Crossing the Line – Chapter 71

I Only Believe Her Words.

“Pair of sixes.”

“Bomb. No problem.”

            

“Pass.”

“Pair of threes, just pair of threes, she’s out of pairs, she can’t beat you.”

Over several rounds, Lin Ji remained leaning against the back of the sofa where Jiang Siyi sat, idly turning the water bottle in her hand.

            

With just a few words, she guided Jiang Siyi to victory, round after round, routing Song Ti completely.

Lin Yunting’s expression grew uglier by the minute.

Lin Xuebo had the butler pour her another glass of wine and sipped it slowly.

            

The Card Shark hadn’t won a single round since she sat down.

She could count cards too, but she couldn’t think as fast as Lin Ji.

The utter rout before her even made her wonder whether, back when she’d won so effortlessly against friends, those bastards had deliberately lost just to leech off her food and keep her happy.

            

After another pair of fours she couldn’t beat, the fury of being toyed with made Song Ti slap her remaining cards onto the table and storm off.

Lin Yunting couldn’t bear to watch her throw a tantrum she’d brought on herself, acting like a sore loser.

It was exhausting—but she could only follow her out.

            

Song Ti used to visit the Xishan Old Residence often. She and Lin Ji each had their own rooms here.

Glug, glug, glug—

She poured herself a large glass of wine and pushed open the door to her room.

            

Inside, nothing but dust and the smell of mildew.

She didn’t care. She sat straight down on the dust-covered bed and gulped down a huge mouthful.

She drank too fast, choking until tears streamed from her eyes.

            

The sound of high heels entered the room and stopped behind her.

Lin Yunting didn’t do what she used to—fuss over her, worry about her, come rub her back to help her settle.

She just stood at a distance, watching coldly.

            

“Uncle Qian told you?”

Uncle Qian was part of the housekeeping team Lin Yunting had always worked with. He was the one who’d personally replaced the crystal chandelier in the old residence.

Song Ti was also his employer.

            

Today’s family banquet had taken a sudden, uncontrollably embarrassing turn, and Uncle Qian was the most suspicious accomplice.

Song Ti hung her head and said nothing.

“You came here, so at least go and greet people properly. Who are you pulling that face for? I went through so much trouble to invite your eldest aunt and your Biaojie and Biaosao here…”

            

Song Ti looked up, teeth clenched, and cut her mother off.

“She’s not my Biaosao. I don’t acknowledge it—can’t you understand that?”

Lin Yunting wouldn’t get angry over her outbursts and rudeness anymore.

            

She looked at her impassively, confirming once more that her heart had gone cold.

She didn’t even bristle at being interrupted. After a pause, Lin Yunting continued:

“If you came here to ruin today’s banquet, then congratulations—you’ve done it. You’ve destroyed what your father and I built, shattered all our efforts, made us beg and grovel for nothing these past days. Our family is finished.”

            

Halfway through, she laughed, looking at this bedraggled, mud-wretched daughter.

Her only daughter.

“No. You finished us off a long time ago.”

            

Lin Yunting had no more words left. She left.

Song Ti drained the rest of her glass in one swallow.

It tasted vile. She didn’t even like alcohol—it made her sick.

            

But only these miserable sensations could press down the hollowness eating away inside her.

She stumbled downstairs.

In the courtyard, she saw a dog.

            

A white, round little dog.

At first she thought the alcohol was playing tricks on her. No one in their family kept a dog like that.

Then she remembered—it was Jiang Siyi’s WeChat profile picture. Her dog.

            

Right. It was hers.

Named… Xueqiu.

Xueqiu’s dark bean eyes looked in Song Ti’s direction.

            

Song Ti still remembered encountering it once at Jiang Siyi’s front door. She hadn’t much liked it then.

Xueqiu had only just been brought home by Jiang Siyi at the time—skinny, with sparse fur, indistinguishable from a mutt, nothing like the plump, adorable fluffball it was now.

She hadn’t expected it to turn out to be a fine-bred Bichon Frise.

