eyes, she fearlessly stared at Gu Qing.

“So because I’m not little, Attorney Gu is allowed to seduce me by moaning? Explain yourself.”

Moaning?

Gu Qing nearly lost control of her expression.

Fortunately, she had always possessed superb emotional restraint. After only a three-second pause, she swept her eyes across Ling Yu’s face and answered evenly,

“They were interjections. ‘Mm.’ ‘Ah.’ If you interpreted them as a moan…”

Gu Qing blinked, then fell silent.

Ling Yu waited for a long time, but Gu Qing’s tightly sealed mouth produced nothing further.

It was as if her silence were saying, Why are you constantly flattering yourself?

Ling Yu stared at Gu Qing’s face for three seconds.

Then the tension in her expression abruptly relaxed. She revealed a lazy smile and drawled,

“My apologies, ma’am. My family owns a Persian cat. She’s recently gone into heat and spends every day wailing…”

Ling Yu tapped her forehead with one finger and swept Gu Qing with the corner of her fox eyes.

She suddenly changed direction and smiled at her.

“So I misheard. I truly apologize. After all, how could you possibly compare to an animal’s…”

Ling Yu paused and stared directly into Gu Qing’s eyes before enunciating every word.

“Lustful! Little! Moans!”

Gu Qing: “…”

The atmosphere between them became taut again, with neither woman willing to yield.

Standing between them, Fang Jia looked left and right, her heart nearly leaping into her throat.

This was the first time she had seen Ling Yu so fearlessly challenge heaven and earth—and then recklessly provoke a scheming woman like Gu Qing.

Fang Jia wanted nothing more than to cover Ling Yu’s mouth with one hand, seize Gu Qing’s arm with the other, and drag her away.

Everyone in the legal industry who knew Gu Qing understood that her mouth could grind a person into the mud and destroy every psychological defense they possessed.

Afraid Gu Qing might suddenly lose her temper and use her courtroom rhetoric to crush Ling Yu’s confidence, Fang Jia forcibly dragged her outside.

“That’s enough, Gu Qing! Didn’t you come to make me leave? Why are you arguing with a child like Ling Yu? If I’m late for today’s meeting with that woman Jin Bi, I’ll camp outside QY Law Firm tomorrow and harass you day and night.”

Gu Qing glanced at Fang Jia and rejected her threat with great seriousness.

“I told you three years ago that your harassment would never produce results.”

Fang Jia choked.

She verbally agreed over and over while looking back and signaling frantically at Ling Yu, telling her to flee as far away as possible.

Ling Yu nearly laughed.

Fang Jia, I ultimately underestimated you. You’ve lived over a decade longer than Gu Qing. Is there really any reason to fear that bastard?

Fang Jia had no energy left to examine Ling Yu’s expression. She was worried sick, terrified that Gu Qing would retaliate.

She pressed the elevator button and forcibly ushered Gu Qing inside. Only after leaning against the elevator wall did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Gu Qing held her phone and examined her unread messages.

Standing beside her, Fang Jia displayed a complete absence of emotional intelligence as she repeatedly explained Ling Yu’s rudeness toward her “Aunt Gu.”

“But honestly, that ‘mm… ah’ of yours really was easy to misunderstand.”

Fang Jia had played the humble fool for quite some time to apologize on Ling Yu’s behalf, giving Gu Qing more than enough opportunity to retreat gracefully.

Now that things had quieted down, she remembered Gu Qing’s alarming moan. Risking retaliation, she cautiously voiced her suspicion.

Gu Qing didn’t answer directly. She merely murmured an acknowledgment and asked,

“In your eyes, is my private life usually promiscuous?”

Fang Jia instinctively shook her head.

“I wouldn’t call it promiscuous. I’d call it sexual incompetence…”

The instant she finished, Fang Jia regretted it and glanced instinctively at Gu Qing.

The woman stood in the shadows, revealing two rows of straight white teeth. Her phoenix eyes lifted halfway and rested on Fang Jia for several seconds.

“So… my voice was hoarse, and I was simply clearing my throat. ‘Mm… ah…’”

Fang Jia fell completely silent.

Her face flushed crimson.

She never should have asked. Who could have known that Gu Qing sounded like that when clearing her inflamed throat?

Shortly after Gu Qing and Fang Jia left, Gu Xiu called.

Ling Yu answered while struggling to drag her two enormous suitcases toward the elevator.

Before she reached it, the doors opened with a ding.

Fang Jia’s complaining voice drifted out.

“How could you drop something like your car keys without noticing? And you’re supposed to be the most meticulous lawyer in the entire legal profession?”

“Your reputation must be fake.”

Still grumbling, Fang Jia walked out of the elevator beside Gu Qing.

Struggling with her two suitcases farther down the corridor, Ling Yu looked up and unexpectedly met Gu Qing’s ice-blue eyes.

Gu Qing lowered her gaze toward her.

Ling Yu was baffled. It took ten seconds for her to conclude that Gu Qing had stormed back because she remained dissatisfied and wanted another fight.

Frankly, Gu Qing’s habit of seizing an enemy and biting until they were dead thoroughly exposed her lunatic nature.

Ling Yu sneered and crooked a finger at her.

