As Chu Luyu walked along the street, her mind was filled with thoughts of taking the system down with her.
Her inner voice sounded as if it were squeezed through clenched teeth: 【Can you tell me why, not long after I finished one task, another one pops up?】
System Cuihua: 【Oh, these tasks are randomly triggered based on the original plot’s settings. You ran into the male lead today, you made up, and coincidentally there’s a lingerie shop ahead—so the task triggered itself.】
Chu Luyu: 【What kind of nonsense is this? Running into a lingerie shop means the male lead has to help pick out lingerie? This task trigger is way too arbitrary!】
System Cuihua: 【The key point is really that you and the male lead made up. In the original plot, the original owner didn’t smooth things over with him nearly this fast. You can see how effective your brown-nosing just now was—you’ve accelerated the task progress directly!】
A thought crossed Chu Luyu’s mind, and she asked: 【So according to you, if I finish all the plot point tasks from the original storyline, I can break off the engagement with the male lead ahead of time? Without having to stick to that half-year agreement?】
System Cuihua: 【Pretty much.】
After confirming that, Chu Luyu suddenly felt much less resistant to this task.
The lingerie shop not far away was an old establishment in the area.
From the outside, the storefront wasn’t too big, and the decor leaned toward a kitschy, cute style. A mannequin stood at the entrance, wearing a set of water-blue and pink lingerie.
When Chu Luyu reached it, her pace slowed down.
Jiang Hezhou was still holding her hand. Sensing that she’d stopped, he turned back with a puzzled look.
“What’s wrong?”
The girl’s face was now full of hesitation and… shyness?
Her fair complexion was inexplicably pinker than usual, and when she met his gaze, her eyes were soft and dewy.
She seemed a bit embarrassed. She glanced at him, then shyly looked away.
“Um, could you… help me pick out a few pieces of lingerie?”
Chu Luyu spoke so quietly that her lips barely parted, the words seemingly squeezed out between her teeth and the tip of her tongue.
Jiang Hezhou really didn’t catch it. He frowned slightly. “What?”
The girl’s expression grew even more uncomfortable. When she looked up, her watery eyes met his, innocent and shy.
After a moment, as if she’d made up her mind, she turned her head away and raised her voice.
“I said, could you help me pick out some lingerie?”
The surroundings immediately fell into an eerie silence.
The noisy street sounds continued—wind rustling through leaves, the whisper of passersby, cars driving by with occasional honks, and from a speaker outside an old-school dessert shop further away, a mechanical, rhythmic sales pitch played on loop: 【Freshly fried dough twists, six for twenty yuan…】
Seeing that Jiang Hezhou wasn’t responding, Chu Luyu’s heart started racing with panic.
This request was indeed too outrageous. In the original plot, the male lead was the type who, even months after confirming the relationship, would only restrain himself to kissing the female lead on the forehead.
Now that she’d made this old-fashioned man hear her ask him to pick out lingerie, he was probably about to explode with anger again.
Suddenly, a low, cool voice came from above, calm and steady.
“Why should I pick?”
Uh—
Chu Luyu looked up in surprise, carefully studying Jiang Hezhou’s reaction.
She couldn’t tell what he was feeling at the moment, but on the surface, he seemed fairly composed?
She thought for a moment, then squeezed out a soft, hesitant voice from her throat: “Because I want to know what you… like.”
That caught Jiang Hezhou off guard for a second. He stood there, gazing at her for a long moment, then turned and led her up the steps into the lingerie shop.
It was really that easy?
Chu Luyu was stunned. Even as she was pulled into the store, she hadn’t quite registered it.
The lingerie shop was fairly small overall, with outdated decor. Behind the counter by the entrance sat an auntie in her fifties with a permed afro, watching short videos on her phone about whether to cancel the bride price.
When she saw them come in, she glanced up indifferently, her expression numb, and didn’t say a word—as if she couldn’t care less about them.
Most of the lingerie in the shop appeared to be sourced from wholesale markets—common styles with little design sensibility, and the quality and fabric didn’t seem particularly good either.
Jiang Hezhou looked hesitant. After scanning the store, he leaned in and whispered to Chu Luyu: “Maybe we should just go to a mall instead?”
Chu Luyu quickly shook her head, leaned closer to his ear, and whispered back: “No, I really like the style of this place. Let’s just buy here.”
Now that she’d finally gotten the male lead to accompany her on this task, finishing it as quickly as possible was what mattered most.
It wasn’t like she actually wanted to buy any lingerie!
Jiang Hezhou didn’t argue further. He turned and began selecting pieces according to his own aesthetic taste.
He seemed to treat this as a task that required serious effort, his expression utterly focused. And he showed no hesitation or embarrassment about picking out special women’s items. When he found a style that met his aesthetic standards, he would repeatedly feel the fabric, comparing them carefully, as if trying to find something that would be more comfortable for Chu Luyu to wear.
