The espresso machine ran its two-second burst and stopped. The morning light through the café window had moved since they sat down — the beam that had caught Xiao Yue's notebook now fell across the counter instead, and their corner sat in the softer wash of mid-morning.
Lin Feng held the phone in his right hand. The screen was still lit.
Both women went still.
"Zhang Tingting?" Xiao Yue's voice went flat.
Lin Weiwei's hand found his arm again — the one she'd released so he could check the phone. Her grip came back tighter than before.
"Su Qingxue's lapdog?" Her voice sharpened. "The matchmaker."
The words landed heavy between them, and neither woman needed further explanation. Zhang Tingting — they both knew exactly who she was. The matchmaker.
And both of them also knew that was the wrong word to describe her.
Xiao Yue did not look at the phone. Instead, her attention was on him. "What does she want?"
"Yeah, Big Brother." Lin Weiwei's hand pressed flat against his chest. Her voice was pleasant, controlled. "Didn't you already cut things off with Su Qingxue? Why is she still texting you?"
Then Lin Weiwei and Xiao Yue looked at each other. For one brief moment, both women found themselves united in hostility toward this person.
Whenever Zhang Tingting's name came up between them, neither woman ever called it what it was. They just settle for matchmaker, as if that is some derogatory term. They said lapdog. But the worry on their faces said something else.
"Block her." Xiao Yue said it fast. Too fast for someone talking about a matchmaker.
"You should block her, Big Brother." Lin Weiwei's voice cut sharp. "Who knows, maybe she would set you up with some other gold-digger."
Her face shifted — more worry than sharpness now — and she continued.
"Actually, Big Brother, you don't need to do that."
Lin Feng's thumb hovered over the screen, but before he could respond, Xiao Yue moved.
Her left hand came across — across his body, past Lin Weiwei's arm on his chest — and took the phone from his right hand in one smooth motion. She set it face-down on the table beside the empty container. Click.
Her fingers found his right wrist and closed around it — the hand Lin Weiwei had just surrendered.
Now Xiao Yue had both.
Her eyes met his.
"You came here for me." Xiao Yue's voice stayed low. "You are sitting here with me to be with me. Not to send some messages to other women."
-----------------------
On his right, Lin Weiwei looked down at Xiao Yue's fingers on his wrist — the wrist that had been hers thirty seconds ago — then up at Xiao Yue's face.
So that's how you want to play it, stalker.
You think I'd just allow you to monopolize Big Brother's attention? In front of me? Just because Big Brother was kind enough to bring you food like you're some dog.
If you think I will let you get your way with him...
On his right, Lin Weiwei leaned in. Her hand on his chest shifted higher, her thumb tracing the ridge of his collarbone through the cotton. Slow. Deliberate.
"Big Brother." Lin Weiwei's voice dropped — its volume closer to the voice she used at the door of his bedroom last night, when she asked him if she could stay. "I'm your fiancée, right? Can't you just focus on your little Weiwei?"
-----------------------
On his left, Xiao Yue's grip on his wrist tightened.
You're just a fiancée. Not his wife. Xiao Yue dared not say what was on her mind.
"You remember the park, don't you?" Xiao Yue said, her tone even. "You held my hand in front of the entire campus. Claimed me in front of Su Qingxue. You told me you'd die before you let me go."
She said it the way she said everything — like she'd rehearsed it once, verified the facts, and was now entering them into evidence.
Lin Weiwei leaned closer. "We shared a bed last night, Big Brother. I think that outranks a park bench."
"Does it?" Xiao Yue didn't look at her. She looked at Lin Feng. "I've been waiting five years."
"I've been living with him. My room sitting next to his. We pass the same hallway and eat at the same table. Every single day."
"And I've been watching him every single day for five years. I wonder which one of us knows him better."
They were talking across him now, each sentence aimed past his chest at the other woman.
-----------------------
Lin Feng sat between them and said nothing.
His training had covered interrogation resistance. It had covered sleep deprivation. It had covered maintaining cover with a weapon aimed at his chest.
It had not covered two women arguing custody of him across his own body.
I'm losing this battle.
Two engagements in twenty-four hours, and Lin Feng lost both.
One on the park bench when he could barely resist Xiao Yue. And one more last night when Lin Weiwei also had him.
These women did something to him that enemy operatives never could. They bypassed every defense he had.
I need an exit. I need—
The phone buzzed on the table. Then it buzzed again, and again, multiple messages flooding in one after another.
Both women glanced at it with irritation.
But Lin Feng lunged for it.
Zhang Tingting.
You absolute legend. My true friend.
He pulled his right wrist free from Xiao Yue's grip, grabbed the phone like a drowning man seizing a lifeline, and brought it to his face.
"Wait —" He angled the screen toward himself. "Let me read this first."
