The Amnesiac Omega Who Reels Me In Every Day – Chapter 122

Xu-Qin’s Mutual Devotion

Xu An x Ji Xiaoqin

A Jealous¹ Birthday

Xu An X Ji Xiaoqin X Wen Ye

            

Xu An and Ji Xiaoqin got together.

The truth was, Xu An had confessed her feelings the very night she rescued Xiaoqin from the man who’d tailed her after she left Wen Ye’s Residence. Xiaoqin hadn’t been ready then, and she hadn’t said yes — but something subtle had already shifted in the way the two of them were around each other.

An ambiguous feeling.

            

Xu An was an Alpha who radiated a natural sense of security, and her open, unembarrassed favoritism made it nearly impossible for Xiaoqin — starved of affection since childhood, and already half gone on her — not to fall.

Xiaoqin fell, and quickly.

But she was still shy. She couldn’t bring herself to take that step. Perhaps to give her time to think it over, Xu An never brought it up again after that night, and for a while the two of them simply drifted along in that in-between state.

            

Or, to put it another way… Xu An was the one pursuing Ji Xiaoqin.

But “mutual devotion” seemed the truer word for the two of them.

It was never Xu An giving and giving one-sidedly. Whatever Xu An poured in, Xiaoqin returned to the fullest extent of her ability.

            

She doted on Xu An, truly.

Her doting was the attentive kind — indulging Xu An at every turn, humoring her at every turn, forever performing small gestures like wiping her hands, dabbing the sweat from her brow.

Xu An had a volcanic temper and was constantly getting angry with people, and it was always Xiaoqin who coaxed her down, soothed her, called her by her pet name, telling her not to be angry anymore.

            

Gentle and soft, like a timid little bird with a devoted heart — not yet a girlfriend, yet already so thoroughly the little girlfriend.

It felt as though… Xu An could do anything to her, and it would be all right.

On the surface, the two of them looked destined to fall into place² before long — but underneath, there were problems.

            

On their dates, for instance: to give Xiaoqin the very best experience, Xu An would reserve an entire cinema just for the two of them, and take her to only the most high-end restaurants.

And every time they parted, she’d hand Xiaoqin a little gift.

“Little” gifts — but to Xiaoqin they were extravagant, a single one sometimes worth an entire month of her salary.

            

For Xiaoqin, it was, in truth, a burden.

Because a whole rented-out cinema, high-end restaurants, expensive gifts — these were all things Xiaoqin had no way of giving back.

On top of that, she owed Xu An several million yuan because of Wen Ye.

            

The pressure weighed on her enormously. She kept doubting — she and Xu An weren’t from the same world; she could never deserve Xu An.

As time went on, the problems surfaced.

She grew resistant to their dates. Receiving Xu An’s gifts still made her happy, but the happiness was outweighed by pressure. She’d asked Xu An to stop buying them — but Xu An hadn’t taken it to heart. In her mind, sincerity mattered when pursuing a girlfriend, and so did a willingness to spend.

            

At the same time, though, she did notice that something was off with Xiaoqin.

Xiaoqin started declining her invitations, grew reluctant to accept her gifts, and whenever she did accept one, she’d earnestly tell Xu An not to send any more.

Then came a stretch when every time she tried to ask Xiaoqin out, Xiaoqin would find some excuse or other to beg off.

            

They barely saw each other during that period, and their WeChat conversations thinned out too.

Xiaoqin seemed to have become terribly busy — too busy to spare her any time at all.

She still sent her good-morning and good-night texts every day, still asked whether she’d been happy today, still replied to the messages she sent.

            

But that gap — the difference from how things used to be — left Xu An feeling unsettled all the same.

Staring at a chat window gone quiet, with only a few scattered messages, Xu An finally couldn’t help asking whether she’d been busy lately. Xiaoqin said yes — there was work piling up at Jiang Jinyi’s Art Studio, she said, time was short, she had none to spare.

And then: once this busy stretch was over, things would go back to normal.

            

But when Xu An asked Jiang Jinyi — asked whether the studio really had that much going on — Jinyi denied it.

Jinyi was still hospitalized at the time; much of the studio’s work had been set aside. Where, then, would Xiaoqin have found all this work to busy herself with?

Xu An knew: Xiaoqin had lied.

            

Why would she lie?

