Transmigrated identity, exposed.
Cheng Xingfei and Sister P looked up all the night markets and bar streets within a five-li radius, afraid that Hua Zhao was in the middle of some trouble.
But unfortunately, unluckily, they weren’t able to find where Hua Zhao was.
The time was already past 3. The whole city was gradually going to sleep, but Cheng Xingfei’s heart was sinking lower and lower.
And then, they received an unexpected phone call.
The call was dialed from an unknown number to Sister P’s phone. After Sister P picked it up, her facial expressions went through several phases. First it was surprise, then joy, which transitioned into an indescribable oddness.
After she hung up the phone, Cheng Xingfei urgently asked, “Is it news about Hua Zhao?”
“That’s right.” Sister P nodded. “You won’t be able to guess who it was that called — Zhuo Yi! You know, the security captain we saw at the History Museum that day. He doesn’t have a shift today, so he bumped into Hua Zhao in an alley at the night market.”
Cheng Xingfei’s impression of him was considerably deep. Not only because of the unforgettable scar on his face, but even moreso because he’d attacked her the first time they met.
… No, wait a minute!
Cheng Xingfei realized something. “Sister, what exactly did Zhuo Yi say on the phone?”
Sister P frowned. “He contacted me to say that he found the person who was at the History Museum that night, and he asked me if I was ‘interested’ in coming over to see. If I wasn’t interested, then he’d take her to the police station.”
Cheng Xingfei: “…”
She smiled wryly.
The first time they met, she thought that Zhuo Yi was a simpleminded boor with well-developed muscles. But right now, she discovered that this guy was quite shrewd.
Seriously, what a boor! The first time he was chasing Hua Zhao, it was to send her to the police station. How could he call them so openly to inform them!
It seemed he’d already guessed — no, we should say he’d already recognized — that Hua Zhao and Cheng Xingfei were connected, with a deep connection!
……
The car sped over to the alley entrance. Disregarding the muddy ground beneath her feet, Cheng Xingfei sprinted to the depths of the alley. Sister P followed closely behind.
When they turned the last bend, the figure that had worried them for the entire night appeared before their eyes.
Below the streetlight, Hua Zhao sat on an overturned box, hugging her knees in both arms. Slipping back and forth in sleepiness, her head nodded up and down like a chicken pecking rice.
Zhuo Yi, who had called them, was half-hidden in the shadows where the streetlight did not reach. A nearly-finished cigarette was pressed between his fingers; the end flickered. They couldn’t see his expression.
What kind of situation was this?
Cheng Xingfei spoke first. “Captain Zhuo.”
She interrupted Zhuo Yi’s thoughts.
He stubbed the cigarette on the wall, dropped it on the ground, and ground it again under his foot. He was astonishingly tall; as he came out of the shadows, he seemed as if an imposing mountain pressing toward Cheng Xingfei.
Then Hua Zhao, whose head was dipping in sleepiness, suddenly woke up. She sprung up from the box, nervously looking at Cheng Xingfei like a little kid who didn’t dare to face her parents after making a mistake.
Hua Zhao cried, “You’re here…”
Looking at Zhuo Yi and then her, Cheng Xingfei asked, “What happened?”
Hua Zhao hurriedly recounted what had occurred.
Trying to reenact her rescuing, her tone rose and fell as she boasted: first, how clever she was in discovering that the two bastards were attempting to “xx” a drunk girl; also, she praised herself for being unafraid, jumping straight into the pit of danger and fighting the gangsters wisely, ultimately successfully taking down those bastards; except that afterward she made a mistake and drew in a policeman, so when she was running away she threw her own self into a fire and ran into Zhuo Yi’s hands.
After she finished speaking, she blinked and asked Cheng Xingfei, “How was it, isn’t bengong amazing?”
She ran away in the middle of the night without even leaving a note. Cheng Xingfei was angry, worried, and her feverish body was nearly about to keel right over! Obviously, Cheng Xingfei should scold her well, but as she looked at the eyes shining in search of praise, her heart suddenly softened and her anger melted away.
…Fine, just slowly educate the child who’s done wrong after we return home.