            

Song Ti: “Xueqiu, come here.”

Xueqiu cutely tilted its head, then scampered toward her on its little pillar-shaped legs.

You’re more loyal than Jiang Siyi. You still remember me.

            

Song Ti bent down to scoop Xueqiu up.

Xueqiu whisked right past her side without stopping at all.

Under Song Ti’s bewildered stare, it didn’t even glance at her, bounding straight past her toward what lay behind.

            

A hand wearing a rose gold plain band ring picked it up with practiced ease.

Lin Ji had changed out of her formal long dress and was wearing casual clothes.

Song Ti stared hard at Lin Ji, but Lin Ji only looked at Xueqiu in her arms, carefully picking off a half blade of grass that had stuck to its fur from who knows where.

            

Xueqiu licked her fingers, contented in her embrace.

The woman and the dog looked deeply familiar with each other.

Jiang Siyi’s dog was this close to Lin Ji?

            

What made Song Ti even sicker was the realization that Lin Ji’s hairpin looked familiar.

She squinted. That was Jiang Siyi’s too.

Some nerve in Song Ti’s brain throbbed uncontrollably, twitching with pain.

            

An alcohol-fogged brain couldn’t hold its tongue.

“Jiang Siyi’s hairpin. You’re wearing her hairpin?”

Song Ti walked toward Lin Ji, her steps unsteady.

            

Lin Ji regarded her with an expressionless, cold gaze, then set Xueqiu down and gestured for the butler nearby to take the dog away first.

Only she and Song Ti remained in the garden.

“I’m wearing my wife’s hairpin. Is there a problem?”

            

Direct and piercing, those eyes even sharper.

Song Ti was struck dumb by the retort.

In the past, she wouldn’t have dared argue back. It had been a while since she’d learned about their marriage, and she’d never once dared to utter a word of protest.

            

Now the alcohol lent her half a spine, and eyes burned red with jealousy dared to glare at Lin Ji.

“She’s my fiancée! We were betrothed since we were children—she’s always been mine! You stole her away while we were fighting… You’re my Biaojie, and you took advantage of a weak spot! Snatching away someone’s love! How could you do this!”

Song Ti finally vented the words she’d been suppressing for so long.

            

“I always wondered why, whenever I came home late, you’d show up to drive me places. It was never about me, was it? Your target was always her! Have you been scheming from the start to steal my fiancée?!”

Her fists were clenched white.

Red-rimmed eyes brimmed with tears of grievance.

            

She’d been turning it over and over in her mind these past days.

So many details hidden in the cracks of time had suddenly surfaced during one sleepless night.

That’s right—her Biaojie had never been close to the cousins in the family. She was aloof and reclusive. Why would she ever volunteer to pick her up?

            

That night the car broke down in the suburbs, she’d come at a single call.

It was never for her.

It was for Jiang Siyi—because Jiang Siyi was with her.

            

The person her Biaojie had wanted to protect all along was only Jiang Siyi.

She’d just been the incidental beneficiary.

She’d been a fool all these years!

            

Compared to Song Ti’s hysteria, Lin Ji’s expression didn’t change at all. She looked at her the way one watches a deranged person losing control—a pathetic creature at the end of her rope, raging helplessly.

Until she said those words—steal my fiancée.

“Your fiancée?”

            

The question came back cool and unrushed, and Lin Ji walked toward her without the slightest hesitation.

With every step forward, the panic in Song Ti’s chest ratcheted up another notch, and she couldn’t stop herself from retreating.

Until her heel caught the edge of the flower bed’s step. Someone who’d drunk too much had no balance to speak of—she toppled backward and fell straight in.

            

Song Ti’s world spun. The moment she opened her eyes, she saw the sole of Lin Ji’s sharp high heel right in front of her face.

About to step on her.

Song Ti threw her hands up to shield her face, crying “Don’t!” in terror.

            

The imagined horror of a heel smashing her features never came.

When Song Ti finally lowered her trembling arm, gasping, she saw Lin Ji’s shoe planted beside her cheek.