In his movements, there was not a trace of lewdness or vulgarity. His head was slightly lowered, his eyes gently cast down, exuding an air of pure refinement and elegance.
Chu Luyu watched him from the side and thought to herself that the male lead really was the male lead—even when doing something so out of character, he didn’t lose an ounce of his appeal.
She even thought that the sight of him so seriously selecting items for his partner was kind of… handsome?
Wait—she was just a vicious, troublesome fiancée—what kind of “partner” was she? At this stage, they were at best just cooperation partners.
While Chu Luyu was lost in thought, new footsteps sounded at the entrance of the lingerie shop.
Suddenly, the system began shouting: 【Holy crap! It’s the female lead! The one coming in is the female lead!】
Chu Luyu could clearly feel her heart jolt. She instinctively turned her head—sure enough, among the two girls who had just entered, one of them was the female lead from the original story!
Chu Luyu: 【So what’s going on now? The male and female leads’ meeting point has been moved up?】
System Cuihua: 【How is that possible! This is a coincidence! A coincidence! It’s not plot-arranged!】
Chu Luyu: 【Uh, so what do I do now? The two of them don’t even know each other yet at this point—if they do run into each other, it shouldn’t be a big deal, right…】
System Cuihua: 【Logically, there shouldn’t be a problem. But the male and female leads are the center of this world. Who knows what might happen if they meet ahead of time? What if it affects your task progress…】
Hearing this, Chu Luyu immediately went on high alert.
It was too late to drag the male lead out now. The shop was tiny—if they wanted to leave, they’d have to pass by the female lead.
Chu Luyu looked around anxiously and finally spotted a temporary fitting room nearby with a curtain drawn across it.
Without a second thought, she grabbed Jiang Hezhou’s hand and pulled him inside.
The curtain was lifted and then dropped, enclosing the cramped space in a semi-sealed state.
Jiang Hezhou’s tall, upright frame stood in this narrow space, his height lending an overwhelming sense of pressure.
He had no idea what Chu Luyu was trying to do, and his eyes showed rare surprise. “You—”
As if terrified that he might make a sound, she quickly covered his mouth the moment he uttered a single word, then whispered to him in a breathy voice: “Don’t talk yet.”
Her voice was so soft, as if afraid he wouldn’t hear her. When she spoke, she even stood on tiptoe to get closer to him.
In truth, the two of them were already pressed very close together.
The space enclosed by the curtain was normally only enough for one person to change clothes. Standing there together, both turned sideways, they just barely avoided touching the curtain around them.
Chu Luyu’s small hand was still pressed tightly against his mouth. The area below his nose was completely filled with the scent of her hand cream—a rather ordinary lavender smell, far inferior to the unique sweet orange fragrance that came from her.
Jiang Hezhou looked down at the beautiful face so close to his. They were so near that he could even see his own reflection in her eyes.
Those bright, moist eyes, shimmering with scattered specks of light, were now completely filled with only him.
The feeling was strange, yet maddeningly pleasant.
Chu Luyu was nervously listening to the sounds outside. The female lead and her companion seemed to be heading in their direction, their voices drifting over from a distance—
“This one’s nice—ivory white, clean and simple style. Just the kind you usually like.”
It was the female lead’s companion who spoke first. The female lead herself seemed to hesitate for a few seconds before responding: “I’ll look around a bit more. This one’s a little expensive…”
Expensive?
Chu Luyu blinked in surprise.
When Jiang Hezhou had been picking out styles earlier, she’d been watching the whole time. Among so many options, the most expensive one she’d seen hadn’t even broken a hundred yuan.
At that price range, did the female lead still find it expensive?
Chu Luyu recalled some of the female lead’s background settings from the original plot—a college student from a family that favored sons over daughters. She never rested during summer, winter, or regular holidays, and sent more than half of her earnings from part-time jobs back home on time, keeping only enough for her tuition, often even having a zero balance on her meal card…
Chu Luyu felt complicated.
She asked the system: 【Cuihua, could I secretly transfer some money into the female lead’s card? Without leaving a trace?】
System Cuihua: 【You could, but it’s probably not necessary. Even though the female lead’s life is still pretty tough right now, once she meets the male lead, her life becomes super sweet.】
Chu Luyu: 【But right now, she can’t even afford a bra under a hundred yuan. I feel sorry for her…】
She had barely finished speaking when, before the system could reply, the voices of the two girls outside the curtain came through again.
“Oh right, Tiantian, have you checked the campus forum lately? There’s been a big news story at our school recently. Over in the forensic medicine department, that famous Professor Jiang—apparently he has a fiancée now!”
The female lead’s voice slowly rose again, gentle and calm: “I haven’t looked at the forum, but I do know about that.”
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