My Wife Rode Me All Weekend: From the Fitting Room to the Cinema
After Zheng Xuemei kissed me in the car that night, when I woke up on Saturday morning my head was still full of her soaked silk blouse and those heavy, warm, soft tits from the rain-soaked night.
Wang Youmin was awake before me.
She was lying on her side next to me, one bare leg hooked over my waist, her knee lightly pressing against my already hard morning erection.
Her eyes were wide open. I didn’t know how long she had been looking at me.
Those usually sharp, self-assured eyes were now full of something far more complicated
—love, jealousy, unease, and possessiveness.
“Morning,” I said hoarsely.
She didn’t answer.
The next second, she sealed my mouth with a good-morning kiss.
Her lips were hot and soft, but the kiss was aggressively possessive. Her tongue shoved straight past my teeth, feverishly wrapped around mine, and sucked and twisted with force, as if she wanted to swallow and shred every memory from last night that belonged to Zheng Xuemei.
“Mmm…” I was kissed so hard I could barely breathe.
Only after she’d left me panting did she pull back a little. A glistening strand of saliva still linked our lips.
“Where did she kiss you last night?”
“...My cheek.”
“Just your cheek?” She narrowed her eyes.
I told the truth. “Later, under the trees... we kissed for a long time, and I... touched her.”
Wang Youmin stared at me for a few seconds, the fire in her eyes growing brighter and brighter.
Then she suddenly rolled over and pinned me beneath her. Her long legs straddled me, and the already soaked, heated softness of her cunt rubbed straight against my hard cock through a thin layer of underwear. She ground forward and back slowly, leaving a slick, sticky smear behind.
“Then today,” she said, lowering her head to bite my lower lip and suck hard on it. Her voice was soft and ruthless. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re shopping with me. You’re going to make up for everything you owe me.”
As she spoke, she deliberately lowered her hips even more, rubbing that wet, hot softness again and again against my glans.
Her slick soaked through my underwear almost immediately, turning the front of it into a mess.
I was so worked up I couldn’t help grabbing her round, firm ass and kneading it hard.
“Youmin... you’re really fierce today...”
“Fierce?” She let out a cold laugh, then shoved her hips forward hard, trapping my cock between her wet, slippery labia and sliding it back and forth through my underwear. “If I’m not fierce enough, are you really going to split your heart in two? Last night, when you were rubbing her big tits and fat ass in the rain, did you ever think about me waiting at home all by myself?”
She ground against me harder and harder, her breathing getting heavier with each second.
The hot slickness of her arousal ran down the base of my cock and turned my lower abdomen into a mess.
She rubbed me until I was nearly unable to hold back, and I gasped low, trying to thrust upward, only for her to pin my waist down hard.
“Don’t move,” she said, her eyes both sultry and fierce. “Today you only get to be ground against by me... when we get home tonight, I’ll take care of you properly.”
When she finished, she lowered her head and kissed me hard again, kissing me until I was almost ready to cum. Only then did she suddenly get up and sway her hips toward the walk-in closet.
After a while, she came back out changed.
Today she wore a cream-colored turtleneck sweater with light camel wide-leg pants. Her hair was casually clipped back with a tortoiseshell barrette, revealing a clean, sharp jawline and a stretch of white, elegant neck.
She wasn’t the kind of woman who needed elaborate styling to look good. The more casual she was, the more beautiful she became, and her whole body gave off that relaxed, high-end air of someone who didn’t need to please anyone.
“Get up. Shopping.” She stood by the bed, her tone leaving no room for argument.
“Today?” I was still wrapped in the blanket, my cock aching hard, my brain not fully awake yet.
“Today.” She tossed my gray hoodie straight into my face. “That coat I liked last week, I want to try it on today. You’re in charge of carrying bags, paying, and saying ‘it looks good’ when I’m trying things on.”
“What if it doesn’t look good?”
She shot me a cold look.
“It looks good, it looks good, it looks good,” I corrected myself instantly.
Before we left, she changed shoes by the entryway while I stood beside her and waited.
Sunlight streamed in through the window and fell across her profile as she lowered her head to tie her laces.
Her eyelashes were long, casting a small shadow over her face.
In that moment I suddenly realized that for the past two months... I hadn’t looked at her tying her shoes in this kind of quiet, unhurried way for a long time.
“What are you staring at?” she noticed my gaze without looking up.
“You tying your shoes.”
“What’s so interesting about that?”
“You’re pretty,” I said.
Her fingers paused for a beat. The corner of her mouth curved a little, but she didn’t answer. She stood up and opened the door. “Let’s go.”
We went to the busiest pedestrian street in the city center.
It was Saturday afternoon. The crowds were thick: young parents pushing strollers, college couples wandering with milk tea and desserts in hand, and couples like us who looked utterly ordinary on the surface yet carried their own quiet, distinct presence in the middle of the crowd.
