The Heiress's Game

Gu Yunjin placed her laptop on her lap. There was an unread email in her inbox. The sender was Zhou Ji, the subject line was empty, and the body of the email contained only one sentence and an attachment.

She first opened the attachment, which was a photo.

The girl in the photo is named Julie, and she is twenty-five years old.

A very clean face.

It's not the kind of beauty that's aggressively striking; it's a gentle, graceful beauty, like a tranquil stream, with relaxed eyebrows and eyes, and a natural smile that's just the corners of her mouth slightly upturned.

Her skin was fair, so fair that it wasn't aggressive at all, like the glaze on porcelain.

She wore a beige knitted sweater, with no accessories around her neck, revealing a clean outline of her collarbone.

The whole person is like a cup of lukewarm water—neither too hot nor too cold, without any irritation. You might not even notice it if it's just sitting there, but once you pick it up and take a sip, you'll feel comfortable.

This kind of comfort is the most dangerous.

Gu Yunjin looked at that face, swiped her finger on the touchpad, and closed the photo.

Zhou Ji wrote only one line in the email body: "The background is clean, and no problems can be found."

She replied with two words: Continue.

The notification that the email had been sent flashed by quickly.

Gu Yunjin closed the laptop and placed it on the bedside table, next to the dark red book.

Gu Zhenxing has seen all kinds of women over the years.

In business dealings and at banquets, all sorts of women flow past him like an endless river.

Young and beautiful, intellectual and elegant, innocent and naive, charming and alluring—he had seen it all.

Ning Limei won not through tactics, but through time.

She appeared before Gu Zhenxing had been sufficiently swayed by the currents of society, and with an attitude of "wanting nothing," she nailed herself into his life.

If she had appeared ten or even five years later, she wouldn't have even been able to reach the edge of Clearwater Bay.

At that time, Gu Zhenxing was no longer the man who could be moved by a glass of plain water.

He's been exposed to all sorts of teas, coffees, and wines, which has honed his palate and sharpened his eyes. If you use the same trick again, he can see right through it.

Therefore, Julie cannot be like plain water. Plain water is only valuable the first glass; after that, it becomes worthless.

Julie needs something else—Gu Yunjin thought in the dark, her fingers unconsciously tapping twice on the quilt—it needs to be a glass of warm water, but with something in it that only Gu Zhenxing could taste.

She didn't need to design the specifics for Julie; Julie was far more adept at this than she imagined. She just needed to lay out the path for Julie.

Gu Yunjin recalled something from a long time ago.

The year Ningwei called Gu Zhenxing "Dad," when the news reached the old house, Mrs. Bei summoned Su Wanning to the main room.

Gu Yunjin hid outside the door and saw her mother standing in the center of the main room through the crack in the door, while Madam Bei sat in a grand chair.

"Aren't you a big star? What about all the skills big stars are good at? How come you can't even keep a man?"

Su Wanning didn't speak. Her back was very straight.

But Gu Yunjin saw her hands hanging by her sides, her fingers curled into her palms one by one, her nails digging into her flesh.

"I can't control what Zhenxing does outside. But you, as his wife, can't control him from letting some bastard or even someone who isn't even a bastard into our home and call him 'Dad'?"

"I shouldn't have let Zhenxing marry you in the first place. An actor is just an actor; they act one way on stage and another off stage. When it comes to the real thing, they're useless."

There were many more times after that.

Gu Zhenxing held a small banquet at Qingshui Bay for Ning Limei's birthday. Mrs. Bei called Su Wanning over and scolded her.

Ningweier filled out a family information form at school, and wrote Gu Zhenxing's name in the father's column. It was screenshotted and circulated by busybodies in the parents' group. Mrs. Bei still called Su Wanning over and scolded her.

Over the years, Gu Yunjin had heard Madam Bei's voice coming from the main room countless times, like a knife sawing away at her.

Su Wanning would always wash her face first thing after returning from the main room.

She thought Gu Yunjin didn't know, but Gu Yunjin knew everything.

Little Gu Yunjin stood outside the bathroom door, listening to the faucet running for a very long time.

When Su Wanning came out, her face was clean.

Her eyes were slightly red, but she would squat down and smile at Gu Yunjin, saying, "Mom washed her face. Come on, Mom will make you something delicious."

Gu Yunjin never asked.

She remembered everything.

-----

Julie had a bad life.

This is what Julie herself said. When she told her friend this, her tone wasn't self-pitying; it was more like stating an objective fact, like saying it rained today or the subway was delayed again.

Julie is of Chinese descent. Her parents left the country with all their savings when she was three years old, and relatives all thought they were going to enjoy a life of luxury.

During the Chinese New Year, my grandmother called from overseas and wiped away tears on the other end of the line, saying, "You're living a good life over there, but don't forget your poor relatives back home."

Her mother laughed as she held up the microphone, saying, "How could that be? Once we're settled, we'll bring you all over."

This has been said for twenty-two years, and it still hasn't come true.

Her parents worked at a Chinese restaurant in a back alley of Chinatown; her father washed dishes in the kitchen, and her mother worked as a cashier and waitress in the front.

The restaurant owner is from Fujian. He pays low wages according to local standards, but he provides two meals a day.

