Pretending To Be Affectionate [Transmigration] - Chapter 6

Ling Yu leaned against the wall and lifted her eyelids. When she looked up, Gu Qing had already traveled quite a distance.

Ling Yu suddenly called after her.

“Wait.”

The corridor was not particularly long. At the far end, turning right led to the patient rooms, while the left side opened into a relatively spacious pantry.

Because the corridor faced away from the sun, almost no daylight entered through its windows around five thirty in the afternoon. It was dim, illuminated only by hazy wall lamps that flickered between brightness and shadow.

Gu Qing stood beneath one of the lights. Her cold, beautiful face looked completely different from that of the wheelchair-bound boy beside her. It seemed covered by a layer of dark shadow, making her emotions impossible to discern.

Only her pale lips pressed together slightly.

Perhaps Gu Qing had never encountered anyone as shamelessly persistent as Ling Yu. When she heard Ling Yu pestering her yet again, her reaction was unusually slow, and her footsteps instinctively paused.

Seeing her stop, Ling Yu quickly walked forward.

Click, click, click.

Her high heels struck the floor, their rhythmic sound echoing throughout the empty corridor.

“Jiejie?”

Gu Ting sat in his wheelchair. Using the strength in his arms, he supported his drooping head and tilted it toward her.

His speech was not particularly clear, but although he was only a teenager, his intelligence was already close to that of an adult.

He raised his head halfway and stared unwaveringly at Gu Qing’s expressionless profile with his slanted eyes, appearing deep in thought.

A moment later, he squeezed out a childish smile.

“Is this…Jiejie’s friend?”

The emotion in Gu Qing’s eyes faded away, bit by bit.

She lowered her gaze and met the boy’s seemingly innocent stare.

In an instant, a bloody chill gathered within her dark-blue eyes.

Without warning, that coldness descended over the boy. Her razor-sharp gaze scraped across his face inch by inch.

Ling Yu had always assumed Gu Qing was cold and heartless only toward her.

Yet at that moment, Gu Qing’s astonishing indifference was more intense than it had ever been before.

It was difficult to imagine that she was directing such coldness toward a fifteen-year-old boy.

Only seconds ago, she had still treated him with some patience.

Ling Yu narrowed her eyes in surprise.

At the same moment, Gu Qing’s bleak voice sounded.

“Gu Ting.”

She bent down and clasped the boy’s chin between her slender fingers.

Bringing her gaze level with his, she said faintly, “Do not attempt to test me…”

The pupils of the boy restrained by her fingers trembled. His gaze flickered before he looked away.

He shrank his neck, and a line of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth.

Most children with cerebral palsy did not have particularly long lifespans. Even when they consistently underwent rehabilitation, their physical abilities usually differed from those of ordinary people to some degree.

Their capacity for thought, however, varied from person to person.

Gu Ting’s intelligence had clearly not been significantly affected.

He reacted a beat too late, and tears quickly filled his eyes. Fear remained written across his face, yet he forced his weak, drooping eyelids to remain open with an almost pathological determination.

He turned his head and glanced toward Ling Yu, though his words were directed at Gu Qing.

“Jiejie, I’m very happy you have another friend… You must be so happy. You were this happy several years ago when you became friends with Wangzai too.”

As soon as he spoke, Gu Qing’s long fingers sank deep into the soft flesh of his neck.

The ferocity on her face was almost tangible. She pressed down against his throat, but when she met the boy’s tearful face, she abruptly withdrew her hand.

For one instant, Ling Yu had the illusion that Gu Qing truly might kill the boy with her own hands.

Even more absurdly, the boy offered no resistance despite being treated this way.

He appeared to be deliberately provoking her.

Even with his life in danger, he made no attempt to evade her. His eyes seemed coated in snake venom, their vertical pupils openly displaying a sticky, perverse excitement.

Ling Yu took in the boy’s expression. Three seconds later, she clicked her tongue as though nothing had happened.

[There’s something psychologically wrong with Gu Qing’s younger brother.]

It was a statement, not a question.

008 refuted her in bewilderment.

[That can’t be true, can it?]

Ling Yu had no time to pay attention to it.

At the same moment, Gu Qing stared at the boy and spoke again.

“If there is a next time, you can die.”

Her voice was extremely faint, as casual as though she were commenting on the weather.

She released him and dusted nonexistent dirt from her hands.

Then she glanced from the corner of her eye at Ling Yu, who stood a meter away.

With a meaningful laugh, she said, “Someone like me doesn’t need friends…”

Gu Qing had seemingly just finished work. Her white blouse was tucked into a fitted black pencil skirt, while an ice-blue coat that reached her ankles was draped over one arm.

She straightened as light poured over her, coating her slender waist in a soft glow.

The close-fitting skirt displayed every elegant curve of her waist and hips.

Combined with her smooth, cold, and beautiful features, the formal attire gave her an intimidatingly powerful presence even when she stood there casually.

The boy in the wheelchair was already trembling.

But to Ling Yu, that pressure posed no threat.

Realizing that Gu Qing’s final statement had been directed at her, Ling Yu could not help feeling amused.

Gu Qing had always been fierce and coldhearted. However, after hearing her warnings so many times, Ling Yu noticed that she merely repeated the same handful of sentences.

She could not help detecting a trace of outward strength concealing inner weakness.

Without revealing anything, Ling Yu took two additional glances at the soft curves of Gu Qing’s waist and hips beneath the thin fabric.

