My Queen, My Rules - 52
Salon
Half an hour later.
Cen Sen sent Ji Mingshu a WeChat message.
Cen Sen: [Ming Shu, what’s wrong?]
He had originally typed, “What’s wrong now?” But earlier that day, Shu Yang and Zhao Yang had been preaching in the group chat, earnestly advising everyone: never, ever use phrases like “what’s wrong now” with a woman. It makes them think you have zero patience.
Remembering this pearl of wisdom just before hitting send, he deleted the word “now.”
Ji Mingshu, who had been waiting for him to ask, saw the message the instant it arrived.
She didn’t reply. Instead, she put on airs, deliberately muted her phone, and placed it face-down on the table.
Gu Kaiyang, leaning against the opposite sofa armrest, watched her out of the corner of her eye, her face screaming, I’m speechless.
When Ji Mingshu first returned, she had launched into a tirade, cataloging Cen Sen’s crimes. Gu Kaiyang had listened and thought it was no big deal, even instinctively defending him.
But she’d given up after a while. No matter what she said, Ji Mingshu would find some bizarre new angle to pin another capital offense on Cen Sen.
It was clear Ji Mingshu was determined to pick a fight. In that state, even if her husband stepped over the threshold with his left foot first or breathed one extra gulp of fresh air more than she did, it would be an unforgivable sin.
Thinking this, Gu Kaiyang grabbed a cushion and pressed it over her face. Her entire body radiated a profound despair that seemed to sigh, God only knows when these two dramatic souls will finally put an end to this performance.
Ji Mingshu was deeply dissatisfied with this fair-weather-friend attitude. She poked the cushion over Gu Kaiyang’s face with a back scratcher.
“Gu Kaiyang, get up! What kind of attitude is that? Do you, like that Dog Man, think I’m just being unreasonable?!”
“We’ve been friends for so many years. Tell me the truth—did that dog man pay you off? You actually take his side?”
“Fine, you don’t have to say it. I see through you now. You don’t love me anymore. I’m not your little princess. I guess getting ground down by work really does make a woman this mercenary!”
She punctuated each accusation with rhythmic pokes from the back scratcher.
Gu Kaiyang felt she was being driven to a nervous breakdown. She suddenly yanked the cushion away and voiced a question from the depths of her soul: “Tell me—are you in love with Cen Sen? He didn’t cheat, and he withdrew the investment, didn’t he? You pulled off that perfect, successful show, proving you’re not useless. And he took you home, so why not just stay and legitimately spend his money like your due?”
“I’ve known you for years, and it’s only recently that you’ve suddenly grown this towering backbone. Your standards for your husband have skyrocketed… And fine, have high standards for your husband—but why are your standards for me so damn high too?!”
Ji Mingshu met her gaze for three seconds, then suddenly looked away, saying as if it were nothing, “Yeah.”
“Huh?” Gu Kaiyang had asked too many questions at once and didn’t know which one was being answered.
“I am in love with Cen Sen. I just realized it a while ago. Forgot to tell you.”
Ji Mingshu said it with staggering nonchalance, her tone identical to saying she’d forgotten to buy Coke on the way home and was telling Gu Kaiyang to make do with the Sprite at home.
Gu Kaiyang was stunned for a moment. “Wait—for real?”
Ji Mingshu: “Why would I lie?”
Since secretly admitting it to herself, and then to Cen Yang, she found herself growing less and less embarrassed to mention her feelings for Cen Sen.
She even had a vague sense that if she admitted it a few more times, she might just work up the courage to confess to him directly.
“……”
Gu Kaiyang was lost for words for a long while.
She mentally replayed Ji Mingshu’s series of unusual behaviors over the past few months of living at her place. Honestly, if you added the prerequisite of “Ji Mingshu is in love with Cen Sen,” a lot of previously illogical things suddenly made perfect sense.
She had always wondered why Ji Mingshu, content to be a canary for so many years, had suddenly awakened and awkwardly adopted this “strong, independent woman” persona after being provoked by Li Wenyin. Turns out, it all boiled down to pride—she couldn’t stand the thought of being looked down on by the person she loved. And running away from home? She was just waiting for him to come kiss her, hug her, and lift her up on a pedestal.
---
Mingshui Manor.
After sending the message, Cen Sen stayed in the living room, dealing with company affairs.
His mind, however, kept wandering. He rubbed his temple intermittently, his gaze flicking repeatedly to his phone on the coffee table.
About half an hour later, his phone finally vibrated. It was Zhou Jiaheng calling to report on Cen Yang’s latest minor maneuvers.
