Chapter 11 — An Indirect Kiss

Wei Zhao paid no attention to any of that. Sour or sweet, who cared — any meat at all was a stroke of luck. He had been running around all day without a bite, so he took the plate and fell to eating in great mouthfuls.

It really was good, far better than the little eatery Widow Wang ran at the head of the village. The colors, the ingredients, everything was done with far more care. How could it compare with Widow Wang's sweet-and-sour shredded pork? Still, the palate of a rich man's daughter was a touch too picky.

Gu Mengyao picked up a piece of water-boiled fish, put it in her mouth, and savored it. Her little face went instantly red from the heat; she puffed and blew, fanning her mouth with her small hand. "So spicy! But so good. Water, where's the water?"

Turning her head, she spotted the orange juice on the table, grabbed it, and gulped it straight down, mouth to bottle. She drank more than half the bottle in one go before setting it down. "Mm, that's better."

Shen Yushu looked at Wei Zhao, then at the juice bottle on the table, and finally fixed her eyes on Gu Mengyao's lips. Her face was a study in disbelief. Wei Zhao, meanwhile, stared blankly at Gu Mengyao and thought: girls in the city really are open. A bottle he had drunk from, and she just picks it up and puts her mouth right on it. Fierce. Brutal.

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

"N-nothing..." Shen Yushu sighed. She did not dare tell Gu Mengyao the truth. With a temperament like hers... God only knew what she might do.

"If it's nothing, then why are you staring at me?" Gu Mengyao was more baffled than ever. She shook her head and helped herself to another piece of water-boiled fish, put it in her mouth, and was once again overwhelmed by the heat. She picked up the juice bottle again and drank, mouth to bottle...

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

"Don't what? Xiaoshu, what on earth are you saying? What's wrong with you? You're acting so strange." Gu Mengyao set down the 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 was that Gu Mengyao had now drunk from Wei Zhao's bottle twice... Wasn't once enough?

"Xiaoshu, why are you hemming and hawing too? If there's something, just say it." Gu Mengyao was getting annoyed. What was this? All this mystery?

There was no help for it. Under Gu Mengyao's interrogation, Shen Yushu could only point at the juice bottle on the table, which now held nothing but the dregs at the bottom. "That drink... that drink..."

"What about the drink?" Gu Mengyao frowned. "So I drank your drink. 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, something dawned on Gu Mengyao. She turned her eyes to Wei Zhao, and her face changed drastically. "You drank that drink?"

Wei Zhao nodded innocently. So he had misunderstood, he thought. He had taken her for one of those open city girls, when really she had simply made a mistake...

"Damn it!" Gu Mengyao's face went green at once. She glared, eyes wide, and pointed at Wei Zhao as if to say something, but in the end no words came out. She clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for the bathroom.

"Hurk—" The sound of dry heaving came at once from the bathroom. Shen Yushu had been gloating at first, but when she saw that Gu Mengyao's reaction was really a bit extreme, she hurried after her.

"Yaoyao... I told you, I said I wouldn't say it. You were the one who made me." Shen Yushu looked at Gu Mengyao with a bitter face, a little apologetic.

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

"No way... a reaction this fast?" Shen Yushu looked at Gu Mengyao and muttered, puzzled, "Mom said kissing doesn't get you pregnant."

Gu Mengyao had just begun to feel a little better when she heard this. Nausea surged again as she remembered that she and Wei Zhao had actually shared an indirect kiss. Tears came streaming down her face.

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

"I don't? And you do?" Shen Yushu was none too pleased either. You were the one who carelessly had an indirect kiss with Wei Zhao, she thought. What does that have to do with me?

Gu Mengyao was already miserable enough, and there was Shen Yushu gloating. Furious, she clenched her teeth, reached out, and seized Shen Yushu in a hug, pressing her own little mouth to Shen Yushu's.

With a smacking "mwah," she kissed her, then let go. "Serves you right for gloating. Now you're in on it too."

"Ah! What are you doing?" Shen Yushu, caught off guard by the kiss, finally understood Gu Mengyao's vicious scheme. Well, now she was tainted too. Still, she felt a little better about it. She consoled herself: even if Wei Zhao's saliva on that bottle had gotten onto Yaoyao's lips, Yaoyao had just spat it all out clean. It definitely could not have gotten onto her own mouth. Right. Definitely not.

At this thought, Shen Yushu's mood improved considerably. Watching Gu Mengyao rinse her mouth over and over, she picked up a cup and went through the motions of rinsing her own mouth too.

After a long while, Gu Mengyao calmed down. She understood that even if she rinsed her mouth until the skin came off, it would do no good. What had happened had happened. There was no Doraemon time machine in real life; you could not go back and do it over.

As for Wei Zhao, though, she was on the verge of going mad. Letting this person move into her villa had been a colossal mistake.

A moment ago, Gu Mengyao had even felt the urge to kill Wei Zhao, an urge that demanded action. If someone had handed her a knife then, she would not have hesitated to drive it into his chest.

But now she did not even have the strength to curse. Gu Mengyao felt as if her whole body had collapsed. She looked at the table full of food and at Wei Zhao sitting there like a dolt, and her lips moved, but in the end she said nothing. She staggered toward the stairs...

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