Chapter Five: People Like Her Don’t Belong in Shangyang
1482 Words
Chapter Five: People Like Her Don’t Belong in Shangyang
Huo Lingchen fixed Nian Yaxuan with a long, level look.
He had recognized her.
She was the girl who had kissed him in the bar that night.
His gaze then slid obliquely to the dress on Mi Jia’s body. On a girl of Nian Yaxuan’s age, that style would indeed have looked dated. When he had picked it out for Mi Jia earlier, he had only swept a casual glance over the racks. Once she’d changed into it, he’d lost interest and hadn’t bothered to check whether it suited her at all.
Now that he examined it properly, he had to admit that the other woman wasn’t wrong. On Mi Jia, the dress did look a little old‑fashioned, and she simply didn’t have the presence to carry it.
All at once, every gaze in the area turned toward Huo Lingchen.
He merely gave a noncommittal “Mm,” and said nothing more.
…
Mi Jia stared at him with wounded eyes. She wanted to speak up for herself, but fear kept the words locked behind her teeth.
Behind them, his assistant Zhong Haicheng studied Nian Yaxuan, feeling that she looked more and more familiar.
Suddenly, a flash of realization struck him. He smacked his forehead, quickly stepped forward, and said in a low voice,
“President Huo, this young lady is your—” wife.
But before the last two syllables could escape his mouth, a deliberately bright voice cut him off.
“Hey, handsome, it’s you!”
Before Zhong Haicheng could react, he found himself being yanked aside.
Good grief.
He was the one who had helped process her marriage certificate with Huo Lingchen, after all. And when her father had tried to foster some sort of connection between the newlyweds by bringing her to see Huo several times, it had always been this assistant who had received them.
Under no circumstances could she let Huo Lingchen know who she was.
After that kiss in the bar and now this abrupt appearance in front of him, he would only be more convinced that she was deliberately throwing herself in his path to attract his attention.
“Mad—”
“Surprised?” she interjected lightly, neatly cutting across his words. “We meet again, heh‑heh.”
Ignoring the puzzled stares from everyone around them, Nian Yaxuan dragged Zhong Haicheng several meters away.
He stopped and looked down at her, completely at a loss.
“Madam, what’s the matter? President Huo hasn’t met you yet. I was going to tell him who you are.”
…
The absurdity of it nearly made her laugh aloud.
Married for three years, and husband and wife still needed a third person to introduce them.
If not for that very real marriage certificate, she would have thought she’d never married at all, much less to some far‑removed international CEO named Huo Lingchen.
Leaning in close, she whispered by his ear,
“There’s no need, Assistant Zhong, but thank you. I’ve already signed the divorce agreement and asked Butler Zhuo to pass it to President Huo. So there’s really no reason for us to ‘meet’.”
“Divorce agreement? Madam, you want to divorce President Huo?”
Shock made Zhong Haicheng take an involuntary step back. He stared at the girl in front of him in disbelief.
If he remembered correctly, she was six or seven years younger than President Huo.
Was there something wrong with her head, to be so eager to divorce a diamond‑grade bachelor like Young Master Huo?
Nian Yaxuan pinched at the hem of her jacket, her tone a little embarrassed.
“Yes. And to avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings, I’ll have to trouble you to keep this between us.”
…
When Zhong Haicheng returned, Huo Lingchen had just finished paying for Mi Jia’s purchases.
Those cold, indifferent eyes paused for half a heartbeat on his assistant’s slightly dazed expression, then slid over to the woman currently flinging herself into Han Huiming’s arms.
A faint curl of mockery tugged at his mouth.
As expected, she was no decent sort of woman.
The thought that he had actually let someone like that kiss him darkened his expression even further.
“Assistant Zhong,” he said, his voice low and frigid, “I don’t care what you have to do with her. Get her out of this mall. People like that don’t belong in Shangyang.”
He had lacked the opportunity to deal with her at the bar.
This time, he would not let her go.
Snapped back to reality, Zhong Haicheng followed his gaze.
Nian Yaxuan was currently clinging to Han Huiming’s arm—coquettishly.
“Little Ming‑Ming, Ming’er, won’t you buy that lipstick for me? Ahem, I want it too. Look, her boyfriend bought it for her already.”
Don’t rush, she told herself. Think.
How did that third‑rate campus “beauty” do it when she acted all sugary and cute?
Han Huiming clutched his chest and stared at the woman shaking his arm, on the verge of collapse.
“Brother Nian… what happened to you? Did something traumatize you? Don’t scare me like this.”
Nian Yaxuan, acting coquettish.
The stunned faces of the others said everything about how unbelievable the sight was.
“Mmh‑mmh, Little Ming‑Ming, I… I love lipstick so much. Buy it for me, pretty please,” she coaxed.
Her smile was already stiff at the corners. If Huo Lingchen did not move away soon, she was going to make herself sick.
But for the sake of her freedom, she would go all in.
Her logic ran like this: she had once taken the initiative to kiss Huo Lingchen; now she was openly flirting with another man.
One day, if Huo learned her true identity and discovered that she was this kind of… well… thoroughly disreputable woman, wouldn’t that only make the divorce go even more smoothly?
“I’ll buy it, I’ll buy it—Brother, I’ll buy it,” Han Huiming blurted.
Anything, as long as she stopped this bizarre performance.
Hands trembling, he scooped up all the lipsticks in front of him and thrust them at the salesgirl.
“Ring them up. Quickly…”
His heart could not take much more.
As soon as they paid, he was sending Nian Yaxuan straight to a psychiatric clinic.
Of everyone present, only Zhong Haicheng understood that she was putting on a show.
He lowered his voice and murmured to his boss,
“But, President Huo…”
“Assistant Zhong, President Huo has spoken. Why are you still standing there?”
Mi Jia, finally easing the knot of resentment in her chest, cut him off with a note of smug satisfaction.
She was convinced that Huo’s action was entirely on her account—that he was expelling this woman to defend her honor.
In front of President Huo, she really was different from all those other women.
“But President Huo, she is…”
The proprietress of Shangyang International, he almost said.
Was his boss truly not going to think twice before throwing her out?
A single razor‑sharp look swept over him.
This time, Zhong Haicheng swallowed the rest of his sentence and turned to the bodyguards behind him.
“Quickly. Clear them out.”
Nian Yaxuan had been keeping half an ear on their side of the floor.
Throw them out?
Perfect. She hadn’t really wanted those lipsticks anyway.
“No need to trouble Young Master Huo’s men—we’re leaving now.”
She hopped lightly down from the raised platform, intercepted the box the salesgirl was about to carry to the register, and calmly set it back on the display.
Then she reached back, grabbed the two closest people—Han Huiming and Lin Wanying—by the arms, and hustled them away from the counter.
Watching her retreating figure, Huo Lingchen felt a sliver of doubt flicker through his deep eyes.
There was something undeniably odd about her behavior.
Mi Jia shot several invisible daggers at Nian Yaxuan’s back, then smoothed her expression, slid her arm through his again, and purred sweetly,
“Young Master Huo, I’m starving. Let’s go up to the fifth floor of Yuheng, shall we?”
“Lead the way,” Huo Lingchen replied coolly.
Shaking off his unanswered questions, Zhong Haicheng hurried ahead to guide them.
At the entrance to Tianxuan, Nian Yaxuan suddenly stopped and turned to Han Huiming.
“Hui‑ming, didn’t you just say you wanted to go to the fifth floor of Yuheng?”
He immediately took a step back.
“Sis, we can talk about this. I’ve spent my entire allowance topping up games. I really can’t afford that.”
“I’ll treat you,” she said.
- Writer