-----------------------
Both women pulled back — slightly, reluctantly.
Lin Weiwei's hand stayed on his chest, her jaw tight. She'd been so close. Another thirty seconds and she'd have buried Lin Feng in enough guilt and intimacy to shut the stalker out entirely.
And some text ruined it.
Xiao Yue's freed hand settled on the armrest. Her other hand slipped from his.
He was responding to me. I felt it. Just like the bench. I was almost there!
But they leaned in anyway — Lin Weiwei from his right, Xiao Yue from his left — and read.
[Zhang Tingting: Qingxue won't stop talking about some guy named Long Tian. How amazing he is. How they're destined to be together.] Received: 10:02 AM
[Zhang Tingting: She said you're nothing compared to him. Those were her exact words.] Received: 10:02 AM
[Zhang Tingting: I went to my cousin Yuting's place to clear my head. She's saying the exact same things about the same guy. Word for word.] Received: 10:02 AM
[Zhang Tingting: I mean I doubt they had even talked to each other. I guess they know each other or something, maybe — I don't know — but this is just too fast!] Received: 10:03 AM
[Zhang Tingting: Please tell me I'm not losing it.] Received: 10:03 AM
Lin Feng read the messages over and over again.
Tingting, you absolute lifesaver.
First — you just rescued me from a two-front assault I was about to lose.
Second — you just handed me intelligence about Long Tian's movements!
Meanwhile, on his right, Lin Weiwei had gone still.
Her hand on his chest didn't move. Her eyes moved across the messages once, then again, and the flush that had been on her cheeks — from the bedroom talk, from pressing her claim — drained out.
Lin Weiwei exclaimed: "She said you're nothing compared to him!" Then, quieter: "And the other one thinks the same thing too?"
Her hand pressed harder against his chest — hard, like she was bracing something.
"That bitch." Her voice came out low. "She said that about my Big Brother?"
Her nails dug through his shirt.
On his left, Xiao Yue's face had gone cold. Not the practiced cold she used on Lin Weiwei. Something rawer. Her jaw was set so tight the muscle stood in her cheek.
"After four years." Her voice came out dangerous. "He gave her four years. And she says he's nothing?"
"Nothing compared to some man she met once." Lin Weiwei's voice rose. "Once! And he's better than someone who gave her everything?"
"Is that man tired of living?" Xiao Yue's tone dropped to a chilling cold. "Who dares say Lin Feng is nothing compared to him?"
"My Big Brother —"
"My Lin Feng —"
They stopped. Looked at each other. The correction had been instant, automatic — both claiming him in the same breath, neither willing to let the other's pronoun stand.
Then both turned back to the phone, and for a moment the rivalry between them disappeared into something hotter.
Some insults went deeper than jealousy.
Lin Feng raised both hands.
"Both of you. Calm down."
They turned to him — still furious, the anger redirecting like a spotlight swinging.
"I don't care what Su Qingxue thinks of me." He kept his voice level. "What I care about is why Tingting is telling me this instead of defending her best friend."
-----------------------
Lin Weiwei's eyes narrowed. Her fury didn't leave. It just found a new direction.
"But why is she telling you this?" Her voice went sharp — and careful. A different careful than she used on Xiao Yue. "What does she want from you, Big Brother?"
"Is this a trap?" Xiao Yue pulled back slightly. "Is Su Qingxue using her to pull you back to her side?"
But that wasn't the real question. Lin Feng could hear what lived underneath both of them. Not "why is the matchmaker texting you."
It was closer to "why is she texting you." The one who used to go out with him. The one who sat across from him at restaurants and walked beside him on streets while they were still fighting for a place in his life.
The one who spent the most time with him in the last four years.
Then both Xiao Yue and Lin Weiwei turned to him. Waiting.
Lin Feng looked at the messages again.
Then he spoke, his voice even.
"Su Qingxue and Zhang Yuting. Two different women, two different backgrounds. Using the same words about the same man. Whatever's happening, Tingting noticed it — and instead of covering for her best friend, she came to me."
He let the pause hold.
"That's either genuine confusion... a very elaborate trap... or she just called the only person she trusts. Or I think she is just being… well — herself."
"And the only way to know which is to hear what else she has to say."
-----------------------
The café was quiet around them. The barista had gone back to wiping the counter. Somewhere outside, a scooter passed on the street and faded.
Lin Feng set the phone on his knee.
Tingting.
Of all the people in this world, you were the closest to the original. Not Su Qingxue. Not Lin Weiwei. Not Xiao Yue. But you.
Though in the end, she still fell to Long Tian. It took thousands of chapters — and it wasn't Long Tian who did it. It was the original's stupidity, his neglect, and Su Qingxue whispering in her ear.
I wonder though… Can I change the outcome for Tingting?
His thumb traced the edge of the phone case.
Anyway...
