Crossing the Line – Chapter 33
by Little PandaBrazenly Squeezed In
Lin Ji had no objections to Lin Xuebo’s suggestion that they stay the night.
The radar that usually let Lin Ji see right through Jiang Siyi’s predicaments and come to her rescue suddenly malfunctioned.
The heavens weren’t helping either.
A sudden squall had rolled in, lightning flashing and thunder rumbling—going anywhere in this was out of the question.
As an outstanding assistant earning a million-yuan salary, Fan Qing’s thoughts always had to stay one step ahead of everyone else’s.
Fan Qing asked Jiang Siyi, “Do you need me to go look after Xueqiu?”
Jiang Siyi said, “No need, no need. I travel for work sometimes too. There’s a camera and an automatic feeder at home, so he can manage on his own for short periods.”
The bathroom door was left open, and Xueqiu knew to use his designated spot.
The clingy mama’s boy of a dog was attached but didn’t require much effort.
All he needed was the occasional chat through the camera so he could hear his owner’s voice.
Fan Qing nodded.
The rain was coming down even harder now. Lin Xuebo said to Fan Qing, “It’s too dangerous to drive in this. Stay here tonight too.”
Fan Qing said, “All right.”
Jiang Siyi noted this quietly—so Fan Qing had stayed over here quite a bit too. Auntie Lin was simply a warm, hospitable woman.
Fan Qing’s room was on the first floor. A housekeeper was inside helping with dehumidifying, and Fan Qing went to fetch her own bedding.
Lin Xuebo said, “Ah Qing, your pajamas and toiletries are right where you left them.”
Fan Qing said, “Okay.”
Lin Ji stood at the door of Fan Qing’s room, briefing her on some work-related matters.
Lin Xuebo, meanwhile, took Jiang Siyi by the hand and said to Lin Ji, “Let me borrow your wife.”
Lin Ji and Jiang Siyi exchanged a glance. Whereas Jiang Siyi was flustered by the overly direct form of address, Lin Ji said without the slightest hesitation:
“Return her as soon as possible.”
Jiang Siyi: …
The villa had both an elevator and a staircase.
Lin Xuebo led Jiang Siyi up the elevator to the third floor and turned right, into the master suite that belonged to her.
She pushed open the begonia-patterned glass door to reveal a spacious, brightly lit walk-in closet.
It was larger than Jiang Siyi’s rented apartment.
The closet consisted of two rooms, inner and outer. The inner room housed a safe. The outer room was lined with display cases arranged in a rectangular circuit, showcasing an array of jewelry for the lady of the house to select and wear.
Jiang Siyi’s professional eyes swept over the collection, and she silently clicked her tongue.
This could stock an entire autumn auction on its own.
“Siyi, come here.”
Lin Xuebo held her hand affectionately and led her to the display cases.
“I’d like to auction some of my jewelry. Take a look and see which pieces would be suitable.”
In all her dealings with collectors, Jiang Siyi had never encountered one who simply handed her the reins like this.
Jiang Siyi said, “Auntie, these are all top-tier pieces, and every single one is worth a fortune. It depends on whether you want to optimize your collection or simply liquidate some assets.”
Lin Xuebo had no intention of optimizing her collection, nor did she need to liquidate assets. She simply wanted to use this opportunity to step into the auction world and appear more often in Jiang Siyi’s circle, laying the groundwork for her daughter before the marriage was fully made public.
At the same time, she simply liked and was grateful to Jiang Siyi.
For many years, for certain reasons, she had never been able to properly thank her. Now that there was a chance to become family, the very first step was to support her work.
Lin Xuebo said, “Let’s call it optimizing the collection, then. I’ll pick a few, and you can tell me if they’d be suitable for auction.”
Jiang Siyi said, “All right.”
Lin Xuebo first picked up the nearest pair of Graff emerald and diamond earrings.
Jiang Siyi’s heart gave a jolt.
Earrings worth 2 million yuan, selected for auction just like that?
Lin Xuebo hesitated. “These won’t do.”
Jiang Siyi breathed a small sigh of relief.
Lin Xuebo said, “Too ordinary.”
