Chapter 1

Hangzhou in mid-August, the temperature had reached 38 degrees Celsius, and there was no sign of cooling down even in the evening.

Lu Xiaoqiao was busy in the kitchen. The space, which had been cool earlier, was now as stuffy as a steamer. After washing the dishes and cleaning up, she closed the kitchen door and stepped into the living room. As expected, the air conditioner outside was turned off.

Her aunt’s family had all gone to the hospital to accompany her grandmother for an IV drip. At this moment, only she and Zheng Yan were left at home.

Zheng Yan was her cousin’s girlfriend, a year older than him. Not long after they started dating, she moved into her aunt’s house. At first, she pretended to be reserved and lived in the small room downstairs with Lu Xiaoqiao. However, less than a week later, she began sneaking upstairs every night to sneak into her cousin’s room, returning quietly in the morning.

Tonight was Lu Xiaoqiao’s last night here. Tomorrow, she would move into the apartment she rented with her colleague and friend. Although the conditions were not comparable to here, it would definitely be more comfortable to live there.

Thinking about helping her aunt clean the living room again, she went upstairs to the bathroom on the second floor to get the mop. As she passed her cousin’s room, the door was not closed tightly. A cool breeze, along with the sound of voices, came out from the crack in the door.

“Liu Ye and his parents took his grandma to get a shot. She’s downstairs washing dishes. I kind of don’t want her to leave. If she leaves, there will be no one to do the chores. But it’s also annoying to have an outsider in the house. She’s just eating and living here for free.”

“She’s using her good looks to seduce people. The blind date I introduced to Sister Na last time was seduced by her…”

Lu Xiaoqiao didn’t have the habit of eavesdropping on other people’s conversations, but the voices were simply too loud. Coincidentally, she heard it, and the topic was about her, and the content of the conversation became even more outrageous.

She wanted to raise her hand to open the door, but thinking about the consequences of her going in would put her aunt in a difficult position, she slowly retracted her hand.

Taking a deep breath, she thought, “Forget it! It’s the last night anyway. Even if I see her at work during the day, we’re not in the same department after all. I can just avoid her and not see her.”

With her mind made up, she turned around and went downstairs.

As soon as she reached the living room and restarted the air conditioner, she heard a “woo woo” whimper from the direction of the balcony. Thinking of Dumpling, who was temporarily placed outside on the balcony, Lu Xiaoqiao quickly put down the broom in her hand, turned the doorknob, and pushed open the balcony door.

The cage used to hold Dumpling was open, and the cooling ice pad she bought for it was still inside, but Dumpling’s little figure was nowhere to be seen.

“Woo woo”

Following the sound, Lu Xiaoqiao looked up and her heart almost jumped out of her throat.

She saw a small puppy standing on the outer unit of the air conditioner, frightened by the sound of the machine, spinning in place trying to jump off. However, the seven-story height below the machine was like an abyss to its tiny body.

Lu Xiaoqiao slowly moved towards it, carefully extending her hand, whispering, “Dumpling, don’t be afraid, come here.”

Although they had only been together for a few days, the little guy knew who was good to it. It came closer and licked Lu Xiaoqiao’s hand.

She picked Dumpling up and repeatedly checked to make sure it wasn’t injured before gently placing it in the cage.

Such a small puppy couldn’t possibly have climbed up to the outer unit of the air conditioner on its own. It was obvious who did it. Lu Xiaoqiao had thought about just enduring it for the last night.

But at this moment, she couldn’t take it anymore!

She took off the rubber band from her wrist and tied her hair tightly into a high ponytail.

Her aunt always nagged her to tie her hair up, saying it made her look more gentle and that she looked better with her hair down. She usually kept her hair loose.

But now, she was afraid it would affect her performance.

Lu Xiaoqiao went upstairs to the second floor. The room door was still slightly ajar, as it had been before. Zheng Yan was still on the phone, but her posture had changed from sitting to lazily lying on the bed, and she was still talking about her.