She chuckled, then slowly walked over to her.

Under the identically cold and gloomy gazes of both siblings, Ling Yu calmly picked up the basketball that had caused her to fall.

She balanced it on her fingertip and spun it several times before tossing it forward.

The basketball traced a silvery arc through the air and landed precisely in Gu Ting’s lap.

Ling Yu did not spare him a glance.

She merely extended a hand toward Gu Qing with a smile.

“My food was…knocked over by him.”

She pointed toward the mess covering the floor, flattened her palm before Gu Qing, and smiled.

“Three hundred yuan. Thank you…”

Gu Qing: […]

008 exclaimed:

[What are you doing, Host? Do you even intend to complete your mission? If you’re this capable, why bother playing a devoted fool? You might as well drag her down with you and die together… Beep, beep, beep, beep…]

Before the infuriated 008 could finish, the scheming Ling Yu had already activated the mute function.

The system’s resentment could only be expressed through a string of beeps.

A slender, fair palm was held out before Gu Qing. Under the light, it possessed a luminous white sheen.

Ling Yu’s hand was as exquisite and fair as the rest of her.

Even the lines across her palm seemed to have been faded away by white porcelain.

Gu Qing’s gaze lingered for a moment before she instinctively reached for her briefcase.

Yet her hands were empty.

She had worn business attire today, but her briefcase was inside the patient room and not currently with her.

Gu Qing’s face stiffened.

“I’ll return to the room and get the money for you. Do you mind?”

“I mind quite a lot.”

Ling Yu’s expression remained unchanged. She held her hand horizontally in front of Gu Qing and said lazily, “Gu…Qing-jiejie, I think you may genuinely have misunderstood something. I’m not idle every day, chasing after you as though I’ll live or die depending on your attention. An elderly member of my family is hospitalized, and I came here to deliver her dinner. Look…”

She indicated the scattered food.

“I don’t have time to wait for you to bring the money back. I need that money to save a life…”

The smile in Ling Yu’s eyes hovered on the verge of disappearing. She met Gu Qing’s sharp gaze without the slightest evasion.

Ling Yu was naturally the sort of woman who wore arrogance openly in her eyes.

Even while acting, she could not tolerate engraving humility into her bones.

Gu Qing could not understand Ling Yu.

In her experience, young women of Ling Yu’s age were delicate as cotton-rose hibiscuses, naturally shy and reserved.

But Ling Yu was different.

Her affection always remained neither too close nor too distant. From beginning to end, she maintained a rhythm that kept Gu Qing from truly losing her temper.

An innate laziness and frankness existed within her bones.

It made her difficult to hate, while unconsciously drawing an extra shred of patience from Gu Qing.

The air fell briefly silent.

A moment later, Gu Qing opened her phone and held out her WeChat payment QR code.

Ling Yu’s face blossomed into a smile, specks of amusement spreading through her clear eyes.

“Sorry, what unfortunate timing. I don’t have my phone with me. If it’s convenient, add me on WeChat and send the money through a red packet…”

Gu Qing stared at her cunning eyes and froze.

[…]

While she was distracted, Ling Yu took the phone from her hand and unceremoniously entered a long string of numbers.

Then she turned and walked away with confidence before Gu Qing could react.

Upon reaching the corner, she stopped and mildly reminded her, “My phone number is also my WeChat ID. Oh, right—remember to add my name as a note. A lot of people add me…”

008 watched in dumbfounded silence.

Once it recovered, it desperately wished it could raise a thumb and scream in admiration. Unfortunately, its mechanical voice could only produce a cheerful rhythm:

[Beep, beep, beep, beep…]

Gu Qing watched Ling Yu’s figure disappear before pushing Gu Ting away.

In the empty corridor, only the boy’s hoarse laughter could be heard.

“Jiejie, do you still remember Wangcai?”

“Your first friend.”

Gu Ting’s chin rested against his chest as he laughed indistinctly.

“The day it died, its stomach had been cut open. It was so pitiful… It looked exactly like my father…when he died.”

Gu Qing’s pupils were filled with deathly stillness.

She did not even glance at him from the corner of her eye. Her expression remained as indifferent as though she had heard an irrelevant joke.

Her unbroken disregard provoked Gu Ting, and his voice gradually became shrill.

“Mom was right. You’re a cursed star destined to bring disaster. Everyone who approaches you becomes unfortunate. Look at me…then look at Mom… Do you really want to add another person now? That woman…”

“Gu Ting.”

Gu Qing interrupted him.

With a perfectly courteous smile, she summoned a nearby nurse and handed the wheelchair over to her.

Then she turned to leave.

Curled up in the wheelchair, the boy’s eyes became bloodshot.

“No matter how hard you push me away, we’ll always be family…”

Gu Qing gave an indifferent hum.

Ignoring the boy’s increasingly frantic calls, she walked away without expression.

When she reached the corner, her ice-blade-blue eyes abruptly narrowed.

Her sharp gaze swept toward Ling Yu, who was clinging to the edge of the wall and secretly eavesdropping.

Caught red-handed, Ling Yu’s expression stiffened.

She greeted Gu Qing awkwardly.

“Hi!”

Gu Qing stared at the eyes Ling Yu was using to pretend nothing had happened.

The composure she had always maintained even if Mount Tai collapsed before her abruptly shattered.

A violent storm gathered in her eyes.

Clenching her fist, she swung it directly toward Ling Yu’s cheek without another word.