Chapter 54.1: “I need a girlfriend.”

Cheng Yao got the call from her parents while she was still half-asleep.

“Yao Yao! Do you know who we ran into today?”

Cheng Yao, groggy from her afternoon nap, mumbled, “Who? That girl who used to chase after Dad back in school?”

“No! What’s going on in that head of yours all day?” Mama Cheng snapped, both angry and excited. “It was that useless boyfriend of yours, Xiao Qian!”

Huh??? Qian Heng??? Wasn’t he supposed to be on a blind date today?? How did he end up bumping into her parents?!

“Your dad and I saw him at this fancy Western restaurant today—he was having dinner with another woman! Straight-up cheating behind your back while telling you he’s working his butt off in Dongguan!”

Cheng Yao was now wide awake. A sense of doom slowly crept in…

“M-Mom, did you… did you talk to him?”

The following parts of the text will be scrambled to prevent theft from aggregators and unauthorized epub making. Please support our translators by reading on secondlifetranslations (dot) com. If you are currently on the site and and you are seeing this, please clear your cache.

“Myzj vs bkx, xu qssv! R nyzzle swv bkp ekptwpvkdt clbyhksa aktbv vbld yde vblal!” Yyxy Ubldt bwqqle raswezu. “Mwadp swv vbyv tkaz bl oyp lyvkdt okvb bye ds kely—pssd yp pbl qswde swv bl yzalyeu bye y tkazqaklde, pbl ewxrle bla obszl tzypp sq okdl sd bkx! Plplahle kv, kq usw ypj xl!”

Ubldt Zys bye kdelle clld wrplv ycswv Ckyd Tldt tskdt sd y czkde eyvl, yde ulyb, pbl bye plnalvzu okpble kv oswze czso wr kd bkp qynl… cwv dsv zkjl vbkp!

…

Yyxy Ubldt jlrv tskdt sd yde sd, asypvkdt “pnwxcyt” Ckyd Tldt zkjl pbl oyp rlaqsaxkdt y pvyde-wr aswvkdl. Jwv vbl xsal Ubldt Zys zkpvldle, vbl nszela bla blyav talo.

“Ysx… R esd’v vbkdj R’zz zkhl vs pll vbl pwd vsxsaaso…”

Yyxy Ubldt pdyrrle, “Ebyv dsdpldpl yal usw vyzjkdt ycswv? Fs obyv kq bl nblyvle? Nkql kp qwzz sq nayr zkjl vbkp—obyv’p y zkvvzl blyavcalyj kd vbl tayde pnblxl sq vbkdtp?! Cwkv qllzkdt psaau qsa uswaplzq. Twaau wr yde calyj wr okvb bkx yzalyeu, tsv kv?”

…

Ubldt Zys oydvle vs pyu psxlvbkdt lzpl, cwv fwpv vbld, pbl blyae vbl qasdv essa zsnj vwadkdt.

Qian Heng…

Qian Heng was back…

“Forget it. You just had bad judgment, that’s all. No one’s blaming you for being fooled,” Mama Cheng softened a little. “Pull yourself together. Your dad and I are eating out for now—we’ll come see you later.”

Cheng Yao couldn’t even hear her mom clearly anymore. Her head was buzzing, and with the approaching storm about to burst through her front door, she had no idea how to handle it.

There wasn’t a shred of optimism left in her. Not even reciting Gorky’s The Song of the Stormy Petrel helped. Besides, she wasn’t a storm petrel anymore. At best, she was a shivering quail, trembling in place.

***

Qian Heng came home with a dark, stormy face.

Cheng Yao snuck a glance at the front of his suit jacket—sure enough, there were some suspicious stains on it. And under the jacket, the white dress shirt still showed blotchy splotches of wine-colored dye blooming faintly as he moved.

So he was really splashed…

At that moment, Cheng Yao didn’t even dare lift her head to meet Qian Heng’s gaze. She bowed immediately, practically ready to kneel on the floor.

