Chapter 142: Ch 142: Leave Everything To Me

Looking at the unusual PD Xu Cui, Su Wanyan felt her back dampen with sweat for reasons she could not immediately name. He was still smiling.. and that was exactly what made it worse.

The expression sat on his face the way it always did—easy, familiar, almost lazy—but the pressure underneath it was wrong. Heavier. More deliberate. As if something he usually kept folded away had been allowed to lean forward into the narrow space between them.

Without meaning to, she looked aside.

The moment she registered the avoidance she corrected it. Don’t think too hard about this, she told herself. Overthinking had never helped her in an operating room and it would not help her here. She shook her head once, hair shifting with the motion, and rebuilt a gentle, professional smile before meeting his eyes again.

"What part of the story do you want to hear, PD?"

The question came out smooth. The unease stayed behind it, carefully fenced off where it would not show in her voice.

PD Xu Cui’s smile deepened a fraction. He looked thoroughly pleased. She had felt the edge of what he was and had not flinched into incoherence or excuses. Interesting, he thought. The usual playful expression returned to his face, though a thin thread of appraisal remained mixed in—as if he were still testing how much weight she could carry without dropping the conversation.

"Everything," he answered simply.

Su Wanyan watched the shift and felt the pressure ease almost at once. The alcove seemed to widen again by a degree. I really was just overthinking it, she thought as she sighed in relief. Freed from the pressure made her next smile more sincere.

"You sure about that, PD? We’ll be here for a long time."

She said it lightly, hoping the joke would tilt the whole exchange back toward safer ground.

PD Xu Cui chuckled. "That’s not how you change the subject, Su Wanyan."

Caught cleanly, she laughed—awkward, short, and a little embarrassed. "Oh. I got found out." She scratched her cheek with one finger, the gesture small and uneasy.

PD Xu Cui let out another chuckle. Then he slid down the wall and sat properly on the packed earth of the alcove, back settling against the rough surface as if he had all the time in the world. He gestured for her to join him. After a brief hesitation, she did, arranging herself across from him.

Once she was settled, the playfulness left his voice entirely. "Spill everything that happened there," PD Xu Cui said. No teasing. No soft landing. Just the instruction, firm and absolute.

Su Wanyan sighed. There was no useful exit and she knew it. She cleared her throat, squared her shoulders, and met his eyes with matching seriousness.

"After you left," she began.

The sequence rose behind her eyes in order, each piece still too vivid. The forest. The grass. The brief stretch of time when the afternoon had still belonged to them.

"Qin Yuran and the others entered the forest not long after." A brief, soft smile touched her mouth at the memory—the three of them still able to mess around on the grass, still able to throw leaves and complain and exist without the day turning on them. "But then—"

The smile faded. Her hands closed without her noticing.

"—after them, some staff, Teacher Lin, and...." She paused. The name arrived coated in something bitter. "Teacher Gu."

She pressed her lips together and forced the temper back down before it could shape the rest of the report. Losing her composure here would not help Mo Xingxue and would not make the story clearer. She drew a slower breath and looked at PD Xu Cui again. He was still listening, patient and unnervingly still, the earlier analysis banked but not gone. She offered him a wry smile.

"Well. After they appeared, the assistant director said we had another segment."

PD Xu Cui’s hand came up at once, palm outward.

"Another segment?"

The repetition was quiet. It was not confusion. It was the sound of a man filing the phrase away under a category that would have consequences later.

"Yes," Su Wanyan confirmed. "Another segment."

PD Xu Cui took a breath. Something sharp moved through his gaze—anger, calculation, the particular insult of authority being invented the moment he stepped away—but he kept it contained and nodded for her to continue. He did not want to break her momentum. Not yet.

"As I was saying," Su Wanyan went on, "the assistant director paired us with the guests he decided we weren’t ’close’ to." She counted them off precisely. "Qin Yuran with Teacher Lin. Zhao Yichen with Song Meiyu. Me with Han Jiho. And....."

"Mo Xingxue with Gu Chengze."

PD Xu Cui finished it for her. The smile on his face had gone colder. Irritation and anger leaked through the edges now, no longer fully banked. The unauthorized pairing landed exactly where he had expected the worst of the story to live.

Su Wanyan, not yet reading the full depth of that reaction, only nodded. "Yes. They were paired." She cleared her throat and pushed forward before the memory could snag her again. "Anyway, Han Jiho had a fight with the assistant director over it. It got resolved enough that we were allowed to sit close to Mo Xingxue and Teacher Gu."

Her hand clenched again in her lap. This was the hinge. Everything after this point was where the day had truly broken—where proximity stopped being a small victory and became the opening Gu Chengze needed.

PD Xu Cui said nothing for a long moment. The unauthorized segment. The forced pairings. The assistant director inventing rules the second the real authority left the set. Each piece settled into place with the particular weight of something that should never have been allowed to happen under his name.

When he spoke again, his voice was quieter than before.

"Go on."

"Well, in this segment, the assistant director said we could ask ten questions to our partner," Su Wanyan continued.

She kept her voice even, laying the facts out in order the way she would have delivered a case summary—clear, sequential, no embroidery. The structure helped. It gave her somewhere to put her hands, metaphorically, while the worst of the memory still sat close enough to touch.