Xu An might be well-versed in love, but even experts lose the plot when they’re inside it³. Faced with this, her thoughts spiraled. Insecure thoughts: maybe Xiaoqin didn’t really like her all that much, and so all her devotion had become nothing but a burden?

Too thin-skinned to say it to her face — was that why she’d chosen cold violence instead?

            

As far as Xu An could see, their relationship had been plunged into a shakier state than ever before.

As it happened, Xu An’s birthday was approaching.

She didn’t mention it to Xiaoqin herself. She didn’t even know whether Xiaoqin remembered.

            

In the days leading up to it, she even went childishly petty — stopped messaging Xiaoqin altogether, and when Xiaoqin messaged her first, her replies turned stiff and curt. She wanted Xiaoqin to notice her mood, to come fuss over her, comfort her — or at least offer some explanation for all this coldness.

Xu An knew she had no standing to demand anything from Xiaoqin. She just hoped, quietly.

But nothing came. Xiaoqin seemed busier than ever, showing not the slightest sign of knowing her birthday.

            

She spent every day cycling between hope and letdown.

The spiraling got worse.

Maybe Xiaoqin really was pulling away from her.

            

Why? Xu An didn’t ask.

They weren’t even girlfriends. She was just one of Xiaoqin’s pursuers, nothing more.

As if she needed Xiaoqin — Xu An had friends to spare. On the night of her birthday itself, staring into a chat window utterly bare of messages, she, with great “backbone,” refused to tell Xiaoqin it was her birthday, and went off with her friends to a bar, booking a private room to celebrate.

            

Every birthday since she’d come of age had been celebrated exactly this way — cutting loose at a bar. Tonight was a little different, though. Usually when she went wild, she’d shut her phone off and toss it aside for total abandon. Not tonight. Tonight the phone stayed on, not even on silent, and after midnight she kept pulling it out to check.

Scrolling through messages, over and over.

Her WeChat was flooded — birthday wishes from friends of every stripe — but she had no heart to answer them one by one. She replied only to Jiang Jinyi.

            

Jinyi was still in the hospital and couldn’t come to her birthday bash — but oddly, just as their conversation was winding down, Jinyi asked for her address.

…

Half an hour past midnight now. Anyone who truly remembered her birthday, who truly kept it in their heart, would have sent their wishes at midnight sharp. This long a silence could only mean one thing: forgotten.

            

She just didn’t care that much.

Xu An’s spirits sank. She stared at the screen, the light draining from her eyes, until a friend yanked her out of it. She frowned, flung the phone aside in frustration, took a long swig of her drink, and forced herself into the mood.

She didn’t know that at this very moment, the person occupying her thoughts was racing toward her with everything she had.

            

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Forty minutes into Xu An’s birthday, Ji Xiaoqin finally arrived at the bar, clutching her gift. Following the address Jiang Jinyi had sent, she found her way to the private room’s door and stopped.

She knocked politely and waited a while — no one came. Probably too rowdy inside for anyone to notice. Xiaoqin tried pushing the door, and it actually gave way. Clutching her gift tighter, nerves humming, she peered inside, searching for Xu An.

Her gaze locked at once onto that gorgeous, flamboyant profile. Her eyes curved with happiness; she was just about to step in — when suddenly the woman seated at Xu An’s side leaned into her, lifted a glass of wine, and intimately fed it to her lips.

            

The woman’s face was turned squarely toward Xiaoqin. In the private room’s dim light, she watched the woman gaze at Xu An with sultry intent as she drank down the wine she’d been fed.

Xu An drank. Xu An didn’t resist…

The scene seared itself into her eyes.

            

Xiaoqin stood frozen for a few seconds as an enormous wave of grief and humiliation crested over her — and in the instant Xu An’s head turned toward her, she spun around and fled, wretched and graceless.

“An’an, who was that who just ran out? She looked kind of familiar — oh, I remember now. Weren’t you always going out on dates with her before?” The woman who’d fed Xu An the wine had noticed Xiaoqin too, and she looked at Xu An, puzzled.

At that moment, Xu An’s heart had already run out the door with Xiaoqin. She ignored her older female cousin⁴‘s question, rose to her feet, tossed a hurried “excuse me for a minute” to the room, and strode swiftly out after her.

            

In that moment, every ounce of the tough, prideful front she’d steeled herself to keep had become a joke.

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The author has something to say:

If there’s any extra you’d all like to see, feel free to say so — I’ll take suggestions on board as I see fit.

            

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