The air was mixed with the sweetness of milk tea, the smoky smell of grilled sausages, and the clean fragrance of osmanthus flowers unique to autumn.
I followed beside her with my hands in my pockets, serving as a very competent human accessory and mobile wallet.
Wang Youmin was walking a little slower than usual today.
She seemed to really enjoy the feeling of keeping her husband on a leash at her side. Every now and then she’d stop to look at a store window, or pull me over to sample desserts from some newly opened stand.
Looking down at the soft, slightly curled ends of her hair glowing in the sunlight, I suddenly felt a long-lost sense of solidity.
For the past two months, I’d been thinking about the system, affection scores, Zheng Xuemei’s rain-soaked tits, and Lin Jia’s long legs. I’d rarely spent time with Wang Youmin like this, simply walking down a street together.
The coat she wanted to see was in a Japanese-style boutique.
The store was small, with wooden decor. The distance between the racks was just enough for two people to pass sideways, and the air carried a faint woody scent mixed with the smell of new clothes.
The moment Wang Youmin stepped in, she started browsing seriously. In the end she picked two items and took them to the fitting room: a navy wool coat and a mustard-yellow mid-length trench.
She tried on the navy coat first and came out to stand in front of the full-length mirror, turning once. The deep blue made her look more composed, and the coat cinched her waist beautifully, but the shoulders were a little broad.
“How is it?” she asked, looking at herself in the mirror.
“Looks good,” I said, putting my phone down.
“You didn’t even look,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me in the mirror.
“I did look.” I walked over, gently hugging her from behind, my hands naturally circling her waist as I rested my chin on her shoulder. “The color really suits you. It makes you look calm and elegant. But the shoulder line is a little wide. It makes you look a bit less energetic. Try the mustard one. It should suit you better.”
She glared at me, but didn’t argue. Obediently, she went back and changed into the second piece.
The moment the mustard-yellow trench coat went on, I knew it was the right one.
The warm color made her skin look especially clear and luminous, white with a healthy glow underneath.
Once the belt was tied, she looked neat and free-spirited, like a beam of warm light in autumn.
The hem of the trench swayed lightly when she turned, and the wide-leg pants outlined her long, straight legs. She looked both gentle and a little casually handsome.
“This one,” I said with a firm nod.
She looked at herself in the mirror, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly before she tried to suppress it and failed.
At that moment I suddenly felt that she actually cared a great deal about my opinion—not because of the clothes themselves, but because I was the one looking at her, the one praising her.
“Fine,” she said, pretending to be casual as she turned toward the register. I followed her, pulled out my card, and paid. She stood beside me, watching me swipe it, and her gaze softened a great deal.
Once we left the store, she carried the shopping bags herself, and her steps became just a little lighter than before. Her shoulders loosened too. No one else would notice such a tiny change, but I knew she was happy.
We kept walking and wandered into a cozy little goods shop. She browsed for a long while, and in the end she came to a stop in front of me holding a jar of scent stones.
“Smell this.” She held the jar under my nose.
I lowered my head and inhaled. The fresh scent of pine wood and citrus blended together, with a little sweetness underneath. It was very soothing.
“It kind of reminds me of the body lotion you use in winter,” I said.
Her eyes lit up. “You remembered?”
“Of course I remembered.” I took the jar from her with a smile. “Every time you put it on, you smell like this. Just smelling it makes me want to hug you.”
Her ears went slightly red, but she didn’t look away from me. Instead, she leaned toward me on purpose and whispered, “Then do you want to hug me right now?”
There weren’t many people in the shop. I went ahead and hugged her lightly from behind, resting my chin on the top of her head and wrapping my arms around her waist, feeling the softness of her body through her sweater.
She didn’t push me away. Instead, she leaned a little more into my arms.
We just held each other quietly in that little shop for a while, a perfectly ordinary married couple enjoying a rare moment of peace and intimacy on a weekend afternoon.
When it came time to pay, she took my arm on her own and sounded much brighter. “Let’s go.”
As we kept shopping, she suddenly dragged me into another lingerie store.
The lighting inside was soft, and the air carried a faint scent of laundry detergent. Wang Youmin lowered her voice. “Pick one for me.”
I glanced at the racks and went straight for an extremely sexy black lace set of erotic lingerie - a half-cup bra, crotchless panties, and matching black garter stockings.
When she took it from me, the tips of her ears were visibly red, but she still bit her lower lip and went into the fitting room.
A few minutes later, the curtain was gently pulled open, and a hand tugged me inside.
Wang Youmin was standing in front of me wearing nothing but that black lace set.
The half-cup bra lifted her two snow-white soft tits high, pushing out a deep, plush cleavage so generous it looked ready to spill over. The edges of her pink areolas peeked through in the soft light, shining with a delicate sheen.