Cen Sen listened, then responded with a flat, emotionless, “Mm.”
In truth, he had received word the day Cen Yang returned to the country—from Cen Yuanchao himself.
Out of sentiment for the past, the Cen family had smoothed Cen Yang’s path during his years abroad. Cen Yang hadn’t wasted the opportunity, steadily progressing toward becoming an industry elite.
One could say that, as long as he was willing to let go of the past, a golden, broad avenue was already laid out before him.
The problem was, he couldn’t let go.
Honestly, Cen Sen had zero interest in whatever Cen Yang was plotting. He had been away from the Cen family for too long and seemed unaware of what extent this surname—seemingly warm but cold-blooded at its core—had now reached.
Even the once equally powerful Huadian Ji family could only bow its head to Jingjian now. Everything Cen Yang was doing couldn’t even be described as “throwing an egg against a rock.”
Compared to watching his futile struggles, Cen Sen was far more interested in cooking spare ribs at the moment.
After hanging up, he walked to the kitchen island, slowly rolled up his sleeves, and began preparing the ribs.
---
After a whole afternoon of pointless, dramatic bickering, Ji Mingshu finally fell silent by evening.
Both she and Gu Kaiyang were starving, their stomachs growling. They were hunched over their phones, debating whether to order Braised Chicken with Rice or Boneless Pickled Fish for dinner when the doorbell rang abruptly.
Ji Mingshu nudged Gu Kaiyang with her little foot. Long accustomed to this enslavement, Gu Kaiyang got up without complaint.
“Who is it?” Gu Kaiyang asked, peering through the peephole.
A very polite male voice sounded from outside. “Hello, is this Miss Gu’s residence? I’m from the catering department of the Junyi Huazhang Hotel. I’m here to deliver dinner for you and Miss Ji.”
Hearing “Junyi Huazhang,” Gu Kaiyang opened the door without hesitation.
The delivery staff outside gave a slight bow and smiled, presenting an insulated food container. “Hello. Inside are two bento boxes prepared by our hotel. There’s also a small separate container of braised pork ribs, specifically for Miss Ji.”
Gu Kaiyang smiled back. “Okay, thank you.”
After seeing him off, Gu Kaiyang scurried back to the living room with the carrier.
She was about to ask about the ribs specifically made for “Miss Ji” when Ji Mingshu opened the container, pulled out the little box of ribs, stared at it for a few seconds, and suddenly muttered under her breath, “Shameless!”
—As she cursed, an unconscious blush spread across her cheeks.
Gu Kaiyang was completely lost. Her mind filled with question marks: Is she cursing at me? No… Why are you blushing while cursing?
“So… you don’t want them? I could—”
“How can you be so delusional?!”
Gu Kaiyang didn’t even finish speaking before Ji Mingshu cut her off.
Ji Mingshu protectively hugged the little box of ribs to her chest, then laid a magazine across the coffee table, forcefully creating a demilitarized zone, using her actions to declare that between plastic sisters, they could share hardships—but not braised pork ribs.
---
Unbeknownst to them, deep winter had settled over the capital.
The Little Golden Canary, after a brief return to the cage and a subsequent re-escape, had now been flying free for over half a month.
During her last return, she had wisely taken her passport. As year-end approached, Gu Kaiyang was swamped and had no time to entertain her. Bored out of her mind, she invited Jiang Chun on a week-long vacation to a tropical island.
Her WeChat Moments feed was updated daily with nine-square-grid photo collages and little videos. Scorching bikini shots provided a feast for the eyes. Each update garnered hundreds, even thousands, of likes and comments, turning her personal feed into a pseudo-celebrity microblogging frenzy.
In contrast, Jiang Chun’s posts were more restrained, as she often saw online complaints: some people go on a trip and spam their Moments every day with selfies and videos. So annoying.
But after witnessing the explosive popularity of Ji Mingshu’s feed, Jiang Chun finally had an epiphany: the annoyance wasn’t about the spamming. It was about the spammer not being a born goddess. :)
---
On the other end, Cen Sen had been trying to figure out why Ji Mingshu had gotten angry and flown the cage again after coming home. But he couldn’t pinpoint the root cause. He wanted to find an opportunity to talk to her properly and resolve the issue for good, but Ji Mingshu wasn’t cooperating—she wouldn’t answer his calls or reply to his messages. Buried in a mountain of work, he was also stretched thin.
With hundreds of subsidiaries under the Junyi umbrella, plus companies he had personally invested in, and the gradual transfer of authority from Cen Yuanchao’s Jingjian conglomerate, his twenty-four hours were utilized down to the second. Project data, events, and social obligations swirled in his mind. Even the omniscient Zhou Jiaheng had forgotten that, on the matter of the show sponsorship, his boss had thoroughly offended Ji Mingshu.
