I Won't Bother You Anymore

Time rewound to six in the morning, when Yun Huaizhu got up to leave.

Su Yutang, who had sat on the couch outside all night stewing in silent anger, called out to her, “Wait a moment. There’s something I need to tell you.”

Yun Huaizhu smiled at her. “But I don’t really want to talk to you, and I’m in a hurry.”

Su Yutang’s expression darkened further at those words. “I advise you to stay away from what’s mine. Otherwise, you know what I’m capable of.”

Yun Huaizhu walked up to Su Yutang without a trace of fear. “I learned your methods long ago. Aside from leaning on your fake identity as the Su family’s eldest miss to crush people, what else are you good at? You know what Mengmeng-jie hates most? That side of you. Even if you play the pity card and crash at Mengmeng-jie’s place for now, so what? She doesn’t like you.”

Every word from Yun Huaizhu drove into Su Yutang’s heart like a thorn. Su Yutang let out a cold laugh. “And you think she likes you? That answer you wanted—did she give it to you?”

Yun Huaizhu’s bright expression instantly turned gloomy. “That’s hardly any of your concern, Eldest Miss Su. Mengmeng-jie will end up with me in the end, no matter what.”

Su Yutang refused to yield, standing her ground before Yun Huaizhu, glaring at her enemy through gritted teeth. “No one takes from me what I’ve set my sights on. Since you brought up status, let me show you what it means to crush someone with power.”

Yun Huaizhu didn’t flinch. “I’ll be waiting.”

With that, Yun Huaizhu shoved hard against Su Yutang and squeezed through the narrow gap in front of the couch to leave.

When Yun Huaizhu stepped out of the residential compound, Aunt Fang was already waiting outside.

Last night, Aunt Fang had driven her car back from the parking lot not far away. Now she could head straight to the airport. Once the international business conference was over, her company’s IPO could be put on the agenda.

As Yun Huaizhu got into the car, Aunt Fang noticed her grim expression. “Miss, did something happen yesterday? You used to be so happy whenever you came to see Miss Lin.”

Yun Huaizhu masked the restlessness inside her. “It’s nothing.”

Then, as if something had occurred to her, she said to Aunt Fang, who was driving, “By the way, after I leave, send an anonymous message to Su Yurong. Say you have a lead on her daughter’s whereabouts.”

Aunt Fang could more or less guess why Yun Huaizhu was so upset. “But doing that might not be good for Miss Lin either.”

Yun Huaizhu seemed to have lost all reason. “It doesn’t matter. Just make contact. I’ll find a way to protect Mengmeng-jie.”

Seeing Yun Huaizhu like this, Aunt Fang was reminded of Yun Huaizhu’s mother, whom she had served years ago. Yun Huaizhu grew more like her mother every day; even her temperament had become the same.

In business, that kind of personality inspired fear and kept others from daring to look down on you. But turn it on someone you loved, and sooner or later they would distance themselves out of sheer terror.

Aunt Fang had watched Yun Huaizhu grow up; she didn’t want her to do something she would regret.

But Yun Huaizhu was still running hot; no amount of persuasion would work right now. She decided to agree for the time being. “Yes, miss.”

…

Saturday should have been a day to enjoy, but Lin Meng looked listless.

She had already tried everything to coax Su Yutang not long ago, but no matter how hard she tried, Su Yutang remained unmoved.

It seemed this young miss was truly angry.

Lin Meng had cajoled her for over an hour, but Su Yutang just sat there with a dark expression, ignoring her completely.

There was nothing Lin Meng could do. Seeing that it was already noon, she could only take the dishes from the fridge, reheat them, and prepare lunch.

Just as she finished reheating the food and was about to ask Su Yutang if she wanted to eat, Su Yutang suddenly glared at her with a venomous look. “I’m not eating the leftovers you and Yun Huaizhu left behind! Get lost!”

Lin Meng swallowed the words she’d been about to say.