The lower half was an outrageously slutty crotchless design, leaving only narrow strips of lace along the sides of her labia, exposing the faintly damp, plump folds of her pussy.
Around her thighs was a delicate black lace garter belt. The thin stockings hugged her long, even legs tightly, pressing pale indentations into her flesh. She looked both elegant and proper, yet so obscenely contradictory that the contrast alone made my blood race.
She clasped her hands behind her back, pushed her chest out a little, and spoke with a hint of shyness while deliberately teasing me.
“How do I look?”
My throat bobbed hard. I could barely look away. My voice came out low and rough. “You look so good I want to commit a crime.”
The corner of her mouth curved with a little victorious smile as she slowly walked over and pressed herself to my ear.
“Then go ahead and commit one for me...” she whispered.
As she spoke, her warm breath brushed across my ear, carrying a faint sweet scent.
I couldn’t help pulling her into my arms from behind, my hands covering the lifted softness of her tits through the thin lace, kneading them hard.
The soft, springy flesh bulged between my fingers. Their heavy weight and shocking elasticity made my palms burn.
Her nipples were already hard. When I rolled them lightly between my fingers, her body gave a clear shiver, but she didn’t dodge. Instead, she pushed her chest even more eagerly into my hand.
“Not here... no...” Her voice was soft and seductive, a distinct nasal edge to it, but she still didn’t really stop me.
I lowered my head to kiss the back of her neck, my fingers sliding down along her waistline and lightly brushing over her already damp labia at the edge of the crotchless panties.
She gave a soft “mm,” pressing her legs together tighter as her toes curled faintly inside her heels.
“Bastard...” she muttered under her breath, but the next second she turned around and took the initiative to kiss me. Her tongue tangled with mine in a lingering, heated kiss, carrying the forbidden thrill unique to a fitting room.
After a while, she blushed and pushed me away, breathing hard as she said, “When we get home tonight... you can commit all the crimes you want. Right now... help me fasten the buttons first.”
She turned around, and I helped her put her outer clothes back on over that sexy set, but my hands still couldn’t help lingering a few extra seconds on her waist and hips.
She shot me a glare in the mirror, but her eyes were so wet they looked as if they could drip at any moment.
The next day, Sunday.
She dragged me to see a literary romance film - Emerald Fennell’s 2026 version of Wuthering Heights.
We went to an afternoon showing. The theater was sparsely occupied. As the lights dimmed, the whole auditorium felt swallowed by thick moorland fog, leaving only the giant screen filled with surging wind and the dark moors of Yorkshire.
Today Wang Youmin wore a simple dark knee-length skirt made of soft, close-fitting fabric.
Not long after the film started, she pulled my hand off the armrest and pressed it against the warm inner side of her thigh.
That skin was as smooth as fine silk, still carrying the warmth of a just-finished shower, trembling faintly with her breathing.
My fingers slowly slid upward along the inside of her thigh and slipped into the depths of her skirt, like Heathcliff finally reaching the soul Cathy had been forbidden to touch - feverish, yet with a destructive restraint.
She was already soaked to the core.
On the screen, Cathy, played by Margot Robbie, ran into Heathcliff, played by Jacob Elordi, in the middle of a storm. The two of them tore at each other like trapped beasts.
In the dark, while pretending to watch the screen, I slowly pushed two fingers into her hot, tight pussy.
Layers upon layers of heated flesh immediately closed greedily around them, like the thorns winding across a moor, wanting to swallow me whole while trembling as if trying to flee.
Thick, hot slick kept pouring out, running down my knuckles and wrist and soaking her skirt and a small patch of the seat beneath us.
Wang Youmin bit down hard on her lower lip, her body trembling lightly.
Her breathing grew more and more ragged, but she held back every sound. Only the faintest little nasal whimper leaked from her nose, like a muffled sob pushed to its limit.
Every time the screen filled with howling wind and rolling thunder, she used the cover of the sound to twist her hips slightly, letting my fingers drive deeper into her slippery pussy meat.
I deliberately pressed my thumb against her already swollen, hard clit, circling it quickly and forcefully.
Her entire leg went tense at once. In the dark her toes curled hard, and the fingers clutching my arm nearly dug into my flesh.
On screen, Cathy and Heathcliff fucked like mad in the muddy moors, the frame drenched in Fennell’s lush, diseased passion.
But Wang Youmin’s cunt was convulsing around my fingers again and again, like it wanted to swallow my whole hand.
“Chen Mo...” In the deepest dark, she let out a whimper so quiet it was almost inaudible, soft and seductive, carrying a clear warning and plea.
The sound was like a whisper torn apart by the wind, yet it was filled with even deeper hunger.
But I kept digging in with wicked intent, curling my fingers to rake over her most sensitive front wall again and again while my thumb mercilessly rubbed her clit faster and faster, pushing her toward the edge of orgasm.