Although Ji Mingshu didn’t reply, Cen Sen still messaged her every few days—short, bland greetings and updates that didn’t address the core issues.
Cen Sen: [Are you asleep?]
Cen Sen: [Have you eaten?]
Cen Sen: [On a business trip today.]
Cen Sen: [Back in the capital.]
When he saw the bikini videos and photo grids on her Moments, his comment was only four words long.
Cen Sen: [Too revealing. Post less.]
Ji Mingshu was so angry she laughed. She finally replied to him—with a meme of a historical figure captioned, “The Qing Dynasty fell over a century ago.”
But for all other messages, she maintained her three-fold strategy of ignoring: don’t pick up, don’t reply, I didn’t see it.
By the time Ji Mingshu returned to the capital from her vacation, it was already mid-January.
Teasers for the show Designer’s Abode had begun airing in rotation on Xingcheng TV. Probably to generate buzz for a strong premiere, the producer said their team’s episodes would be among the first two broadcast.
After all, Pei Xiyan’s popularity was exploding, and Yan Yuexing’s girl group was stirring up drama—both guaranteed to generate topics.
But the closer the broadcast date loomed, the icier Ji Mingshu became toward Cen Sen.
Because she really, truly had not seen a single clear frontal shot of herself in the teasers! That deadbeat!!!
---
Gu Kaiyang’s magazine was hosting a year-end media appreciation salon. The theme was “De-stress Day,” the idea being that everyone worked hard all year, and the year-end break should be about relaxing.
They had asked Ji Mingshu to consult on the interior design for this salon event. Ji Mingshu wasn’t involved in the actual on-site setup, only providing some advice on color schemes and spatial layout for reference.
As the event was hosted by Zero Degree, Ji Mingshu naturally received an invitation, but she had zero interest in attending. To be precise, she hadn’t planned to attend any social events since running away from home.
First, her failed battle with Li Wenyin at that cocktail party had left a lingering shadow. Second, she didn’t want to field questions about her marriage.
Her marriage to Cen Sen was a topic of keen interest within their circle, but by now, no one could say for sure what was going on with them.
It was true that Cen Sen had gotten into a fight for her not long ago, and she had subtly shown off late-night movie ticket stubs. But it was also undeniably true that Cen Sen had wanted to invest in his ex’s movie, and Ji Mingshu had left home over it and hadn’t returned.
Moreover, Li Wenyin’s movie had recently entered the casting phase. She was quite capable—after Junyi announced the withdrawal of funding, she had secured a large investment from a film company under the Yuan family. She had even hired Huang Baili, who had won Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival, to be the supervising producer for her little film.
The mere thought of appearing at an event where people would smile to her face but point fingers and gossip behind her back depressed Ji Mingshu immensely. It was easier just not to go—out of sight, out of mind.
But the clever little devil Gu Kaiyang saw, in Ji Mingshu’s tangle of worries and indecision, a golden opportunity to send this goddess back where she belonged.
So when Zhou Jiaheng, amidst his own busy schedule, found time to visit the magazine office and ask her to pass along another gift, she didn’t even look up from her desk. Her voice was cold.
“Assistant Zhou, even if you’re not tired, I am. Do you think this game of pass-the-parcel is fun? Go back and ask your boss if he has any sincerity left—if he even wants his wife anymore.”
Zhou Jiaheng was no fool. After a slight pause, he adopted a humbly receptive manner, showering her with a whole basket of pleasantries and promising significant benefits if she could help resolve the situation.
Gu Kaiyang kept her head down, furiously signing documents, forcefully maintaining her aloof, powerful-woman persona. She spoke rapidly.
“Don’t bother flattering me. I’m immune. Shushu has been wronged for so long—don’t expect me to be nice to you.”
“Your boss is rich and powerful, investing in shows without batting an eye. But Shushu worked her butt off for over a month, and he just ordered her footage cut without a single word of explanation. Do you think that’s appropriate?”
“Your boss’s rotten luck in love is still causing trouble everywhere, flying so thick that our Shushu doesn’t even dare attend a salon for fear of people pointing fingers behind her back. Do you think that’s appropriate?”
“Your boss stabs people in the back, shooting his mouth off for momentary satisfaction, and hasn’t even offered an apology. Do you think that’s appropriate?”
Zhou Jiaheng didn’t dare breathe too loudly.
Without looking up, Gu Kaiyang tossed a salon invitation toward him. “Figure it out!”
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