A hair’s breadth from actually grinding in.

            

The woman standing over her looked down at Song Ti the way one looks at garbage.

Thank god the person spending her life with Siyi isn’t this piece of trash.

Because if it were—even without cheating, the moment life threw the slightest hardship her way, forget protecting anyone—she’d duck behind Siyi in a flash, using her as a shield.

            

“I’m the one who was betrothed to Jiang Siyi on the island. What ‘since childhood’ are you talking about?”

Seeing the blank look on Song Ti’s face, Lin Ji sneered.

“You don’t even know about the island betrothal.”

            

Lin Ji slowly bent down, those eyes drawing closer and closer to Song Ti’s.

There was barely any emotion in them, but the raw, unfiltered pressure was something Song Ti had never experienced.

A ruthlessness distilled from a world she’d never set foot in—an instinct and undertone carved into the very bone.

            

Like the stillness of an apex predator in a dark jungle locking onto its prey—and the genuine terror that it really would tear flesh to shreds in the next second.

Lin Ji had known every time Song Ti went to harass Jiang Siyi.

She’d also seen how Lin Xuebo was willing to fall out with her own younger sister for Siyi’s sake.

            

And there was the cousin relationship, too. To spare her mother some grief, Lin Ji had let it slide.

What she’d gotten in return was Song Ti pushing her luck again and again.

And still having the nerve to cry thief.

            

“Taking advantage of a weak spot, stealing someone’s fiancée—isn’t that you, Song Ti?”

She grabbed Song Ti by the collar and hauled the scrawny woman up with effortless ease.

“Need me to refresh your memory?”

            

Song Ti was choking on her own collar, nearly suffocating.

Her feet kicked, trying to stand.

But the angle of her body was pinned by Lin Ji’s grip, making it impossible to get upright. She could only flail helplessly forward, her face turning an unnatural, swollen red.

            

Lin Ji had effortlessly dragged this provocateur into a world beyond her control.

She knew exactly what posture would make an ordinary person look the most humiliated, the most wretched.

“While I was missing—alive or dead unknown—you stole her away. Every bit of help that made her warm to you at first—those were all answers you pestered me into coming up with for you. Even that tiny bit of goodwill, you stole from me. Where do you get the nerve to say I took advantage of a weak spot?”

            

Every word drove the color further from Song Ti’s face.

She’d almost forgotten.

After Jiang Siyi’s mother passed away, her relationship with her family had deteriorated. She’d grown more and more withdrawn.

            

A pretty, quiet girl was an easy target for bullies.

Song Ti had wanted Jiang Siyi to depend on her, wanted the beautiful younger girl to look up to her—but she hadn’t known how to solve the problems either.

At the time, Lin Ji had just “transferred back from abroad.” Everyone said her Biaojie was a top student. A top student had to be smart, had to have plenty of solutions.

            

So every time, she’d tell Jiang Siyi, “Let me go think about it, I’ll tell you what to do tomorrow.”

Then she’d go find Lin Ji, repeat whatever had happened to Jiang Siyi—just without mentioning that the person being bullied was her.

Her Biaojie’s solutions had always been remarkably effective.

            

Jiang Siyi had grown more and more dependent on her.

Lin Ji had never once brought any of this up. Even after she figured out that Song Ti’s requests were all about helping Jiang Siyi out of trouble, she’d never gone to Jiang Siyi to claim credit.

Never said a single word to Jiang Siyi.

            

Over time, Song Ti had fallen into an illusion—

Those clever solutions had nothing to do with her Biaojie. They were hers. She was the one who’d told Jiang Siyi, the one who’d solved Jiang Siyi’s problems.

Jiang Siyi’s dependence, her gratitude—all of it was deserved.

            

She’d come to see Jiang Siyi as someone beneath her.

Someone who owed her care, who lived under her protection.

That was why, when Jiang Siyi first asked to break the engagement, she couldn’t accept it.

            

How could someone who’d grown up relying on her break off their engagement?