Her body started trembling uncontrollably. Slick surged out in wave after wave, almost drowning my hand. Just as she was about to break, I suddenly pulled my fingers out, leaving behind only emptiness and wetness.
Wang Youmin leaned against my shoulder and panted heavily for a long while, her chest heaving violently and her face burning hot.
After a moment, she turned her head and whispered in my ear in a voice so quiet it was almost impossible to hear, yet sharp with sultry resentment.
“When we get home... just watch how I deal with you.”
Her breath brushed my ear, wet, hot, and scorching, like a moorland fire finally breaking through restraint.
After the movie, she dragged me to a noodle shop recommended by one of her coworkers and ordered two bowls of knife-cut beef noodles. The steaming broth rolled in the bowls, and the rich aroma instantly washed away every complicated emotion.
She sat across from me, outwardly proper and gentle, looking like a tender, considerate wife as she picked up her noodles with elegant movements.
But under the table, she slipped off her shoe and used her foot in thin stockings to rub lightly against my already half-hard cock through my pants.
Her toes flexed nimbly, pressing and kneading my glans, occasionally trapping it with the arch of her foot and sliding up and down. The motions were subtle, but unbearably arousing.
She teased me so hard my breathing turned heavy, yet on the surface all I could do was pretend to eat calmly.
Halfway through the meal, she suddenly lifted her eyes, looked at me, and asked softly,
“What are you planning to do about Zheng Xuemei?”
I set down my chopsticks, thought about it, and answered seriously.
“She was scared out of her mind on Friday... the rainy night in the woods, the crime scene, that kiss in the rain... it was too much for her. Let her calm down for a few days first. Her affection score in the system is already at 152. Pushing it any further... I’m not even sure what I should do yet.”
Wang Youmin lowered her head and kept picking at her noodles, her movements looking calm:
“And Lin Jia?”
“Lin Jia has a proper cooperation project to follow up. She’ll come to the company next Monday to talk with our business director.”
“Your company?” Her chopsticks paused in the bowl, the steam from the noodles blurring the emotion in her eyes.
“Yeah. It’s a real business project,” I added.
“I know it’s a real business project.” She a piece of beef and slowly chewed it. “I never said it wasn’t.”
The air suddenly went quiet. After a couple of seconds, I tested the waters.
“Wife, could it be that you’re...”
“Eat your noodles.” She cut me off immediately.
I obediently lowered my head and kept eating.
The noodles were delicious. The broth was rich and mellow, the noodles were chewy and springy, and the beef had been braised until it was tender without falling apart, melting in the mouth.
But the best part of the meal was the woman sitting across from me.
The way she lowered her head to eat was serious, as if she were dealing with something extremely important.
The afternoon sunlight slanted through the window and fell onto the hand she used to hold her chopsticks.
That hand was pale and elegant, and the silver wedding ring on her ring finger flashed softly in the light, like a silent reminder.
I suddenly felt that this afternoon was worth more than any affection score increase from the past two months.
When we got home that night and the door had barely closed, Wang Youmin shoved me straight down onto the sofa.
She straddled me, her movements fast and ruthless, as if the emotions she’d been holding all day had finally found an outlet.
Today she was already wearing the sluttiest black lace erotic lingerie set she had bought yesterday -
the half-cup bra lifted her two snow-white soft tits high, pushing out a cleavage so deep it seemed bottomless; the crotchless panties left only narrow strips of lace along the sides of her labia, exposing the damp, pink flesh of her pussy in a teasing blur; and the black garter stockings around her thighs squeezed her long, even legs tightly, making her look both elegant and so filthy it was enough to set my blood on fire.
“Chen Mo...” She pressed both hands to my chest, her eyes bright and hot, carrying a very clear mix of retaliation and declaration. “All day long, were you still thinking about Zheng Xuemei’s big tits? Thinking about Lin Jia’s long legs?”
She said it as she unfastened my pants, took hold of my cock, already swollen dark purple and hard as stone, and lined it up with her wet, burning slit. With a sharp thrust of her hips, she sat down.
"Thwip--!"
The whole thick, hard cock was swallowed in one go by her layered folds of hot flesh. The wet, tight embrace shot from my glans through my whole body in an instant.
"Aah--!" Wang Youmin threw her head back and let out a long cry of satisfaction edged with tears. She started riding me frantically, up and down, sinking all the way down every time so that my glans slammed viciously into her deepest place.
"Say it... when you were rubbing her in the rain... was it this hard?" She rode faster and harder, her white breasts bouncing wildly in front of my eyes, her pink nipples hard as two little cherries.
I cupped her rounded, springy ass and slammed up into her, gasping as I answered, "I thought about it... but I wanted to come home and fuck you even more..."
"Liar..." Tears glimmered at the corners of her eyes, but she rode me even more fiercely, her slutty pussy clamping down on my cock and swallowing it over and over. "Then prove it to me now... Fuck me harder than you fucked her... Fuck me into the kind of woman you really want... Ah--!"
