Chapter 19: You Also Wouldn’t Want…

The moist lips exhaled a fiery breath.

It branded an indelible mark.

Shen Xixi leaned in, her chest rising and falling, her breathing slowing. Her fingers explored, those fair, slender fingers were about to touch…

A phone rang in the restroom.

Immediately after, a knock sounded at the door.

“Teacher Shen Xixi, Teacher Lin Yi, are you in there? I was drunk just now, my head was dizzy. When I woke up, I found you were both gone. The waiter said it seemed like you went to the restroom…”

Yun Ling’s slightly urgent and apologetic voice came from outside the door.

“Tsk, what timely timing, coming at this exact moment.”

Shen Xixi’s brow furrowed slightly. The movements of her hands stopped, and her interest instantly waned, feeling dull and tasteless.

‘Of all the times to come, why this one?’

‘Getting interrupted halfway, on the verge of getting there but not quite. I hope you eat instant noodles without a seasoning packet from now on, and only get the crust when you eat egg tarts.’

‘May your purple vibrator never have power!’

“Oh, yes, I’m in the restroom. Teacher Lin Yi seems to have gone out to make a phone call. You can go back to the room and wait for a bit, I’ll be right out.”

Shen Xixi took a few deep breaths and spoke gently to Yun Ling outside.

“Oh, oh, okay, okay, I’ll go back to the room and wait for you now.”

Yun Ling was relieved. She had thought it was because of her poor alcohol tolerance, getting knocked out after just two drinks, which made Teacher Yun Ling and Teacher Lin Yi think she was disrespecting them and leave in anger. If that were the case, she really wouldn’t have been able to cry even if she wanted to.

‘But, didn’t that waiter say Lin Yi also came to the restroom?’

‘Then there should be separate rooms for men and women in this restroom. Why did it feel like this was just a single stall when I knocked just now?’

‘Did Lin Yi just go out to make a phone call, and I missed him?’

Hearing the sound of footsteps leaving, Lin Yi felt an inexplicable sense of relief in his heart. Luckily, he hadn’t been discovered.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t even know how to explain it.

He looked at the woman still leaning in his arms, his arm subconsciously resting on her waist.

Hiss!

Shen Xixi felt Lin Yi’s hand spring away like lightning. A faint, ambiguous smile touched her lips. She tidied up the clothes she had just messed up and moved away from him.

“Hehe, let’s go back first. Teacher Yun Ling is getting impatient. Like you said, our main purpose today is to talk about your novel. We have to make your novel a true milestone in the male market.”

“I don’t care about the work stuff. I’ll do what I have to do. But, those videos…”

Lin Yi’s words were cut off by Shen Xixi’s sharp gaze.

“The WeChat that was blocked and deleted before can be added back now, right? As for future contact, little Yi, remember to be on call, okay? You also know that those videos can’t be explained to your wife.”

Shen Xixi’s fingers tugged at the corner of her mouth, deliberately revealing her tender oral cavity. “If you don’t want a packaged video to appear on your wife’s phone, you understand, right?”

Lin Yi stood there in disarray, looking at the familiar cavity that he had explored many times before. His head ached even more.

He took out his phone and re-added Shen Xixi’s WeChat, which had previously been deleted and blocked.

He also changed the previous note to her real name, Shen Xixi.

“What’s this? Wasn’t the previous note good enough? ‘Passionate ✈️,’ doesn’t that symbolize our most advantageous relationship before? Changing it to a real name is so boring. If that’s not good enough, change it to ‘Bad Woman,’ I’d be happy with that too.”

Shen Xixi smiled happily.

On her phone’s interface, there were countless red exclamation marks.

Those were her attempts to contact him after regretting the breakup, but unfortunately, none had been successful.

After her brain was kicked by a donkey and she agreed to break up with Lin Yi, she regretted it almost the very next second. But Lin Yi was like smoke, dissipating into the air, disappearing into the sea of people, and there was no contact ever again.

“If you have to put it that way, then let’s change it to ‘Cao Thief’.”¹

The corner of Lin Yi’s mouth twitched as he changed Shen Xixi’s note to “Cao Thief.”

This world had the Three Kingdoms, but Zhuang Yayun didn’t like to read it, and it was even less likely that she would know the extended meaning of this term.

“Ehehehe, 🥰🥰🥰, not bad, I quite like it.”

As an illustrator, Shen Xixi naturally understood internet memes better. Cao Chun, the female chancellor from two thousand years ago who liked to NTR married men.

This was a meme that had only become popular in the last two years. Even if you surfed the internet regularly, if you weren’t involved in this area, you probably wouldn’t understand it very well.

“Are you satisfied now?”