Lin Ji’s words had punctured the last shred of her self-entitlement.

All that adoration, all that dependence—every bit of it had come from Lin Ji.

            

It was Lin Ji’s hand, extended in secret, that had held Jiang Siyi and guided her through those painful years.

Song Ti’s eyes dimmed, bit by bit, until all the light was gone.

Defeat, suffocation, pain… tangled together in her chest. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even cry.

            

Having said what she’d always wanted to say, Lin Ji’s expression gradually returned to calm.

She released Song Ti’s collar.

Song Ti crumpled back into the trampled flower bed, coughing without end.

            

“You did protect her, once. You did think of her.”

Lin Ji glanced at her from the corner of her eye.

“Don’t harass her again—if you have even a shred of decency left.”

            

SPACE LINE

The voices were gone. Song Ti sat in the mud and weeds, eyes emptied, staring at nothing for who knows how long.

It was all absurd. It shouldn’t have been like this.

            

But why shouldn’t it? What had gone wrong? Her alcohol-ruined brain couldn’t produce an answer.

The sun was sinking westward. Aching all over, she hauled her mud-caked self upright with great effort.

Her neck still throbbed.

            

She heard voices—scattered laughter drifting from the main house.

It felt like that laughter was mocking her disgrace, gossiping about her incomprehensible, failed life.

A housekeeping auntie spotted her and gasped, “Oh my! What happened to you? Go wash up and change your clothes right away.”

            

Song Ti ignored her completely.

Like a wraith, she wandered the old residence for who knows how long. The longing for Jiang Siyi pierced her heart like needles, dense and relentless.

SPACE LINE

            

Lin Ji found Xueqiu and called Jiang Siyi. Splitting up to search, they reconvened at the first-floor corridor in front of the courtyard.

Lin Ji stroked Xueqiu’s head and placed it in Jiang Siyi’s arms.

“It didn’t run off. The butler noticed it stepped in some spilled wine and got its feet dirty, so he took it to get wiped down.”

            

During the card game, neither of them had been paying attention to Xueqiu. They hadn’t even noticed when it disappeared.

They’d checked the security footage and split up to find it.

Jiang Siyi knew Xueqiu wouldn’t wander off, and nothing would happen to it in the house, but after the earlier incident, she was still on edge.

            

She stroked Xueqiu’s head and looked at Lin Ji.

Nothing seemed wrong. At a glance, nothing unusual at all.

But she could sense something unfamiliar in Lin Ji’s bearing—a faint residue of tension and emotion.

            

“Did something happen?”

Jiang Siyi asked, a note of worry in her voice.

Not wanting to soil Jiang Siyi’s ears with anything about Song Ti, Lin Ji smiled faintly.

            

“Nothing. Let’s go back.”

Jiang Siyi: “…Okay. I’ll go get Auntie Xuebo.”

As Jiang Siyi carried Xueqiu upstairs, she glanced back at Lin Ji once more.

            

Lin Ji was answering Fan Qing’s call.

Lin Yunting had been in the middle of discussing business with Lin Xuebo.

When Jiang Siyi came up, Lin Yunting glanced at her, smiled, and fell silent.

            

Lin Xuebo took Jiang Siyi’s hand and pulled her to sit beside her.

“There’s nothing Siyi can’t hear. Go on.”

Meanwhile, downstairs.

            

Fan Qing: 【BOSS, that Zhou guy came to the company again, going berserk in the office. I’ve already called the police.】

The Zhou in question was the key figure in Huanwei’s ongoing acquisition case. He was stubborn and obstinate—if not for his one-track mind, this acquisition wouldn’t have been so difficult.

Fan Qing: 【I’ll handle the follow-up. Right now we need BOSS back for the final due diligence review meeting. Legal and finance teams are already waiting in the conference room.】

            

Lin Ji closed her eyes briefly. 【Alright. I’ll be there in about forty minutes.】

Fan Qing: 【Understood.】

Lin Ji went upstairs to tell Jiang Siyi she had to swing by the office, and that she should ride back with Lin Xuebo’s car.