All weekend, she was like an inexhaustible machine of possession, using the most intense methods to take me back, inch by inch, from the memory of that rainy night.
She came twice while riding me. The first time she rolled her eyes back, her tongue lolling out, both hands lifting weakly into the air. The second time she cried out my name, her vagina convulsing violently deep inside, like countless tiny mouths were sucking my glans madly.
I was fucked so hard by her that I lost control completely too, letting out a low roar as I shot all of my thick, hot seed deep into her womb.
Afterward, she lay on my chest, breathing hard, her sweat-soaked body pressed tightly against mine. It was a long time before she finally said in a soft, nasal voice:
"Chen Mo... I love you... I love you so much it hurts... so don't make me too uneasy, okay?"
And I came to understand it even more deeply: Wang Youmin looked generous and tolerant on the surface, but in truth she was already deeply uneasy. She loved me so much that she feared losing me even more fiercely.
Monday.
At ten-thirty in the morning, I was at my desk revising a proposal.
Zhao Tao sent it back again, saying the logic wasn't clear enough and the client wouldn't understand it.
That was already the third time.
I took a deep breath and silently repeated three times in my head, "His favorability is -37, so he's not targeting me, he's just born with a shitty mouth," then reopened the document.
My phone buzzed. It was a WeChat message from Lin Jia:
["I'm here, in the lobby downstairs at your company. What was the business director's surname again?"]
I replied: ["Surname Zhou, Zhou Li. I'll come down and get you."]
I tidied my desk, got up, and headed for the elevator.
As I passed the finance department, I couldn't help glancing inside. Zheng Xuemei was at her desk, head down, looking at the computer, wearing a light gray turtleneck sweater with her hair tied in a low ponytail.
She looked much better than she had last Friday. Her complexion had returned to a healthy pallor, but she seemed much quieter, as if she were digesting something.
She must have sensed something, because she looked up and met my eyes.
We held eye contact for about a second. Her mouth curved very slightly, then she lowered her head again and continued looking at the computer.
I didn't stop. I kept walking toward the elevator.
In the lobby downstairs, Lin Jia was standing by the front desk, scrolling through her phone.
She was dressed very professionally today: a black tailored blazer over a cream silk blouse, paired with dark gray wide-leg trousers.
Her hair was pinned up in a neat low bun, and she wore a pair of small silver stud earrings.
She looked sharp and composed, far more professional than when I'd met her at the convenience store.
When she saw me, she smiled faintly. "You're here."
"Yeah." I swiped her in through the card reader and walked with her while briefly introducing the company. "Mr. Zhou is on the third floor. The meeting room's already booked. How's your team's proposal deck coming?"
"We adjusted the structure according to your last suggestion of the 'three-layer storytelling' approach. The first ten pages cover diagnosis and positioning, and only after that do we get into the execution plan." Her voice was low, her pace steady, her heels tapping the marble floor with restrained precision. "By the way, the client added another revision yesterday, including a plan for an offline pop-up store."
"A pop-up store? Is the budget enough?"
"The budget was raised by six hundred thousand. It's nearly four and a half million total now."
I gave a soft whistle. A four-and-a-half-million full-service project was a real fat piece of meat at a mid-sized ad agency like ours.
The elevator doors opened, and we got in. On the third floor, I led her down the hallway. As we passed the planning department, several coworkers looked up curiously. Xiao Zhang's gaze was especially sticky.
First he looked at Lin Jia, then at me, and his face took on that unmistakable "ohhhh" look. I ignored him.
When we passed the finance department, Zheng Xuemei happened to come out holding a stack of documents, apparently on her way to the printer.
The three of us almost stopped at the same time in the hallway.
Lin Jia was the first to react. She gave a slight nod, polite and restrained, the corners of her mouth carrying that faint professional smile people use when they brush past strangers at work.
Zheng Xuemei also nodded. Her gaze skimmed Lin Jia, paused for less than a second, then landed on me and moved away again.
The whole thing lasted maybe two or three seconds. No introductions, no extra pleasantries, just two adult women exchanging a silent, polite acknowledgment as they crossed paths in the hallway.
But in those two or three seconds, I clearly felt something subtle shift in the air, like two winds from different seasons briefly meeting at the same corner, each carrying its own temperature, touching lightly before going their separate ways.
Zheng Xuemei didn't linger. She lowered her head and walked past us. Her steps were a little smaller than usual, her shoulders slightly taut, as if she were unconsciously holding something back.
Lin Jia didn't look twice either. She kept following me forward, but at the corner she tilted her head slightly and asked in a very light, very natural tone, "That woman just now... is she a colleague from your finance department?"
"Mm," I answered quickly, steady in tone. "Finance manager, Zheng Xuemei."
Lin Jia nodded without pressing further. The faint curve at her lips stayed exactly the same, neither more nor less.
