Chapter 46: Midnight Rumba (Part II)

Lin Jiajia seemed to have a great fondness for Tarcy Su’s songs.

As "Sisters Stand Up" ended, the player automatically switched to "A Woman's Hidden Thoughts."

The cue arrived, but no one sang.

Only the instrumental accompaniment played on, synchronized with the scrolling lyrics.

...
In the coffee shop of the East District
In the dim sofa
A modern woman harboring hidden thoughts
Drinks alcohol yet weeps like a child
...

Holding the microphone, Lin Jiajia tilted her head sideways to gaze at Xia An.

Her intoxicated, deer-like eyes were watery and dazed.

Xia An stood before the table, observing Lin Jiajia’s eyebrows.

He looked at her smudged lipstick.

He looked at her newly permed, voluminous waves tied up with a hair band.

He looked at her incongruous mix-and-match outfit: a sweatshirt and T-shirt on top, paired with jeans and high heels below.

The two of them quietly stared at each other like this for a full half-minute.

"Huh? Little Xia An? Heh... *hiccup*."

Lin Jiajia finally recognized who was standing in front of her, grinning broadly as she spoke.

Mid-sentence, she let out a loud hiccup.

She asked again, "What are you doing here?"

Tilting her head and blinking, she took in Xia An's mature attire—especially the leather shoes on his feet—and suddenly uttered an enlightened "Oh~".

"You came looking for a hostess!"

Xia An: "..."

"I have Tang Wan's number, you know..."

She giggled and teased, thoroughly amused by Xia An's eye-rolling expression.

"Don't worry, I won't tell. Little Xia An has grown up after all, all men are like this."

Lin Jiajia motioned for Xia An to come over and sit down, then propped herself up, half-drunk, to ask him if he was finished yet and if he had fun.

Amidst the deafening accompaniment, Xia An pointed at his watch to signal that it was very late.

Lin Jiajia waved dismissively, grabbed his arm, and pulled him down to a seat.

"Auntie invites you to keep singing! Listen to me sing for you!"

Without giving Xia An a chance to speak, she started singing right away.

In between lines, she poured Xia An a drink.

Halfway through a line, she gasped for breath and quickly blurted out, "Order whatever you want to eat, it's on me."

Then she immediately rushed to catch up with the lyrics.

With a wry smile, Xia An picked up a fresh, inverted glass, refilled it with alcohol, and took a small sip.

Diuretic mixed with water—insipid.

Empty beer bottles were stacked eight boxes high in the corner.

The table was a chaotic mess of opened, barely touched bottles of red wine leaning every which way.

Lin Jiajia belted out three consecutive sorrowful ballads before finally putting down the microphone.

Wielding a beer bottle boisterously, she insisted on toasting Xia An.

After finishing his drink, Xia An told her, "I'm taking you back."

Lin Jiajia refused.

To prove she wasn't drunk, she paused the music, crossed her legs, sat up straight, smoothed her hair, gave a dry cough, and declared, "There, is this fine? I want to keep playing."

Just as Xia An was about to persuade her further, he saw Lin Jiajia purse her lips and gaze at him with wide, pleading eyes.

He didn't know what had transpired between Old Zhou and her, but there was clearly a major rift.

Lin Jiajia was an eternal maiden; never mind thirty, he remembered her acting precisely like this even in her forties.

After a moment of thought, Xia An poured two glasses of honey-lemon water, drank one himself, and handed her the other.

"Playing is fine, let's take a breather. I haven't had little to drink tonight either."

"Okay," Lin Jiajia replied obediently, cradling her cup.

Prompted by Xia An's questions, she stammeringly and incoherently recounted the events of the evening.

The palliative care project had officially been approved at the Central Hospital and the Second Affiliated Hospital.

Zhao Zhijing, Lin Jiajia's superior, and several other project participants had hosted a lavish banquet that evening to treat various leaders from the hospital and the Health Commission.

As the person in charge of the self-funded, self-maintained website, Lin Jiajia had smoothly become the number-three core figure of the project.

Naturally, she had to attend.

With a tongue-clucking expression of wonder, Xia An pointed at her and asked, "You went to the banquet dressed like this?"

In his memory, Lin Jiajia's wardrobe consisted of only two styles throughout her life.

At work: a white lab coat and high heels, blending professional authority with subtle allure.

After work: sportswear, acting like a teenager.