Jiang Siyi: ?
She swapped them for a Cartier Panther necklace, then hooked on a Boucheron diamond necklace, picked up a jade Guanyin pendant, and tossed a pair of South Sea pearl and diamond earrings on top…
Piece after piece after piece—Jiang Siyi watched, holding her breath, her blood pressure rising.
The velvet tray was piled high, as if she were sweeping the shelves at a ten-yuan shop by the roadside.
Jiang Siyi was dumbfounded. Lin Xuebo still seemed unsatisfied and added a Burmese pigeon-blood ruby diamond ring.
If Kong Yuchen had been present, he would have recognized this as the gift he had specially flown to Burma to purchase for their twentieth wedding anniversary.
Jiang Siyi said, “…Auntie, are you sure you want to auction all of these? Isn’t this too many?”
Altogether, these pieces were worth tens of millions of yuan without even trying.
Lin Xuebo glanced down and realized she might have been too enthusiastic—afraid of startling the young woman.
“That is quite a lot, isn’t it? Which ones do you like? Pick whatever you’d like.”
In all her years of work, the collectors Jiang Siyi had dealt with were always cautious with their pieces—some even told her to touch as little as possible, terrified something might get damaged during appraisal.
No one had ever let her pick freely like this.
Jiang Siyi understood, of course, that Lin Xuebo was looking out for her career.
These lots were all trendy, highly sought-after pieces—the kind wealthy wives loved—ones that virtually never went unsold. They were exactly the kind an auction house loved to take on.
Lin Xuebo was so generous that it left Jiang Siyi overwhelmed and somewhat embarrassed.
After all, she was just an arranged marriage partner, not someone Lin Ji actually loved.
Lin Xuebo’s kindness made her feel guilty, as if she were letting down someone’s goodwill.
“It doesn’t seem right for me to pick.”
“Why wouldn’t it be right?” Lin Xuebo said. “I’ve watched videos of your auctions. I trust your professional ability—you’ll definitely get beautiful prices for them.”
Lin Xuebo’s words steadied Jiang Siyi’s wavering emotions.
True enough. They weren’t gifts for her—they were being entrusted to her for auction.
Jiang Siyi brought her professional instincts to bear, selecting several pieces that were currently most sought after by the market and most likely to fetch high prices, and she explained their value and estimated hammer prices to Lin Xuebo in detail.
Lin Xuebo didn’t pay the least attention to the details, saying she was leaving everything in her hands—she trusted family.
The sounds from the walk-in closet drifted out intermittently. Lin Ji, standing quietly at the door, listened to their conversation, and the lines of her face gradually softened.
Around bedtime, Lin Ji had an online meeting to attend. Lin Xuebo told her to go ahead without worry and took Jiang Siyi to Lin Ji’s bedroom on the second floor.
Lin Xuebo said, “Xiaoyou’s work keeps her incredibly busy. She could be called into a meeting at any moment, jetting off to different time zones at the drop of a hat. She might be sleeping soundly one night when something on the other side of the world needs her decision, and she has to get right up. That’s how it is during a growth phase. Siyi, if you ever feel lonely on your own, just tell me and I’ll come keep you company.”
Jiang Siyi obediently replied, “Okay,” thinking to herself that Auntie Lin didn’t know the two of them didn’t live together.
The nightgown carried a faint fragrance when Lin Xuebo took it from the closet.
“I’ve prepared several nightgowns for Xiaoyou. She doesn’t come home often—she’s only worn one set, and the rest are brand new. Do you like this one? If it doesn’t suit you, I can get you another.”
The nightgown was made of a very skin-friendly fabric—a lace slip dress paired with a flowing outer robe. The style looked a bit cool, but it was indeed well-suited for sleeping.
Jiang Siyi said, “This one is fine, thank you.”
As they spoke, Jiang Siyi’s attention was drawn to the countless certificates and trophies in the room.
Jiang Siyi had always known that Lin Ji was the dark cloud looming over her peers from childhood, winning first place in everything so often it became routine. Now, standing here, she finally understood the true weight of that reputation.