Su Qingxue met Long Tian once. A few hours in the library. By that evening — destiny, soulmates, dragon among men. Zhang Yuting, the same. One afternoon. Same words. Same script.
Exactly their dialogue in the novel.
Two different women. Two different lives. One meeting each.
He glanced right. Lin Weiwei's hand was still on his chest. Her jaw was set the way it set when she was debugging — locked on the problem, everything else stripped away.
Then left. Xiao Yue's face was turned toward the window, away from him — as if the name on the screen left something on her she didn't want to feel.
And then there are these two.
Su Qingxue heard his name and started glowing. Weiwei and Xiao Yue heard his name and looked like someone had smeared shit under their noses.
The novel says they're supposed to be his. Both of them. The endgame. The women the entire story was building toward.
So why do they look like they'd rather die than stand in the same room as him?
The thought pulled him further than he meant to go.
Not as text on a screen from some obscure novel — all of that was now gone, a full universe away — but as knowledge that had crossed with him, etched into his bones.
When the original died, Weiwei found his body. She knelt beside him and took his hand. That same night, she swallowed poison in his bedroom.
Xiao Yue heard the news an hour later. She walked to a rooftop. She didn't hesitate at the edge.
Neither of them went to Long Tian. Neither joined his harem. Neither became what the novel said they should become.
They chose death instead.
Lin Feng looked at Lin Weiwei's hand on his chest. At Xiao Yue, who had turned toward the window.
The morning light had moved again. A knuckle's width across the counter.
Three women. Three completely different reactions. And I don't know why.
Damnit, why didn't the author write more about Lin Feng and his group? There are so many things I don't know about Lin Feng himself, or Xiao Yue or Lin Weiwei. I don't even know why Zhang Tingting was so loyal to him.
He exhaled through his nose.
Ahhh! This is so frustrating!
Anyway… I'll try to reach out to Zhang Tingting.
-----------------------
He picked up the phone and typed.
[Lin Feng: I'm at the Starlight Café, the one across from the Lin mansion. Can you come here?] Sent: 10:05 AM
Lin Weiwei's mouth went tight. "You're inviting her here?"
On his left, Xiao Yue's hand found his again. Her grip was harder than before. She looked at the door of the café and then back at him. Her jaw set.
"Zhang Tingting?" She said the name like she was confirming a target. "Here?"
"I need to hear what she knows." Lin Feng kept his voice even. "If something is happening to Su Qingxue and Zhang Yuting, Tingting might be the only person who can tell us what."
"Why do you care what happens to Su Qingxue?" Lin Weiwei's hand flattened against his chest. "She just called you nothing, Big Brother. Or do you actually want to go back to her side?"
"And Zhang Yuting." Xiao Yue's eyes narrowed. "Who is Zhang Yuting to you?"
"Nobody." Lin Feng said it plainly. "But two strangers saying the same words about the same man after one meeting each — that's not about Su Qingxue."
"I think there is something bigger at play here."
Lin Feng's eyes went to the counter.
Not yet. They don't need to know about Long Tian. Not until I know more myself. Lin Feng thought, and said none of it.
He looked at the phone again, and right on cue, it buzzed with Zhang Tingting's reply.
[Zhang Tingting: I can be there by 11. Is that okay?] Received: 10:06 AM
[Lin Feng: That's fine. I'll be here.] Sent: 10:06 AM
Less than an hour.
Both women exchanged a look across his body. For once the calculation on both faces was the same. Not another woman. That woman. The matchmaker. The practice partner. The one who'd already occupied the spaces they had never managed to gain yet.
And neither was willing to leave him alone with her.
"We're staying." Xiao Yue's tone left no room.
"Obviously." Lin Weiwei's agreement was instant.
They looked at each other across his chest. The brief alignment held for a half-second — then broke. Rivals again. Always rivals. But for this one hour, they're rivals with a shared perimeter to defend.
The café settled around them.
The barista finished wiping the counter and moved to the pastry case. The morning light had reached the far wall now, leaving the counter in shadow. Somewhere in the kitchen, a timer went off and was silenced.
At the third table by the window — Xiao Yue's table, the one with the view of the Lin mansion gate — the cup of cold black coffee sat where it always sat. Untouched. Dark at the rim where it had cooled against the ceramic, the way it cooled every morning.
Lin Feng finally put the phone back on the table.
Long Tian has his system. Quests, rewards, a whole framework. Numbers on a screen telling him exactly where he stands with everyone.
I have three women on a couch that fits two and a matchmaker who knows me better than I know myself, sending me messages I wasn't supposed to receive.
He closed his eyes.
Would it have killed whoever built this world to give the villain a manual?
He sighed and let his head rest against the back of the couch — two women pressed against his sides, a split lip, and a matchmaker arriving in less than an hour.
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[End of Chapter]