Come on, then. You think I’m afraid of you?

Sure enough, Gu Qing shook off Fang Jia and strode decisively toward her.

Ling Yu remained still and watched her approach at leisure.

Three seconds later, Gu Qing walked straight past her shoulder.

Ling Yu was faintly surprised.

She wasn’t here to start trouble?

But after taking only a few steps, Gu Qing abruptly stopped and turned back.

Ling Yu looked up and gave her an unsurprised smile.

“We haven’t seen each other for only a few minutes, and you already feel that urge toward me again…”

She pointed at her dress.

“Wait until I change clothes… then we can fight.”

Gu Qing’s heart initially skipped.

She thought Ling Yu had discovered the emotions she had worked so hard to conceal, and inexplicable anxiety rose within her.

Then she heard the second half.

Gu Qing raised her eyes and carefully examined Ling Yu. Once she confirmed that Ling Yu meant those words completely literally, her expression darkened and her chest began to ache from anger.

Thinking about it, every interaction between them either involved fighting or traveling toward their next fight.

Ling Yu made her sound like some infinitely strong man who woke each morning searching for someone to challenge.

Gu Qing was rendered speechless by Ling Yu’s thought process.

Abruptly, she smiled—mainly from sheer exasperation.

Meanwhile, Fang Jia hurried over and immediately began trying to prevent a fight.

The entire world assumed she wanted to tear into Ling Yu.

Gu Qing lost control of her expression and revealed a smile that was simultaneously bitter, helpless, and painfully misunderstood.

Lowering her head, she no longer wanted to speak.

She lifted Ling Yu’s enormous suitcase and tossed it toward Fang Jia as though moving a crab.

Ling Yu: “???”

Gu Qing looked up expressionlessly.

“Move these two enormous suitcases. They’re obstructing my search for my car keys.”

Ling Yu remained rather bewildered.

Gu Qing had returned upstairs and searched everywhere for her keys, only to discover them inside her own handbag.

She had also helped Ling Yu move her luggage along the way.

The situation left Ling Yu too embarrassed to continue revisiting the hostility between them moments earlier.

The three entered the elevator.

Gu Qing and Fang Jia were heading to the basement parking garage, while Ling Yu pressed the button for the ground floor.

Gu Qing remained silent throughout.

Fang Jia, however, hesitantly said, “Yu Yu, I’m in a hurry. Where are you going? I’ll send a driver to pick you up.”

“No need. My friend is coming.”

The elevator arrived at the ground floor.

Ling Yu dragged her two large suitcases outside.

Inside the elevator, Fang Jia craned her neck and looked around but saw no one.

Just then, the elevator doors closed.

Fang Jia stared absently at the wall.

“A friend? Who?”

Gu Qing remained silent.

After a moment, she took a cigarette from her bag and placed it between her lips, then casually tossed her car keys to Fang Jia.

The underground garage was pitch-black.

After they had walked in silence for several seconds, Gu Qing abruptly asked, “Why did Ling Yu come to Gangcheng?”

Fang Jia paused.

Seeing that Gu Qing appeared interested, she sighed and recounted the entire story of Ling Yu’s biological father and stepmother.

“Ling Taiguo wants to expand into Gangcheng, so he plans to use Ling Yu in a marriage alliance…”

By this point, anger was suppressed in Fang Jia’s eyes.

Gu Qing raised the cigarette between her fingers. Hostility flashed through her blue eyes.

She said nothing and silently took two drags.

By the time Fang Jia drove the car out of the garage, Gu Qing had just extinguished her cigarette.

She bent down and settled into the passenger seat. After shutting the door, she casually remarked,

“Ling Yu doesn’t look like an obedient daughter who listens to her father.”

At that, Fang Jia nearly turned the steering wheel in the wrong direction.

She narrowed her eyes in frustration.

“That’s because you don’t understand Yu Yu. She may appear temperamental, but blood ties can’t be severed. Whatever Ling Taiguo asks of her, even if she doesn’t want to do it, she’ll never disobey her father.”

The corner of Gu Qing’s mouth twitched as Ling Yu’s rebellious dark eyes flashed through her mind.

She glanced at Fang Jia and suddenly felt pity for her friend.

“Sister Fang, what do you think of Jin Bi?” Gu Qing asked, changing the subject.

At the name Jin Bi, a crack appeared in Fang Jia’s beautifully maintained face.

Her foot nearly slammed the accelerator to the floor.

Feigning composure, she answered, “I don’t know.”

Gu Qing murmured an acknowledgment.

“You don’t know her, yet you dressed like this. You did your homework remarkably well.”

Fang Jia: “…”

“The last time we ate together, Jin Bi said she graduated from University A. If I remember correctly, you did too…”

A teasing smile hovered at the corner of Gu Qing’s lips. But before she could say fellow alumna, she caught sight of the residential complex’s main entrance from the corner of her eye.

She turned and looked at the woman fastening her seat belt inside a convertible.

The emotion in Gu Qing’s eyes instantly vanished.

At the same time, Fang Jia made a startled sound.

“Gu Qing, is that Gu Xiu? Why is she here?”

She looked again.

“Wait—Yu Yu! Damn it, they actually know each other.”