So what if they were leftovers? Leftovers didn’t taste any different.

Lin Meng knew she was angry, so she closed the bedroom door and let the young miss have some time alone.

If Su Yutang didn’t want to eat, fine. She’d eat by herself.

…

After Su Yutang shouted Lin Meng away, she suddenly sank into a bewildered, miserable state, as if a piece of her heart had suddenly gone hollow.

Yun Huaizhu must have sensed last night that she was hiding in this apartment; that was why she’d deliberately said those infuriating things.

But when she thought about it carefully, Yun Huaizhu hadn’t really done anything wrong. Yun Huaizhu was just a young miss who’d been doted on since childhood; anyone who went against her wishes would suffer for it.

Because Su Yutang liked Lin Meng, she had endured Lin Meng rejecting her again and again, and endured Yun Huaizhu’s mockery and sneers.

And now Su Yutang was like a clown, putting on a display of impotent rage in front of Lin Meng.

She had always hated forcing things. In her world, if someone relinquished something of hers out of pathetic pride, others would always line up to beg for her charity.

Maybe she’d been wrong all along. Someone like Lin Meng could never be warmed up. She might as well give up.

She could let Lin Meng go, but she would never let off Yun Huaizhu—not after she had dared to humiliate her.

If she couldn’t be with Lin Meng, Yun Huaizhu wouldn’t get to either!

As her thoughts grew darker and more twisted, she noticed the sky outside gradually dimming.

Earlier, lying on Lin Meng’s bed mulling everything over, time had felt endless. But now that she was about to leave, it suddenly felt as if time had flown too fast.

A stifling bitterness, mixed with an inexplicable pain like a needle piercing her heart, spread through her chest.

She had originally brought Lin Meng to Grace today to spend a wonderful time together at Huo Yi’s seaside villa.

But now, all her beautiful fantasies had been shattered.

…

After lunch, Lin Meng curled up on the couch outside and played on her phone for a while. But her mood wasn’t as relaxed as usual; a heavy weight seemed to press on her heart, stifling and suffocating, though she couldn’t say why.

Su Yutang hadn’t eaten dinner last night, and now it was almost dark again. By that count, hadn’t this young miss gone a whole day without food?

People couldn’t run on empty—and besides, Su Yutang had surely never gone hungry a day in her life…

As she thought about it, her conscience began to prick at her.

She got up and rummaged through the fridge. Aside from the leftover dishes Yun Huaizhu had brought last night—which she’d packed and portioned—there was only the ham sandwich she’d bought when she came home from work the day before yesterday.

That kind of pre-made ham sandwich had a shelf life of at least three days in the fridge. Lin Meng took it out and heated it in the microwave.

Since Su Yutang refused to eat the food Yun Huaizhu brought, surely she’d eat a sandwich Lin Meng had bought herself.

Just as Lin Meng took out the heated sandwich and was about to bring it to the sulking Su Yutang, the bedroom door opened. The other woman had Lin Meng’s baseball cap on her head and a mask on her face, as if she were about to go out and do something shady.

Lin Meng quickly set down the sandwich and jogged over. “Tangtang, where are you going?”

Right now, hearing Lin Meng call her “Tangtang” in that casual, ordinary tone, Su Yutang felt an indescribable tangle of feelings surge up inside her.

Her face was expressionless, her voice icy. “I have something to do. Come out with me first.”

Lin Meng pointed at herself, surprised. “Huh? I… your business—does it need me to come too?”

Su Yutang no longer wanted to explain. She stepped forward, looking down at Lin Meng, her tone distant. “Yes. I promise you’ll be back tonight as long as you come with me. And I won’t bother you anymore after this.”

Lin Meng should have been happy to hear that, but Su Yutang seemed different from before. If this young miss was truly angry at her, she could have taken out a small whip and lashed her, or made her kneel and apologize. But Su Yutang said she wouldn’t bother her anymore.

