Chapter 22: The Fuming Girl

"Stop screaming!" Chen Ye scolded in annoyance. "You've been watching too many soap operas. What makes you think I'd do anything to Jiang Xin?" Who asked a question like that in real life? She was truly all chest and no brains.

Su Siyun realized she might have overreacted and quickly shut her mouth. However, she still glared at Chen Ye with high alert. She gripped her bag tighter and even took the opportunity to scan her surroundings for a handy weapon.

Right then, Jiang Xin, having heard the commotion, ran out of her room with an anxious look on her face. Su Siyun had been so loud that she assumed something terrible had happened. Yet, when she came out, she saw Chen Ye and her sister standing nearly five or six meters apart. She figured Su Siyun was just startled to find Chen Ye in their home.

Standing beside Chen Ye, she hastily began explaining to her sister in sign language. Her slender fingers flew up and down in a dazzling blur. Chen Ye only caught the signs for "he" and "come"; the rest went completely over his head. Fortunately, as the sister who had lived with Jiang Xin for several years, Su Siyun understood the gist of it.

"He came to use the computer," she signed.

Clearly, Su Siyun didn't buy that excuse. Why would someone from a poor family, who never even had the chance to touch a computer, come all the way to her house under the guise of using one instead of returning to his rural hometown after the college entrance exams? In her eyes, Chen Ye obviously couldn't bear to give up on her. He was just using Jiang Xin as a stepping stone to get closer to her. And look at the situation now—he had actually managed to run into her! She, Su Siyun, had never been alone in a room with a boy before, let alone in her own home! What a cunning guy! Chen Ye had hidden his true colors way too well. If he wanted to pursue her, he should just say so. She absolutely despised this kind of roundabout scheming. Convinced that Chen Ye had ulterior motives, her panic began to subside.

Su Siyun waved over Jiang Xin, who was still frantically signing. Confused, Jiang Xin walked over to her.

"He said he wanted to borrow your computer, but did he actually use it?" Su Siyun asked gently, setting her bag down.

Hearing this, Jiang Xin recalled what she had seen. She had, in fact, stolen a few glances while Chen Ye was typing away in earnest. However, she quickly bit her lip and shook her head. She hadn't understood a thing.

"He didn't do anything? Then what is he doing here!" Su Siyun's eyes widened instantly. If Chen Ye really just came to borrow the computer, she could have let the matter slide. But Jiang Xin had actually shaken her head.

Seeing that Su Siyun had misunderstood, Jiang Xin hastily grabbed the notepad she had brought out with her and wrote, "He did use it, and for a long time too. I just didn't understand what he was doing."

Noticing her sister's lingering suspicions, she quickly added another line. "He just came to borrow the computer and didn't do anything else. Please don't tell Mom and Dad."

She wouldn't mind if their parents found out, but Chen Ye would definitely be interrogated. They might even ban him from coming over ever again. It wasn't that Su Hongshan and Liu Tinglan would look down on Chen Ye's family background—in fact, Su Hongshan would likely offer him financial aid out of the goodness of his heart. But the couple would almost certainly forbid Chen Ye from interacting with her. Doing charity and dragging one's own family into it were two completely different things. Not to mention, she was a "defective" person.

"Did he really just come to borrow a computer? And he didn't do anything?" Su Siyun stared at the two lines of text, her slender eyebrows knitting together. She didn't think Jiang Xin would cover for Chen Ye, nor did she believe Chen Ye was capable of orchestrating such a thing. If he were, he wouldn't have spent the last three years barely daring to speak a word to her. "But did he really do nothing? Or did he come here with an agenda, wanting to do something but failing to act on it?" Once someone falls into a logical fallacy, it is hard for them to climb out—especially someone like Su Siyun, who had always thrived in this particular comfort zone of being pursued.

In her mind, Chen Ye was deliberately and indirectly trying to woo her. Right now, he was simply executing the classic "get close to her friends and family first" strategy, and Jiang Xin was obviously the perfect target. She was innocent, soft-hearted, and gullible. Once he buttered up Jiang Xin and got her to put in a good word for him, his advantage would far surpass that of the other boys who merely chased after her directly. Therefore, she absolutely would not let Chen Ye succeed!

"Why shouldn't I tell Mom and Dad? I'm going to tell them!" Su Siyun pulled Jiang Xin behind her, then glared at Chen Ye and enunciated every word. "Don't think I don't know what you're plotting. Let me tell you right now, you are never going to succeed!"

At those words, Chen Ye merely looked puzzled and confused, but Jiang Xin froze in place with wide eyes, as if struck by a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.

"What?! Su Siyun actually knows?!" she panicked inwardly. "Does... does she know about Chen Ye confessing his feelings to me? How is that possible! Could it be... last night, when Chen Ye snatched that piece of paper from her hand, she had already seen what was written on it?!"

Instantly, a flush of crimson rushed to the young girl's cheeks. Standing behind her sister and looking at the slightly taller Su Siyun, her mind became a tangled mess. Su Siyun had just threatened to tell their parents! Having never experienced anything like this before, she was completely at a loss and had no idea how to react.

Chen Ye, on the other hand, was starting to piece things together. He might not have completely won Su Siyun's heart in the past, but he had at least thoroughly explored her physical core. Thus, he had a fairly good grasp of how this woman's mind operated. She was probably maintaining her usual arrogance, assuming that his sudden shift in attention to Jiang Xin was just him playing hard to get and employing some sort of roundabout flanking strategy to win her over. But Su Siyun was dead wrong. He genuinely wanted nothing to do with a woman who was so incompatible with him.

"Su, there's no need to have such an overactive imagination," Chen Ye replied calmly, a faint smile on his face as he habitually slipped a hand into his pocket. "You don't know me at all, so how could you possibly know what I'm thinking? Let me give you one final piece of advice: don't be so blindly arrogant. Also, they're quite fair and slender."

With that, he ignored Su Siyun's face, which was rapidly flushing red, draining white, and darkening in fury, and shifted his gaze to Jiang Xin, giving her a smiling nod. "Thank you for today."

Jiang Xin quickly shook her head, her anxious gaze darting back and forth between her sister and Chen Ye. Ignoring the tension, Chen Ye brushed past the two girls, pushed the door open, and left Jiang Xin's home. As the door closed with a soft THUD, the pent-up tension in Su Siyun finally burst.

"That's too much! How... how could he speak to me like that!" She was furious at Chen Ye's cold tone, yet deeply embarrassed by his parting comment about her being "fair and slender." Caught between the two emotions, her face flushed crimson.

If he accidentally saw something, fine! But he actually had the nerve to comment on it right in front of Jiang Xin! No matter how popular she was with the boys, no one had ever dared to speak to her in such a frivolous manner. And no boy had ever seen her... there!

"My sudden movements just now must have exposed something!" Su Siyun repeatedly told herself. Once the thought took root, it was practically impossible to shake off.

Watching from the sidelines, Jiang Xin assumed Su Siyun's flushed face was purely out of anger over Chen Ye's words, so she hurriedly began writing to defend him. At the same time, she begged her sister not to tell their parents about the visit. But as Su Siyun stared at the lines of text presented before her, the anger in her heart only flared hotter.

"You... you need to stop contacting him! Don't listen to a word he says!" Su Siyun scolded. "That guy is full of wicked ideas. You won't be able to handle him!"