Chapter 335: An Unreliable Suggestion

(Really sorry, my wife’s been away the last few days, I’ve had to look after the kid. No kindergarten on weekends, so it’s a full day at home plus sending them to interest classes, which delayed my writing. I’m back on track today, and updates will return to normal tomorrow. Sorry.)

Li Jie, Huang Ying, Qiao Huanxuan, and Hai Fu... At a time like this, suddenly getting texts from a bunch of women—do I read them or not?

Hearing her question, Yue Yao couldn’t help pressing her lips into a smile and quietly asked, "So do you want to read them, or do you not want to read them?"

Yurong frowned slightly. "Honestly... I do want to read them. I’m really curious what Hai Fu said in her text in particular. But I’m not in a position to. That wouldn’t be appropriate; I can’t invade his privacy while he’s in a coma."

Yue Yao was curious too. Even though she could give ground to Zhang Yurong, that didn’t mean she could be that generous with the others. On this front, whether she was standing from Zhang Yurong’s angle or her own, she was on the same defensive line as Yurong.

She herself would never go through Li Yan’s texts, but seeing Yurong like that, she also wanted to help. After thinking a bit, she suggested, "Maybe you can look at it from another angle..."

"Huh?"

"Like, say he’s in a coma and a call comes in. If we’re right here, can’t we help answer and tell the caller he’s not in a position to pick up right now? That way, if it’s urgent, if it can be relayed to someone else, the caller will decide that. Texts are the same thing!"

"Um... is that really okay?" Yurong could understand; there was definitely some concept-switching going on, but the logic wasn’t completely unreasonable. What if there were clues in these texts about why he fell into a coma? What if there was something urgent? That’s no different from using his phone now to look up Zheng Yixuan’s number. In an emergency like this, you shouldn’t be too hung up on rules.

Yue Yao shrugged. "Right now you’re trying to understand why he’s in a coma, you’re not trying to catch him cheating, right? What matters is your intention, not the method."

Zhang Yurong thought about it and decided that made sense. They’d been together for over a year and she’d never once snooped through his texts. This time she wasn’t coming from that mindset either. Besides, he’d even brought Yu Xiaodi straight home; if there were more shady stuff, it wouldn’t be sitting in his text messages. Could anything be more over the line than that?

Then she compared it to herself, quietly asking: if she were the one in a coma, and Li Yan wanted to read her texts and contacts, would she be upset when she woke up?

No, because there was nothing in her phone that couldn’t see the light of day. As long as the motive behind it wasn’t surveillance or voyeurism, she wouldn’t find it hard to accept.

She nodded to Yue Yao, and with no attempt to avoid it, began calmly checking the messages.

Earlier, when she’d been flustered, Zhang Yurong had already opened and read two texts—Yu Xiaodi’s and Wen Qianyi’s—and the content of those two hadn’t surprised her. It was natural for Yu Xiaodi to worry about him, and Wen Qianyi’s was just concern from a friend and relaying her words. But after reading the texts from Li Jie, Huang Ying, Qiao Huanxuan, and Hai Fu, her mind was swimming.

In fact, whether it was Li Jie, or Huang Ying, or Hai Fu, their personalities were all different, but without exception they wouldn’t write anything too blunt or especially ambiguous in a text. That included Qiao Huanxuan. They all knew about Li Yan disappearing for a night and couldn’t get through to his phone, so they hurriedly texted him, asking him to call back when he saw it.

You could say the four messages Yurong saw were all simpler than the ones from the previous two days, and they were all more or less the same. But a woman’s intuition had already told her that Li Yan’s relationships with those few women were not nearly as pure as they looked!

Sometimes, simplicity can contain a lot more complexity.

For example, it can reveal a kind of closeness in tone—not like texts between ordinary friends, which keep a certain level of politeness. Qianyi’s text was one she’d sent after calming down; in Zhang Yurong’s view, it sounded like a close friend, nothing further. But the others had all fired off their messages in a panic after hearing the news. They hadn’t had time to think about phrasing and other details.

"What is it?" Yue Yao didn’t ask whether there were any clues. She told herself that if even she didn’t know anything, then unless a woman had been with Li Yan last night, none of the others would have a clearer idea of what had happened.

Yurong shook her head lightly. "Nothing... These texts are all just asking how Li Yan is doing, just general concern, asking him to call back when he sees them. There’s no clue in them."

"And you..." Yue Yao could see her mood was complicated; there was no need to spell it out.

Yurong gave a bitter little laugh and lowered her head to glance at the screen again. "There’s someone named Li Jie. I feel like I’ve heard the name, but I can’t remember who she is for the moment. Then there’s that girl from Li Yan’s old department, Huang Ying, and Li Yan’s first-love female classmate, Qiao Huanxuan. They all heard the news from Yu Xiaodi, and when they couldn’t get through to him, they sent texts right away to ask. And then there’s Hai Fu from the company... She... her message is more or less the same too, but she actually heard about it after asking Wen Qianyi!"

"And what does that tell you?" Yue Yao already had a rough idea, but didn’t feel it was her place to say it out loud.

"It tells me... at the very least, those four have a pretty good relationship with Li Yan. Otherwise Yu Xiaodi and Wen Qianyi wouldn’t have contacted them to ask once they heard about this, and they wouldn’t have gone straight to Li Yan to ask either."

"And those few... you’re not close with any of them..."