Lin Meng suddenly felt that the skyscraper called “Plot” had begun to wobble. She had seen Su Yutang’s changes lately, but there had been no romantic progress between Su Yutang and Yun Huaizhu whatsoever.

Su Yutang didn’t seem so much angry now as… heartsick and desolate.

Lin Meng stood frozen for a long while, then put on her coat to go out with Su Yutang. Su Yutang stepped out first. The moment she crossed that threshold, she felt as if her connection to Lin Meng had been completely severed.

As Lin Meng was about to lock the door, something seemed to occur to her. She stuffed the warm sandwich into the pocket of her “enormously capacious” coat.

No matter what Su Yutang felt, whether she would bother her again in the future, Lin Meng had to get Su Yutang to eat something first.

After all, the body’s dopamine secretion was closely linked to going hungry. Su Yutang’s sudden despondency might also be because she hadn’t eaten.

…

Su Yutang flagged down a taxi. Lin Meng got in after her, and Su Yutang told the driver, “To the Grace building.”

The driver frowned. After entering the destination into his navigation, he found that the place actually existed!

“Little miss, it’ll cost one or two hundred to get there from here. Are you sure you want to go?”

Su Yutang impatiently pulled three hundred yuan from her wallet and tossed it onto the passenger seat. “Keep the change. I’m in a hurry. Hurry up!”

The driver found it strange. Just as he was about to ask more, the girl with glasses sitting beside Su Yutang spoke up. “Sir, we really do have something urgent. Please just drive.”

Seeing Lin Meng, the driver’s doubts eased considerably, and he set off toward the destination on his navigation.

Along the way, Lin Meng could feel the atmosphere in the car growing colder and colder. Su Yutang, who was usually so talkative, didn’t say a word the entire trip.

During the ride to Grace, Lin Meng kept reaching into her pocket to touch the intact, packaged ham sandwich. She wanted to seize a chance to take it out and give it to Su Yutang.

But every time she saw Su Yutang’s dark, grim expression, she lost her nerve again.

What if Su Yutang rejected it on the spot, or threw the sandwich away?

At that thought, Lin Meng grew even more afraid to pull the sandwich out in front of the taxi driver.

Maybe she’d give it to Su Yutang after they arrived?

When Su Yutang had come to her apartment, she’d told Lin Meng she’d argued with her family and had nowhere else to go.

Lin Meng also remembered her own childhood—homeless, curled up in a ball by the door, waiting in silence…

How old had she been? The experiences of two worlds and the wear of years had blurred the true date of that memory.

She only remembered that she’d been very small, probably in kindergarten. In kindergarten, everyone else had parents to pick them up, but she went back and forth alone every day.

Fighting with your family and running away from home was already miserable enough.

Su Yutang had said her mother’s people were all over outside looking for her. Going back now would be no different from returning to the place that made her angry and heartbroken.

Even though Lin Meng knew that no matter how angry and hurt Su Yutang was, plenty of people would coax her and shove expensive gifts at her, she still felt a pang of pity for Su Yutang.

Setting money aside, Su Yutang’s feelings were probably the same as hers.

…

When they arrived, the meter read “two hundred fifty.” The driver was about to give Su Yutang fifty in change, but she got out without even glancing back.

Lin Meng said, “Sir, keep the change,” then opened the door and ran after Su Yutang.

An unfamiliar feeling suddenly rose in her chest. She touched the sandwich in her pocket, its warmth fading bit by bit.

She had to give it to her quickly, or it wouldn’t taste good cold…

Lin Meng ran fast, so she didn’t notice that Su Yutang had suddenly stopped until she crashed right into Su Yutang’s back.

If they took the main elevator or the scenic elevator up, she’d easily be spotted. Although Grace was her property, plenty of Su Yurong’s people were in this building too.

If one of them turned out to be a traitor and told Su Yurong where she was, wouldn’t she be caught and dragged back in no time?