The display cases were packed to the brim, and two rows were arranged neatly on the desk.
Many photos were displayed alongside the trophies.
The photos showed Lin Ji as a child.
Jiang Siyi looked through them one by one and discovered that Lin Ji had grown up in perfect proportion—she was simply a scaled-down version of her present self.
At one year old, she already had a precociously mature air about her. Even as a young girl holding a chubby penguin plushie, she held it with a blank expression, as though she might hurl it at whoever provoked her in the very next second.
In the crowded graduation photos, Jiang Siyi could always spot her at a glance.
Partly because of her height—she always stood in the center—but also because her features and bearing were impossible to overlook. It was as if she existed on a separate layer from the rest of the crowd.
There were also group photos with Yan Yu and other friends.
Among a crowd of smiling beauties, the cool, aloof her was always the most striking.
Come to think of it, Jiang Siyi had already witnessed most of the different stages of Lin Ji shown in these photos.
After all, they had grown up in the same social circle, attended the same middle and high school, and though they rarely spoke, they knew of each other and occasionally crossed paths.
In Jiang Siyi’s memory, Lin Ji had been quiet and reserved, with a brooding intensity that frightened people. The school had even circulated an absurd rumor that Lin Ji had killed someone.
The Lin Ji in these photos was still the Lin Ji she knew.
Only, for some reason, the girl in the photos seemed different from the brooding figure in her memory.
That distant, quiet beauty was actually quite captivating.
And what was that about a killing rumor… Looking back, it was honestly hilarious. She had actually believed it back then.
Lin Xuebo was very patient, explaining photo by photo how old Xiaoyou was and where each one was taken.
As Jiang Siyi listened, she noticed something.
There were photos of Lin Ji when she was very young—at one year old, at three.
And then they suddenly jumped to age fifteen or sixteen.
From early childhood all the way through middle school—not a single photo in that long stretch.
Just like herself, Lin Ji had a gap in her photo record.
Jiang Siyi’s gap was because of her mother’s passing—a long period of depression during which she had no desire to be photographed.
What was Lin Ji’s reason?
Her gap seemed even longer.
Jiang Siyi had been through many hardships herself and had naturally learned to be understanding—she didn’t press the question.
As Lin Xuebo talked, she too realized that a long stretch of time had gone missing.
Something came to mind. Her speech slowed, and her eyes darkened.
Jiang Siyi noticed her mood sinking and immediately changed the subject, recounting amusing stories from her own childhood to make her laugh.
…
While they chatted about this and that, Lin Ji had finished her meeting and come back. Seeing the two of them deep in conversation, she didn’t interrupt and went to shower first.
When she came out, Jiang Siyi had just finished interacting with Xueqiu on her phone.
When Jiang Siyi carried her bathrobe into the bathroom, the room was still wreathed in Lin Ji’s fragrance and steam.
As she undressed, she felt her body enveloped by Lin Ji’s lingering scent… She pressed her lips together, quite ill at ease.
After her shower, she put on the mint-green slip dress and looked in the mirror.
The A-line cut made her look tall and slender, and the flowing drape outlined her figure with an effortless elegance.
Though it was a bare-shouldered slip dress, the skirt was long enough to nearly brush the floor, so there was no risk of overexposure.
As she slipped on the outer robe, Jiang Siyi pondered a problem.
Lin Ji’s room had nothing but a single chair by the desk—not even a sofa—which meant that tonight she would not only be sharing a room with Lin Ji but possibly the same bed.
She instinctively clutched her collar.
But they’d definitely each have their own blankets… right?
When she emerged from the bathroom, Lin Xuebo had already left. The quiet bedroom held only Lin Ji.
Lin Ji was sitting in bed reading, wearing a slip nightgown in the same style as Jiang Siyi’s but a different color.
The ice-blue nightgown lay over her body like a thin layer of ice, yet her well-proportioned skin seemed to emanate waves of warm fragrance.
A pool of pale light settled in the hollow of her delicate collarbones.
Her thick, dark hair fell smoothly, veiling half her brow and eyes.
Sensing Jiang Siyi approaching, she set down her book and turned her gaze toward her.
