“I told you not to do that already. Look, now Nan Nan is angry. Quick, apologize to him.” Liusu was like a coquettish little girl, hugging my arm affectionately. But she didn’t listen to me at all. Instead, she angrily said to Shu Tong, “Cousin, if you ask him with this kind of attitude, even if Nan Nan agreed to help you, I would not agree to it!”
I had an ominous hunch. I felt like Liusu wanted to sell me. Moreover, after she sold me, she would even want me to count the money for her!
“Chu Nan, my future cousin-in-law. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You are very handsome, so much so that you will make every woman lose their minds. Not to mention the third-rate stars, even the first-rate stars saw your pictures, they would want to smash their mirrors…”
I took the orange juice that Shu Tong humbly and respectfully passed to me, and curiously asked, “why do they want to smash their mirrors?”
“They would feel inferior,” Shu Tong said with a flattering smile, “you are so handsome that they would lose the courage to look at the mirror…”
Damn… I thought I was shameless enough, but I didn’t expect that Shu Tong would be much more shameless than me. She could even say such shameless words to flatter me.
Just like the expression – ‘flattery will get you everywhere,’ although my face was flushing in embarrassment, I couldn’t deny Shu Tong’s flattery completely. Otherwise, if I denied her flattery, wouldn’t that mean I also denied myself as well? Even if I knew she was using his trick to make me help her, I still wasn’t able to stop my ego from being inflated by her flattery. “Forget it, I don’t bother to argue such a trivial matter with you. Just tell me why you want me to impersonate Liu Xiaosheng.” Instead of saying that I was magnanimous, it was much better to say that I was being hypocritical.
From the corner of my eye, I could clearly see that Liusu gave Shu Tong a thumbs up. This bratty girl. This must be her idea. Obviously, she was trying to help her cousin.
Feeling embarrassed, Shu Tong said intermittently, “actually, it’s not asking you to impersonate Liu Xiaosheng. It’s… it’s… it’s asking you to…”
I took a sip of orange juice and said impatiently, “to what? !”
“Pretend to be my boyfriend…”
“Cough—” The orange juice I had sipped almost went into my windpipe. It caused me to cough so violently that my eyes were in tears. Liusu who was next to me seemed to have already expected that I would have such a reaction. She actually used the napkin she had already prepared to help me clean the spilled drink, “what did you just say? ! Pretend to be whose boyfriend? !”
“My…” Shu Tong’s voice sounded like a mosquito. Her face blushed like blood and she muttered, “I really couldn’t find anyone else… Otherwise, you think I like to ask you to help me?…”
“What did you say?!”
“Nothing,” Shu Tong gave a serious expression, but looked funnier than when she complained, “I mean, no one can help me except you.”
“No, I can’t help you either.” I simply refused, “it’s not like you don’t know my relationship with Liusu…”
Shu Tong looked surprised and said, “what relationship do you have with Liusu?”
Feeling that she was provoking me, I held Liusu’s hand and stared at her, “what do you think?”
“Fine, as her elder cousin, I admit your two’s relationship,” Shu Tong finally admitted defeat, and said, “but Liusu has agreed to it, because it was her idea to ask you for help.”
“It was your stupid idea?” I was in disbelief, “even if you two are close siblings, how can you lend your boyfriend to her?”
“Bah, don’t be so full of yourself, who said you are my boyfriend?” Liusu blushed. She rolled her eyes at me in embarrassment and said, “what do you mean by that this is a stupid idea? Besides, I also can’t think of anything else. Apart from you, there is only Yang Wei who could pretend to be my cousin’s boyfriend. I wanted to ask you for help in the beginning, but my cousin felt embarrassed because of our relationship. So she went to Fengchang to look for me today. This was why she didn’t go to school today. She wanted to meet Yang Wei first and see if he was willing to help. But Yang Wei kept gawking at her the moment he saw her. We could all tell that he was drooling secretly. My cousin was really scared of him…”
Brother Wei was really an honest man. He never concealed his true feeling… He could always show his truest self in front of women. This had always been something that I admired. Looking at the disappointed look of Shu Tong, I couldn’t help but feel puzzled, “why do you have to find someone to impersonate your boyfriend?”
Shu Tong pouted her lips and said sadly, “I just got dumped by a man, so I don’t have a boyfriend…”
To be honest, she didn’t look like a woman who was dumped by a man to me. In fact, her relationship with Liu Xiaosheng was like a few words on a piece of white pepper. And now, those few words had just been rubbed out by an eraser…
“What does that have to do with you needing someone to pretend to be your boyfriend? Even if you just got dumped by someone, there is no need for you to rush to find a new one, right?”
