My Queen, My Rules - 15
Dispute
...?
For several long seconds, Ji Mingshu couldn't even process what Gu Kaiyang had just said.
The only thing the name Zhang Baoshu left behind in her mind was the lingering echo of the final syllable, which happened to sound the same as the Shu in her own name.
"What? Who and Cen Sen?"
The moment the question left her lips, she remembered the description Gu Kaiyang had used.
That shameless woman.
Her expression froze.
Without another word, she pulled out her phone and opened Weibo.
The news hadn't spread publicly yet. There was nothing on the front page. Zhang Baoshu was, at best, a fourth or fifth-tier actress. Unless someone paid to buy trending topics, who would waste their time caring about the love life of a barely recognizable celebrity?
Ji Mingshu stared at the search bar, suddenly realizing she didn't even know what she was supposed to search for.
Her mind drifted.
When had she first accepted that one day she'd marry for the sake of her family's interests?
She honestly couldn't remember anymore.
Nor could she remember when the dirty secrets of wealthy families had become so ordinary that she'd stopped reacting to them altogether.
There were simply too many.
In the Ji family alone, the uncle she had always respected kept three mistresses behind his wife's back. One of whom was three years younger than Ji Mingshu herself.
Her aunt never interfered. She simply maintained the dignified posture of a lawful wife, following the old belief that a man could have as many lovers outside as he pleased, so long as the wife at home remained unshaken.
Even the parents Ji Mingshu vaguely remembered had nothing to do with the loving marriage she'd imagined as a child.
After becoming an adult, she'd learned by chance that they had only given birth to her to prove they were capable of having children and to satisfy both families.
Once she'd been born, they'd left her to be raised by others.
Later, the two of them died unexpectedly while away on one of their performative romantic vacations.
Perhaps that had been karma finally catching up with them.
To outsiders, Ji Mingshu was an orphan whose parents had died young, yet whose uncles and aunts doted on her endlessly, treating her like the treasured jewel of the family.
People often said she must have accumulated incredible blessings in a previous life.
In many ways, they weren't wrong.
Her eldest and second uncles had truly treated her like their own daughter. Growing up, she lived more extravagantly than any of her cousins.
But she'd understood very early that being treated like a daughter didn't actually make her one. Everything she'd been given came with a price.
Her future marriage.
From the moment she married Cen Sen, she'd already accepted that theirs would never be the kind of marriage where husband and wife loved each other, respected each other, and grew old together.
There might never be endless love, but there would be endless money.
When she looked at it that way, the arrangement had seemed perfectly fair.
Yet now, standing here after learning her husband had apparently cheated on her, she couldn't understand why her first feeling wasn't anger.
It was confusion.
Then panic.
Then a dull ache that settled deep inside her chest.
"Shushu... d-don't cry. Please don't cry..." Gu Kaiyang coaxed softly, flustered and stumbling over her words. Seeing Ji Mingshu sway slightly, she hurried over and helped her onto the sofa.
Ji Mingshu didn't actually feel like crying. Even sitting down, she instinctively crossed her legs neatly to one side, rested both hands gently on her knees, and held her back perfectly straight.
Her posture remained as elegant as ever.
Only her vacant eyes and the faint tremor in her fingers betrayed her.
Nearly a minute passed before she finally spoke. "Show me."
Gu Kaiyang didn't move.
Ji Mingshu: “It’s fine. Let me see."
Whether Gu Kaiyang showed her or not, Ji Mingshu would eventually find it herself.
They both knew that.
After a long silence, Gu Kaiyang reluctantly moved her fingers.
The leak consisted of a video and several photographs. Ironically, the headline had nothing to do with Cen Sen. It claimed Zhang Baoshu had secretly met First Young Master Zhang, Zhang Qi of Fengchang Cultural Tourism, late at night. The article described them as unusually intimate and speculated they were in a passionate new relationship.
The lengthy write-up focused almost entirely on Fengchang Cultural Tourism's powerful background and First Young Master Zhang's notorious romantic exploits.
But among the so-called evidence, aside from several blurry paparazzi shots where nobody could even tell who was who, the remaining photos were ten consecutive shots of Zhang Baoshu standing beside Cen Sen's car.