“Bang!”

Lu Xiaoqiao kicked open the door with one foot.

The door was still on the phone, Zheng Yan was startled by the sudden sound and shivered: “Are you crazy? You scared me.”

“Why didn’t you scare yourself to death.”

Adhering to the principle of not wronging good people, Lu Xiaoqiao still asked “politely”: “Did you put Dumpling up there? Why did you do that?”

Zheng Yan sat up from the bed, hung up the phone that was still showing a call, and looked up with disdain and arrogance in her eyes.

“It was me, so what? I was just playing with it.”

“So high, you knew what would happen if it fell.”

“So what, it’s just a dog, it’ll fall if it falls! I didn’t put you up there… Ah!”

There was no apology or guilt, Lu Xiaoqiao couldn’t understand where her brazenness came from.

Before she could finish, Lu Xiaoqiao walked a few steps forward, went up and grabbed Zheng Yan’s hair, and with her other hand, dragged her towards the door.

“Playing with it? Okay, sister is in a good mood today, so I’ll play with you too.”

The two of them pulled each other to the door, Zheng Yan’s free hand clung to the door frame, refusing to let go, and she screamed threats at Lu Xiaoqiao.

“Ah! Ah Lu Xiaoqiao, let go of me, if you dare to do this to me, I’ll have Liu Ye fire you, I won’t let you get away with it.”

Zheng Yan struggled to make Lu Xiaoqiao let go, because her hair was being pulled by Lu Xiaoqiao, she wanted to grab her hair but couldn’t, her attention was only focused on the hands that were pulling her.

A sudden sting made the force in Lu Xiaoqiao’s hands loosen, she quickly glanced at the back of her hand and forearm, then turned back and grabbed Zheng Yan who was trying to run, then lifted her leg and tripped her, straddled her, and pressed down on her hands.

“Heh! Fire me? Okay! You go ahead and tell him, let that blind Liu Ye see the true face of the woman he likes, you wear a ‘mask’ every day, aren’t you tired? I’m tired for you.”

Sometimes, Lu Xiaoqiao had to admit, Zheng Yan played the role of being one way in front of people and another way behind their backs, and she was a master at it.

For example, in front of her aunt’s family, she would sweetly call Lu Xiaoqiao “Xiaoqiao jie” after Liu Ye, but when no one was around, she would call her by her name.

Every time she would fight to do the housework, after her aunt and the others went back to their rooms, she would throw the rag away and leave all the housework to Lu Xiaoqiao, and order her to do it quickly.

The reason why Lu Xiaoqiao endured it without saying anything was because she was afraid of causing trouble for her aunt. It was fine if she did more housework, but if she said something that affected the two people who were in love, even if she was right, she would be in the wrong, after all, this wasn’t her home.

She originally wanted to drag her to the balcony to scare her, but thinking about the trouble that the neighbors would cause if they heard the noise, and the possibility of being reported to the police, she wasn’t crazy enough to get hurt eight hundred times to hurt the enemy a thousand times just to teach a little person a lesson.

Finally, she dragged her into the bathroom, pressed Zheng Yan down so she couldn’t move, and used the shower to spray her from head to toe with cold and hot water alternately. At first, she struggled a few times, but later she just sat there, her arms tightly hugging her legs, burying her head in her knees and whimpering.

Lu Xiaoqiao turned off the valve, her breathing was slightly rapid, she gasped slightly, then put down the shower head and squeezed out the water from the slippers that had gotten wet when she was showering Zheng Yan.

She glanced at Zheng Yan who was still crying, and hummed with a smile: “What are you crying for? I was just playing with you.”

When she finished speaking, Zheng Yan’s cry became even louder!

Lu Xiaoqiao frowned, then warned: “Sometimes you can’t be too excessive, I don’t start trouble, but that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of trouble, you can ask Liu Ye, why I came to Hangzhou to study when I was a child.”