The antique girlfriend of a chaebol heir

The air was very quiet.

Shen Ci moved a few steps to the side and huddled in the corner of the hot spring, her back against the cool stone wall. The water was above her shoulders, and the petals swirled gently in the ripples.

She lowered her eyelashes, not daring to look at the man a few steps away.

Jiang Duo remained seated in the pool, closing his eyes to rest once more, as if the embarrassing incident from just moments before had never occurred. Amidst the rising steam, his silhouette resembled a blurred ink painting, indistinct and distant.

She and he were only a few steps apart, yet it felt like they were from two different worlds.

Unfamiliar memories flooded her mind all at once, and Shen Ci clenched her fingers underwater, her heart pounding wildly.

She was still processing the fact that she had died and then come back to life, living in a bizarre and fantastical "storybook".

There are no traditional moral codes or social norms here, no strict separation between men and women, but there is the absurdity of people bathing together in hot springs and being barely clothed.

"Boss!"

A male voice abruptly broke the silence, coming from afar, carrying a lazy laugh: "We're one short for our card game, just missing you!"

Shen Ci froze.

The sound grew closer, accompanied by hurried footsteps. She instinctively looked up and saw several men approaching from the other end of the hot spring pool.

Her pupils suddenly contracted.

Those men... those men were all "disheveled"!

The leader was wearing only a white towel around his waist, his chest was bare, his abs were clearly defined, and his wet hair was still dripping.

The other one was even more outrageous; she was completely naked from the waist up, and only wore a very short pair of black panties that clung tightly to her thighs—no, those weren't panties; the material was strange, and the shape was something she had never seen before, a truly shameful sight.

Another man, wearing a loose-fitting outer robe with the collar wide open, revealing a large expanse of collarbone and pectoral muscles, walked by, laughing and calling out, "Boss, are you hiding here enjoying yourself?"

In broad daylight, this is immoral and indecent!

Shen Ci felt a buzzing in her head, and her blood rushed to her cheeks.

She abruptly turned her face to the side, staring intently at the stone wall beside her, her gaze fixed straight ahead, as if the rough rock were some masterpiece painting.

But her ears betrayed her.

The tips of her ears were so red they looked like they were about to bleed.

Like a boiled shrimp, or the most delicate touch of rouge on a spring branch. Amidst the rising steam, that red hue spread from the tips of her ears to the side of her neck, even tinging her snow-white shoulders with a faint pink.

"Oh," a lazy, chuckling voice rang out, "Miss Shen is here too!"

The speaker was Xie Shuheng, Jiang Duo's childhood friend and the heir of the Xie Group.

Shen Ci held his breath and dared not respond.

At that moment, all she wanted to do was bury herself in the water and sink to the bottom of the pool.

Xie Shuheng's gaze fell on her face, which she had turned to the side.

This wasn't the first time he had met Shen Ci.

A while ago, there was a traitor in the Jiang family. Jiang Duo's sports car was tampered with at a suburban horse farm, causing the brake pads to fail, and he crashed into a guardrail on a remote mountain road.

It is said that this young girl took the person to the hospital and stayed by their side for a day and a night.

Jiang Duo never liked owing favors, so he asked her what she wanted in return. Unexpectedly, this girl who looked quite young asked to be his girlfriend.

They've got quite a mind of their own...

That's what Xie Shuheng thought at the time.

In their circle, too many women threw themselves at Jiang Duo. Shen Ci was just lucky—a life-saving grace, repaying with her body, what an old trick.

He had seen her a few times; she was indeed beautiful.

With almond-shaped eyes, cherry lips, and snow-white skin, she would be considered a top-tier beauty even in the entertainment industry.

But what kind of beauties hasn't Xie Shuheng seen? He's already tired of them.

But at this moment...

Xie Shuheng narrowed his eyes.

The girl huddled against the stone wall, her face turned to the side, her eyelashes trembling like a startled butterfly, her lips pressed together until they were pale.

Although she was soaking wet and dressed in thin clothes, she didn't act like those women who deliberately flaunted their charm—her shoulders were slightly hunched inward, and her arms were crossed in front of her chest, an instinctive, almost clumsy form of self-protection.

The most dangerous thing is that touch of red.

Her cheeks and ear tips were flushed a vibrant red, yet she pretended to be calm, staring intently at the stone wall as if the Four Books and Five Classics were engraved there.

It doesn't seem like he's faking it.

Xie Shuheng's heart stirred for no apparent reason.

This was different from the Shen Ci he had seen before.

On previous occasions, when she stood beside Brother Jiang, her eyes held calculation, ingratiation, and an ambition that was certain of her victory. But now, she was like a peony wet with rain, delicate and fragile, with a shyness that made one want to protect her.

He couldn't take his eyes off it for a moment.

"Let's go," Jiang Duo suddenly said.

He had stood up at some point, water droplets sliding down his chest, and grabbed a bathrobe from the poolside to put it on. He fastened his belt slowly, but his gaze was fixed on Shen Ci—she remained in that profile position, as if she had been frozen in place.

"Shall we go together, or soak a little longer?" he asked.

His voice was low and emotionless.

Shen Ci lowered her head, her voice habitually filled with the soft, gentle tones of a woman from Jiangnan, with a slight, almost imperceptible tremor: "I...I'll soak a little longer."

She dared not look at him, nor at anyone else.

She just wanted them to leave quickly, to get away from this suffocating place.

Jiang Duo paused as he fastened his belt.

His eyes were half-closed, landing on her bright red ear tips, where he paused for a few seconds.

"Don't soak it for too long." That was all he said in the end.

As I turned around, my bathrobe stirred up a breeze, causing a slight mist to rise.

Before leaving, Xie Shuheng took one last look at the woman in the hot spring.

She still turned her face to the side, revealing a slender, fair neck. The blush had spread from the tips of her ears to the back of her neck, like a peach blossom petal fallen in the snow.

The footsteps faded into the distance, and the sound of the water subsided.

Shen Ci waited a while longer until she was sure those people had really left before she finally breathed a sigh of relief.

She collapsed, leaning against the cold stone wall, gasping for breath. Her heart pounded in her chest, not from illness, but from shame, from shock, from all the absurdity that had unfolded in that brief moment.

What kind of world is this?

She looked up at the night sky above—but that night sky was wrong; there were no familiar stars, only a few strange lights hanging high in the sky, blindingly bright.

The surrounding stone walls were carved with patterns she didn't recognize, and the pool was filled with strangely shaped objects.

She doesn't understand, she doesn't understand anything.

But she knew one thing—

From this day forward, she is no longer Shen Ci, the sickly eldest daughter of the Shen family in Jiangnan.

She arrived in the world described in the storybook, and gained a healthy body that she had longed for but could not obtain in her previous life.

She has to survive.

To live on in this bizarre and wonderful world with a new identity.

After calming herself down, Shen Ci began to analyze her current situation.

According to the original owner's memories, the handsome man she first saw when she woke up was named Jiang Duo, the male protagonist in this storybook.

Because of the debt of gratitude for saving his life, he temporarily agreed to be the original owner's boyfriend.

But this act of saving his life was tainted with falsehood.