Apparently the paparazzi's eyesight had failed spectacularly. Not only had they confused Zhang Qi with Cen Sen, they'd also confidently written several thousand words analyzing the relationship.
Although Cen Sen's face wasn't visible in the photographs, everything else gave him away.
His car. The wedding ring on his hand. His watch. The smiling profile of his face. Even Zhou Jiaheng standing nearby.
Each detail confirmed his identity.
And Ji Mingshu, a woman who had shared his bed, recognized his silhouette instantly.
He was smiling.
Smiling at a three-hundred-and-eightieth-tier actress whose name he'd probably never even heard before.
Was he always this gentle with other women?
When he slept with them, did he complain that his wife was nothing more than a beautiful, boring ornament?
Ji Mingshu felt as though her mind were exploding.
Hearing the rumor and seeing the photographs were two entirely different kinds of shock.
There was another video after that. It claimed Zhang Baoshu and Cen Sen had spent eight intimate hours together inside her apartment.
Ji Mingshu couldn't bring herself to press play, her hand shook violently around the phone. She had no idea how she'd managed not to throw it against the wall.
She suddenly remembered their wedding. At both families' insistence, they'd held a traditional Chinese ceremony.
She hadn't liked it. But she'd also never liked the groom, so she'd simply gone along with it. What difference did the ceremony make?
Before the wedding, she'd even sat down with Cen Sen to establish three rules for their marriage.
The very first rule had been simple.
No matter what happened behind closed doors, they could never allow the image of their perfect marriage to collapse.
Whatever either of them did outside the marriage, they were never to embarrass the other publicly.
Back then, Cen Sen had answered with only two words: "I won't."
She had believed him.
She never imagined that barely three years later, that promise would shatter.
Nor had she expected that when this day finally arrived, what hurt wasn't merely the humiliation or the anger of being made a fool of.
There was something else.
A dull soreness.
A quiet sense of grievance.
A suffocating heaviness she couldn't quite explain.
Watching her like this, Gu Kaiyang's own heart ached.
They met while studying overseas. Gu Kaiyang had been the kind of student whose family had scraped together every last cent to send her abroad, leaving her terrified of wasting the opportunity. Ji Mingshu, meanwhile, had been the dazzling princess everyone revolved around.
When Gu Kaiyang first arrived overseas, she'd already heard the legends.
People said Ji Mingshu had casually bought an apartment simply because it would make one of her design projects more convenient.
They whispered endlessly about just how unimaginably wealthy her family was.
As a freshman who'd barely seen the world, Gu Kaiyang had been awestruck. She'd never dreamed that the girl everyone talked about would one day become her friend.
Throughout all the years they'd known each other, Ji Mingshu had always been the brightest star in the sky.
The longer Gu Kaiyang stayed by her side, the more she felt that someone as radiant as Ji Mingshu made the world itself seem like a better place.
She never wanted to witness the day that star fell.
Quietly, she walked over, wanting to offer some comfort.
Without lifting her head, Ji Mingshu spoke first. "Let me be alone."
Gu Kaiyang turned toward the window, pressed a hand over her forehead, dragged it down her face, and exhaled soundlessly.
A little while later, she quietly slipped out of the office.
She pulled the door almost completely shut behind her.
She didn't want anyone outside seeing Ji Mingshu like this.
Her little fairy deserved to be forever beautiful and vibrant.
"Hey, wasn't your team supposed to be shooting Zhang Baoshu and EE's cover today?"
In the heavy, low-pressure atmosphere of the editorial bullpen under Gu Kaiyang’s watch, someone barged in, and immediately asked the one question they absolutely shouldn't have.
A second later, the intruder seemed to remember something. "Oh, did the shoot get canceled because of Zhang Baoshu's scandal? That guy wasn't Young Master Zhang, was he? It was President Cen from Junyi."
She turned toward Gu Kaiyang.
"Right. Isn't President Cen your rich socialite friend's husband? How can you still sitting here? Shouldn't you be comforting her? Or do rich girls actually enjoy wearing a pair of green horns?"
The malice in her voice became unmistakable.