            

Jiang Siyi: “Mm-hm. See you at home tonight.”

Lin Ji’s fingertips traced the back of Jiang Siyi’s hand of their own accord, gazing at her wife with lingering tenderness for a moment, and said:

“See you at home tonight.”

            

Fifteen minutes after Lin Ji left, Lin Xuebo and Jiang Siyi were getting ready to go too.

Lin Xuebo: “Siyi, wait for me a second. I need the restroom.”

“Okay.”

            

Jiang Siyi sat on the living room sofa, playing with the fur on Xueqiu’s head, waiting for Lin Xuebo.

She suddenly noticed Zhou Ni push open the back garden door and lean against the frame, her alert gaze sweeping toward the other side.

Zhou Ni’s appearance meant danger was approaching.

            

But not serious danger—after all, Zhou Ni was only standing there, not moving to act.

The kind of minor incident that merely showing herself would be enough to scare off.

“Jiang Siyi…”

            

Hearing that voice, Jiang Siyi understood.

She turned her head slowly.

Even knowing it was Song Ti, she was still somewhat startled to see her in person—wretched, covered in filth.

            

That also explained the unfamiliar tension she’d sensed on Lin Ji.

They must have clashed.

Judging by appearances, Lin Ji hadn’t come out worse for wear. Jiang Siyi felt a small measure of relief.

            

Song Ti spotted Zhou Ni and recognized the lunatic who’d nearly dislocated her arm. She didn’t dare step closer, standing ten paces from Jiang Siyi, crying as she spoke:

“Jiang Siyi… why won’t you even talk to me anymore? Do you hate me that much?”

Her tears didn’t move Jiang Siyi in the slightest.

            

The endless back-and-forth had left nothing but weariness.

Xueqiu bared its teeth at her, a warning growl rumbling in its throat.

Jiang Siyi looked down at Xueqiu, patiently smoothing out a small tangle in its fur.

            

“Is there something you need, Biaomei.”

The word “Biaomei” made Song Ti flinch visibly.

It was a clean, final severance.

            

She wouldn’t even get angry at her anymore.

Frustration and resentment curdled at last into bitter, concentrated spite.

I’m wretched and ruined. What right do you have to live so well?

            

“Jiang Siyi, did you know? From the very beginning, your fiancée was Lin Ji.”

She would use everything to provoke her, make her lose composure, make them misunderstand each other, fight, fall apart.

“You were betrothed since you were children.”

            

Those two sentences did flash a flicker of surprise through Jiang Siyi’s eyes.

Song Ti smiled. “But she didn’t want you. She broke the engagement, and that’s when I stepped in. You think she actually loves you? You’re just a toy she discarded on a whim and then couldn’t stand losing. Remember? She was gone from J City for so long—she only came back in middle school.”

Lin Xuebo had always kept this secret. Lin Ji was still under medical treatment, still on medication. She wouldn’t tell Jiang Siyi.

            

And Jiang Siyi’s reaction confirmed she hadn’t known.

Of course Song Ti wouldn’t tell the truth. She’d already prepared countless lies to make Jiang Siyi doubt, to make her suffer.

Finally, she had the upper hand over Jiang Siyi’s emotions.

            

She wanted her to care. Even hatred would do.

She couldn’t accept a complete severance from Jiang Siyi.

That was why she’d come here today.

            

Song Ti: “Do you want to know why she broke the engagement back then, why she left J City for so long? She was running away from your betro—”

Zhou Ni had already been loosening up her knuckles.

Lin Ji had told her on her way out: if Song Ti came to bother Jiang Siyi again, don’t show the slightest mercy.

            

“No.”

Jiang Siyi’s calm eyes and unwavering words swallowed every wave of Song Ti’s self-serving storm.

“I only want to hear it from Xiao You herself. I only believe her words.”

            

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The author has something to say:

Lin Ji: Another day of being spoiled by my wife 🥺🥺

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