From last night until this afternoon, Ning Zhen’s desire to flee was urgent and genuine—otherwise, she wouldn’t have bought a plane ticket.
She knew clearly that she had been exposed; this game could no longer be played.
Facing a cunning old fox like Meng Xianwen, she seemed to have no chance of winning, yet deep down she still wanted to fight desperately. That's why, when she arrived at the airport, she posted a WeChat Moments update that only he could see.
She wanted to test his reaction.
Of course, Meng Xianwen wasn’t the kind of male lead in a prime-time drama who would drop all his work to drive to the airport and chase after someone. That kind of behavior—not in this lifetime, nor the next, nor the one after that—would he ever do.
She was just clutching at a faint hope.
For instance, that he might call her or send a message.
If he did that, she wouldn’t worry about being unable to gauge his attitude.
Yet, after sitting in the airport coffee shop for half an hour, she received greetings from many people—everyone except him. She even checked if her phone was out of credit, recharging it a few times in frustration. When he stayed silent, as if dead, without the slightest stir, she flew into a rage!
Was this even a person?
Was this even a man?
How dare he, how could he ignore the moment she had posted specially for him?
If his girlfriend was angry and about to leave, even if he just sent her a question mark in reply, she wouldn’t be this furious. But he chose to ignore her entirely, as if her actions had no impact on him at all.
For someone else, this might have been water off a duck’s back. But not for Ning Zhen. She was livid, and it stirred a long-dormant competitive spirit in her.
Meng Xianwen suspected she wasn’t his girlfriend, didn’t he? Testing her again and again, even dragging Meng Jiaran into it?
Well, she was going to dig in her heels and make him believe, no matter what!
Ning Zhen promptly ordered another iced coffee, downed it in one go, and her muddled mind instantly felt clear. She had always been like this—the angrier she got, the sharper her thinking.
A mark that once existed but was now gone—what could it prove? Only that she was young, much younger than him, and her skin healed quickly. So what?!
Ning Zhen grew calmer, weighing the cards she held.
Even if she had carelessly thrown down a 3, she still had a straight and a pair of aces up her sleeve.
His parents, his younger brother, all his friends knew she was his girlfriend. How could she possibly have made all these people cooperate in a charade for her?
If she had that kind of power, would she have been caught in his trap three months ago?
In short, just the testimony of these people was enough to refute him. Because he couldn’t contradict the version of himself that had solemnly confessed to being her boyfriend three months ago.
At the airport, Ning Zhen inhaled, exhaled, calmly waited until her flight had taken off, then dragged her suitcase with a confident stride out of the airport, hailed a taxi, and returned to the hotel in high spirits.
Meng Xianwen stared intently at Ning Zhen as she approached him. He seemed surprised, but remained seated without moving, his tone flat and unruffled: “You didn’t leave?”
He felt an odd sensation inside.
When he had been sure she had left, and her silent departure aligned perfectly with his guesses, she came back—upending all his assumptions.
Could he have been wrong?
For as long as he could remember, it was the first time he had doubted his own intuition.
He deeply disliked this feeling.
A feeling that things were slipping out of his control.
“I did leave at first,” Ning Zhen said, looking at him with a reproachful gaze. She was still angry, sitting a seat away from him instead of pressing close. Her voice was soft and airy, unlike her usual assertive tone: “I don’t understand what I did wrong. Before your business trip, everything was fine. You told me to be good and wait for you to come back, said once you got through this busy period and after the project launched, you’d buy me a yacht and take me out to sea to relax.”
“Then, within twenty-four hours, you got into a car accident. I was so scared I didn’t dare close my eyes, staying by your bedside in the hospital all night.”
“After finally managing to keep you safe until you woke up, you forgot that I’m your girlfriend.”
At these words, a flicker of emotion passed through Meng Xianwen’s calm eyes. He leaned back lazily, fixing his gaze on her, taking in every detail—her words, her every expression.
Ning Zhen wanted to squeeze out a few tears, but it was hard. She was so angry right now that she had to restrain herself from grinding her teeth.
So she could only hang her head helplessly, sniffing, “I told myself, forgetting is okay. At most, at most I’d treat it like falling in love all over again. I can overlook everything else, as long as you’re safe, as long as you’re healthy. But you don’t seem to see it that way. You don’t need me at all. Last night, I was still thinking about what tea treats to prepare for you, to make your work less tiring…”
When she reached this point, she lifted her head to look at him, her eyes shimmering with moisture. “But when I woke up in the morning, I was alone in the room.”
Meng Xianwen listened quietly.
Inside his mind was a scale, one side belief, the other doubt.
Each unexplained suspicion, and each fact that countered his instinct, were weights on the pans.
He just had to see which side was heavier in the end.
He couldn’t deny that Ning Zhen, as a person, was strange—her behavior included.
