When Will My Childhood Sweetheart Marry Me?-Chapter 195: Live-action Martial Arts Movie
A neutral and clean low voice slowly rose as Zhong Yuan hugged her guitar, sitting on a high stool, wearing a long plaid shirt that exuded an ultimate sense of cold detachment.
Sometimes, it’s hard to describe Zhong Yuan in words. Every time you saw her, she was always brimming with a brooding, dark energy.
She smoked, drank, and was a perennial fixture in bars, with her actual appearances in a classroom for lessons being few and far between.
But even so, people couldn’t bring themselves to dislike her.
At least in Jiang Shuyao’s heart, Zhong Yuan was still far from being a bad element of society.
While listening, Tang Xing suddenly leaned in, "Yaoyao, do you remember that actress who became famous a few years ago for acting in that historical palace drama?"
"Which historical palace drama?"
There were many actresses who rose to fame with historical palace dramas, and Jiang Shuyao didn’t usually pay much attention to them.
Tang Xing paused for a few seconds, pondering how to convey the explosive news to Yaoyao that she had just learned, when she saw Chen Jin suddenly rise from the couch across the room.
"I’m going to meet someone outside, I’ll be back soon." With that, he hurried away.
Jiang Shuyao remembered Wen Lin hadn’t arrived yet and figured it out. Glancing back at Tang Xing, she noticed the girl’s face looking a bit unnatural.
"Yaoyao, stay put, I’m going to the restroom."
"..."
Are you sure it’s the restroom?
No sooner had Tang Xing left than Jiang Shuyao picked up her jacket and decided to follow and see for herself.
Just as she got to her feet, two men holding wine glasses blocked her path. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶
"Beauty, we’ve had our eyes on you for a while. Why don’t you sit down, have a few drinks, and make friends?"
This "for a while" was not an exaggeration at all, ever since Jiang Shuyao had walked in with Chen Jin, her distinct, pure aura amidst the crowd had attracted the attention of many onlookers.
In a bar, it’s typical for strangers to strike up conversations with each other.
Jiang Shuyao didn’t have the habit of assuming the worst of people and smiled politely, "I’m sorry, I need to leave now. Please let me pass."
The men didn’t budge, and the smiles on their faces grew murkier, "Just one drink, and then we’ll let you go."
It was not hard to discern the coercive tone in their words.
Jiang Shuyao frowned, planning to ignore them and go around, but one of the men seemed to anticipate her plan and stretched out his hand to touch her shoulder.
"My friend can’t handle her liquor well. If you want to drink, you might want to ask me instead."
The hand stopped a half-centimeter from her shoulder, firmly blocked and unable to move.
Jiang Shuyao, surprised, turned her head to meet Zhong Yuan’s calm gaze.
The band’s lead singer—few at the scene wouldn’t know her.
The man pulled back his hand, disgruntled, and snapped his fingers at a nearby waiter, pointing to a tray full of vodka shots, "Give you one minute to drink all these. I’ll smash ten thousand on your band tonight, how about that?"
Smashing ten thousand.
These kinds of people were nothing new to Zhong Yuan. She crossed her arms and waited, watching the man, "Then please, sir, pay a promise deposit of fifty thousand first. Forget one minute, for a hundred thousand, I’ll drink with you all night, no problem."
"Go to hell, are you sick in the head?"
The men’s expressions turned sour, and after cursing, they walked away.
Jiang Shuyao, confused, asked Zhong Yuan, "How did you know they didn’t have the money?"
Zhong Yuan snorted, "Rich people looking to befriend you don’t use alcohol."
"What do they use?"
"Money."
Well.
That joke was ice cold.
After a silence, Zhong Yuan spoke softly, "Stay close to me, let’s go out for some fresh air."
There was an alley behind the bar, leading straight to the adjacent hotel’s parking lot.
The hotel next to the bar—indeed a sharp business mind.
Somehow, Jiang Shuyao found herself not as naïve as before.
The streetlight in the alley was dim, and Zhong Yuan stood underneath it, lighting up a cigarette, wreathing himself in smoke, a stark contrast to his quiet singing on stage.
The sense of despair emanating from within once again assailed Jiang Shuyao’s neural pathways.
So, getting some "fresh air" meant inhaling secondhand smoke.
She moved a few steps farther away.
Zhong Yuan noticed the girl’s small movement but didn’t react much, subtly smiled, took a few hard drags to finish off the leftover cigarette, and tossed it into the trash can.
"Shall we go in?"
"Okay."
Zhong Yuan halted mid-turn, squinted as he looked toward the endless darkness at the end of the alley.
Footsteps drew nearer, and suddenly, several figures emerged from the dim light up ahead.
Jiang Shuyao frowned subconsciously.
It was her first time witnessing a scene straight out of television, where a group of grim-faced men approached with hardly a word, wielding weapons as they closed in on the two of them.
"What do they want?" The tension was evident in Jiang Shuyao’s voice.
As the group drew closer, Zhong Yuan’s icy gaze showed no emotion.
She gave the girl a gentle push to the side, "You go in first."
Jiang Shuyao had never seen such a scene and began frantically reaching for her phone to call the police.
By chance, she caught the eye of the fierce-looking leader, who signaled to a dark-skinned thug. The punk received the instruction and quickly strode toward the girl.
His target was clear, the phone in her hand.
Jiang Shuyao retreated in terror, but as the thug passed by Zhong Yuan, he comically fell face-first onto the ground.
The real-life action began just then.
With the punk tripping over, the alley fell into a brief silence before three burly men raised thick clubs and viciously aimed for Zhong Yuan’s back.
Jiang Shuyao cried out in alarm, "Watch out!"
But with just those two words, she clamped her mouth shut and froze in place.
Her body went numb, wanting to move but unable to.
The scene unfolding was beyond anything she could have ever imagined, even in her wildest dreams.
In the dead of night, the continuous screams filled the alley as the men in front of Zhong Yuan became like paper tigers, their clubs not only useless but now just obstacles tripping them up.
Of course, all this was because Zhong Yuan was just too good at fighting.
After a few rounds, the men were piled up like a small hill, wailing as they lay atop the foul-smelling trash can.
Jiang Shuyao didn’t know how to express what she felt at that moment.
She really wanted to clap.
But that might have seemed a bit awkward.
So she could only stand silently, watching Zhong Yuan go to a corner and emotionlessly turn on the tap, repeatedly washing his hands.
After cleaning his hands, Zhong Yuan took out a cigarette from his pocket and leaned against the wall, slowly smoking.
He cast a sidelong glance at the girl beside him, who still seemed in shock, and asked indifferently, "Why didn’t you run just now?"
Two seconds passed before she reacted.
Jiang Shuyao came to her senses and answered dumbly, "My legs went soft, I couldn’t move."
Zhong Yuan snorted.
"Does Pei Yan know you’re this cute?"
"..."
Was that a compliment or an insult?
In the silent moment, she overheard him murmuring to himself with a barely detectable self-mockery, "I thought you’d be scared to see all this."
In her second year of junior high, she had gotten into a fight to stand up for a classmate, picking up a brick and splitting open a bloody gash on someone’s head. Since then, her classmate treated her like a devil, staying well away from her.
Any girl just a little bit nicer wouldn’t like someone like her.
Let alone the princess here, who grew up cradled in men’s palms.
