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Wei Jinglin held the photo frame steadily, his eyes seemingly piercing through the glass, giving him a deeply affectionate look.
Deng Yi coughed lightly and said, "That's fake."
Wei Jinglin looked up, his expression puzzled.
"The director's signature and Gian's handwriting on it were both done by me." Deng Yi recalled his childish act, his expression slightly unnatural. "How could I possibly put a gift that Gian gave me in a place where you can freely enter?"
Wei Jinglin laughed in anger, his laughter echoing through the previously empty room. He let go, and the photo frame crashed to the ground with a loud bang, but the wooden frame and glass remained undamaged.
He stared at the intact photo frame, pondered for a moment, and then smiled with relief, "So you deliberately let me know about your relationship with Zhou Ji'an. The reason you suddenly showed up at my housewarming party was because you saw my conversation with Zhou Ji'an."
Deng Yi remained silent in thought.
Wei Jinglin was still smiling, his jealousy, suspicion, resentment, and inferiority complex almost completely gone. "I thought you were different from us, at least. I even thought that your relationship and marriage with Zhou Ji'an was simply because you liked her and couldn't forget her. But now it seems that you are no different from us. All you see and think about is yourself. When you meet someone, the first thing you think about is whether that person has any use to you."
Wei Jinglin even wanted to burst out laughing. He walked to the door, turned back and said, "I fucking thought I was really inferior to you in every way."
Deng Yi was silent for a moment, then closed the cabinet door and said calmly, "I knew her before you did, so I don't need to use her to provoke you."
Wei Jinglin scoffed coldly: "No wonder he's a drama fanatic, he can't even get out of character while acting."
The sunlight illuminated Deng Yi's subtle changes in expression by the window, and also revealed the handwriting in Zhou Ji'an's notebook.
Sunny/Wednesday/Second floor of the library
Last Saturday, Deng Yi and I watched a TV series together. The relationship between the female and male leads gave me an inexplicable discomfort. They didn't seem like lovers, but more like a father and daughter, or rather, the kind of unconditional, boundless doting relationship that the screenwriter expected or imagined a father would have for his daughter. Hmm... I can't quite put my finger on it, but just thinking about the male and female leads in such a relationship holding hands, kissing, and having sex makes me feel a little disgusted.
Why do people find it disgusting? Is it because it's like incest? But at the time, some people in the comments said that this was a "dad-type" boyfriend, and many people wished they had a boyfriend like that.
What was Deng Yi thinking? Why did he invite me to watch this TV series together?
Will he feel uncomfortable like I do?
Could this be related to his professional assignment, which requires him to watch such TV series and critique the values they convey?
Or is he trying to imitate the male protagonist...?
That would be terrifying.
But wait, it seems Deng Yi is treating me like the male protagonist in the story, only with some differences.
What's the difference? What's the difference? Think about it carefully.
I can't figure it out, and thinking about it doesn't help. Could it be that Deng Yi has spoiled me into becoming a childish female lead?
Sigh, a thought suddenly occurred to me: if a smart, quick-witted, mature, and independent woman is pampered for many years by someone like the male lead in a TV drama, will her abilities be weakened? Will she eventually lose the ability to solve problems independently, just like the female lead in the drama?
If such an experiment were to be conducted in practice, wouldn't it be necessary to prevent the female protagonist from discovering that the male protagonist's doting behavior was purposeful? In addition, such doting behavior would likely place high demands on the male protagonist, since it's impossible for one person to dote on another person completely without limits.
Would male celebrities in the entertainment industry who are not short of money or fame and have excellent acting skills perform "pampering" like this in order to maintain their image?
It seems that I haven't heard of any male celebrities who would spoil their girlfriends or wives without limits, but there are quite a few who are spoiled without limits by their girlfriends or wives.
Zhou Ji'an flipped to the last page of the notebook and found that this was the last entry in the diary.
She had little recollection of those writings; she had probably only jotted down these shallow thoughts during breaks from her studies, hoping to have something in common with Deng Yi. So she casually left the notebook in Deng Yi's studio, and had never thought of it again over the years.
She forgot about the notebook's existence, and she also forgot her previous thoughts.
Zhou Ji'an flipped back to the last diary entry, glanced at the date at the end, and suddenly realized that she had written this entry less than two days before her breakup with Deng Yi.
A jumble of thoughts raced through Zhou Ji'an's mind, and the sunlight stung her eyes. She closed them and leaned against the French windows.
"Was the anxiety expressed in this diary the main reason I mustered the courage to break up with Deng Yi?"
How could I forget this?
Half-asleep, Zhou Ji'an frequently tried to dispel the suspicions that Yu Xi had planted in her heart and mind.
She opened her eyes in the warm study, looked at the sunless floor, and sighed, "How can it be considered as Yu Xi implanting it? I've always had similar suspicions."
The voices outside the study swayed loudly as they burst into the wide-open study door.
"Where is Jian?"
"In the study."