After Old Zhou's death in his past life, she refused the inheritance, opened a small pharmacy, and spent over a decade wearing a white lab coat over her sportswear.

"What's wrong with this outfit?"

Lin Jiajia scoffed, tossing her voluminous waves to imply she had gone to get her hair styled.

Then, with a sudden spring in her movement, she hoisted her leg up and hitched her denim pant leg higher.

A faint fragrance drifted over.

Good grief, Xia An's entire field of vision was blocked by black silk stockings reflecting the colorful ambient lights.

"See that? Those lecherous old men today kept peeking under the table at me."

She was truly plastered.

Xia An pushed down her long leg and humored her, saying, "Right, ample, you showed plenty of respect."

Lin Jiajia giggled merrily, raising an eyebrow to ask if he was having a good time and who he had come with.

Then, before Xia An could answer, she randomly pointed toward the restroom.

"You know what? My eyes were really opened today. An old man dragged a hostess in there and didn't come out for half an hour. Tsk tsk tsk."

Instantly, Xia An lost any desire to spend even another second sitting in that room.

Right on cue, a waiter knocked and entered to deliver hot towels.

Xia An asked Lin Jiajia if she was absolutely sure she wouldn't leave, to which Lin Jiajia firmly replied that she wanted to play a little longer.

She said it was her first time visiting such a luxurious KTV and she wanted to sing to her heart's content.

This was a KTV? Xia An was amused.

Learning from the waiter that the bill for this room had already been settled, he asked him to find a smaller private room instead.

The smaller room was on the floor below.

Lin Jiajia could no longer walk straight; swaying and humming a tune, she let Xia An support her as they went downstairs.

The minimum spending requirement was four thousand five hundred.

Xia An swiped his card and asked Lin Jiajia, "Are you sure you still want to drink?"

Standing before the song selection machine and picking every single track from top to bottom without missing one, Lin Jiajia waved a hand without turning around. "Drink, drink, drink."

Xia An took two hundred in cash from his wallet and handed it to the male waiter. "Get me real alcohol."

The waiter looked troubled and asked Xia An whether he wanted red wine, baijiu, spirits, or beer.

Xia An asked Lin Jiajia.

Lin Jiajia waved her hand again. "Beer, beer."

Xia An looked at the waiter.

The waiter breathed a sigh of relief—they actually had that in stock. Tucking the cash into his vest pocket, he said, "Please wait a moment, sir."

Four thousand five hundred, two people, no hostesses, and just beer.

When the waiter finished setting out the food and drinks all over the table, Lin Jiajia had already been howling for quite a while.

Lin Jiajia loved Korean dramas, had taught herself half-baked Korean, and was currently singing last year's mega-hit "Endless Myth."

Sesame oil, rancid oil, whatever oil—all kinds of oil.

She wasn't even sitting down, striking all sorts of poses in front of the screen.

Xia An found the sight quite comical.

In the dim and flickering lights, a strange illusion washed over him.

It was hard to imagine that the Lin Jiajia before him—feigning carefree high spirits and pretending to be a young girl—would, two years later in the original timeline, display toward him... the radiance of maternal love.

Fine.

A drunken laugh shall accompany you through tens of thousands of rounds!

Xia An rolled up his shirt sleeves, intending to share Jackie Chan's part of the duet with her.

As it turned out, she didn't need help at all.

As soon as Lin Jiajia finished "oiling" her way through that song, she dropped her pitch and began: *Every night, pierced by heartbreak...*

When she finished, she turned around and bowed deeply to Xia An to convey: *Performance concluded, where is the applause?*

Xia An shook the maracas vigorously.

Lin Jiajia burst out laughing.

The next song was one Xia An knew, so he reached out for the microphone.

Lin Jiajia dashed over to snatch it away, clutching it tightly to her chest like a treasured artifact to keep Xia An from singing.

Another sorrowful ballad.

Xia An's competitive spirit flared up—wasn't everyone a karaoke hog?

He selected a song, bumped it to the top of the queue, and cut the track.

He wrestled one microphone right out of Lin Jiajia's grasp.

——*Hishasha, I Hishasha...*

The biggest hit of the moment!

Lin Jiajia was dumbfounded, and by the time he finished singing, she was already convulsing with laughter on the sofa.

"Sing something upbeat," Xia An said smugly.

He thought to himself that this was only because *Sunshine, Rainbow, White Pony* hadn't been released yet.

