Chapter 48: You Were Sent by Heaven to Tame Me

Gao Cheng frowned; today was only Monday, and she wouldn’t go home until Friday night.

– “Buy another one.”

Right after saying that, he immediately corrected himself.

– “No, one is too few. Buy ten more, and I’ll reimburse you.”

Shi Kezhen curled her lips.

– “Not buying.”

– “Why?”

– “I don’t want to feed you too well.”

Gao Cheng: “…”

– “Just having that one and wearing it occasionally is enough to give you something to long for; you can’t eat good food too often, or you’ll get tired of it.”

Gao Cheng: “…”

– “Only by eating good food once in a while will you treat it as an earthly delicacy.”

– “Wifey.”

– “Mm?”

Gao Cheng sighed, his voice carrying the helpless resignation of yielding to fate.

– “I’ve realized something.”

– “Realized what?”

– “You were sent by heaven to be the death of me.”

Unable to hold back her amusement, Shi Kezhen covered her mouth and giggled again.

Listening to her laughter, Gao Cheng’s lips involuntarily curved upward, and he feigned a sigh.

– “Go ahead and laugh. You really know how to torment me.”

Suddenly remembering something, he made a request.

– “Fine then, if you won’t let me see the lace camisole, then I want to see your collarbone.”

Shi Kezhen was quite willing to satisfy this minor request.

Holding her phone with her left hand, she reached her right hand toward her pajama collar, pinched the top button, and slowly unfastened it.

The entire back of her right hand was exposed to the camera, and Gao Cheng clearly saw that on the back of her right middle finger, there was a purple butterfly.

Through the screen, it looked remarkably like a tattoo, but he knew that it was not a tattoo—it was a stamp.

He had even chosen the design of this stamp himself.

It had been Jiang Chengshuo’s idea; those girls from the Woodcarving Club had been arranged by him to deliberately approach Shi Kezhen.

Gao Cheng stared at the butterfly on the back of her finger for a long time.

Completely unaware that her identity had been uncovered, Shi Kezhen held the phone with her left hand, still adjusting the angle, while pulling her collar down a fraction with her right hand to reveal her collarbone.

– “Can you see it clearly? Do you want me to undo another button?”

– “I see it clearly.”

At this exact moment, he was finally one hundred percent certain.

Yao was the Shi family’s adopted daughter, Shi Kezhen.

Gao Cheng shifted his gaze away from her hand to her collarbone, and after looking for a moment, he frowned.

– “You seem to have gotten thinner.”

– “Have I?”

Shi Kezhen looked down at herself; she had only undone the top button, yet he could still tell she had lost weight?

This guy’s eyes were truly sharp.

She casually offered a perfunctory reply.

– “Yeah, I’ve been losing weight.”

– “Do you even need to lose weight?”

Gao Cheng frowned; he had seen her body more than once after she shed her sleepwear, and she was already on the slender side, so how could she possibly need to lose weight?

Gao Cheng recalled the conversation he had overheard between her and Shi Yanzhou in the canteen at noon.

He also remembered how she had looked sitting in the canteen eating, her pointed chin, and her visibly sickly complexion.

Not coming to school for two whole weeks—had she truly been ill?

Could it be that during the two weeks she had fallen out of contact, she hadn’t intentionally ignored him, but had been hospitalized due to illness and couldn’t check her phone?

The more Gao Cheng thought about it, the further his thoughts drifted; he even wondered whether being unable to look at a phone for two weeks meant it wasn’t just an ordinary hospitalization, but perhaps she had undergone some sort of surgery.

While he was lost in wild speculation, Shi Kezhen’s teasing voice came through again.

– “Don’t boys all like thinner girls? A woman dresses up and trims down for the one who pleases her.”

Not wanting to hear her nonsense, Gao Cheng simply asked directly.

– “You disappeared for two weeks; were you sick?”

The smile froze on Shi Kezhen’s face.

– “…No, why do you ask?”

– “Just that you suddenly vanished, and now you’re noticeably thinner.”

Gao Cheng’s voice softened somewhat.

– “If you’re sick, you have to tell me.”

Shi Kezhen felt his concern, and her heart warmed slightly, yet she stubbornly didn’t want him to know about her difficult predicament.

