Chapter 11 — An Indirect Kiss

Wei Zhao paid no mind to any of it. Sour or sweet, who cared? Having meat to eat at all was a fine thing, and after a whole day of running around, he had not eaten a bite. He took the plate and tore into the food.

It really was good, far better than the little eatery Widow Wang ran at the head of the village. The color arrangement, the ingredients, everything was more carefully done. How could Widow Wang's sweet-and-sour pork slivers even compare? The palate of a rich man's daughter was a touch too picky, wasn't it?

Gu Mengyao picked up a piece of boiled fish and put it in her mouth. She savored it a moment, and her small face went scarlet from the spice. She panted and fanned her lips with her little hand. "So spicy! But so good. Water, where's the water?"

Turning her head, she spotted the orange juice on the table. She picked it up and gulped it down straight from the bottle, draining more than half of it in one breath before setting it down. "Mm, much better now."

Shen Yushu looked at Wei Zhao, then at the juice bottle on the table, and finally fixed her gaze on Gu Mengyao's lips. Her face was written all over with disbelief. As for Wei Zhao, he simply stared at Gu Mengyao, dumbfounded, thinking to himself that city girls really were open. A bottle he had already drunk from, and she picked it up and put her lips right to it, mouth to mouth. Fierce. Violent.

Gu Mengyao was eating and drinking in perfect contentment and was about to continue when she saw Shen Yushu staring at her with a very strange expression. She was baffled. "Xiaoshu, what are you looking at me like that for?"

"No... nothing..." Shen Yushu sighed. She did not dare tell Gu Mengyao the truth; knowing Gu Mengyao's temperament... ah, heaven only knew what she might do.

"Nothing, and you're staring at me like that?" Gu Mengyao was even more baffled. She shook her head and, paying it no further mind, picked up another piece of boiled fish and put it in her mouth. It was unbearably spicy again, so she picked up the juice bottle once more and drank from it, mouth to mouth...

"Don't—" Shen Yushu tried to stop her, but found it was already too late. She could only swallow the rest of her words.

"Don't what? Xiaoshu, what are you even saying? What's wrong with you? You're acting strange." Gu Mengyao set down the juice bottle, wiped her little mouth with her hand, and frowned at Shen Yushu.

"That... I'd better not say..." Looking at Gu Mengyao's utterly clueless expression, Shen Yushu felt both pity and amusement. The funniest part of all was that Gu Mengyao had now drunk from the bottle Wei Zhao had drunk from twice... and once still wasn't enough?

"Xiaoshu, why have you gone all hesitant too? If there's something, just say it." Gu Mengyao was a little displeased. What was this? All so mysterious?

Left with no choice under Gu Mengyao's interrogation, Shen Yushu pointed at the juice bottle on the table, drained down to the last dregs, and said, "This drink... this drink..."

"What about the drink?" Gu Mengyao frowned. "So I drank your juice, what of it? There's plenty more in the fridge. If you want some, I'll just get you another bottle. Is it worth all this?"

Seeing that Gu Mengyao still had not caught on, Shen Yushu finally burst out laughing. "Haha... I can't, I'm dying... Yaoyao, haven't you figured it out yet? That drink wasn't mine..."

"Not yours? What do you mean—" Halfway through, Gu Mengyao suddenly realized something. She turned her gaze to Wei Zhao, and her expression changed drastically. "You drank that juice?"

Wei Zhao nodded innocently, thinking to himself that he must have misunderstood after all. He had taken her for an open-minded city girl, but it turned out she had simply made a mistake...

"Ugh—" Gu Mengyao's face turned green at once. She glared, wide-eyed, and pointed at Wei Zhao, wanting to say something, but in the end said nothing. She clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for the washroom.

"Hurk—" The sound of dry heaving came at once from the washroom. Shen Yushu had been gloating at first, but seeing that Gu Mengyao's reaction was a little too extreme, she hurried after her to the washroom.

"Yaoyao... I told you, I said I'd better not say anything. You're the one who made me tell you..." Shen Yushu looked at Gu Mengyao with a pained expression, her voice tinged with apology.

"Then why didn't you say so earlier... hurk—" Gu Mengyao shot Shen Yushu a glare, then went back to dry heaving over the sink...

"No way... a reaction already, this soon?" Shen Yushu looked at Gu Mengyao and muttered to herself in confusion, "Mama said kissing doesn't make you pregnant."

Gu Mengyao had just started to feel a little better, but hearing Shen Yushu's words set off another wave of nausea. She remembered that she and that creature Wei Zhao had actually shared an indirect kiss, and tears began to patter down.

Her first kiss, treasured for eighteen years, gone just like that? Gu Mengyao's head swam, and she nearly fainted. She glared at Shen Yushu, aggrieved. "Pregnant my foot! Do you have any basic biology?"

"I don't? And you do?" Shen Yushu was rather unhappy herself. She thought, you're the one who carelessly went and had an indirect kiss with Wei Zhao. What does that have to do with me?

Gu Mengyao had already been upset enough, and there was Shen Yushu, gloating on top of everything else. Gnashing her teeth, Gu Mengyao suddenly threw her arms around Shen Yushu and pressed her own small lips to Shen Yushu's.

A smack of a kiss, and only then did Gu Mengyao let go of Shen Yushu, saying bitterly, "That's what you get for gloating. Now you're in it too."

"Ah—what are you doing?" Caught off guard by the kiss, Shen Yushu finally understood Gu Mengyao's malicious scheme. Well, that was that—she was implicated now too. Still, Shen Yushu felt somewhat better deep down, consoling herself: even if Wei Zhao's saliva on that drink bottle had gotten onto Yao Yao's lips, she had rinsed it all out just now, so there was no way it could get onto her own lips. Right, it definitely wouldn't.

With that thought, Shen Yushu's mood brightened considerably. Watching Gu Mengyao rinse her mouth over and over again, she picked up a cup herself and went through the motions of gargling.

After much fussing, Gu Mengyao finally calmed down. She understood that even if she rinsed her mouth until the skin peeled, it would do no good. What was done was done. There was no Doraemon's time machine in reality, no going back for a second try.

But as for Wei Zhao—he had utterly driven her insane. Letting that man move into her villa had been a colossal mistake.

A moment ago, Gu Mengyao had felt an urge to kill Wei Zhao—one of those impulses that demanded immediate action. If she'd had a knife in her hand at that moment, she would not have hesitated to plant it in his chest.

But now she didn't even have the strength left to curse. Gu Mengyao felt as though her entire body had gone hollow. Gazing at the table full of delicacies and at Wei Zhao sitting there with a dumb, vacant look on his face, her lips moved—but in the end, nothing came out. She turned and staggered upstairs.