Maybe because Shu Tong’s request was too ridiculous, so I couldn’t help but jokingly say, “Besides, if you really need one, why ask someone to pretend to be your boyfriend? You can just hurry up and find yourself a new one…”
After hearing what I said, Shu Tong’s face suddenly became cold. It felt like a gust of cold wind on a snowy night. I couldn’t help but shiver. ‘Did I say something wrong?’ I was confused.
“Can’t you stop joking. We are serious, and no one is joking with you!” Liusu pinched my arm fiercely and said, “who do you think my cousin is? You think she is a casual woman?”
Seeing the tears of grievance appearing from the corners of Shu Tong’s eyes, I realized that there might be something hidden behind this ridiculous request, so I hurriedly said, “No, what I mean is, Shu Tong is also a pretty girl, so she must have a lot of suitors, right? Can’t she choose anyone from her suitors? Why does she have to ask me to pretend…”
Shu Tong’s expression darkened. She sniffled and said dispiritedly, “I don’t have any suitors…”
“You didn’t have one because you were with someone, but now that you no longer have a boyfriend, you will definitely have many suitors. By that time, you will probably have a hard time choosing which one to be your next boyfriend.”
I wasn’t trying to flatter Shu Tong. Shu Tong was a beauty who was not inferior to Liusu in any aspect. She was simple and delicate, charming and cute. She had a Cinderella kind of temperament. Otherwise, it was impossible to attract a person like Liu Xiaosheng. So the reason why she didn’t have any suitors in the past was that no one would think that they had better conditions than Liu Xiaosheng. Trying to compete with him was like inviting humiliation.
“There isn’t enough time,” I was taken aback when I heard this. Then Shu Tong carried on sadly, “from two years ago, my parents have constantly urged me to go back to marry someone. I always ignored them. But I didn’t expect them to be so impatient. Last year, before I went back, they had already arranged a blind date for me. I was so scared that I didn’t even dare to go home during the Spring Festival. But then they even wanted to bring that man to see me…”
“A blind date?”
Seeing that I still hadn’t figured it out, Liusu explained to me in a low voice, “my cousin’s hometown is in the countryside. They don’t encourage puppy love but encourage early marriage. Most of the girls in her hometown are married in their early twenties, but my cousin is twenty-five years old this year…”
It turned out that this was the reason. Since there was such a custom in her village, it was understandable why her parents wanted to rush her. However, this kind of blind date was no different from a forced arranged marriage. It didn’t give her any freedom to choose her own future husband at all.
“Of course I didn’t want them to come over. At that time, it just happened that I have a colleague who married a senior executive of the Liu Corporate Group and I met Liu Xiaosheng at their wedding. I noticed that Liu Xiaosheng also showed a certain affection for me, so I lied to my family and said that I had a handsome and rich boyfriend…”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I interrupted Shu Tong, and asked with uncertainty, “so, you agreed to be Liu Xiaosheng’s girlfriend just so you could use him to fool your family?” If Shu Tong nodded her head then I definitely would not help her. Although I didn’t like Liu Xiaosheng, I also didn’t like women who played with men’s feelings.
“Who said that I agreed to be his girlfriend? I only said that to my family, and I have never said that to other people. He is at best my suitor.” When Shu Tong said this, she was so confident that it could almost be considered arrogant. But as she carried on, she slowly started to lose confidence, “originally, I thought he was quite sincere, and I was about to really agree to be his girlfriend, but I didn’t expect that he would suddenly dump me at the time when my parents requested to meet him. They are coming over next week. My heart wound still hasn’t been healed. How can I find a new boyfriend in a few days? Besides, I don’t trust any man now, and I don’t plan to get married in my life…”
Bah! Shu Tong was definitely pretending to be pitiful! No wonder that Liusu said that she wouldn’t even give Liu Xiaosheng a chance to hold her hand. It turned out that she never treated Liu Xiaosheng as her boyfriend. Then could she even call that he had dumped her? At most, he just gave up chasing her, right? In terms of her heart wound. I didn’t believe it at all. I had experienced the feeling of having my heart broken by love before. That was definitely not a feeling that people could get over easily. At least, not like how she would react now.
Maybe Liu Xiaosheng wasn’t serious about chasing Shu Tong. Probably, he was just playing. But what about Shu Tong? This woman’s attitude towards having a serious relationship was very confusing to me…