"Shi Qing. I don't feel like arguing with you today.” Gu Kaiyang finally looked up from her computer. Her gaze settled coldly on the woman. "You'd better get out. Right now."
Wherever people worked together, office politics inevitably followed.
The rivalry between Gu Kaiyang and Shi Qing had begun the day they joined the magazine. Over the years it had only escalated, transforming from subtle competition into open warfare.
Whenever Ji Mingshu and Gu Kaiyang met, Shi Qing inevitably became part of the conversation. Over time, Ji Mingshu had also taken note of this person.
On a few occasions when they’d crossed paths at the magazine, Ji Mingshu had casually mocked Shi Qing's outdated fashion sense, remarking that someone with such terrible taste belonged editing men's magazines for the rest of her career.
The comments had become an office joke, leaving Shi Qing humiliated for a period.
While Shi Qing didn’t dare confront Ji Mingshu outright, she remembered every slight, long dreamed of making both Gu Kaiyang and Ji Mingshu pay back every ounce of humiliation with interest.
Today, it seemed, was that long-awaited day.
"Can't even tell the truth now?"
Shi Qing sneered.
"She's not even here. Why are you sucking up to her so hard? Isn't it just because she's rich and you want to cling to her? Honestly, why didn't you ask her to introduce you to some rich, handsome guy so you could marry into money too? Nice and easy, right? So what if your husband cheats? If there's enough money involved, what's a little sacrifice?"
Every word was uglier than the last.
With a loud bang, Gu Kaiyang slammed her keyboard aside and lunged forward.
Several junior editors hurriedly grabbed her. "Editor Gu, don't! Calm down!"
Shi Qing had spent the entire year being overshadowed by Gu Kaiyang. Now that she'd finally found an opportunity to strike back, she became even more vicious.
"Oh? You want to hit me? Go ahead! Come on! Hit me!"
"What did I say that wasn't true? Isn't Ji Mingshu always so arrogant? Looking down on everyone just because her husband has some stinking money. Don't think I don't know what she really is in the Ji family!"
"They're raising her the same way wealthy families in ancient times raised beautiful girls to marry off for profit. The only difference is the packaging looks more respectable."
"What exactly is she so proud of? Does she dare get divorced? Of course not. She wouldn't even dare squeak."
Gu Kaiyang's eyes turned bright red with fury. "Let me go!"
She struggled violently.
"Nobody touch me! If I don't tear this bitch apart today, my surname isn't Gu!"
Before Gu Kaiyang’s words fully faded, the deputy editor’s office door was shoved open with a ‘bang!’
Today Ji Mingshu wore a pair of lace-up stilettos. The heels had been sculpted into the shape of the brand's signature letter. Against the polished marble floor, each step rang out in crisp, rhythmic clicks. The satin ribbons shimmered softly as they wound around her slender pale ankles before being tied into delicate bows. Cold, elegant, exquisitely beautiful.
She walked across the office one measured step at a time.
Click. Click. Click.
Until she stopped directly in front of Shi Qing.
Her gaze slowly swept over her from head to toe. Then she reached out and lightly lifted Shi Qing's chin.
"And what exactly are you?"
She had just reapplied her lipstick. A matte, perfectly sculpted crimson. Her lips were flawless.
Her words were light, slow, and cold.
Every bit as naturally imperious as Shi Qing had accused her of being.
Ji Mingshu: “Your bag is fake. And that ring? You copied a picture online and had someone reproduce T House's classic design. Someone who has so little respect for design has no business working for a magazine."
The instant her lie was exposed, Shi Qing's mind went blank. Humiliation flooded across her face, reddening her ears, neck, and cheeks.
"You don't like me. So the moment something goes wrong in my life, you rush over to mock me. But remember this. Even if I, Ji Mingshu, lose everything, it will never be your turn to judge me.”
She loosened her grip on Shi Qing's chin, almost as if touching her had dirtied her fingers. Casually, she pulled a tissue from a nearby desk and wiped her hand clean.
Silence swallowed the entire office.
After wiping her hands, Ji Mingshu put her sunglasses back on, picked up the papers she'd printed from Gu Kaiyang's office, and walked away, never sparing Shi Qing another glance.
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