Happily, Lin Jiajia raised her bottle and downed half of it in one go.

After a few repetitions, Xia An told her to pour it into a glass and drink slowly.

Lin Jiajia filled her glass to the brim with ice, prompting Xia An to remark that women shouldn't drink things that were too cold.

Lin Jiajia retorted, "I never knew you were such a nag. I drink cold things every day of the month, why didn't you say anything before?"

That was actually true; Xia An seemed to have genuinely never seen her drink hot water. That habit didn't look like a doctor's; it looked like a Westerner's.

He was out of options.

Lin Jiajia chose S.H.E.'s "Magic." The song suited her vocal range wonderfully and sounded delightful.

...
I once grew disheartened, thinking I had come to the wrong world
Too many unorthodox ideas, finding no one who understood
...

The two of them sang a duet of "In the Rain," one of the few classic Mandarin duets Xia An actually liked.

Growing tired of singing, Lin Jiajia leaned quietly against the sofa and listened to Xia An sing.

She muttered under her breath: *Turns out you sing pretty well too.*

Xia An didn't hear her.

When "Devotion" played, Lin Jiajia hummed along.

When the newest hit "Fairytale" came on, Xia An thought of Tang Wan.

When it ended, Lin Jiajia clapped and said, "Sing it again, I like listening to this one."

Xia An sang it a second time, and upon finishing, found that Lin Jiajia had fallen asleep.

He paused the music, walked over, and discovered that Lin Jiajia's sleeping posture was identical to Tang Wan's.

With her hands cupping her cheeks, she was curled up in a corner, quiet and still.

Xia An checked the time: two and a half hours, and another box and a half of beer.

Once things quieted down, Xia An was suddenly hit by a wave of vertigo, realizing he needed to sober up a bit before he would have the strength to carry Lin Jiajia.

Gulping down half a pot of honey water, Xia An poked Lin Jiajia. Seeing that she was fast asleep, he casually queued up an upbeat dance track.

Amidst the loud DJ beats, he sang songs he had loved in his future life.

Singing, swaying, and hopping around, he wanted to break into a sweat as quickly as possible.

In a daze, Lin Jiajia squinted her eyes, amused by the silly young man silhouetted against the backlight, before drifting back into a deep sleep.

When Xia An could no longer bounce around, and seeing that Lin Jiajia showed no signs of waking, he headed to the restroom to relieve himself for the sixth time.

Mid-stream, the door was yanked open with a *whoosh*.

Covering her mouth, Lin Jiajia rushed inside.

Frowning as he desperately tried to control his bladder, Xia An patted the back of the retching Lin Jiajia.

The moment he squatted down, however, the discomfort worsened.

Utterly unable to hold it back, Xia An briefly ran out to look at the opening of a beer bottle—unless his aim was miraculous.

Then he looked at the ice bucket...

His basic decency forbade him from doing that.

The sound of a flushing toilet echoed from within.

Assuming she was done throwing up, Xia An hurried back in, only to find Lin Jiajia relieving herself while seated on the toilet bowl.

Her three layers of pants were bunched up around her calves.

The two of them stared at each other in blank dismay for five seconds.

As Xia An turned to leave, Lin Jiajia covered her mouth and chuckled, "I really couldn't hold it in, just pee in the sink."

Xia An slapped his forehead, suddenly remembering that the empty room across the hall also had a restroom.

...

Insisting on finishing the remaining half-box of beer, Lin Jiajia dragged Xia An along to sing for another hour.

Eleven-thirty at night.

Stumbling and supporting each other, the two of them left "Rose Residence."

The manager and the staff gave them enthusiastic thumbs-ups—truly impressive, treating a KTV room like a wholesale warehouse.

Xia An hailed a cab by the roadside, but Lin Jiajia stopped him.

She declared that they absolutely could not take a car right now, or they would definitely vomit.

With his brain barely functioning, Xia An pondered this for a brief moment and said, "That makes sense."

On the sidewalk, the two of them staggered along one after the other, humming tunes.

Provincial capital entertainment venues were mostly clustered in the same block.

Not far from Rose Residence was the bar where Xia An had originally met Tang Wan.

Continuing further in the direction of the city center, they eventually reached Lingbo Bridge.

A gentle breeze carrying a misty dampness rushed into their faces. Leaning against the railing, Lin Jiajia gazed at the distant twinkling fishing lights on the river, muttering something under her breath.