Julie grew up eating leftovers from restaurants—not the leftovers from customers, but the leftovers that the kitchen had stocked up on but hadn't sold. After closing time, the head chef would reheat them all and give each person a bowl.

She still remembers the taste: the saltiness of soy sauce and oyster sauce mixed together, the heavy use of MSG, and the dry feeling in her mouth after eating it.

Later, she saw people discussing "wok hei" (the smoky aroma imparted by a wok) online, saying that she didn't understand the smoky atmosphere of Chinese cuisine.

She wanted to laugh. She'd smelled it since she was a child.

The family of three squeezed into a cubicle upstairs in the restaurant, with two beds visible when the curtain was drawn.

You have to go to a public bathhouse to take a shower. Hot water is available for a limited time, and it's common for the water to cool down halfway through a shower in winter.

Her mother never complained; she would just say after each cold shower, "We'll move next year when we've saved enough money."

This has been talked about for twenty-two years, and it will be next year.

So Julie understood one thing very early on—going abroad doesn't mean enjoying a life of luxury.

For wealthy people, going abroad is like getting a bigger swimming pool.

For people like hers, going abroad is like turning a small pond into a ditch—the water is dirty, but they have to swim in it because they can't go back.

To this day, the relatives still believe that they are living a good life outside. Every year when her mother sends photos home during the Spring Festival, she will specially wear her best coat.

I took a picture standing in front of the plastic wishing tree at the restaurant entrance, and I smiled smugly in the photo.

Julie doesn't want to take these kinds of photos anymore.

She doesn't envy those born in Rome.

She envied those who could simply open a map of Rome, point to any spot on it, say "I want to live here," and then move in.

She didn't want to smell the salty tang of soy sauce and oyster sauce mixed together in the back alleys of Chinatown anymore.

Julie has a gentle face. That's her only asset.

She also has ambition that matches her looks.

It's not the kind of ambition that's written all over your face, all bared and snarled; it's ambition that lies beneath the surface, like an undercurrent.

She doesn't envy her classmates who went to big companies and earned tens of thousands of yuan a month right after graduation, nor does she envy her senior classmates who married people in the same industry and are paying off their mortgages together.

She felt that kind of life was too slow, as slow as a snail climbing an infinitely high wall—she'd never reach the top, no matter how long she climbed. She didn't want to climb. She wanted to just take the elevator.

She had figured out where the elevator buttons were a long time ago.

Find a man born in Rome. Have him take her to live in Rome.

Ideally, the man should be very old, so old that he doesn't have much energy to take care of her, so old that his body is starting to decline, so old that—to put it bluntly—he won't live much longer.

She needs a lot of money, so much that she doesn't need to calculate her monthly living expenses, so much that she doesn't need to check the price tag before buying a coat, so much that the amount left after this man leaves is enough for her to live on for a lifetime.

She didn't want to have the child. What's so good about having a child? Ten months of pregnancy, a ruined figure, stretch marks, postpartum depression.

Then comes a lifetime of worry; being a mother for a day means being a mother for life. This isn't a worthwhile trade.

Her plan was clear: make enough money, take everything she could, and then leave.

What would happen after she left? She had thought about that question. She would take the money, find a seaside city, and buy a house with a view of the sea.

I will not get married, I will not have children, and I will not take responsibility for anyone.

If you want to date, then date. Find someone young, good-looking, and healthy. If you get tired of them, then move on.

For the first twenty-five years of her life, she lived for others—for her parents' expectations, for tuition fees, for monthly rent.

She wants to live the rest of her life for herself.

The opportunity came sooner than she had expected.

It was delivered through a completely unexpected channel.

The middleman was very cautious and never revealed any information about the client from beginning to end, only saying, "A lady thinks you are suitable."

Julie didn't press the matter. She didn't need to know who the client was; she only needed to know who the target was.

Gu Zhenxing.

After leaving the coffee shop, Julie sat in the nearby public library for the entire afternoon.

She didn't use her own phone to search; she used the library's public computer. There was a yellowed note stuck to the corner of the screen that read, "Please do not download illegal content."

She smiled at the note.

Gu Zhenxing's information was too easy to find.

If you put Gujia in South Korea, it would be one of the three major conglomerates, listed on the same page as Samsung, Hyundai, and SK.

The Gu Group's businesses span real estate, finance, and energy, with ports in Southeast Asia, wineries in Europe, and commercial real estate in North America.

Photos of Gu Zhenxing himself can be seen everywhere in financial news—he's over sixty years old and has deep nasolabial folds.

His eyes and brows carried the composure that comes from someone who has spent most of their life fighting in the business world, a composure steeped in power.

The family relationships are clearly listed in the publicly available information. Don't dream about it; how could a man like that be single?

Julie weighed the number in her mind. She was twenty-five years old.

If she were to start now, she wouldn't want to spend another twenty-three years.

Five years. She set a deadline for herself in her heart.

Within five years, she will acquire enough. Five years later, at thirty, she will be at the best age for a woman—she will have money, experience, and the confidence to withdraw at any time.

A thirty-year-old woman with enough money to last a lifetime has the world at her fingertips.

She turned off the computer in the library and walked out the door; it was drizzling outside.