“Boss, I’m guilty.” Cheng Yao’s face was scrunched in remorse. “I didn’t know my parents would go to that restaurant. I didn’t know they’d be so impulsive and jump to the conclusion that you were cheating. I didn’t know they’d confront you right there in front of your date and embarrass you like that. And I definitely didn’t know your date would dump her drink on you before you even got a chance to explain…”

She clung to a shred of hope as she spoke, her voice turning weak and tentative: “But, well, from what I’ve heard, blind dates usually go nowhere, right? Most of the time, people just don’t click. And sometimes the matchmakers are just… way off. With your standards, Boss, I bet some run-of-the-mill girl wouldn’t even register in your eyes. So, even if today was a little messy and ended in misunderstanding, at least it didn’t mess up anything important, right…”

Cheng Yao had it all worked out in her head—after all, Qian Heng always thought 99% of people were idiots, so his dating standards must be sky-high. If he hadn’t been into the girl to begin with, this would all blow over easy…

But of course, life loves to slap you in the face.

Qian Heng’s voice shattered her expectations.

“I was actually really satisfied with her.”

Cheng Yao: ???

Qian Heng pressed his lips together and spoke seriously, “She was pretty satisfied with me too. If your parents hadn’t barged in, I’d probably be in a relationship by now.”

That fast??? Is that even legal??? How is that possible!!!

But Qian Heng was dead serious—he insisted that things had been going great with that girl, the vibes were perfect, and they were this close to riding off into the sunset together… until Cheng Yao’s parents came crashing in and blew it all up, ruining his one good shot at love.

“So, you need to compensate me.”

Cheng Yao was on the verge of tears. “Boss, whether people get together or not comes down to timing, destiny, chemistry—it’s all fate! Maybe this was heaven’s way of telling you the two of you weren’t meant to be! And besides, how am I supposed to compensate you? You know the law—we don’t do emotional damage claims here in China. We’re both in the legal field; we should respect the law, right?”

Qian Heng took off his coat, tossed it aside, and sat down on the sofa. He crossed his arms coolly over his chest.

“I don’t want emotional damages. I’m not short on money.”

“Then…?”

“I’m short a girlfriend.”

Cheng Yao: !!!

Cheng Yao was stunned. Shocked. Absolutely speechless.

Qian Heng was looking at her as he said that… Did that mean—was he hinting at something??

What do I do what do I do what do I do!!

She suddenly couldn’t breathe. Her mind raced—was Qian Heng trying to make her his girlfriend??? Wait, so all those TV dramas were real?! Was he about to say: “Since your parents made me lose a girlfriend, you have to be the one to make up for it”?

How was she supposed to respond to that?! Say yes?? But no! Her dream first love needed to be epic, with truckloads of roses and grand romantic gestures! Not some weird compensation deal! And everyone knows dating your boss is a terrible idea—if they break up, it’ll be super awkward! Qian Heng’s the boss, so obviously he won’t quit… which would mean she’d have to find a new job?! And with his toxic personality, who knew if dating him would be lethal?!

But if she turned him down… they’d still have to see each other at work every day. Wouldn’t that be even more awkward?

While Cheng Yao’s brain spun out a whole soap opera’s worth of internal drama, Qian Heng finally spoke again—leisurely, like he had all the time in the world.

“I need a fake girlfriend to bring home to deal with my parents.”

Cheng Yao blinked.
Oh.

Qian Heng shifted his position and continued,
“My dad’s birthday is coming up. He’s issued a strict order—I must bring someone home. Otherwise, they’ve already printed 3,000 copies of my matchmaking profile and are ready to hire people to hand them out at Renmin Park and all the subway entrances.”

Oh.

“You just need to pretend once. Shut them up for now. After a while, we’ll just say we broke up because work got too busy.”

Oh.

“Cheng Yao?”

“Oh.”

Qian Heng frowned. “What’s with all the ‘oh’s?” He turned his head to the side. “Anyway, it’s settled. I’ll let you know when it’s time.”