I quietly glanced at her favorability over my head: [Lin Jia (34) favorability toward you: 104].
Three points lower than the last time we met, a normal natural decay. But it was still firmly above one hundred.
When we reached the conference room, Mr. Zhou was already waiting.
The moment Lin Jia entered, she switched instantly into full professional mode, shaking hands with Mr. Zhou, exchanging business cards, pulling up the PPT. The entire process was crisp and efficient, with not a word wasted.
The pitch went on for about forty minutes.
Lin Jia did very well. Her logic was clear, her key points were sharp, and especially in the brand diagnosis section she backed things up with a large amount of competitor data and consumer research, which made her case very convincing.
I listened from the side, occasionally adding a sentence or two, mainly to match a few advertising execution details with our company's production capacity.
Mr. Zhou listened very seriously and took notes the whole time.
After the pitch ended, he leaned back in his chair, thought for a moment, and said, "Overall the proposal is good. We'll take it back and evaluate it, and get back to you before Friday this week."
Lin Jia nodded. "All right, then I'll wait for your news."
After the meeting, I saw her downstairs. In the elevator, it was just the two of us. She leaned against the elevator wall and let out a soft breath, as if releasing all the tension from the past forty minutes at once.
"How was it?" I asked.
"Not bad," she said with a smile. "He didn't say it was bad, but he didn't give the green light on the spot either, which means he's still hesitating. But those few lines you added about production capacity and delivery timelines were crucial. They plugged a few holes he was probably going to ask about."
"With things like this, directors usually have to go back and discuss it internally. Not rejecting it on the spot is already a good sign."
She nodded. The elevator doors opened and we walked out together into the lobby. She stopped, turned to face me, and changed hands on her briefcase.
"Thanks for helping out today, Chen Mo."
"No problem. This was a collaboration, after all."
She looked at me, her gaze calm, but there was something in it I had gradually become familiar with - a quiet good will that didn't need to be spoken aloud.
It wasn't intense, and it wasn't clingy. It just made it feel like today's weather was a little warmer than the forecast had promised.
"Then I'm heading out," she said with a smile. "Let's grab coffee another day."
"Sure. Be safe on the way."
She turned and headed for the revolving door. After a few steps, she looked back at me again, just like she had at the café last time.
This time she didn't say anything. She simply waved with a smile, then walked out into the sunlight.
I stood in the lobby watching her back disappear beyond the glass doors.
On the way back I passed the finance department again.
This time Zheng Xuemei didn't look up, but there was a coffee cup on her desk - not the instant stuff from the company pantry, but a takeout cup from the coffee shop downstairs.
A note was stuck to the cup with a strip of paper. Someone had written a few words on it in black ink.
I didn't lean in to look, but I vaguely felt the handwriting looked familiar.
It wasn't mine.
Whose was it?
I didn't think about it too much. I went back to my desk and kept revising the proposal.
At eleven on Tuesday morning, an unknown number called in.
"Hello, is this Mr. Chen Mo?"
"Yes."
"Hello, I'm Liu Qianqian from the Criminal Investigation Team of Nancheng Subbureau. We met you last Friday night at the outskirt jungle scene. Do you remember?"
Of course I remembered. The girl in police uniform, her voice crisp, speaking straight to the point, barking at me with plenty of breath when she scolded me.
"I remember," I said. "Officer Liu, what's the matter?"
"It's like this: we need you to come in and make a formal witness statement. You and Ms. Zheng Xuemei discovered some important clues at the scene that night, including the bloodstains and physical evidence in that abandoned cabin. We only made a brief oral record before, but now that the case has officially been filed, we need both of you to come to the bureau for a formal written statement."
"Okay, when?"
"Would this afternoon be convenient? The sooner the better. If Ms. Zheng Xuemei is available too, it'd be best if she came together."
"I'll ask her."
I hung up and sent Zheng Xuemei a WeChat message, explaining the situation. She replied quickly:
["This afternoon won't work. I have a group conference call at three and can't get away. You go first. Tell them my part for now. If they absolutely need me in person, I'll go tomorrow."]
I replied: ["Okay, I'll go this afternoon."]
She sent another message:
["Chen Mo, be careful."]
I stared at those three words for two seconds. I didn't know whether she meant "be careful with your wording when you give the statement at the station" or something else.
At two in the afternoon, I took a taxi to Nancheng Subbureau.
The bureau building was a plain gray-and-white four-story structure, the exterior walls washed pale by the autumn sun. Several police cars were neatly parked at the entrance, their blue-and-white paint especially eye-catching in the afternoon light.
Everyone coming and going moved quickly, carrying that tight, serious pace unique to the public service system.
There was a faint mixed smell of disinfectant and paper and ink in the air, making you straighten your back without meaning to.
I registered my ID at the front desk. A young auxiliary officer in his early twenties checked the documents and took me up to the third floor, then opened a door marked "Interview Room 2."
