I woke up. Judging by the view from the window, the sun hadn’t even set yet, making this nap a short one.
Bella was fast asleep, using my arm as a pillow. The only downside to this was the quick rate at which I was losing the sense of touch in said appendage. Ugh.
Judging by the fact that I could still feel something, my nap was even shorter than I initially thought. Hunger and the fact that my bladder was about to burst did wake me up. Not to say anything about how sticky I felt after everything we had done.
A few particularly spectacular scenes flashed in my head.
Yeah, it was definitely more on the wilder side. Even compared to the usual escapades that our sex tended to turn into. The fact that Bella fell asleep, completely exhausted by the end of it, spoke for itself.
And I couldn’t resist the temptation either, after seeing how content her sleeping face was.
With great care, I slid my arm from under the head of my special woman, trying my best not to wake her up. Through those selfies from last week, it wasn’t that hard to establish just how busy Bella had been for those seven days.
I thanked my long and rich history of honing this set of skills through countless repetitions and slipped out of the bedroom, closing the door behind me.
***
My phone showed me the time, around five in the evening.
I had already taken that much-needed shower and was currently contemplating the solution for my second problem.
Bella’s fridge was devoid of anything that resembled food. Which made me question my own memory since it was stocked nicely back during my last visit. The fuck happened?
A total mystery.
Anyway, I had three options: order something, search for the closest supermarket and do some shopping myself, or go down one floor and steal something from the bodyguard regiment residing there.
Technically, there was a fourth one—starve to death. But I chose to ignore it. As for the three things above, each had a set of cons. From me being fucking lazy to the chance of waking up Bella.
Or her waking up with me nowhere in sight, which was even worse.
I shuddered, imagining the epic tantrum my dear would throw if I had the dare to do that.
The desperation—and laziness—made me scour the kitchen drawers once again. Much to my surprise, this time I managed to find a pack of instant ramen. Another raid on the freezer got me half a pack of chicken nuggets that I somehow missed the last time.
Dino nuggets.
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Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers, so I grabbed my smartphone from the hallway to use as a timer and got to cooking.
Some true magic later, I had a humble meal in front of me. This amount of food was hardly enough for me, but there were times I had it much worse, so no complaints.
I poured myself some coffee, as it was the only non-alcoholic beverage my special woman’s apartment had in stock, grabbed myself a fork and dug in.
The Messenger app showed quite a number of new messages that I'd received since the last time I checked.
Olivia sent a few videos, most likely the ones from that karaoke visit last Friday. I chose one at random, which showed me a duet between my silly girl and, what a surprise, Su clan’s first young lady.
My girlfriend had mediocre—if I was generous—talent for singing, but was very enthusiastic otherwise. And Yin… Well, as expected of a young lady from a noble clan, she was properly trained in arts.
As far as I could tell, obviously. The showbiz side of my company was far enough out of my focus, managed properly by other people.
After the song ended, I chose another random one. This time it was a total miss, starring the duet between the other two friends of my silly girl, whatever their names were, so I closed it almost instantly.
I sent a thumbs-up emoji as a response. Which didn’t get the usual quick response out of Olivia. Odd, but I guessed she was busy with something.
Claire sent another complaint about people’s nature, detailing how absolutely disgusted she was with the matters surrounding the inheritance process.
Counter Girl: [Tian, why are people so damn greedy?]
I reread this message another time, trying to think of a good way to answer. ‘People are generally trash’ just didn’t sound good enough in my head.
Me: [do you want my help?]
In the end, I opted to just offer this. Legal issues could suck the soul out of anyone. On the other hand, both the Long and Kouzuki clans had an army of lawyers on standby.
Getting a few of them involved in some trivial matters wasn’t a great price for potentially seeing Claire sooner.
Seeing that my message hadn't been delivered yet, I chose another contact to check on.
The two messages I sent to Nicole were left on read. Good. Let's wait and see who is more stubborn.
My finger froze over the ‘Lady in Black’ contact as I hesitated whether I should announce tomorrow’s visit. In the end, I decided to discuss it with Bella properly first.
Me: [good singing]
And sent. I chose to ignore the veritable flourish of messages that followed shortly after. Ah, being petty was such a great feeling!
It took me a great deal of courage to tap on Helen’s name. Who knew what kind of scary things the kooky young lady Smith was up to?
Much to my surprise, after that last wall of text, the ‘
The content of that photo was surprising, to say the least.
Donning towels, two young women were lying on two separate massage tables. Some kind of cosmetic facial mask, which looked like a kind of green mud to me, was marring the beautiful faces.
I recognized them by their eye and hair color, as well as their smiles, excluding the dead giveaway of the sender of this photo.
For some reason that I couldn’t quite grasp, Helen and Olivia were together in some kind of beauty salon. Or something like that. Spa? Something else altogether?
I pinched my arm, just to check if it was some kind of fever dream. It wasn’t.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked aloud, failing to control myself.