– “Didn’t I tell you? The reason I ignored you for two weeks was because I was mad at you.”

She paused, then added softly:

– “I wasn’t sick. Don’t overthink it.”

– “Mm, as long as you weren’t sick.”

Seeing that she didn’t want to tell the truth, Gao Cheng didn’t force her.

– “But you’re already very thin; you’re not allowed to lose any more weight in the future. I don’t like girls who are too skinny.”

– “Oh~~~”

Shi Kezhen suddenly let out a mischievous laugh.

– “Right, right, right, now I remember. My hubby likes busty girls with plenty of meat.”

Gao Cheng: “…”

“Giggle, giggle…”

Having successfully teased him into silence, Shi Kezhen felt rather proud and covered her mouth as she laughed again.

Gao Cheng felt somewhat helpless toward her habit of being playful from time to time; staring at her hand, he intentionally asked:

– “When did you get a butterfly tattooed on your finger?”

Shi Kezhen looked at her hand and brought it closer to the phone camera.

– “You mean this? This isn’t a tattoo.”

– “Not a tattoo?”

Gao Cheng deliberately probed to see how she would explain it.

– “Was it drawn on?”

Shi Kezhen only knew that Cheng also went to university in Jingzhou, but Jingzhou was so large with so many universities that she had never imagined such a coincidence as picking an online boyfriend who happened to be at Jingda as well.

Therefore, without overthinking, she spoke the truth.

– “This afternoon at school, I ran into a few girls from the Woodcarving Club recruiting new members; this butterfly is a stamp carved by one of their members.”

She mumbled somewhat perplexedly:

– “I don’t know what kind of ink they used, but I tried washing it several times with body wash and couldn’t get it off.”

Gao Cheng chuckled softly.

– “Don’t worry. If it was just stamped on, it will fade away cleanly over the next few days.”

Shi Kezhen stared at the butterfly.

– “It better. If it still won’t wash off before I go home on Friday, I’ll have to find a professional outside to deal with it.”

Gao Cheng frowned.

– “Is that really necessary?”

Shi Kezhen took it as a matter of course.

– “Of course it is. My family is strict, and if they see it, it’ll be hard to explain.”

Hearing her say this and recalling her identity as an adopted daughter, Gao Cheng understood in his heart that her life in the Shi family was likely far less glamorous than it appeared to outsiders.

– “Do you have… a good relationship with your family?”

He asked rather cautiously.

– “Are your parents good to you?”

This was the first time he had ever asked her questions regarding her family, and Shi Kezhen felt somewhat disheartened.

– “Just so-so.”

– “What do you mean by ‘just so-so’?”

Shi Kezhen curled her lips.

– “Neither good nor bad. I don’t lack food, and I don’t lack clothes.”

‘They just don’t give me freedom.’

She added in her heart.

– “Oh.”

It was enough to know that the Shi family didn’t mistreat her physically; as for further details, since she was unwilling to tell him, he planned to find out through Jiang Zhexi.

The Jiang family was close with the Shi family; as long as Jiang Zhexi put a little effort into it, finding out about Shi Kezhen’s situation in the Shi family shouldn’t be difficult.

The sound of keys turning in the lock suddenly came from the dorm door.

Shi Kezhen glanced at the time: 17:40; the second major afternoon block had already let out.

She whispered:

– “I can’t chat with you anymore; my roommates are back.”

Gao Cheng had long since lost the temper to argue with this.

– “Fine then. Are you heading down to dinner now?”

– “Mm, if I go any later, there won’t be anything good left at the canteen.”

She nodded; this hour happened to be the peak dining time for the canteen.

– “Alright, go eat quickly then.”

Having said that, Gao Cheng immediately followed up with:

– “Will you get on the game tonight?”

The dorm door had already swung open, followed by the sound of someone walking in.

Shi Kezhen knew it was her roommate, and without parting the bed curtain to look, she whispered into the video call:

– “We’ll see. If I go online, I’ll call you. Let’s stop here, bye-bye.”

Without waiting for Gao Cheng’s response, she hung up the video call directly.

Looking at the now-disconnected chat interface, Gao Cheng felt both amused and exasperated.

Just how shameful and unspeakable was he to her?

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