Cheng Xingfei was most concerned about her wellbeing. “Did you get hurt while fighting?”
Hua Zhao raised her chin. “What nonsense, bengong could even take on ten people without issue!”
Cheng Xingfei: “…”
That’s right, Hua Zhao could escape from the History Museum’s clutches before, and she could leap off the wall from the 28th floor, so teaching a lesson to two bastards really wasn’t an issue.
The only problem was that those two bastards saw Hua Zhao’s face.
Sister P said, “Since it’s just based on their word, the police won’t believe them. Even if the media picks up on rumors and asks me, I won’t let them find out about you two.”
After they finished talking about the sexual harassment event, next up was the main performance.
Cheng Xingfei held Hua Zhao’s wrist and pulled her behind her like a mother hen protecting her young chick. Then she raised her head and looked straight at the taciturn man.
Because it was his day off, Zhuo Yi wasn’t wearing his guard uniform. He lived in the neighborhood and went out in the middle of the night to buy a snack, without anticipating that he would bump into an interesting drama. He was wearing casual clothes — loose jeans paired with a worn and faded muscle top. The muscles on his exposed arms were solid and distinct.
He looked extremely aggressive — this was not a false assumption.
“Captain Zhuo,” Cheng Xingfei calmly said, “From a long time ago, my little sister hasn’t understood much about the world, and she ran away from home and caused trouble. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Your little sister?” Zhuo Yi said lowly. “If the actress Cheng Xingfei had an identical younger twin sister, which media wouldn’t have released that information? If you had a sister, then the whole world would know about it.”
Cheng Xingfei had already prepared an excuse. “When I was very little, my mother and father divorced. My mom took my little sister overseas, so we haven’t seen each other for a long, long time.”
Half of this was true and half was false. That her mother and father had divorced when she was little was true. That her mother had left the country was also true. It was just that her mother was already remarried overseas and had given birth to a mixed-race baby.
Cheng Xingfei had never publicized her family situation to the media. Now she could fortunately use this as an excuse in order to fool Zhuo Yi.
However, Zhuo Yi didn’t fall for it.
Zhuo Yi: “You say that your little sister’s just come back from overseas? Then can I listen to her say a few English words?”
Cheng Xingfei tugged on the hem of Hua Zhao’s clothes and gave her a meaningful glance — time to test the results of Hua Zhao’s week of cultural lessons!
Hua Zhao: “…”
Hua Zhao panicked. What kind of development was this, how could she suddenly receive a test paper like this without prior notice! What did she learn in this past week? She hadn’t even fully memorized the twenty-six letters of the alphabet yet.
Hua Zhao could only bite the bullet and go for it.
First she haltingly recited the alphabet.
Then she began to show off her excellent conversational abilities: “Halloo, how or yoo? Fien, sank you, and yoo? I’ma fien, to.”
…Very good, she directly asked herself and answered herself.
Expressionless, Zhuo Yi said, “Your little sister’s English is really vairy gud.”
Cheng Xingfei: “…”
Sister P, who was standing on the side, couldn’t bear to listen to this plastic English, so she turned her head away in embarrassment.
Cheng Xingfei still made an effort to excuse it. “She went to the local Chinese school there, so her English isn’t good.”
Zhuo Yi: “Oh, which Chinese school also teaches its students to jump over the wall and mourn in the History Museum in the middle of the night?”
Cheng Xingfei had no words left to say.
Zhuo Yi raised his eyebrows, sizing up the two identical faces in front of him. It was quite interesting, because although they clearly had the same features and the same facial structure, when they were put on two people, there was a clear difference between them. In particular, those apricot eyes — one pair was full of curiosity, the other full of vigilance.
The thing Zhuo Yi hated the most were the annoying things, so he didn’t want to beat around the bush with his words. He directly said, “Miss Cheng, you don’t need to lie to me. I can pretty much guess her identity — She’s Princess Hua Zhao, right? Princess Hua Zhao who came from a thousand years ago?”
“!!!”
Without giving them any buffer, he effortlessly exposed Hua Zhao’s identity.
In that moment, Cheng Xingfei felt like a magician hurrying onstage who had not yet practiced enough, and the sharp audience picked out the trick in her cards.