Zhou Ji'an braced himself with one hand on the ground and gripped the notebook tightly with the other, staggering to his feet. He looked around blankly, searching for a place to hide the notebook, while familiar footsteps grew closer and closer.
In her haste, she pulled open the desk drawer.
There was a thin stack of A4 papers in the drawer, and the top one had the words "Divorce Agreement" printed on it in large characters.
Zhou Ji'an felt as if someone had suddenly shoved a fist into her throat, silencing her shock and astonishment.
She swallowed the shock and bewilderment stuck in her throat in vain, closed the drawer, and walked toward the laptop bag in the corner.
"Is the work finished?" Deng Yi asked.
Zhou Ji'an knelt on the ground with her back to him, zipped up her laptop bag, and trembled uncontrollably. In the end, she could only tightly grip the rough laptop bag to barely steady the overwhelming sense of humiliation and replied, "Just finished."
The next second, she was lifted up from behind.
"What are you doing?" Zhou Ji'an shouted, grabbing his hands that were holding her thigh. "Please put me down."
The person behind her was clearly taken aback. They put her down, turned her around, and asked, "What's wrong?"
When Zhou Ji'an met Deng Yi's exaggeratedly doting gaze, he could no longer speak to him in the same distant tone as before.
So that's why she didn't remember the worries in her diary on the day of the breakup.
"I feel a little... dizzy," Zhou Ji'an lied, adding details, "Sitting for too long has caused insufficient blood supply to the brain."
Deng Yi seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, reached out and pinched the back of her neck, gently pressing it a few times. As if he felt it was inconvenient to apply force, he directly pulled her into his arms, covered her fragile cervical spine with his large hands, and began to massage her professionally.
"You can't just swim, you need to do some strength training." Deng Yi lowered his head and kissed the back of her neck, which had been rubbed red. "Do you want me to teach you?"
Zhou Ji'an pushed him away in a fit of urgency and said coldly, "I can do it myself."
He seemed somewhat surprised, looking at her quietly, as if trying to see through her, or perhaps intending to force her to "confess" and explain the reason for her sudden change in attitude towards him.
“I’ve studied this before,” Zhou Ji’an said as he walked toward the desk.
"Who taught you?" Deng Yi stood still.
Zhou Ji'an avoided his gaze, bent down to turn off the computer, and said, "I went to the gym."
The silence in the room made Zhou Ji'an look at Deng Yi with unease. He was still standing there, not moving an inch.
All three computers were shut down. Zhou Ji'an even wiped her desktop clean, but Deng Yi didn't move or show any change in expression.
"I'll go make dinner. Are you going to wait for Auntie and the others to cook?" Zhou Ji'an asked.
Zhou Ji'an was aware that her behavior was unusual, because she hadn't cooked for herself since Deng Yi came home.
"What are you planning to do?" Deng Yi asked.
He approached her as he asked questions, his tone complex and difficult to decipher.
"I don't know," Zhou Ji'an said. "I'll just make something to fill my stomach."
"Planning to go back to your old life?" Deng Yi stopped half an arm's length away from her. "Whose divisive words did you believe this time?"
His keen observation about the cause of her unusual behavior immediately made her breathless.
“Wei Jinglin, Xu Zhiyan? Or Qin Xirang, Yu Xi? Or perhaps Lu Jiani, Zhao Xingran?” Deng Yi listed the names of the people around her.
If he really is using her as a test subject, then he is now doing everything he can to prevent her from finding out about the experiment, in order to avoid affecting the results.
What if he wasn't using her as an experiment? Would she break up with him over such a misunderstanding that isn't even a real misunderstanding?
Zhou Ji'an wavered, continued to avoid his probing gaze, and retreated to the other end of the desk.
No, if he wasn't using her as an experiment, he wouldn't have already drafted the divorce agreement.
"I've already entered into a fake marriage with you, how dare I frequently contact those people you mentioned?" Zhou Ji'an said, then realized he had spoken too harshly, as if he were being defiant or complaining.
She glanced at Deng Yi's expression and said, "I have to go to work every day, I don't have that much time to chat."
Deng Yi pondered the words "fake marriage" that she had just blurted out, and gave a cold laugh. "You've had a hard time, pretending to be married to me... After marrying me, you've lost your freedom."
Zhou Ji'an also noticed the unusual tone in Deng Yi's voice. He would never have spoken to her in such a sarcastic or even mocking tone before.
“That’s not what I meant,” Zhou Ji’an said.
That's not what she meant at all. She didn't feel she had to contact those people. She could even avoid contacting anyone except him, so she didn't feel she had lost her freedom without "friends."
She had given up this freedom of social interaction when she agreed to the fake marriage, but that doesn't mean she felt it was a loss.
Moreover, they had discussed this topic in front of Wei Jinglin and Qin Xirang last time.
He knew perfectly well that she didn't care about this so-called freedom.
Deng Yi pressed further, "Then what do you mean?"
Just as Zhou Ji'an was trying to figure out how to explain, Deng Yi asked again, "What do you mean by starting to reject me again because of a few casual words from an outsider?"
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