seduction

Yu Xi really wanted to ask Deng Yi why he wanted to have a fake marriage with Zhou Ji'an.

She was clearly the best choice.

In the crowded barbecue restaurant, Yu Xi, who suddenly stood up, was not conspicuous. She walked towards Deng Yi.

Deng Yi finished the deep red liquid in his glass, pushed the glass away, stood up and said, "Very interesting, it should get even more interesting in the future."

Yu Xi stopped in her tracks.

The hour hand of the wall clock has already pointed to the number nine.

Zhou Ji'an sat on the sofa in the living room, watching a lighthearted variety show, but still felt uneasy.

Before she married Deng Yi, she had never lived in a house where the sofa wasn't against a wall, and she never imagined that sitting on a sofa without a wall could make her feel so insecure.

It felt as if someone might stand up from behind the sofa at any moment, take out a rope and put it around her neck, or swing a short knife at her neck.

Deng Yi hadn't returned by 10 o'clock, so Zhou Ji'an couldn't call him to ask. He would think she was urging him, or that she was trying to control him like a wife.

Zhou Ji'an's sleep alarm went off. Usually, she would already be in bed by this time, but today she hadn't even washed up yet.

She told herself that she wasn't waiting for Deng Yi, but was afraid to enter the empty bathroom and bedroom.

But in the end, she couldn't help but think that perhaps from now on, she would enter the empty world alone day after day, in a repetitive cycle.

When the bedroom door was pushed open, Zhou Ji'an had just dried his hair.

She spent about half the time she usually does washing up today.

When Deng Yi looked at her, she felt a pang of guilt, the same guilt she felt for not keeping proper hygiene while staying at someone else's house and being afraid of being discovered.

"I went swimming today and have already taken a shower," Zhou Ji'an explained in a panic.

Deng Yi's gaze swept over the section of her waist that was exposed between her white T-shirt and gray shorts.

Zhou Ji'an quickly noticed and immediately pulled up the hem of his T-shirt.

The T-shirt and shorts are clothes from many years ago, and they are quite loose. She occasionally wears them as pajamas, so the T-shirt and shorts do not look old.

But she still felt it was not presentable.

"you……"

Meeting his gaze, Zhou Ji'an swallowed the rest of his question, smiled, and said, "I have to go to work tomorrow, I'm going to sleep now."

Deng Yi nodded: "Mm."

His expression and tone were even colder than they had been on the phone.

Zhou Ji'an was glad that he hadn't asked the question, "Why did you have such a long dinner party?"

Zhou Ji'an lay on the bed, but he couldn't fall asleep at all.

She wasn't sure if it was the bedroom light or the sound of running water in the bathroom that was causing the problem.

When Deng Yi lay down on the bed, she kept her eyes tightly closed, her eyelids trembling, and she was trying her best to pretend to be asleep.

The lights went out.

Zhou Ji'an breathed a sigh of relief, but a strange sense of disappointment welled up inside him.

Deng Yi, lying on the other side, was unusually quiet.

His interest in her seemed to last less than a day.

Perhaps, in less than a day, he realized that she was no match for the girls he had met, and thus cut his losses in time.

She really shouldn't have dated or married someone who was so much better than her in every way.

In the future, she will encounter countless moments like this where she doubts herself.

Feelings of inferiority returned to Zhou Jian, disrupting her sleep.

In the middle of the night, Zhou Ji'an woke up from his dream and heard the sound of running water from the bathroom again.

The bedroom remained completely dark, with only a sliver of light leaking through the crack in the bathroom door.

Deng Yi was not on the other side of the bed.

Zhou Ji'an vaguely knew why Deng Yi was still showering at this time, but she just didn't want to believe that what was happening was real.

Not long after falling asleep again, Zhou Ji'an's alarm clock rang.

This alarm clock was to prevent her from oversleeping; when it went off, it meant it was already nine o'clock.

Deng Yi was nowhere to be seen.

Zhou Ji'an suddenly felt a sense of bewilderment, like waking from a dream.

What's next?

Never mind, she doesn't know what she's thinking next.

Getting to work is the priority.

With a piece of bread from the refrigerator dangling from his mouth, Zhou Ji'an pushed open the study door while thinking about his work for the day.

Deng Yi was already sitting at the desk.

Zhou Ji'an immediately retreated outside the door; she shouldn't have brought the food into the study.

Deng Yi looked up at her, and before Zhou Ji'an could detect the disdain in his eyes, she closed the study door again.

In the kitchen, Zhou Ji'an, who was wolfing down his food for the first time, drank a large glass of water before he could wash down the dry bread.

Before pushing open the study door again, she carefully patted her clothes to avoid getting bread crumbs on them.

Deng Yi remained in the same posture, but this time he didn't look up at her.

As she turned on her three computers, she heard Deng Yi say in a casual tone, "The room on the second floor that faces the garden is the gym."

"Oh." Zhou Ji'an didn't understand his intention. At first, he only replied with a single word, but after sitting down, he wanted to say something more.

So she asked, "Do you always work out at home?"

Deng Yi flipped to an A4 sheet of paper, looked down and replied, "Yes, the equipment is very complete. If you don't mind, you can use it for some strength training, it will be good for you."

Zhou Ji'an recalled some embarrassing past events and replied perfunctorily, "Okay, I'll use it when I have time."

Zhou Ji'an had done strength training for about three months to strengthen the muscles in his shoulders, neck, and waist in order to reduce the chances of developing occupational diseases.