The tangible reality of spending the night together suddenly spread before her eyes.
The dream-memory of Lin Ji lifting her skirt hem and freely caressing her thighs suddenly resurfaced at the worst possible moment.
Jiang Siyi’s heartbeat roared, accelerating violently.
Two women dressed in matching nightgowns—the next scene should have been an embrace, releasing desire on this bed, not wasting the night.
Only, they weren’t that kind of relationship—an unspoken understanding between them.
“The bed is big enough.”
Lin Ji said these three words very flatly, meaning to reassure Jiang Siyi.
To Jiang Siyi, Lin Ji’s characteristically emotionless tone could only be described as cold.
Understood. The implication was that they’d each sleep on their own side and not disturb her.
Jiang Siyi quickly scanned the bed—there were two sets of blankets.
Further confirming her understanding.
Each to their own.
Honestly, spending the night together was no big deal. After all, they had shared a bed before—though Lin Ji didn’t know that.
Jiang Siyi mentally tamped down her racing thoughts.
The mattress had excellent support—so good that when Jiang Siyi sat down, only the faintest movement transmitted, like a light cat landing silently at her side.
Jiang Siyi turned her back to Lin Ji as she slipped off the outer robe. Her narrow shoulders and slim back made the inward curve at her waist all the more pronounced.
As she lifted her own blanket to lie down, she caught in her peripheral vision Lin Ji setting her book and the plushie in her arms on the nightstand together.
Come to think of it, Lin Ji always seemed to carry a small rabbit plush keychain with her.
She’d occasionally seen it when they ate together.
In the photos just now, she was holding a similar plushie too.
And there was one in bed as well.
Jiang Siyi asked curiously, “Lin Ji-jie, do you like plushies?”
Earlier she’d been intimately calling her Xiaoyou, and now that they were alone, she’d regressed to the businesslike “Lin Ji-jie.”
“I have a habit of collecting them.” Lin Ji stroked the ear of the lop-eared bunny plushie by her bed. “The ones with a good texture are very stress-relieving to touch.”
Is that so…
She never would have expected cute plushies and the mature, cool Lin Ji to have any overlap.
Lin Ji said, “Childish?”
Jiang Siyi answered quickly, “Not at all.”
Perhaps because she answered so quickly it felt like reassurance, Lin Ji smiled.
“I mean it.”
As Jiang Siyi explained earnestly, she turned to face her. The slip strap slipped down, barely hanging on her pale, slender shoulder.
She had no idea how enticing a picture she presented to Lin Ji.
“I like plush toys too, you know. Those mushrooms on my bed.”
Lin Ji’s gaze turned away.
Jiang Siyi thought she still didn’t believe her, so after a moment she continued:
“When I was little, I liked to hold my mom’s ear while falling asleep. I couldn’t sleep without it. After my mom passed away, I could only hold my own ear to fall asleep. Sometimes one wasn’t enough—I’d have to hold both.”
Lin Ji looked at her.
“Childish enough? Consider it an exchange.”
Jiang Siyi’s sweet smile was outlined by a low-saturation gold edge of light, the fine downy hair on her face faintly visible, her eyes bright.
My childishness for your childishness—being childish together doesn’t count as childish.
Needing to hold an ear to fall asleep…
Jiang Siyi’s words drew Lin Ji’s attention naturally to her ears.
Jiang Siyi’s ears were small, with very little flesh—clearly contoured, jade-like in texture, pale and white.
Lin Ji also knew they were easily governed by emotion, readily flushed red.
She wondered what it would feel like to hold them and rub them.
What she would do to them.
The night light on Lin Ji’s side never dimmed the entire night.
An unfamiliar environment, sharing a bed with Lin Ji—it should have been hard to fall asleep.
Surprisingly, the bedroom had a soothing atmosphere, and the mattress was professionally designed for sleep—far better than the cheap one in her rented apartment.
Combined with the fact that Lin Ji was so quiet she might as well have vanished, Jiang Siyi drifted off to sleep after lying there for a while.
Comfortable as it was, even with separate blankets, there was still a living, breathing person beside her—a great beauty whose figure was impossible to ignore. Jiang Siyi couldn’t help but be conscious of that.