His family and friends all said she was his girlfriend. He believed they had no reason to deceive him about something like this.
And she seemed very familiar with him; her body language couldn’t be faked. If their relationship hadn’t reached a certain level, given what he knew of her past, she wouldn’t have dared.
Yet, at the same time, the loopholes in her actions made their relationship puzzling, sparking a long-lost interest in him.
He was curious to see what was really going on.
“I’m sorry,” Ning Zhen noticed that he seemed lost in thought, judging that he might be wavering. She played her trump card and, taking the chance to retreat in order to advance, she moved closer to him, hesitantly reaching out to take his hand resting on his knee. “I shouldn’t have agreed to attend that dinner with you and then sneak away. On the way to the airport, the taxi driver saw me crying so hard, and she told me that life always throws many obstacles. Xianwen, I thought about it, and I shouldn’t have been so willful. Let’s take this as a test, a tough time, and face it together, okay?”
After a long pause, Meng Xianwen nodded silently.
He lowered his gaze to their clasped hands, her warmth spreading over the back of his hand. He didn’t continue the topic but, after a moment of thought, asked gently, “Have you eaten yet?”
“No!” Ning Zhen pouted, looking pitiful. “How could I have any appetite…”
“Alright, what do you feel like eating?” His brow relaxed.
“Anything I want?” she countered.
Meng Xianwen didn’t nod or answer, but the look in his eyes as he watched her held a kind of almost indulgent calm.
Without warning, Ning Zhen leaned in close. He didn’t dodge, sitting still as a mountain, their noses almost touching. She stared into his eyes, trying to peer into his very soul to see if he truly believed her. But she found nothing.
His eyes were still.
His breathing never quickened.
His heartbeat seemed calm.
She had known him for years, their relationship always lukewarm, and she had only ever seen him lose his temper once.
It was also after that time that he seemed to stop pretending in front of her, letting his worse side show.
Ning Zhen’s gaze shifted. She didn’t look at him but instead tilted her head closer to his neck and took a sniff. “You didn’t drink today, did you? That’s what I’m most worried about. You just got out of the hospital—you can’t have alcohol.”
Her breath brushed past his ear. Meng Xianwen’s eyes flickered slightly, but his tone remained flat. “Don’t worry. I didn’t drink.”
“Mm, no smell of alcohol.” She let out a light laugh. “That’s more like it.”
With that, she settled back into her seat, still keeping a close but not too close distance, and looked at him expectantly. “So since you’re not drinking and it’s still early, will you come eat with me? Think of it as a date.”
“Okay.”
He paused for a moment, then nodded in agreement.
A few minutes later.
Ning Zhen took Meng Xianwen’s arm as they rode the elevator down and walked through the hotel lobby. It was late spring in Nancheng, and the climate was pleasant. The night breeze carried a warmth as it brushed against them. Their driver had already left, and Ning Zhen didn’t want to call him back, so she decided on a whim that they’d walk to a nearby restaurant to find something to eat.
She wasn’t hungry at all.
Yeah, right. As if she’d starve herself waiting for him in the hotel. Did he deserve that?
The food at the airport was terrible. On the way back to the hotel, she’d scrolled through her phone, done some research, and had the driver take her to a highly rated restaurant instead. She hadn’t eaten much—just enough to feel about seventy percent full. How else would she have the energy to deal with him?
Acting—especially acting for Meng Xianwen—was exhausting.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ning Zhen suddenly asked as they waited at a crosswalk for the light to turn green.
Meng Xianwen looked at her. “What?”
“I apologized to you, but you haven’t apologized to me!” Ning Zhen grew impatient, shaking his arm as if she wanted to rattle his brain loose again. “What did you promise me last night? You said you’d wake me up this morning so we could go to the office together, but you left on your own. Isn’t that breaking your word? Is that right?”
“…”
Meng Xianwen almost lifted a hand to rub his forehead.
Did she really have no idea why he hadn’t woken her up?
He’d been trying to focus on work, and she kept taking sneaky photos of him, disrupting his concentration at every turn. If he hadn’t weighed the pros and cons and decided to let it slide, he’d have had security throw her out long ago.
“Sorry,” he said flatly.
His tone and expression showed no sign of remorse. If you scanned him with a sincerity detector, you’d come up with nothing.
Ning Zhen pretended to glare at him, dissatisfied with his attitude, but inside, she was practically giddy. What a milestone—she never thought she’d live to hear Meng Xianwen apologize to her.
She silently decided to stick with this act all the way.
That sorry was just the beginning.
“I’ll forgive you for now, but don’t let it happen again.” She curled her lips into a smile. “Everything you promise me, you have to deliver.”
Especially that yacht that could go out to sea.
Since he hadn’t argued or refused when she mentioned it, that meant he’d agreed.
