My Queen, My Rules - 20

Dream

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Ji Mingshu had to admit that Cen Sen’s line, “I’m not someone who likes to revisit the past,” had pleased her to her very core. The earlier irritation she’d felt at the impending arrival of that distinguished invader vanished instantly.

When she slipped under the covers to sleep, she unconsciously clung to Cen Sen again, her arms winding around his neck, her smooth, bare legs entwining around his waist.

Half-asleep, Cen Sen adjusted his position, pressing the restless octopus squirming against him firmly into his embrace.

That night, Ji Mingshu dreamed.

Perhaps it was nearing dusk in the dream, or perhaps the dream itself was bathed in a warm, golden glow. Every scene seemed soaked in a jar of honey, each frame stretching into crystalline yet bizarrely kaleidoscopic fragments of the past.

The first half was a tedious, drawn-out, nonsensical replay of high school life. One moment she was in her dorm altering the length of her school uniform skirt; the next, she was urgently notified of an exam.

Halfway through the test, the grade head ran in and announced, “Wrong exam. You're in the arts track; you don't need to take physics.”

After leaving the exam hall, she felt both relieved and puzzled. Hadn't she only just started tenth grade, before track selection? And wasn't the exam she’d just taken geography?

Then, Cen Sen abruptly appeared in the latter half of the dream—

In the corridor outside the exam hall, Ji Mingshu saw him walking from the far end with Li Wenyin.

His figure was tall, straight, and lean. Even the reviled navy-blue school uniform of the affiliated high school looked neat and handsome on him. The two walked close together, passed by her, and brushed past with cold indifference.

Ji Mingshu stood there, feeling irrationally annoyed, though she wasn't sure why.

Soon, the scene shifted to the classroom after school. Honey-colored sunset light streamed through the window onto the desks, the lingering rays warm, a delicate breeze gently stirring the curtains.

Besides Ji Mingshu, the classroom was empty. She lay sprawled across a desk, pondering what to eat for dinner.

Just then, Cen Sen walked in.

It was utterly nonsensical—a twelfth-grade student suddenly appearing in a tenth-grade classroom, sitting down beside her, wanting to go over her test paper.

But in the dream, Ji Mingshu's brain seemed to have been eaten by zombies; she found nothing strange about it at all. After rummaging through her backpack, she told Cen Sen nervously, "My test paper is gone."

Cen Sen said, "It's fine."

He patted her head very gently, then leaned in slightly and kissed her.

What happened next took a hard turn into R-18 territory.

He lifted her onto the desk to sit, then stood beside it, pushing her shortened little skirt up and removing her last layer of covering.

Later, she lay flat on her back across the desktop. Cen Sen remained standing beside it, moving back and forth.

She covered her eyes with her hands but couldn’t help peeking through a tiny gap, stealing glances at Cen Sen's clean, ascetic, yet wildly unrestrained expression.

At the peak of passion, Cen Sen gripped her waist, leaned down, and asked her questions too shameful to voice aloud.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Li Wenyin standing at the classroom door. Her heart was tense and apprehensive, yet a secret, indescribable thrill stirred within her. She whispered sweetly and softly into Cen Sen's ear, "I like it."

Then, she woke up.

For the first few seconds after waking, Ji Mingshu’s mind was completely blank, her fingertips trembling.

What kind of bizarre dream was that?

Her heart was pounding wildly, and the strange sensations in her body didn't cease abruptly with the dream.

Finally, her vision focused, and she saw the culprit who had been tormenting her body early in the morning—the one responsible for her dream's drastic genre shift.

To be fair, Cen Sen hadn't expected Ji Mingshu to sleep so soundly. He’d been teasing and stroking her for a while with no signs of her waking. It wasn't until the very end, upon his release, that she finally stirred.

Fortunately, her body’s instinctive reactions in her sleep had been quite… honest.

Their eyes met.

Seamlessly connecting this to the scene in her dream, Ji Mingshu’s ears turned an uncooperative red, her gaze flickering away.

In contrast, Cen Sen, the one who had actually committed the misdeed, was completely unruffled. Waiting until the last trace of pleasure faded, he withdrew, looking thoroughly satisfied, as if to say, Well, that was enjoyable.

