BXXD Chapter 10: Mine is still more beautiful

A group of burly men clad in black swiftly rushed up and took over the role of restraining the middle-aged man from Ran Qingzhuang.

The man shouted disjointedly as he was dragged further and further away.

“Do you know how dangerous it was just now?” Ran Qingzhuang jumped down from the table and started to walk towards me, brows furrowed.

“I…” I was pushed to the front by the crowd; it wasn’t like I was purposefully trying to take a stand. And I was only intending to kindly persuade the other person to rethink his actions—I didn’t expect him to get so agitated. If I knew it was going to be dangerous here, I wouldn’t have come. Who could predict the future?

My mood, which wasn’t originally too bad, plummeted to rock-bottom all at once.

Of course I could argue with him and prove my point if I wanted to, but he would almost certainly think that I was just raising petty objections, and it would inevitably result in both of us being upset.

He disliked me, so no matter what I said or did, it would always be wrong.

“…I’m sorry.” After thinking it through, I gave up on the idea of quarreling with him about it, and I apologized frankly.

However, Ran Qingzhuang’s expression didn’t lighten at all. Instead, his brows knitted even more tightly together, as if he was caught completely off guard by this move of mine and didn’t know what to do with all the words he was initially going to berate me with.

“Yao-ge, is everything okay?”

“Man, you move so fast, ge! You just vanished with a whoosh!”

During our conversation, several young men jogged hastily up to us. They all looked a little familiar—they appeared to be the subordinates I saw standing next to Ran Qingzhuang the night of Mrs. Jin’s birthday banquet. 

“Ning-ge, Ning-ge are you okay? You didn’t get hurt, did you?” From the other side, Chen Qiao finally found me too.

Now everyone had gathered together. Upon spotting Chen Qiao, the junior members immediately greeted him and asked him what he was doing here.

“I came with Ning-ge to find Yao-ge.” When Chen Qiao saw all the junior members staring at him blankly as if they didn’t understand what he was talking about, he clicked his tongue in exasperated disappointment and reminded them, “Why’re you all just staring—greet your sister-in-law!”

The junior members had most likely heard the rumors by now. Thanks to Chen Qiao’s light prompting, they snapped out of their daze and instantly lined up in a row. Hands pressed flat against the sides of their legs, they bowed respectfully towards me.

“Hello, sister-in-law!”

I shrank my head back a little; they were so loud that I could almost hear a faint ringing in my ears afterwards. I could clearly tell that Ran Qingzhuang wasn’t particularly thrilled about their form of address for me, but because of some reason that only he was privy to, he had no choice but to reluctantly and grudgingly allow the junior members to consider me their “sister-in-law.”

“Don’t call me ‘sister-in-law.’ Just Ji Ning is fine.” Similar to my stance with Chen Qiao, I didn’t accept the juniors’ form of address for me.

“Hurry and clean this up. Pick up all the broken glass, so nobody else gets hurt.” A tall, slim woman wearing a spotless white suit parted the crowd and approached us, followed by several bodyguards and people who appeared to be assistants. She looked to be in her forties, and her hair was cut neat and short.

The junior members called out “Hua-jie” when they saw her and automatically scattered away from Ran Qingzhuang.

Hua-jie paid no attention to them and walked straight over to Ran Qingzhuang. With a smile, she said, “Your help was much appreciated today.”

“All part of my duties, Hua-jie,” Ran Qingzhuang said.

Hua-jie nodded approvingly before her gaze swept towards me. Raising one of her slender eyebrows, she asked, “And this is?”

Ran Qingzhuang shot a pointed look at me. “Where are your greetings?”

For a brief moment, I felt as if I had returned to my childhood again, when my parents would take me on a string of visits to different relatives’ homes on New Year. There was always a large and random assortment of family members present: this person was Grandma, that person was Uncle, and none of the seniority could be mixed up. If you didn’t know how to address them or took even a second too long to say something, your parents would instantly scold you and ask where your greetings were.

“Hello, Hua-jie!” I quickly copied the others and greeted her obediently.

Chen Qiao seemed to be a frequent visitor to this place and was well-acquainted with the people who worked here, including Hua-jie. Sidling up to her, he fed quite a few whispers into her ear. Immediately after, the way she looked at me transformed into an expression filled with affection.

“Ah, so you’re Xiao Yao’s old sweetheart. Oh my, so this is the type our Yao-er likes.” She promptly reached out to pinch my cheeks. Somewhat taken aback, I didn’t even have time to avoid it. “This little face is so smooth. I heard you’re a cellist—no wonder your aura is different from everyone else’s.”

