Mistakenly Marked – Chapter 9
by Little PandaTerms
A habitual liar.
Water is among the softest things in this world. And among the hardest to guard against.
She’d come out in too much of a hurry for a coat — up top, only a thin black sweatshirt, long-sleeved, high at the collar.
Pure cotton. Within seconds, the rainwater on Bo Suiqing had soaked through it, seeping in.
A cold, faintly sticky chill spread along her arms.
Not the least bit likable.
But almost immediately, it was blanketed by what came through next — the warmth of the person held in her arms.
As though the layers of clothing between them were gradually ceasing to exist, as if no estrangement separated them at all, and she could feel the other woman’s body heat, furnace-warm and unmistakable.
Even more detestable.
Xu Jialuo stopped in front of the elevator, knuckles tightening as if to dispel the unpleasantness. “Call the elevator.”
“…”
The person in her arms took a few seconds to respond, then reached out a hand and pressed the number.
Her one redeeming quality: she knew exactly when to stay quiet.
Carried out of the security room and all the way here by Xu Jialuo, she hadn’t said a single word — only leaned, soft and boneless, against her chest.
The very picture of gentle, harmless docility.
A habitual liar.
When the doors slid open, Xu Jialuo stepped in at an even pace.
The numbers began to climb.
Her floor was high. She’d ridden this elevator countless times, yet this ride, for some reason, felt exceptionally long.
One would think a certain someone might extend a courtesy around now — say, at minimum, “I can stand on my own.”
The person in her arms appeared to have no such plans whatsoever.
The knot between Xu Jialuo’s brows pulled tight once, then loosened. In the end, she didn’t drop her.
Because she was, in truth, very light.
For someone who trained year-round, barely any effort at all.
What sort of standards a movie star imposed on her own weight, Xu Jialuo couldn’t say — only that they were nothing she would endorse.
A bag of bones with barely any meat on her — one shove and she’d topple over. Not safe. Nowhere near healthy, either.
Take now: caught in a little rain, and she carried on as though she could no longer walk.
Too weak.
Wordless silence spread through the elevator.
Until Bo Suiqing tipped her head back, voice thick and clinging. “Xu Jialuo.”
Xu Jialuo didn’t look down. She watched the floors tick upward. “Talk.”
“Are you cursing me out in your head?”
Xu Jialuo went quiet for one second. “…”
“You are.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Now you are.”
Xu Jialuo: “…?”
Xu Jialuo lowered her head, prepared to say something cold and unpleasant — the “shut up or I drop you” variety.
But first she saw the unnatural red on the face in her arms.
Xu Jialuo shut her mouth.
The body heat registering against her arms was, in fact, climbing. The woman was starting to burn with fever.
Out of the elevator, a few strides to her door — and one second before Xu Jialuo could set her down to unlock it, Bo Suiqing dropped her head and pressed it to her neck. “Stop scolding me.
“After I came downstairs… I ran into the strangest fan, all of a sudden. I was scrambling to hide, and the rain just kept getting heavier.”
Her voice was pitched low and husky, soft.
A born performer, laureled again and again at her young age — she had the exact measure of a faint choke in her throat calibrated to perfection.
Scorching breath drifted down, light and unhurried, settling on the collar pressed to Xu Jialuo’s neck with the sweet pheromones riding it — slipping beneath the fabric, toying with one small measure of collarbone.
“Xu Jialuo.”
Short of actual contact, it was all but a tender kiss steeped in coaxing. “I was a little… frightened.”
Only “a little,” she said — yet the tail of the word trembled.
“So cold. So miserable…”
A fine, closely woven net — spun in expectation of comfort from whatever prey it caught.
Xu Jialuo turned her face aside and tightened her arms, hoisting Bo Suiqing up a little higher.
Flat-toned: “Don’t smear your hair dye on me.”
“…”
The net sprang a leak.
Xu Jialuo lowered her lids, took in the side of Bo Suiqing’s face — gone taut in an instant — and tightened the arm beneath the woman’s knees. “Put some strength in your arms.”
Bo Suiqing obeyed, tightening her hold around Xu Jialuo’s neck — only to feel the arm at her back abruptly let go.
Thinking she was about to be shoved away, Bo Suiqing faltered. “I really was scared—”
Sensing that Bo Suiqing now held on securely, Xu Jialuo freed a hand and pressed her fingerprint to the lock. “I know.”
Detached as ever in tone — yet the hand beneath the woman’s knees braced her perfectly steady. The kind of steadiness that made one feel safe.
A low, faintly grave voice slid beneath the lock’s chime of release. “I’ve stopped cursing you.”
“Huh… that’s strange…”
The property management surveillance room.
A property staff member leaned in. “What, found something? A dangerous character snuck in, or a stray dog?”
“Neither…”
The security guard shook his head. “We finished every clip of that lady coming and going, and nothing happened at all. It looked like… she simply walked out into the rain herself and stood there getting soaked…”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure. The two of us went through it three times over.” The guard tapped a finger against his own skull. “Could it be… something’s the matter up here?”