Liu Qianqian was already waiting inside.
Today she wasn't wearing the field duty uniform she'd had on last Friday, splattered with mud and water. She had changed into her regular police uniform: a dark blue shirt with the cuffs neatly rolled to a point just below her elbows, revealing the clean, crisp lines of her forearms.
Her epaulets and name badge were pinned in exactly the right place, and her hair was cut very short, close to her head, leaving a strip of clean white skin at the nape of her neck.
She sat across the table, with a stack of blank statement forms spread out before her, a black signing pen, and an old recording device beside it. She looked both professional and a little fresh and young.
When she saw me come in, she looked up.
"You're here? Sit down." She tipped her chin toward the chair opposite. Her tone was as direct as it had been when she reprimanded me in the jungle last time, though with less gunpowder and more official calm.
I sat down. She first gave me a procedural explanation about the nature of witness statements, the obligation to tell the truth, and the notice about audio and video recording.
Then she pressed record, picked up the pen, and began the formal questioning.
"Please start from the time you arrived at the outskirts that night and, in chronological order, describe in detail your route with Ms. Zheng Xuemei, the abnormal circumstances you discovered in the jungle, and the full sequence of how you came into contact with our officers."
As she spoke, her eyes stayed on me. A twenty-nine-year-old criminal investigator, eyes bright, expression restrained, but you could feel that she was carefully thinking through every word you said.
I started from when we set off at four in the afternoon, trying to reconstruct everything as accurately as possible along the timeline.
Which road we took, when we realized the path narrowed, when we ran into the wild dogs, where the abandoned cabin was located and what we saw inside - the backpack, the bloodstains, the shattered phone - and then the encounter with the police, the questioning, and being directed to leave.
Liu Qianqian listened very carefully, jotting quickly on the statement sheet with her left hand and occasionally looking up to confirm details. Her handwriting was fast and steady, the strokes clean and without any mess.
"You said you saw a torn backpack inside the cabin," she paused her pen. "Can you describe the backpack's color, material, and size?"
"Dark, maybe dark green or dark gray. The light was too poor at the time, and the flashlight didn't make it easy to tell. The material seemed like nylon, the kind used for outdoor sports gear. As for size... a regular backpack, not especially large."
"Any brand logo or zipper charm on it?"
I tried to remember and shook my head. "Didn't notice. I was mostly scared by the bloodstains nearby and didn't pay attention to the details."
Liu Qianqian gave a soft "Mm" and wrote it down. Then she flipped back to the previous page and asked:
"You mentioned the bloodstains were 'already dried and black.' Did you notice any unusual smell nearby? For example, a metallic smell, a rotten smell, or the smell of chemicals?"
"Yes," I recalled. "A faint smell of blood. Not very strong, but noticeable. No chemical smell."
She nodded and added a line of notes to the statement. Then she looked up, her gaze settling on my face.
"You're pretty quick to react," she said. "A lot of ordinary citizens at a scene like that would be too scared to remember anything, or they'd add a bunch of made-up details afterward. Your account is actually pretty restrained - you said what you saw and didn't see, and what you didn't notice, you said you didn't notice."
"Maybe it's a work habit," I said with a smile. "I'm in copywriting and planning. When you write things, they need to be backed by evidence. Making things up gets you scolded by the client."
The corner of Liu Qianqian's mouth twitched, as if she wanted to laugh, but she quickly held it back.
"All right, then keep going. After you left the cabin, how long was it before you ran into us?"
I kept going, and when I got to the part where a gun was pointed at us, Liu Qianqian put down her pen, leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms, and her expression took on a trace of helplessness.
"That was Xiao Wang. New guy, first time on field duty, overly nervous. Lao Li later tore into him."
"Understandable," I said. "If I ran into two mud-covered strangers next to a crime scene in the middle of the night, I'd be nervous too."
"But he shouldn't have drawn his gun before confirming your identities." Liu Qianqian's tone suddenly turned a little more serious. "That's a procedural issue, not a nervous-or-not issue."
When she said that, her speech slowed by half a beat and her voice dropped a little.
I suddenly realized that she had seemed jokey when she was scolding us at the scene last Friday, but she was actually very serious about her work.
The statement took about forty minutes. She checked everything over, handed it to me to review, and after I confirmed it was correct, I signed it and pressed my fingerprint.
She put the statement into a folder, turned off the recorder, and stood up to stretch her neck.
In that instant, she switched from "Officer Liu Qianqian from the criminal investigation team" back to "a twenty-nine-year-old young woman" - she pushed her chair back a step, braced both hands on the edge of the table, tilted her head, and her tone suddenly became much more casual.
"Your female colleague, Zheng Xuemei. She also needs to make a statement. Can she come in tomorrow?"
"She said tomorrow works."
"Okay. I'll set up a time with her. Just give me her phone number."