Xia An noticed the absence of footsteps behind him, and when he turned around, he jumped in fright.

Lin Jiajia had thrown her arms wide, letting the wind whip against her face as she shouted, "It feels so good, like I'm flying!"

Utterly drunk, buffeted by a strong wind, eyes closed while the world spun and turned upside down—didn't it feel just like flying?

Staggering over, Xia An grabbed her arm and said, "Flying for a moment is enough, don't go getting any ideas about swimming or anything."

Lin Jiajia burst out laughing.

Finding that feeling the breeze actually felt quite pleasant, Xia An leaned against the railing as well, watching the starry sky swirl.

Lin Jiajia said, "If only it were dusk right now."

Right then, a dump truck drove past, and Xia An didn't catch her words clearly. "What?"

"I said, if only it were dusk right now. There would be wind, the wheat in the setting sun would all be ripe, my mom and dad would be wearing straw hats waiting by the road for me to finish school, there would be smoke rising from cooking fires in grandma's courtyard, and flocks of birds would fly from the river into the reed marshes..."

Listening quietly, Xia An didn't speak.

Lin Jiajia's parents had been swept away by a flash flood five years ago.

Lin Jiajia continued, "Old Zhou doesn't want me anymore, and grandma's health is getting worse by the day."

Turning sideways, Xia An looked at the profile of Lin Jiajia leaning against the iron railing, wanting to say something.

Lin Jiajia smiled as she gazed at the river, then turned her head, their eyes locking.

She asked Xia An, "Have you ever wondered what it would feel like if one day you had no family left?"

*Wondered?*

Xia An felt that word wasn't quite accurate.

*Remembered* would be more fitting.

Sincerity in his voice, he told Lin Jiajia, "You and I are around the same age. If we both live hard lives, we'll probably die back-to-back, right? We won't be left without family."

Lin Jiajia giggled lightly and remained silent for a long time.

Heavy trucks, permitted to travel only at night, roared past one after another, kicking up clouds of sand and dust.

Lin Jiajia turned around and leaned against the railing in the same posture as Xia An. "Little Xia An, you're so capable, why don't you take me along to make money in the future?

"Old Zhou wanted to give me money, but I didn't take it.

"Still, I hope to buy that peach orchard of his someday.

"And plant grandma's courtyard full of roses—bright red roses."

Staring at the pitch-black water surface, Xia An said, "Alright."

Lin Jiajia suggested, "Shall we dance?"

Xia An: "?"

Lin Jiajia: "I remember, you danced in the private room."

With that, Lin Jiajia walked to the middle of the sidewalk and slipped off her high heels.

Standing on her tiptoes, she held her shoes in one hand and extended the other.

"When I was in junior college, I went to dances too.

"Little Xia An, your Auntie was young once as well."

Xia An flashed a wide grin.

Spitting into his palm, he rubbed it against the hair at his temples.

August 4th, exactly midnight.

It was as if an old Shanghai vinyl record had begun to play across the surface of Lingbo Bridge.

Thirty-six-year-old Xia An took thirty-year-old Lin Jiajia by the hand.

He supported her waist; she rested her hand on his shoulder.

They silently danced an old-fashioned rumba.

Within just a few steps, the stockings on those slender feet developed two tears.

Lin Jiajia said, "When I have money, I'm going to take grandma traveling, to lots of places. When grandma can't walk anymore, I'll go back to the countryside to look after the peach orchard for her. Just thinking about it is freedom, isn't it?"

Xia An nodded in agreement.

Yet whenever we speak of freedom, our mouths are bound by so many shackles, always waiting for "after I..."

The dance concluded, and both of them burst into laughter.

Neither of them remembered how they walked the rest of the way.

In short, every hundred paces or so, one of them would inevitably end up hugging a tree and vomiting violently.

In the early morning, when Lin Jiajia woke up in her own bed, her entire body felt as though it had fallen apart.

Her stockings were ripped in multiple places, there were friction marks on her wrists, and kiss marks dotted her neck.

-----------------

Early that morning, Xia An woke up hugging a toilet bowl, a splitting headache throbbing through his skull.

This toilet was unfamiliar.

This restroom was unfamiliar.

Stepping outside, the entire apartment was unfamiliar.

The only thing he recognized was a person in a framed photo sitting on the television cabinet.