“Uh… mn…” Although my face was being distorted because of her tugging, I didn’t dare to move about, so I could only stammer out a response and smile at her weakly.

“What a wonderful temperament.” She patted my cheek, beaming, before she pulled out a gold casino chip from the pocket of her trousers and pressed it into my hand. “Good boy. This is our first time meeting, but I didn’t prepare any presents, so you should take this chip and go have some fun. Xiao Yao, come with me for a moment, I have to talk to you about something.” After that, she bustled off again in the same manner she had arrived in, with a whole entourage in tow.

I held the token like it was a hot potato and cast a beseeching look at Ran Qingzhuang. He glanced at me in return before he tossed out blithely, “Just take it, since it was given to you. I’ll go take care of the shift transfer, you two wait for me outside.” Then he also left with the junior members.

“That person from earlier is the casino manager, as well as Mr. Jin’s right-hand woman: Ou Hua. We all call her Hua-jie.” Once everyone else was gone, Chen Qiao started to fill me in. “She’s very straightforward. As long as you don’t anger her, she’s easy to get along with.”

The injured dealer went away, and the table they were in charge of temporarily ceased its operations. All the glass shards on the floor were swept away, allowing the casino to resume functioning. Any guests who entered now probably couldn’t even tell that this place had almost turned into the site of a bloody tragedy merely ten minutes earlier.

“What’s going to happen to that person?” I asked, peering at the chip on my palm.

“Considering that he injured someone and also made such a scene, Hua-jie won’t let him off easy.” When Chen Qiao saw me staring at the chip, he thought it was because I didn’t know what to do with it, so he suggested to me, “Gold chips are worth 5,000 yuan—if you wanna play, I’ll take you to play a round of something, since Yao-ge’s not ready yet anyway. If you don’t wanna play, I can exchange it into cash for you. What do you think?”

I put the chip into my pocket as I shook my head and said, “It’s fine. Just keeping it as a souvenir is good enough.”

Chen Qiao’s expression clearly indicated that he was baffled by my decision, but in the end, he didn’t attempt to advise me again in light of my “sister-in-law” identity.

—

After we waited in the car for about half an hour, Ran Qingzhuang finished taking care of his tasks and emerged from the casino.

At night, the east and west sides of Lion King Island had two completely different atmospheres. It grew darker and darker the further west we drove, until eventually even the high-beam headlights couldn’t illuminate much of the road in front of us.

It was predominantly Chen Qiao talking the entire drive back—about the incident that had just taken place at the casino, about something that was going on with one of his “brothers,” about the recent weather patterns. Ran Qingzhuang would occasionally respond to him with a brief reply, but for the most part, he was very quiet. From beginning to end, neither he nor I spoke a single word to each other.

Back at the residential building, we each returned to our respective homes. Chen Qiao got off on the fifth floor, while Ran Qingzhuang and I continued upwards. As soon as Ran Qingzhuang entered the apartment, he discarded his jacket on the sofa and went to the refrigerator in the kitchen to open a can of cold beer.

He tilted his head back and gulped down the liquid furiously, as if he was parched. His Adam’s apple bobbed again and again as he swallowed, the excess liquid trickling down his neck. Just as it was about to slide into his tank top, he let out a belch from the alcohol and roughly wiped away the wetness on his neck. At the same time, he crushed the empty beer can with one hand.

“What are you looking at?” he asked me irritably, brows furrowed. Only then did I realize that I had been staring at him from the entryway to the kitchen for quite some time.

“I…” Touching the ring box in the pocket of my shirt, I pressed my lips together before I mustered up the courage to walk towards him. “That person from earlier didn’t necessarily have to reach that point. If someone had lent him a hand or tried to persuade him otherwise, perhaps everything could’ve been turned around.”

All major mistakes had warning signs even in their most rudimentary stages. It accumulated over time, piling up layer after layer until it slowly reached the point of no return.

Ran Qingzhuang looked at me unwaveringly with pitch-black eyes that didn’t reveal a single trace of his emotions. “What, are you trying to give me a lesson on ideology in the middle of the night?”

“This isn’t a good path, after all.”

We seemed to be talking about the events that took place earlier, but at the same time, we weren’t talking about that at all. We were both fully aware of the pretense, but neither of us chose to expose the truth.

He chucked the beer can into the trash and said, “Since he’s already stepped onto this path, he’ll have to endure it no matter what the conclusion is. He has no right to complain about being wronged, nor is there really such a thing as ‘injustice’ in his situation.” After that, it seemed like he was getting ready to end the conversation and return to his bedroom.

I already knew that my attempt to persuade him to rethink his decisions would likely be in vain. As a result, I wasn’t particularly surprised by this outcome.

