Volume One, Chapter Ninety-Eight: Kiss Her.

Xu Zhi had already forgotten why she had gone upstairs. After she came back down, the people in the living room were still chatting merrily. Taking advantage of the fact that no one was paying attention, she slipped into the restroom on the first floor.

In the mirror, she saw that her lips were slightly swollen and split at the corner. Her face, however, was deathly pale, her eyes red-rimmed.

She cupped cold water in her hands and washed her face, trying to clear her head, telling herself she had done nothing wrong.

But...

She had called Liang Jinmo an illegitimate son right in front of him.

She could not even bear to hear others speak of him that way, and now she herself had said it.

Tears welled again in her eyes. She closed them and endured it, and only after quite a while did her emotions settle.

When she went back out, she found an excuse and told Fu Wanwen that she was unwell and wanted to go home.

Seeing her poor complexion, Fu Wanwen asked, “What’s wrong? Where do you feel ill? Why is your lip split too?”

Xu Zhi bit her lip. “I had a stomachache just now... I wasn’t paying attention and bit myself.”

Fu Wanwen guessed it was menstrual pain and said, “Should I have Muzhi take you home?”

Xu Zhi shook her head. “It’s fine. I can manage on my own.”

Fu Wanwen said, “Then I’ll settle the specific arrangements with your father first. Tomorrow, when you’re feeling better, we can look over the schedule. If you have any ideas, bring them up then.”

Xu Zhi only wanted to leave. She nodded and went.

When she got home, Liang Jinmo’s figure in the darkness still filled her mind.

She felt that for the rest of her life she would never forget it. She had never wanted to hurt anyone, yet she had hurt him the deepest.

This time, he would never forgive her again. He would hate her. How could she have said that about him?

As she thought of it, tears surged up once more.

She did not wipe them away, did not hold them back. In the darkness, thinking of him, she cried out aloud.

After the bodyguards were withdrawn, Liang Muzhi seemed wholly revived, full of energy and spirits. The next day he came looking for Xu Zhi with the wedding planner’s schedule in hand.

Xu Zhi had not slept well the night before and looked listless; her eyes were still swollen.

When Liang Muzhi saw her, he was startled at first, then frowned. “You cried again?”

Xu Zhi let him into the room, then went back to sit by the bed and casually repeated the excuse from the night before. “My stomach hurt. It’s nothing serious.”

Liang Muzhi said, “My mother told me, but I remember it’s not these few days for you...”

Xu Zhi frowned at him. “How do you remember everything?”

Liang Muzhi’s expression became slightly unnatural. In high school, Xu Zhi had indeed suffered from menstrual cramps for a period of time. He had even bought ibuprofen for her then, and he had remembered it ever since.

As for why he remembered until now, he could not quite say. When a person is eager to escape embarrassment, he will often strike first and change the subject. His tone hardened. “My mother also said you went upstairs looking for me last night. I didn’t see you. Where did you go to hide from the commotion?”

Xu Zhi’s attention was indeed diverted.

She certainly could not say she had been in Liang Jinmo’s room. “I was going to find you. After I went upstairs, my stomach got uncomfortable, so I stood by the wall for a while. It still felt bad, so I came back down.”

“If you felt bad, why didn’t you look for me?” he said irritably. “This is worse than before. You even asked me to buy medicine for you back then...”

As he spoke, he walked over, took a box from his coat pocket, and handed it to her. “I don’t know whether your home has any medicine, so I bought another box for you. Keep it. You’ll need it sooner or later.”

Xu Zhi glanced at it. It was a box of ibuprofen.

Her feelings were tangled and unspeakable, but she still gave him the courtesy of reaching out to take it. “Thank you.”

Yet Liang Muzhi did not let go.

Xu Zhi looked at him in mild confusion.

He had said he was giving her the medicine, but now he would not release it. Their hands were locked at either end of the box.

“Zhi,” he said suddenly, then after a pause called again, “Little Zhi.”

Xu Zhi was slightly stunned. Liang Muzhi had not called her that in quite some time.

Watching her expression, Liang Muzhi softened his tone. “Shall we... make up?”

During this period, they had gone through the worst quarrel of their lives, then a cold war. There was already an obvious gulf between them.

He was very unused to it. During his growing years, Xu Zhi had occupied too large a share of his world. It seemed she had always been by his side, would never leave, would forever be gentle and forgiving of everything about him.

And now, whether real or nominal, she was already his fiancée. They had been bound together once more, and whether from reason or feeling, he very much wanted to return to the way things had been between them.

Xu Zhi hesitated for a few seconds, then loosened her grip on the medicine box and lowered her lashes. “You were the one throwing a fit with me. You thought I was the reason Chen Jing got hurt. I explained it to you, but you just wouldn’t believe me.”

Now he was the one asking to reconcile. She actually knew that for a young master like him, it was already no easy thing to bow his head first. But the heaviness in her chest had nowhere to go. She could not forget that at the ski resort, when he drove her away, he had shown her no mercy at all.

What happened at the ski resort had become a dividing line in their relationship, and Liang Muzhi understood that too. But the truth was too hard to verify. He only wanted to solve the problem, and said, “What I said then was too much. No matter what the truth is, Chen Jing was injured too. Can we just let this go?”

Xu Zhi thought that Liang Muzhi truly had not changed at all.

He did not care about the truth, did not care whether she had been wronged, perhaps because on the other side stood the girl he liked.

She still felt wronged, but she was also gradually facing reality. He would be her nominal fiancé in the future, and her company still needed the Liang family’s support. In the end, she nodded. “All right.”

This was the answer after weighing everything. She could still only be the Xu Zhi who yielded to circumstance.

Liang Muzhi handed the medicine back to her. She took it and asked, “What did you tell Chen Jing?”

Liang Muzhi felt as though a great burden had been lifted from his heart. His nerves relaxed greatly, and even his breathing became easier. He said, “I’ve explained it clearly to her already. The engagement is just to placate my parents, and she accepted that.”

Xu Zhi thought that Liang Zhengguo and Fu Wanwen had truly worked for nothing; Chen Jing was actually willing to be a hidden lover.

She suddenly wondered whether her future would really become what Xu Heping had once envisioned: a nominal mistress of the Liang household, watching her husband keep a string of women outside.

Only then did Liang Muzhi remember something important. He took the schedule proposal over. “Right, I came to go over the schedule with you. This was put together last night by my mother, your father, and the planning company. I made you a copy...”

Xu Zhi took it and flipped through it casually.

The Liang family was determined to make a grand affair of it. Even the schedule proposal ran several pages long, and the venue arrangement was extravagantly lavish.

“Let me see,” Liang Muzhi said, sitting down beside her as well. He opened his copy and scanned it at a glance, but very quickly his gaze froze.

Seeing that his expression was off, Xu Zhi looked at the page in his hand.

At the sight of it, she too froze.

There was actually an additional segment: under the host’s guidance on stage at the venue, he was to kiss her.