At that thought, Su Yutang instinctively grabbed Lin Meng’s hand and led her through the stairwell to an old freight elevator in the second basement level. Almost no one used it, but it could also reach the top floor of Grace.

Just as Lin Meng was about to ask what they were doing, she was pulled into the elevator.

The old, rundown elevator was completely different from the fancy, upscale ones inside the building—it didn’t even seem to belong there.

If Su Yutang hadn’t dragged her here, Lin Meng would never have imagined a place like this could exist inside a skyscraper.

As the elevator slowly ascended, Lin Meng quietly stood beside Su Yutang. She had already pulled the sandwich halfway out of her pocket. Though there was a good chance Su Yutang wouldn’t accept it, she felt she had to give it to her to put her own mind at ease.

“Um, Tangtang… I…”

Just as Lin Meng was about to take out the sandwich and hand it to her, the elevator—having risen to the sixteenth floor—suddenly jerked and stopped.

As the elevator lurched to a halt, a suffocating dizziness surged through Lin Meng.

After freezing for two seconds, her eyes flooded with terror. She lunged forward and frantically pressed the open-door button. But no matter how many times she pressed, the doors stayed shut. She pressed several adjacent buttons in quick succession; the elevator didn’t respond at all.

Lin Meng still had her survival instinct to fall back on—she kept pressing buttons—but Su Yutang, facing this for the first time, went pale with fright in that instant. Her face, which had been cold with despair, was gradually overtaken by pallor and panic.

This was the sixteenth floor!

If the elevator suddenly dropped, at this height, both she and Lin Meng would die here.

Lin Meng took out her phone to call for help, but she tried several times and got no signal. Now the two of them were truly trapped.

Because the elevator could plummet at any moment, Lin Meng’s heart hung suspended. Her face went ashen, and she bit her fingers anxiously.

Thankfully, the lights in the elevator were still on. It shouldn’t be that dangerous yet…

Just as Lin Meng thought this, a crackle of electricity ran through the top of the elevator, followed by a snap—and the elevator plunged into complete darkness.

At that, Lin Meng finally broke down. She covered her ears and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Ahhh—!”

“No, no!”

“Don’t drop!”

Tears poured out with her screams, the pitch-black elevator filling with her panicked, desperate cries.

Lin Meng had imagined dying suddenly at her desk, or being hit by a car outside, but she had never imagined dying in an elevator. She’d heard that an elevator falling from a high floor would compress into an extremely flattened sheet of metal, and the people inside wouldn’t even leave behind intact corpses.

Just thinking about it made Lin Meng’s legs go weak. She collapsed onto the elevator floor.

“Stop screaming. If you make any more noise and cause the elevator to drop, it’ll be bad.”

Su Yutang’s voice pulled Lin Meng back from the brink of losing her mind to terror. Lin Meng remembered there was someone else in the elevator besides her—Su Yutang.

Lin Meng carefully felt her way toward Su Yutang. When she touched Su Yutang’s leg, she sat down beside her, curling up and trembling.

If she really was going to die here with Su Yutang today, then Su Yutang would be the last person she ever saw in this life.

This illusory novel, conjured from the author’s inner world, would end just like this.

Lin Meng had always thought of this as a novel, so she drifted back and forth between reality and illusion every day. But now, at the moment of life and death, the impact of reality hit her with overwhelming force.

She was both inside the world of the novel and within reality itself.

Like her, Su Yutang feared death too.

Lin Meng trembled beside Su Yutang for a long while. She thought back on her life in this world… no relatives worth writing a last letter to, and her only friends were these few characters from the novel.

What did she want to do most right now?

As Lin Meng thought this, her body—cooling from sheer terror—registered the warmth radiating from the sandwich.

Lin Meng opened her eyes. She turned on her phone and, by its faint light, took the sandwich from her pocket. It had gone somewhat cold, but to Lin Meng, whose hands and feet were completely icy, it was a warm presence.