Even as the sound of running water came from the bathroom, Ji Mingshu remained lying stupidly under the covers, taking a long moment to regain her senses.

Why on earth had she had such a strange dream? And in the dream, it was right in front of Li Wenyin, too! So shameful!

And also, that Dog Man Cen Sen had gone three times last night. Why was he at it again first thing in the morning?

She’d been sound asleep! What’s the difference between that and necrophilia?!

…Wait, no, she wasn’t a corpse!

While Ji Mingshu’s thoughts ran wild, Cen Sen finished his shower and emerged. Succumbing to temptation this morning had cost him quite a bit of time; his phone had been ringing non-stop since eight o'clock.

Talking on the phone, he adjusted his collar with one hand but couldn’t manage his tie single-handedly. He glanced at Ji Mingshu, walked to the bedside, and handed her the tie.

Ji Mingshu, not knowing what spell had come over her, sat up wrapped in the duvet—completely naked underneath—took the tie, and began knotting it for him.

"... Hexie softening their stance is only a matter of time. Their funding gap is too large; Junyi is their only viable option. You don't have to worry about that."

Perhaps due to the vigorous early-morning activity, Cen Sen's voice was slightly low and hoarse, carrying a sense of deep physical satisfaction.

Ji Mingshu kept reminding herself, It’s just marital relations; don’t act like a lovesick fool, while simultaneously, unhelpfully, recalling all the shameful scenes, which made her blush and her heart race frantically.

By the time Cen Sen finished his call, the Windsor knot still wasn't properly tied.

Cen Sen gave her a deep look, suddenly reached out, and took the tie from her hands.

"I'll do it myself."

Ji Mingshu didn't dare meet his eyes. Sitting on the bed wrapped tightly in her little duvet, she finally mustered a semblance of bravado: "Y-You should have done it yourself in the first place! What’s wrong with you? Just put the phone on speaker! Did you have to bother me?"

The moment the words ‘bother me’ left her lips, she flinched; no one was more sensitive to that word than she was. Before she could blush further, she quickly lay back down, pulling the covers over her head.

A soft, low chuckle came from outside the duvet. She remained motionless, determined to play dead until Cen Sen left.

At 8:30 a.m., Zhou Jiaheng and the driver finally saw Cen Sen emerge.

It was strange. In Zhou Jiaheng’s memory, Cen Sen was always terrifyingly self-disciplined; tardiness should never occur for his boss.

But he didn't dare ask, silently attributing it to a marital spat or some other unexpected family issue.

There was a group-wide routine meeting scheduled for the morning, primarily involving managers from various subsidiaries presenting reports.

Among Junyi's hotel chains, the cities with the most locations were the Capital and Xingcheng. During the recent hotel inspections, Xingcheng hadn’t been visited yet. Junyi had twenty-three hotels spanning four different brands there; a visit would require at least a week's stay.

As luck would have it, this routine meeting uncovered some messy issues stirred up by senior management at the Xingcheng branch.

After the meeting adjourned, Cen Sen immediately instructed Zhou Jiaheng to adjust his upcoming schedule.

Zhou Jiaheng reminded him that it would be best not to cancel Director Chen's appointment that night. Cen Sen said in a low voice, "Then we depart right after it ends."

Back in his office, after finishing the documents at hand, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes to rest.

Suddenly, the image of Ji Mingshu moaning beneath him popped into his mind, sweet and utterly seductive.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. He sat up again and took a sip of black coffee.

He and Ji Mingshu had actually known each other for a long time, but upon reflection, their understanding of one another wasn't particularly deep.

For instance, her staunch insistence on ‘divorce in case of infidelity’ was completely beyond his expectations. He also found his own reaction to it to be somewhat unexpected.

The word ‘divorce’ evoked a strange sense of aversion, a feeling of things slipping out of control.

On second thought, it seemed laughable. The Ji family held little use for him now; in fact, this marriage alliance was far more beneficial to the Ji family than to him. How dare Ji Mingshu constantly threaten divorce? The Ji family would be the first to object.