“…Could be. Then let’s set it aside for now. Send me that clip — I’ll message the resident and explain. But all of you keep watch these next few days, and report anything the moment it happens.”
“Understood.”
Sweetness laced with the chill of scattering snow, diffusing through the air. The living room still carried the pheromones from earlier.
The moment they came indoors, it all refreshed in real time, blending with the pheromones freshly spilling over.
Xu Jialuo carried her straight into the bathroom, hooked a chair over with one long leg, braced it against the wall, and bent to set Bo Suiqing down on it.
In full view of Bo Suiqing, she rolled up her sleeves as she turned, planted herself at the sink, and began rinsing her arms.
As though scouring away contamination — washing clean every trace of rainwater that had soaked into her skin.
Bo Suiqing leaned against the bathroom wall and watched in silence.
When Xu Jialuo started working antibacterial soap between her palms, she finally couldn’t hold it in — she drew one long, deep breath.
Xu Jialuo spared her a glance, toweled off the water, and turned to leave.
Bo Suiqing pinched the hem of her top and tipped her head back. “…Where are you going?”
Tilted forty-five degrees, red lips parted — the precise angle made to be admired by downcast eyes.
Xu Jialuo stopped. Turned her head.
The woman leaned against the wall, drained and boneless, her soaked beige trench coat hanging open to reveal the moon-white1 qipao clinging to her body underneath.
A few black stains dotted her fair forehead and the side of her face; her makeup had smudged, faintly — and it only made that lush, striking face look all the more deserving of pity.
Beautiful to a degree that flouted all reason.
Just as unreasonable, her fingertips turned and hooked Xu Jialuo’s little finger. “…Don’t go.”
Pheromones twined up around her, clinging, in an instant.
Xu Jialuo’s motion stalled. The discomfort along the back of her neck — ignored for a while now — had abruptly started up again.
Scalding heat rolled down her spine, igniting every dormant limb and bone along the way.
…So hot.
What is this, exactly…
Xu Jialuo swayed; her hand shot out to press the wall.
The phone in her pocket buzzed once.
Perhaps Zou Wan had arrived. Xu Jialuo closed her eyes for a beat, then took the phone out and glanced at it.
It was a message from property management instead.
Beneath a few lines of explanation sat an attached surveillance clip, a dozen-odd seconds long.
As the video played, the temperature in the air plummeted.
A dozen seconds on, message and video both finished, Xu Jialuo pocketed the phone and bent down. “Bo Suiqing.”
One hand braced against her thigh, head lowered, she pinned Bo Suiqing’s eyes dead-on. “I’m not a fool. And it’s not as if I’ve never watched anyone act.”
The hand that had been hooked moments before rose and caught the woman’s pale, delicate chin.
It hovered there a few seconds, slightly unpracticed — then, as if repaying every liberty she’d been touched with, the pad of her thumb dragged over and kneaded, careless, at the woman’s faintly trembling red lips.
Bo Suiqing’s eyes flew wide. Her lashes stirred.
Xu Jialuo didn’t let go. Her mist-dark eyes had shed their everyday cool, indifferent ease — ink sinking heavy, as if to congeal at the very bottom of one’s heart.
“So since just now, what frail, wheedling little act have you been performing for me?”
“Dreaming up a new way to play me, or some other game entirely? Whichever it is—
“I have no interest in wasting my time here with you.”
“…”
Bo Suiqing said nothing. Catching sight of Xu Jialuo’s phone, its screen still lit, she slowly veiled the rippling shimmer in her eyes.
Just as Xu Jialuo’s knuckles flexed to let go, Bo Suiqing raised a hand and covered the back of it.
“No.”
Xu Jialuo stilled.
“It’s not what you think.”
Her fingers tightened, then eased — as though handling some fragile, precious thing she dared not hold too hard. Bo Suiqing said, low, “I just… want to reconcile with you.”
She added, unhurried, “Sincerely.”
“…”
Xu Jialuo withdrew her hand and straightened. “What terms did Xu Shangning promise you?”
Terms enough to make Bo Suiqing say such a thing.
Bo Suiqing understood the misunderstanding in those words, and said nothing.
A few seconds later, she lifted her head again. “Very good terms.
“I promised her I’d keep it secret. But since I’ve decided to soften things between us and be friends, I don’t want to keep you in the dark.”
Sincerity and falsehood blended together — the hardest kind of lie there is to tell apart.
Bartering for a thing like this with resources was simply absurd.
But it suited Xu Shangning’s chronic unreliability perfectly.
Brow furrowed, Xu Jialuo pulled open the cabinet, set two fresh towels to one side, and walked out of the bathroom.
A few minutes later she was back, laying a stack of clothes on the bathroom’s storage shelf — ones Jiang Yi had sent over recently, never once worn.
“Get yourself in order, then leave my home.”
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