To avoid a repeat of the incident at her place last time, Jiang Siyi consciously pressed herself to the very edge of the bed.
That way, on a two-meter-wide bed, there was room for two more people between her and Lin Ji. Surely they wouldn’t end up touching.
Jiang Siyi guessed the beginning but didn’t foresee the ending.
When she woke the next day, she found that she and Lin Ji weren’t exactly “touching.”
They were thoroughly, inextricably entangled.
Lin Ji had slipped into her blanket at some point and was now wrapped around her waist.
That perfect sleeping face appeared before her eyes once again in close-up. In the instant her eyes opened, Jiang Siyi’s drowsiness evaporated completely.
Wha—what was going on?
How did Lin Ji end up in her blanket?
For someone so composed in everyday life, she was surprisingly restless in her sleep—with unexpectedly poor sleeping posture.
Just as Jiang Siyi was puzzling over this, she realized she wasn’t resting on a pillow—she was resting on Lin Ji’s arm.
Jiang Siyi: ?
She looked down further: the blanket covering her was actually Lin Ji’s, while her own blanket was lying quietly on the floor.
Jiang Siyi: …
So it wasn’t that Lin Ji had bad sleeping posture—Siyi herself had crawled into Lin Ji’s blanket.
Some hazy memories floated to the surface of her mind.
Last night she had slept pressed against the edge of the bed, and her blanket had slipped off at some point. Added to that, the temperature had dropped sharply in the early morning hours because of the rain, and Jiang Siyi, without a blanket, had shivered with cold.
Half-asleep, she had fumbled around for a blanket, found the corner of Lin Ji’s, and brazenly squeezed her way in.
Not only had she commandeered Lin Ji’s blanket, she had burrowed into her warm embrace, and once her cheek found her arm, she had claimed it outright.
Lin Ji, having been woken up, had witnessed the entire process of her pushing her luck.
But hadn’t had the heart to wake her.
Jiang Siyi arrived at a dull-eyed conclusion: the one with bad sleeping posture was herself.
In her daze, her palm seemed to be pressed against something soft and warm.
Her gaze traveled downward. Her hand, in her sleep, had slipped beneath the hem of Lin Ji’s nightgown.
The nightgown, which should have reached her calves, had been rucked up in layer upon layer of folds by this motion, exposing Lin Ji’s long legs entirely to the morning light.
Jiang Siyi, eyes round: !
Last night she had dreamt of petting a stray dog, petting it so enthusiastically, and the surface growing smoother and smoother—turns out that had been the feel of Lin Ji’s thigh.
Last time she had dreamt of Lin Ji touching her thigh, and now she had gone and done it for real.
Her head buzzed, and she immediately withdrew her hand.
Lin Ji, who had been pretending to sleep, let the corner of her mouth twitch.
It would be too fake to still be asleep after all that commotion.
This time, Lin Ji couldn’t keep up the act with Jiang Siyi and had to open her eyes.
The two of them sat in the tangled sheets, face to face.
The nightgown that had been pushed up nearly to the waist caught Lin Ji’s eye.
Jiang Siyi was beyond defending herself, so she tried to brazen it out.
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Lin Ji-jie. Last night my blanket—”
“Lin Ji-jie” again.
That “Lin Ji-jie” was so grating on the ears.
“No need to explain.”
Lin Ji didn’t bother pulling her hem back down either. Meeting Jiang Siyi’s crimson face, she said lazily,
“We got our marriage certificate. Whatever you do is legal.”
Jiang Siyi: .
That tone was as casual as saying good morning, but the words made Jiang Siyi’s already flushed face turn crimson in an instant.
Jiang Siyi got up to flee.
“I, I need to go wash up…”
Lin Ji lay on her side elegantly, watching her flustered retreating figure, and said, “Left.”
Jiang Siyi, who had been striding briskly to the right for a while, stalled. She turned around in chagrin, her quick little steps accelerating as she fled.
The author has something to say:
Lin Ji: Wife-pampering Step 5—let wife do whatever she wants.
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