It was a smiling Lin Jiajia alongside her grandmother.

Suffering from a total alcohol-induced blackout, Xia An massaged his temples and surveyed his surroundings, realizing this was a simple one-bedroom apartment with cozy decor.

Lin Jiajia had another home??

There wasn't a single item belonging to a man in the entire place, proving this wasn't Auntie Lin's secret chamber for hiding a lover.

Xia An poured himself a glass of water.

As he tilted his head back to drink, he noticed that the index and middle fingers of his right hand were stained with dried blood!

Dazed for a long moment, Xia An walked back to the restroom to wash his hands.

In the mirror, he spotted three small face masks hanging from the clothesline overhead.

All of them were pure cotton, featuring cartoon prints.

Chaste, not sexy.

There was a pair of black silk stockings in the wastebasket.

None of that mattered; what mattered was that after washing his hands, Xia An discovered there were no wounds on them whatsoever.

Was Lin Jiajia hurt?

-----------------

A knot tightened in Xia An's chest, filling him with an ominous foreboding.

The bedroom was small, not particularly refined, maintaining that same cozy style.

Perched on the pillow was a talking donkey doll from *Shrek*.

The quilt was unmade—sloppy Lin Jiajia.

Xia An sat down on the edge of the bed, his palm pressing against a damp patch.

Pulling his hand back, his fingertips were stained with a faint reddish hue.

On the bedsheet, spots resembling fallen plum blossoms were a shocking sight to behold.

Xia An shot to his feet, his brow furrowing deeply.

*How... how is this possible?!*

Recalling the traces on his fingers earlier, Xia An gritted his teeth and cursed himself: *Beast!*

He had genuinely believed that since coming back through rebirth, his mindset had reached a state of complete clarity.

Yet at this moment, sudden tension and anxiety gripped him.

What in the world was this?

He himself had blacked out entirely, so goodness knows what state of drunkenness Lin Jiajia had been in...

A series of mental images of himself transforming into a wolf flashed through his mind, causing Xia An to shiver.

No wonder.

No wonder she hadn't cared where he slept, no wonder she had vanished without a trace.

She wouldn't do anything foolish, would she?

As for whether Lin Jiajia might storm over to his house to complain to his parents, Xia An figured that would still be better than taking her own life!

Daring not hesitate any longer, Xia An dialed Lin Jiajia's cell phone.

Hesitating, Xia An paced barefoot across the hardwood floor.

The phone rang for a long time before it was answered.

Just as Xia An blurted out, "Hello, where are you?", Lin Jiajia's calm voice came through: "You're awake?"

Her voice was weak, but there were clearly people around her.

"Are you at work or somewhere else?"

"Are you still at my place?"

"Uh, yeah, I am."

"Oh, then open the drawer on the left side of the television cabinet and take a look. We'll talk later."

*Click*—Lin Jiajia hung up on her own.

Her tone was calm, yet calm in a way entirely unlike the Lin Jiajia he knew.

Walking back to the living room, he found two drawers beneath the thirty-two-inch color television.

Directly above the left drawer sat that framed photograph.

Pulling it open, Xia An revealed a transparent document folder.

A stack of reports, a single sticky note.

The first document: a birth certificate and medical report.

[Lin Jiajia, female (infant)...]

Every page of indicators was normal.

Except for gynecology.

At the very end...

[Congenital absence of the uterus]

The second document: junior college entrance physical examination.

[Lin Jiajia, female, 18 years old]

[Congenital uterine malformation: absence of the uterus]

The third document: employment internship physical examination report for the Second Affiliated Hospital.

The fourth document: a physical examination report from the summer of her twenty-sixth year.

Xia An remembered that half a year after this report, she had married Old Zhou.

The sticky note:
[Married for three years, he was away on business for twenty-eight months]
[He worshipped me like a deity]
[Xia An, don't be afraid]
[It doesn't matter]

With his mouth agape in astonishment, Xia An surveyed the small apartment once more.

Worshipped like a deity...

He instantly recalled what Old Zhou had said when he got drunk at his house that day.
*'I have issues, and she has issues too...'*
*'Sigh, it's my own fault, it has nothing to do with her.'*

Swallowing hard, Xia An looked back at the photograph of the pure young girl wrapping her arms around her grandmother's neck from behind.