Hua Zhao was even more scared, shrinking away into a quail. She even suspected that Zhuo Yi had arranged this “injustice on the road.” Were there any people lying in ambush in the darkness of the alley ready to rush up and take her away to be dissected?
Sister P was also shocked. Transmigration was something that pretty much only appeared in novels or TV shows; she’d even needed to strain herself to accept Hua Zhao’s identity in the beginning, so how could Zhuo Yi figure it out just like that?
Zhuo Yi unveiled Hua Zhao’s identity with such certainty, such calmness and indifference. But in the face of it all, they couldn’t even deny it.
Everyone was silent.
Zhuo Yi took a cigarette out from his pocket and lit it. Smoke wisped up.
He laughed shortly. “Alright, let’s not make a fuss about nothing. I’ve been working at the History Museum for so long, I’ve seen even stranger things than a thousand-year-old Princess’s fake corpse.”
The car was silent on the way back home.
Hua Zhao guiltily sat in the backseat, focusing on her nose and not moving an inch.
She knew that she was in the wrong. She ran away from home tonight without saying a word and also somehow exposed her identity in front of Zhuo Yi — really, go die and decay!
Sister P glanced at her and cleared her throat, “Cough, cough, Princess. Xingfei took the last flight of the night back from Yang City because she was scared you’d be lonely by yourself. Then once she came home and found out that you went out from the twenty-eighth floor, she almost passed out! —You don’t have anything to say?”
Sister P: “To remind you, two words; the first is ‘I’m’ and the second is ‘sorry.’”
Pretty much throwing the correct answer into Hua Zhao’s face.
Hua Zhao: “…”
The little Princess had never spoken a word of apology in her life. These two simple words lingered in her chest for a long time, but something seemed to be stuck in her throat. She couldn’t speak aloud those important words.
Sister P: “Or five letters in English, begins with S and ends with Y.”
Hua Zhao still didn’t speak.
Sister P: “Japanese also works, sumi… oh, right, you haven’t learned Japanese.”
Upon seeing the situation, Cheng Xingfei shook her head lightly at Sister P, signaling her to not make things too difficult for Hua Zhao.
Sister P rolled her eyes, thus valiantly snatching first place in the World Eye Rolling Championship. “Oh, I’ve become the bad guy here.” She really didn’t know what Cheng Xingfei was up to; how could she want to become a mom to someone at only 20 years old?
Hua Zhao was so embarrassed that she vindicated herself in a quiet voice, “I did not run away from home today for no reason, I did not think that I would have such bad luck and fall into Zhuo Yi’s hands.”
But on closer thought, if she didn’t fall into Zhuo Yi’s hands, the policeman would’ve arrested her… f**k, there was no way out!
“Zhuo Yi is a real problem.” Cheng Xingfei frowned slightly. Because she was sick, her face was abnormally flushed and her eyes were astonishingly bright. “—I’m afraid that he’ll leak Hua Zhao’s existence out. We need to think of a way to bring him to our side.”
How to do so required careful consideration.
Using money to shut his mouth was the worst-in-worst-case scenario.
……
The car moved forward into the night.
The sky was gradually lightening, the morning light emerging from beneath the horizon to dispel to darkness of the night.
Three people had not slept for an entire night and were all exhausted together.
It was only after they entered the house that Hua Zhao realized how worn out she was. She walked around the night market tonight and taught a hands-on lesson to two bastards; there was both dirt and blood on her body, which felt like she’d been rolling around in a trash can.
Cheng Xingfei prepared a change of clothes for her and told her to shower first.
Hua Zhao held the soft and scented pajamas in her arms as she looked at Cheng Xingfei’s exhausted eyes. Wave after wave of guilt washed over her.
Yet not daring to say anything, she lowered her head and immediately fled into the shower.
The shower door closed with a screech. A second before it shut, a small voice floated through the crack in the door.
“ —Xingfei, I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble today.”
Cheng Xingfei stilled. Across the frosted glass of the bathroom door, she turned toward the indistinct figure and smiled.
“—Idiot, I’ve never blamed you.”
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aw… last scene is so cuteee (:3 」∠)
lilypad translations 