After she had been training for almost three months, her coach looked at her back and said, "Jian, you are a fitness goddess. You've only been training for a short time, and look at your slim waist and perky butt."

The coach's voice was loud, and some people around her were glancing at her sideways, while others were even walking closer to look without any attempt to hide it.

Zhou Ji'an, who was doing squats with added weight, almost strained his back.

She was already dressed much looser than other fitness enthusiasts, yet people still noticed her figure.

In addition, she really didn't expect that strength training would make her buttocks more perky.

The next day, Zhou Ji'an made up an excuse to stop his fitness classes and focused solely on swimming. At home, he would only practice yoga or run in place.

Deng Yi suddenly asked, "You only eat one slice of bread for breakfast?"

Zhou Ji'an was replying to work messages when he glanced at him out of the corner of his eye and replied, "We can eat something else later if we get hungry."

Deng Yi: "Irregular meals and unbalanced nutrition have made me thinner and thinner."

Zhou Ji'an's meals were regular, but because his nutrition was indeed not very balanced, she couldn't say that what he said was wrong.

She simply said, "I'm not getting thinner; I'm just about ten pounds lighter than I was in college."

But after she finished speaking, she suddenly realized that he might have been saying that she wasn't voluptuous enough, and she felt a little uncomfortable.

This seems to be the second time he's said she's thin, so he's probably quite dissatisfied with her figure.

Deng Yi's gaze shifted from the script to her, and he asked doubtfully, "Are you sure you've only lost about ten pounds?"

His gaze was too direct, and thinking about what he had done to her yesterday and the day before, Zhou Ji'an's breathing became erratic. "Not going to the company today?"

Deng Yi looked away, put down the script in his hand, picked up a new one and flipped through it, asking indifferently, "Are you kicking me out?"

"Of course not." Zhou Ji'an was so flustered he almost stood up.

She was just trying to change the subject.

Besides, this is his home; what right does she have to kick him out?

Deng Yi then asked, "Is work heavy today? What time will you finish? Can you invite your friends over to your house?"

The topic suddenly changed again.

He asked three questions in a row, but he didn't really mean to ask for her opinion.

Zhou Ji'an delayed, saying, "I can probably finish my work by 2 or 3 pm, but my friends might not have time, since we are all working professionals."

She needs to think of more reasons to discourage Deng Yi from inviting her friends to his home.

"Lu Jianni isn't an independent designer? She shouldn't need to work in an office. The girl I met the day before yesterday who wasn't interested in me didn't seem like an office worker either."

Deng Yi held the edge of the paper and said slowly, "And Xu Zhiyan, he seems to be looking for a job, so he should have plenty of time."

He'd said everything; what could she possibly say?

Zhou Ji'an thought for a moment and said, "They're not familiar with you, and you're not familiar with them either. It'll be awkward."

“Lu Jianni was your makeup artist at our wedding. We met that friend the day before yesterday, Xu Zhiyan… Xu Zhiyan and you…” Deng Yi paused for a moment and continued, “We didn’t have time to talk much yesterday, but we can chat during today’s gathering.”

Zhou Ji'an lacked confidence in her acting skills, and neither her friend Lu Jianni nor the newly acquainted girl Zhao Xingran were easy to fool.

Perhaps Lu Jianni and Zhao Xingran will discover that her marriage with Deng Yi is a sham as soon as they walk in the door.

As for Xu Zhiyan, Zhou Ji'an always felt that he already knew that her marriage with Deng Yi was a sham.

Perhaps Wei Jinglin noticed something amiss and revealed it to Xu Zhiyan, otherwise Xu Zhiyan, who always had a good sense of propriety, wouldn't have sent her such a strange message.

Zhou Ji'an said worriedly, "I'm afraid they'll find out something. I'm not as good at acting as you are. I might not be able to keep up with your acting and I might accidentally expose myself."

Deng Yi put down his script, leaned back in his chair, and, adopting a relaxed and leisurely demeanor, scrutinized her closely before asking, "What did you discover? What did you expose?"

His rhetorical question reminded Zhou Ji'an of what he had said the day before.

He said they had dated, had a marriage certificate, and had a public wedding; it wasn't a sham marriage.

Zhou Ji'an was momentarily at a loss for words to answer his rhetorical question.

Discovering that their marriage was a sham, or exposing that it was a sham, wouldn't be the answer, and certainly wouldn't deter him from inviting her friends.

As Zhou Ji'an was about to say something disgusting like discovering there was no love between them and exposing the lack of affection between them, Deng Yi stared intently at her with eyes as dark as a deep pool and said, "Did you do something that made them discover it? Or have you already exposed something?"

Zhou Ji'an was startled, feeling that all of his previous words were meant to elicit these two questions.

After having this suspicion, when she looked at his excessively handsome face again, she actually saw a hint of indifference.

Zhou Ji'an, who could never keep a secret, simply laid his cards on the table.

She thought that having her cards on the table wouldn't be any worse than being alone in an empty house, or having her hopes dashed.

"On our wedding day, while I was getting my makeup done, Lu Jianni and Yu Xi suspected I was pregnant, which is why I suddenly married you. So they said I wouldn't sleep with you. My intention was to say I wasn't pregnant, that it was impossible for me to be pregnant, but I accidentally..."

"Did you accidentally reveal your true thoughts?" Deng Yi finished her sentence for her.