As he was walking past me, I grabbed onto his arm and said, “I have something to give you.”

He shot a glance at my hand. Before he could say anything, I let go of him on my own.

“What is it?” Not too bad—at least he didn’t reject me without even looking at it first.

A little nervous, I lowered my eyes and pulled out the ring box from my pocket before I opened it and presented it to him.

“My compensation to you.”

For a long moment, Ran Qingzhuang didn’t say anything as he silently took the box from me.

I felt like a prisoner that had been sentenced to death—I had already been forced up onto the gallows, and my hood-covered head was pushed obediently through the loop of rope. All that was left was the final drop, but it was that very last part that was the most torturous and difficult to endure.

Time trickled by slowly. My ears were filled with the sound of the clock’s second hand ticking across its surface.

It felt as if I waited for an entire lifetime: until all the insect eggs turned into nymphs that eventually burrowed their way out of the dirt, transformed into full-fledged cicadas.

Then, at long last, amidst the resonant cries of the cicadas, my time of death also arrived.

“Ji Ning, is there actually something wrong with your brain?” Ran Qingzhuang kicked me off the gallows mercilessly, making my death a very decisive and peaceful one.

He scoffed as he took the platinum ring out of the box. “Yes, this ring does look much better than that crappy silver ring of mine, and it’s also worth much more. But why would you think that I would accept it just because you’re giving it to me? If I don’t even want that other crappy ring anymore, did you really think I would want this fake one you bought?

“Stop doing these random, inexplicable things in an attempt to bring us closer together. I already told you: we are on two separate paths that will never cross. Did you not understand any of that? If you really want to make it up to me and earn my forgiveness, then hand in your resignation letter tomorrow and leave this island forever, so I don’t have to see you again.”

He stuffed the ring back into the box before tossing it at me. “This thing—you can keep it.”

I stood there stiffly, allowing the box to hit me and tumble onto the ground.

Ran Qingzhuang turned around and went back to his room, leaving me all alone in the kitchen.

Everything went silent again. This place was already rather quiet to begin with, but now it felt even more as if I was the only person left in the entire world—even the sound of my breathing seemed too loud.

I knew from the start that he wouldn’t accept it, but I still had the faintest hope… I wanted to try.

I picked up the red box from the floor and blew on it a little before tucking it away in the nightstand next to my bed.

What was the point of me keeping it? I might as well return it. But that was also quite troublesome—I would have to bother Chen Qiao, and he might grow suspicious as a result. Never mind then, I wouldn’t return it; I would just keep it, and it could be passed down as part of my inheritance. My mom and my sister could do whatever they liked with it when the time came. If my little sister wanted to give it to her future husband, that could always be an option too.

—

The next day, while I was still half-asleep, I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing; it was probably Ran Qingzhuang leaving bright and early in the morning.

After I got up, I tried knocking on his door, but just as I thought, he was no longer there.

I contacted the building’s maintenance and told them that my ring had fallen down the drain. I asked the worker to come by with the necessary tools to get it out.

Upon inspection of the sink, the maintenance worker told me that because it was a pedestal sink, the pipes were hidden in the column-like base. If I wanted to get to the pipes, the basin of the sink would have to be removed first.

It was here that he hesitated a little. “The sink is fitted with curved pipes, so the ring should still be there, but I’m worried that moving the basin will displace the pipes and cause the ring to slide down.”

I handed the hammer to him. “Go ahead.”

As soon as I gave my order, the worker took the hammer from me and smashed the basin apart with a few quick blows.

In the porcelain pedestal, the pipes were curved in an S-shape. The worker illuminated the interior with his flashlight—sure enough, there was a small, dark shape tucked in the curve of a pipe.

It was all very straightforward from there. The pipe was cut open, the ring was extracted, and that was that.

Before I could bring up payment, the maintenance worker collected his tools and told me not to worry; a new sink would be installed in the afternoon.

Well, that was fine by me. At least it saved me from having to explain the giant hole in the sink to Ran Qingzhuang.

—

After I sent away the maintenance worker, I brought the silver ring—which hadn’t seen the light of day for a while now—back to my bedroom. I took out the ring box from my nightstand drawer and placed the silver ring next to the platinum one, comparing them against each other.

No matter how I looked at them…

“Mine is still more beautiful.”

I shoved the silver ring into the box, layering it over the platinum ring. Then I carefully placed the box back in its original position and closed the drawer.

I’ll return it to Ran Qingzhuang once he’s back—hopefully it’ll make him a little happier, and he won’t have to keep frowning all the time anymore.