I recited Zheng Xuemei's number. Liu Qianqian wrote it down on a sticky note, then tucked the note into the folder.
After that, she leaned against the table and looked at me, suddenly saying, "The last time on the mountain, when you let her wear your shoes and walked in socks yourself..."
My heart tightened slightly.
"...Lao Li kept talking about it when he got back, saying, 'This young man has a sense of responsibility.' People of his generation really eat that up."
"And you?" I couldn't help asking. "You don't?"
Liu Qianqian glanced at me, and a teasing glint flashed in those bright eyes.
"Me?" She smiled, her voice clear and crisp. "I've seen too many men crying in the interrogation room, saying, 'I did it for her own good.' Just giving up your shoes isn't anything. The key is whether you actually treat people like people."
She said it directly, but not harshly. I froze for a second, not knowing how to answer.
She didn't continue the subject either. She gathered up the things on the table, straightened, and resumed her professional tone. "All right, that's it for today. Thanks for your cooperation. If we need additional information later in the case, we'll contact you again."
I stood up and nodded at her. "Thank you, Officer Liu."
"No need to thank me." She picked up the folder and headed for the door. When she reached it, she suddenly looked back and added, "By the way, don't go wandering into the mountains after dark anymore. You two were lucky it was us you ran into. If you'd run into someone else, I don't even want to think about it."
"We're not a couple." I corrected her instinctively.
Liu Qianqian paused.
She turned her head slightly, letting her gaze skim across my face. The corners of her mouth curved again, but this time she didn't laugh out loud.
She just said "Mm," and then kept walking down the hallway, her uniform back straight and her steps light.
I stood at the door of the interview room, watching her turn into the office area at the far end of the corridor and disappear behind a sliding door.
I took out my phone and checked the system.
[Liu Qianqian (29) favorability toward you: 22].
Up from 15 last Friday. Seven points.
A proper witness statement and less than five minutes of small talk, and I got seven points.
Seven points wasn’t much. But those seven points hadn’t been pushed through any system bonus. She’d given them to me herself.
After I left the bureau, the sunlight outside was excellent.
It was a little after three on an autumn afternoon, with the temperature just right, neither hot nor cold, and a faint sweet scent of osmanthus in the air.
I stood on the steps outside the bureau and sent Wang Youmin a WeChat message:
【Finished with the statement. Everything went smoothly.】
She replied at once: 【Good. What do you want for dinner tonight?】
I thought about it and sent back: 【Whatever you make, I’ll eat.】
She replied: 【Then it’s pork rib soup. Buy two ears of corn on the way back, sticky kind.】
I replied: 【Okay.】
Then she sent another message:
【How was that female cop?】
I stared at the message for two seconds. Wang Youmin’s instinct for this kind of thing had always been terrifying. I even suspected she’d installed some sort of women-specific radar on me.
I replied: 【Very professional. Her questions were clear and logical. Young, but very serious.】
Wang Youmin: 【Pretty?】
I: 【...Why are you asking that?】
Wang Youmin: 【Answer the question.】
I considered my wording carefully and replied: 【Fresh-faced, capable, that type. Not your type.】
Wang Youmin: 【What type am I?】
I: 【My favorite type.】
She was silent for about ten seconds. Then she sent back two words:
【Smart-ass.】
Then she added:
【Buy three ears of corn. We can boil the extra one for congee tomorrow morning.】
I put my phone away, went down the steps, and headed for the subway.
When I passed a fruit stand, I thought about the mango mille-feuille I’d promised her last time and then come home empty-handed with, and my chest tightened a little.
I stopped and bought a box of mango mille-feuille, carefully choosing the one with the best presentation.
I walked two more steps, then turned back and bought another box. Two boxes. One for today, one to make up for last time.
My phone buzzed. It was my wife again:
【Come home early tonight. I bought new lingerie again. French style. I want to show you.】
I sat on the subway with the corn and the mille-feuille in my hands, the tunnel lights racing past the window. Leaning back in my seat, I found myself thinking about several people at once:
Zheng Xuemei’s quiet profile as she sat at her desk in the office, head down, looking at her computer.
The split-second glance between Lin Jia and Zheng Xuemei when they passed each other in the corridor.
That ambiguous little "mm" Liu Qianqian had given me when she turned back at the door.
And Wang Youmin, at home, washing the pork ribs and waiting for me to come back with the corn.
Each of them lived in their own world, going about their own lives. And I, somewhere along the way, had become a barely visible thread running between those worlds.
That thread was growing longer, and thinner.
I wasn’t sure where it would end up taking me.
But I knew that tonight, when I got home and pushed open that door, smelled the pork rib soup, and saw Wang Youmin in that loose pale-pink nightdress, her hair casually pinned up, telling me to wash my hands before touching the corn, all those threads would loosen for a while.
Only one would remain, tied firmly and steadily to her.