*"Turns out Old Zhou was the ultimate simp?!"*

He remembered that in his past life, Old Zhou's death had been rather disgraceful—he had allegedly suffered a heart attack from overusing enhancement pills in the arms of a new young bride.

At the time, he had assumed Old Zhou was just excessively fond of carnal pleasures.

Never had he imagined that Old Zhou was utterly infatuated with Lin Jiajia, holding her up like a goddess upon a pedestal, only for it to backfire completely and strip away all mundane desires!

In his two lifetimes, Xia An had only ever heard of such things, never witnessed them.

No wonder, no wonder. No wonder she engaged in retaliatory intimacy with a newcomer.

Yet, didn't this mean that Lin Jiajia...

Tsk, in her prime years of desire, both her body and her heart remained so pristine?

Silently lowering his head to look at his right hand, Xia An was left utterly speechless.

-----------------

August 4, 2006. Jinxiu District, Donghai City. The Civil Affairs Bureau.

At the entrance.

Even though Zhou Ming良 was deeply curious as to why Lin Jiajia had dressed in such a manner to process their divorce, he swallowed the questions back down.

The certificate was issued, their paths parted ways—what was left to say?

Looking nearly sixty years old, Old Zhou gazed with lingering desolation at his ex-wife, Lin Jiajia:

"I thought you would need some time to think it over, I never expected you to agree right away. Jiajia, I... I failed you, sigh."

With a gauze scarf wrapped around her neck, toad-style sunglasses shielding her eyes, and wearing a light trench coat despite the height of summer, Lin Jiajia shook her head calmly.

She only said: "Right from the start, I knew a day like today would come."

Just as Old Zhou opened his mouth to speak, Lin Jiajia looked up and smiled: "You're getting on in years, treat her well and don't be like you were with me. You don't have many relatives on your side of the family, so hurry up and carry on the family line."

Tears welled up in Old Zhou's eyes.

"Jiajia, at least let me offer you some compensation.
"Money, a house, a car, anything is fine. After all, I... what I did was wrong."

Bag slung over her shoulder, Lin Jiajia walked away without uttering another word.

From behind her, Old Zhou choked out, "Jiajia, I'm sorry."

Lin Jiajia paused her steps. She had wanted to say "It doesn't matter."

Then, remembering she seemed to have already said those three words to someone else today, she turned her head back and told Old Zhou:

"Thank you."

...

Rounding the street corner, Old Zhou was no longer visible behind her.

Lin Jiajia knew that for the rest of her life, Old Zhou would no longer be a part of it.

Yet, with a woman like her, would there ever be anyone else?

Would any man want a woman incapable of bearing children?

Perhaps. Perhaps some man might think: *How wonderful, it saves a fortune on little umbrellas.*

Ever since she had grown old enough to understand, Lin Jiajia had begun to dread the arrival of that day, keeping suitors at arm's length and instinctively harboring suspicion toward them.

A plaything? She loathed playthings.

The only thing she liked was that smirking, cynical donkey doll—if she hated someone, she would just kick them flying.

In the sixth grade of elementary school, the other girls of her age successively began experiencing their periods.

Fearing mockery, she faked it too, wasting money on sanitary pads...

Feigning stomach aches, pretending she couldn't participate in P.E. class, pretending to drink brown sugar water...

Back when she wanted to reject Old Zhou, she had purposely gone to get a gynecological examination and shown him the report.

Old Zhou had raised his hand to the heavens and sworn a solemn oath: If I care about this, I'm a goddamn son of a bitch!

Ha, he really hadn't been.

After marriage, he built her a shrine.

Incense offerings and ritual fruits, worshipped with utter piety.

*I don't want to be a deity, I just want to be an ordinary woman.*

Her arms ached, her neck ached, her chest ached.

Her legs ached, her lower body ached, even her toes ached.

That little punk!

That bastard punk!

Realizing what had happened after recalling the madness of the previous night, Lin Jiajia had intentionally left the bed unmade.

*Scare the hell out of that scoundrel!*

Crouching in a corner, Lin Jiajia used her phone to take a photo of her divorce certificate.

She sent it via MMS to that certain scoundrel.

[I said it, it doesn't matter.]

The scoundrel called her back: "Lin Jiajia, actually, it doesn't matter to me either."

Lin Jiajia said coolly: "Call me Auntie, hanging up."

She didn't pick up when he called again.

Eight times in a row, unanswered.

Five days straight, unanswered.