Lin Yi pocketed his phone, turned around, opened the restroom door, and walked straight out.

Shen Xixi’s delicate laughter came from behind him.

The sound of high heels tapping on the floor quickly approached, and a soft little hand wrapped around his arm at his side.

“Teacher Lin Yi, don’t walk so fast. You wouldn’t be unaware of a gentleman’s etiquette, would you? When you’re with an elegant lady, you should take the initiative to offer your arm to show a gentleman’s respect for a lady.”

“…”

Lin Yi sighed inwardly, letting Shen Xixi hold onto his arm just like that.

In this world, the only area where men had an advantage was probably their height.

Therefore, this tradition had appeared in the Middle Ages and was still preserved.

And so they returned to the room.

When Yun Ling saw Lin Yi and Shen Xixi’s state, she immediately looked at Shen Xixi with a slightly envious gaze.

In the entire company, who didn’t want to hold Lin Yi’s arm like this?

He was handsome, sunny, and confident, and had the air of a married man, an absolutely handsome guy. He was also a rising star author whose works in the male-oriented genre were often original and attracted many female readers. Several teachers in the company quite admired Lin Yi.

She never thought that Shen Xixi would have just arrived and already be holding Lin Yi’s arm.

She, as his editor, was so close yet had not obtained this yet. She was really falling behind.

‘Maybe tomorrow I should take Lin Yi to the little dark room and do whatever I want…’

Ahem!

‘No, what am I thinking? I’m going to be a good woman of the new era. How can I have the same concept of love as in the old era?’

‘That kind of behavior, treating men as playthings, is not what I want.’

‘What I want is a man and a woman who support each other through thick and thin, a love that is treated with gentleness, not a casual toy.’

‘Yun Ling, you have to persevere. You can’t go back to being the old you who loved to play with toys.’

Yun Ling unconsciously puffed out her chest, her soft, large mounds trembling. “Teacher Shen Xixi, Teacher Lin Yi, let’s continue then. We still need to have a good discussion about the setting and future direction of the new work.”

An hour and a half later.

The small liquor bottles on the table were already empty.

The discussion about the work was also gradually coming to an end.

Yun Ling had filled a small notebook, her fingers slightly sore. It was full of Yun Ling’s and Shen Xixi’s various suggestions and ideas for Teacher Lin Yi’s new work, as well as many settings.

Including the male and female leads.

Shen Xixi suggested that the male lead’s name should be Lin Yi, so that Teacher Lin Yi would feel more immersed and could write the male lead’s psychological feelings on a deeper level, which would attract more female readers.

At the same time, she also suggested adding a first love named Shen Xixi, so that she, as the illustrator, would also feel more immersed.

Lin Yi wanted to object, but Yun Ling thought that since neither teacher’s real name would be exposed, using their real names as the main characters’ names would indeed increase immersion and also add a sense of mission.

Using their own names for the first pioneering male-oriented work, Yun Ling felt that if it really succeeded, it would be a very famous existence in the entire history of novels.

Therefore, this suggestion was kept.

It wasn’t until three-fifty in the afternoon that this long meeting at the dining table finally came to an end.

“Well then, Lin Yi, the next time we meet will be next Monday. During this time, I will be in charge of the illustrations for your current work. I hope that when we meet next time, you will have the manuscript for your new work.”

Shen Xixi’s fingers were half-clenched. She raised her hand, her slender wrist holding her handbag, her high heels slightly crossed as she stood, smiling as she tapped Lin Yi’s chest.

“See you next time.”

Lin Yi waved helplessly.

“Lin Yi, Shen Xixi and I are going the same way, so we’ll leave first. Please be sure to hand in the manuscript for your new work next Monday.”

Yun Ling was also smiling. The relationship between the three of them had quickly grown closer at the dining table, and the “Teacher” title had also been dropped.

“I’ll do my best.”

Lin Yi watched the two of them leave.

He rubbed his forehead, his heart full of depression and melancholy.

His ex-girlfriend, with whom he should have broken off contact long ago, had reappeared before him at a time when he already had a fiancée, and was even threatening him with those videos from before that absolutely could not be released.

For now, apart from temporarily obeying, there seemed to be no other way.

He could only take it one step at a time.

‘Find a chance to delete all of Shen Xixi’s old videos…’

¹ (Cáo Zéi), literally “Cao Thief,” is an internet meme referring to Cao Cao, a famous historical figure from the Three Kingdoms period. The meme jokes that Cao Cao had a penchant for taking other men’s wives. It’s used to refer to someone who likes to cuckold others or pursue people who are already in a relationship. In this gender-flipped world, “Cao Chun” is the female equivalent.