She held the sandwich out to Su Yutang, who was sitting beside her—but something was clearly wrong with Su Yutang now.

She saw Su Yutang’s pupils dilate and go vacant, then her whole body began to tremble at an unnatural frequency.

Lin Meng immediately dropped the sandwich and reached for Su Yutang. But the moment her hand touched Su Yutang’s arm, Su Yutang—ignoring her own earlier warning—began screaming, “No! Don’t kill me, don’t lock me in a place like this, let me out, let me out—!”

“Tangtang, what’s wrong? It’s me, Lin Meng! No one here wants to kill you. Calm down, or if the elevator drops we’ll both die here!”

When Lin Meng grabbed Su Yutang’s arm, Su Yutang—as if terribly frightened—clawed and scratched at her. “No! No—get away, get away!! Mom, save me—”

Lin Meng’s arm and chin were scratched bloody by Su Yutang’s frantic movements. She immediately stepped forward and tightly embraced Su Yutang. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared… I’m here.”

Su Yutang’s eyes became bloodshot. She stared wide with terror, not daring to blink. “Wuu… I’m so scared. They held a knife to my neck, and my neck bled. It was… it was Aunt Lu who did it, Bai Li saw it too… but none of them said anything. Mom, I’m so scared, that place was dark and cold and so small…”

From Su Yutang’s disjointed words, Lin Meng gathered that Su Yutang might have suffered some psychological trauma, and what she was showing now was very much like claustrophobia.

If someone with claustrophobia stayed in a sealed, dark space for too long, abnormal brain discharges could trigger seizures, and even lead to shock and sudden death.

At this rate, before rescue came or the elevator dropped, Su Yutang might die first.

Lin Meng was terrified. She couldn’t even bear to imagine how horrifying it would be to be alone in this pitch-black space with a corpse.

She held Su Yutang tightly, trying to warm her with her own body heat.

Su Yutang had just been crying for her mom to save her. At that thought, Lin Meng softened her voice. “Dear sweetheart, what exactly happened? Tell Mommy all about it. Mommy will always be here with you. I won’t abandon you.”

Hearing this, the chaos in Su Yutang’s mind cleared a little. Her gaze began to slowly focus. “Aunt Lu and Bai Li’s mother planned my kidnapping together… but, Mom, Aunt Lu treated me well before. Her daughter was seriously ill. I couldn’t bring myself to be ruthless with her. Bai Li was like the puppy Aunt Lu brought back with me that day—I liked it so, so much. Because she wasn’t involved in this, I forgave her just like that…”

“Mom, I’m sorry. I’m not a qualified heir. I’m still too weak. I can’t do it—I can’t do any of it…”

She thought again of the days when Su Yurong discovered her trauma-induced stress reactions and sent her to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

“I don’t want to be strapped to the bed, don’t shock me… I’m not sick, I’m just scared, I’m just so scared… No one stayed with me, no one came to save me…”

Hearing this, Lin Meng’s eyes brimmed with tears of pity. She held Su Yutang and patted her back gently, the way a mother soothes a baby to sleep. “Don’t be afraid, Tangtang. Mommy is here. No one will hurt you ever again. Mommy will never send you back to that place. I love you. I love you…”

When Su Yutang heard the words “I love you,” her gaze gradually regained its light. Though her heart still pounded wildly in fright, she could feel her body warming in this embrace.

She really was afraid of narrow, dark, enclosed spaces—but if that space was in Mommy’s arms, then she was no longer afraid.

Su Yutang buried her head against Lin Meng’s chest, and Lin Meng gently soothed her. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you.”

The repeated “won’t leave you” gave Su Yutang a brief sense of security.

Like a frightened cub, she huddled pitifully in Lin Meng’s arms. “Then do you love me?”

Lin Meng answered without hesitation. “Yes, Tangtang. I love you.”