"Everything was fine at first. However, just a few minutes later I heard Xuexue’s breathing change. When I looked behind me, Teacher Gu was—"

She stopped. The image arrived intact: the grip, the angle of Mo Xingxue’s shoulders, the particular tight discomfort on a face that never allowed discomfort to show in public. Pity rose sharp enough that her eyes stung. She cleared her throat and forced the rest out.

"Teacher Gu was holding her hand, but Xuexue looked uncomfortable."

The report was truthful and deliberately incomplete. She did not describe how completely the light had gone out of Mo Xingxue’s expression, or how small the omega had seemed in that single held second. Some details belonged to Mo Xingxue alone.

"I don’t know what got into me," Su Wanyan went on, a short, self-deprecating laugh escaping before she could stop it. "I harshly shoved him away. Then I checked on her first—obviously. But as a payback he forced me to face him and punched me."

She touched the memory of the impact without flinching. "I retaliated. I punched him in the nose."

Hearing that, PD Xu Cui broke. A small laugh slipped out before he could catch himself.

Su Wanyan paused and gave him a flat look. Causing him to laugh harder, then he waved a hand in front of his face.

"Sorry, sorry." He cleared his throat, the seriousness returning like a door closing. "Continue."

She sighed, then nodded. "After that he said something about Xuexue climbing her way to the top—the same way he claims a lot of people in the entertainment industry do."

She winced as the words left her mouth, then glanced at him. After all, the man in front of her is also working in that industry.

PD Xu Cui let out a cold laugh. "Is that what he thinks of us?" The question was not directed at her so much as at the insult itself. However, even without knowing the full personality and history of the man, Su Wanyan could feel the temperature drop. He was angry—properly, professionally angry—in a way the earlier parts of the story had not yet produced.

He forced the reaction down and gestured for her to keep going.

Su Wanyan smiled wryly, already tasting the next admission. "After I heard that, I saw red. I....." She hesitated only a second. "I beat him up."

She bowed her head, the reflex of shame arriving on schedule. A moment later she lifted her head. Why should I be ashamed? The correction was internal and absolute. I did the right thing, she thought.

Meanwhile, PD Xu Cui had gone quiet for different reasons. Internally he was turning the pieces over with care. Close proximity. An uncomfortable expression.... Two weeks of watching these particular guests had taught him that Mo Xingxue did not wear discomfort for nothing, and that Su Wanyan did not escalate to violence over a merely awkward face. Something sat under the reported facts. He did not yet know its shape.

After a beat, PD Xu Cui asked, "Was that part recorded? The shoving."

"Yes, PD." She did not understand why the footage mattered to him yet, only that it did.

He nodded once. I’ll watch it later.

Then, more carefully.... "Is there a deeper reason you and Mo Xingxue reacted that extremely?"

Su Wanyan flinched. Her eyes darted once before she recovered with an awkward laugh that convinced neither of them.

"Nothing, PD. I just didn’t like how close he was to her. I’m sure that’s how she felt too."

The excuse was clumsy and freshly assembled. PD Xu Cui squinted, suspicion open on his face, but chose not to press. If they were not ready to hand him the full truth, forcing it in an alcove would only teach them to close doors harder. He could work with what he had.

He stood, brushed the dust from his pants, and offered his hand. Su Wanyan took it and rose, dusting herself off in turn.

This time the smile he gave her held no hidden edge—only clear appreciation. He inclined his upper body slightly.

"Thanks for informing me."

Su Wanyan shook her head and hands at once, startled by the formality. "I didn’t do much, PD—please straighten up."

He obliged, the familiar playful tilt returning to his expression. He set a hand on her shoulder and patted once, firm enough to be felt.

"Don’t worry about anything else from here on out. I’ll handle everything."

Su Wanyan held his gaze, then nodded. "Then I’ll leave everything to you."

They stood in the narrow space a moment longer—two people who had finished the necessary exchange and understood, without needing to say it, that the next moves would not be simple.

When they finally stepped out of the alcove, the village noise rose to meet them again, ordinary and unaware. Behind them, the report remained where they had left it—incomplete about things that mattered most, but already more than enough for PD Xu Cui to begin.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

SO SORRY FOR THE LATE UPLOAD Y’ALL! I WAS BUSY WITH SCHOOLWORKS AS MY PROFFERS SUDDENLY DUMPED US TEN ACTIVITIES AND TWO HOMEWORKS.... DO Y’ALL KNOW HOW CRAZY THAT IS??? THEY DUMPED THAT TO US AT 8:50 SOMETHING PM... THEY’RE HIGH I TELL YA!

Anyway, that’s the reason why I couldn’t finish revising this Chapter earlier. Also, TMI, I’m still not done with my works~ I put this Chapter as a priority so y’all won’t get Chapter drought... TvT.

Oh and btw, I have another reco! It’s a novel called "The Sacrifice of a Frozen Soul." It’s Yuri, Fantasy, and Action! (Also, it’s on RR... Please get that abbreviation, ’cause ion think we can plug in other.. ’you know’ here...)

Anyway, that’s all! Bye-bye!!