He opened a new file. Before he’d read two lines, he suddenly picked up his phone and sent a WeChat message to Ji Mingshu.

---

When Ji Mingshu received Cen Sen's WeChat, she was at a trendy dessert shop with Jiang Chun and Gu Kaiyang.

The three of them had ordered a table full of items and taken plenty of photos but were all sipping bland, plain tea.

Ji Mingshu and Gu Kaiyang had strict standards for their figures. The guilt from annihilating an entire plate of braised pork ribs the night before weighed heavily on Ji Mingshu. Even though she'd had a bedroom marathon from night till morning, stepping on the scale still showed a gain of a solid 0.3 kilograms.

No helping it. Fat is a lie detector that even money can't bribe—harsh and unforgiving.

Jiang Chun wanted to eat, but before her goose claw could make a move, Ji Mingshu started ranting in her ear.

"Eat, eat, all you know is eat! Do you think you're as slender as Zhao Feiyan already? Maintaining your figure is a woman's lifelong endeavor. Yan Yu and that little green tea bitch are still watching. With you looking like this, you still want Yan Yu to be consumed with regret and have him and that little green tea bitch eat shit together?"

(1: A famous Chinese empress during the Han Dynasty, a symbol of slender beauty.)

"Don't think just because you're making some progress with Tang Zhizhou lately you can let yourself go! Tang Zhizhou might see you through love-blinded eyes today and call you adorably chubby, but he could turn on you tomorrow and call you an uncultured little fatty!"

Jiang Chun: "…"

Damn, who could still have an appetite after that?

Having successfully prevented Jiang Chun from indulging, Ji Mingshu started chattering with Gu Kaiyang about the show invitation.

Her socialite image was too heavy a burden; she couldn't make up her mind.

Gu Kaiyang, however, thought it sounded like a fun experience. She was, by nature, a relatively independent and strong-willed girl who always believed women should have their own careers.

Gu Kaiyang said, "Participating in the show is an experience first and foremost. Secondly, you could use it to develop your own career. Xingcheng TV has decent influence. Appearing on one of their shows as an interior designer could lead to more cases in the future. Your husband is generous, and you have more money than you can spend, but isn’t money you earn yourself more satisfying to spend?"

"Not really," Ji Mingshu said matter-of-factly, resting her chin in her hand. "I think spending other people's money feels even better."

"…"

Thinking about it carefully, she wasn’t exactly wrong.

Just then, Ji Mingshu received the WeChat message from Cen Sen.

Cen Sen: [I'm going to Xingcheng tonight. Might be there for one or two months.]

He’s going to Xingcheng?

Ji Mingshu remembered the show's filming schedule was also about a month.

Immediately, another message came in.

Cen Sen: [Call me if you need anything.]

The night before, she had wanted to ask him if he had any opinions or suggestions about her participating in the show. Later, with all the bedroom entanglements, she'd forgotten all about it.

Now, she earnestly and promptly implemented Cen Sen's ‘call me if you need anything’ instruction, dialing his number before he had even put his phone down after sending the message.

After a bit of small talk, Cen Sen suddenly asked her to wait.

Half a minute later, his voice returned to the line. Ji Mingshu got to the point: "Actually, it's like this. Xingcheng TV wants to invite me to participate in a show. It's a space design program, basically teaming up with celebrities to complete design tasks. What do you think?"

Cen Sen looked at the participant list Zhou Jiaheng had brought him half a minute earlier. His gaze fell on the line Zhou Jiaheng had marked:

"Group 3: Li Che, Ji Mingshu (tentative)"

"Note: Li Che has plans to unbind from Meng Xiaowei. He can cooperate with the production team to form a CP with the non-celebrity participant. The non-celebrity participant has outstanding appearance and can be prioritized as a key filming target."

He skimmed through Li Che's personal profile and said dismissively, "I don't think it's a good idea."

Ji Mingshu: "…"

Cen Sen added, "A show like Metamorphosis² might be more suitable for you."

(²: A popular Chinese reality show where, typically, a troubled urban teenager and a rural teenager swap lives for a period.)

Ji Mingshu: "…?”

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