“Oh.”

“……”

***

Qian Heng was in an absolutely foul mood.

In fact, he hadn’t felt this way when he first got home.

Sure, he’d been splashed with red wine, but at least that little drama had successfully rid him of the clingy blind date girl, so overall, he’d considered the outcome acceptable. As for wrangling Cheng Yao into this mess—that hadn’t even been part of his original plan. He honestly hadn’t expected that Cheng Yao’s parents would skip over the entire backstory and leave out the crucial detail that the whole misunderstanding had been deliberately engineered by him.

Thanks to their selective storytelling, Cheng Yao was now under the impression that her parents had just impulsively stormed into his date and ruined everything without rhyme or reason.

And of course, his usual cold face only made things worse—it convinced Cheng Yao even more that she’d committed some great crime. The moment she walked through the door, she had that tragic, sacrificial look on her face, like she was about to offer herself up for execution.

Qian Heng didn’t even know what possessed him—some strange impulse made him lie and say he’d been very satisfied with the blind date. And then it just spiraled into him blackmailing her into pretending to be his girlfriend.

But now, what the hell was that “oh” supposed to mean?!

And not just one—two “oh”s!

Qian Heng was utterly, thoroughly, one hundred percent dissatisfied.
Was that how you speak to your boss?!

He’d proposed she pretend to be his girlfriend, and she didn’t look the least bit flustered, excited, nervous, or honored? Seriously?

Even if it was just fake, wasn’t the fact that he, someone this refined and tasteful, had chosen her, a compliment in itself?

But Cheng Yao didn’t seem moved at all!

Not only was she not moved—she looked like she’d just taken a serious hit to the soul!

Qian Heng was practically livid.

But he couldn’t blow up.
So he could only bottle it up and stew.

***

In Cheng Yao’s eyes, though, Qian Heng was acting like a completely different beast.

Sure, his face was still as cold and expressionless as ever—but his whole vibe was off. If he had a 40-meter broadsword on him, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d pulled it out already.

What made it worse was that she’d caught Qian Heng sneakily glaring at her several times, with this intense, menacing look in his eyes. She couldn’t help but wonder—was he plotting revenge because his blind date got ruined?

Cheng Yao was baffled.
Like… seriously? They only met once. And he fell that hard? He was so hung up on that girl he was ready to come at her with knives? Was it that deep?!

She pouted to herself, feeling weirdly sour. Just who was this stunning goddess of a woman that left Qian Heng so heartbroken and unforgettable? Hadn’t he even complimented her looks before? So what, this other girl was even prettier?

Unacceptable!

But no matter how annoyed she felt, Cheng Yao couldn’t forget one important fact:
She needed something from Qian Heng.

Her parents were coming over tonight!

And right now, Qian Heng’s stuff was still all over the place. They had just caught him “cheating” earlier—if her parents saw his things here, how would they possibly stay calm?

“So, Boss,” Cheng Yao began tactfully, “how about I take this chance to help pack up your stuff? You’re moving out soon anyway, right? I could get a head start sorting things. That way, when my parents show up and see your things packed, they’ll figure we’re breaking up and won’t question it too much…”

Qian Heng said nothing.

She kept going, trying to reason with him: “And even if you hide somewhere, if all your stuff’s still here, with the way my mom is? She’ll straight-up throw everything out. Might as well let me pack it—tell her I’ll handle it, keep her out of it.”

Still no response.

But since Qian Heng didn’t outright object, Cheng Yao took his silence as silent approval.

Not wasting a second, she got right to work, fully aware her parents could show up at any minute.

“Boss, how do you want me to sort these documents? Should I file them all into one box?”

“Boss, I put all your coats together here.”

“Boss…”

Cheng Yao was working up a sweat, completely focused, while Qian Heng didn’t lift a finger. She figured he must’ve really been devastated by the failed date—even moving back to his fancy villa couldn’t cheer him up.

---