Why Don’t You Like Me

Everywhere that Song Caitang had been and anything that had happened to her along the way, including people she met, had been thoroughly investigated, so of course, Lu Yuxue had been questioned about what happened. Her description of the incident back then matched what she was saying now, and it sounded reasonable.

When people wanted to do bad things, the first thing they would think about was how to hide themselves and remove any connection between themselves and the crime, even framing someone else for it. Taking the initiative to quarrel in public sounded illogical.

And because they had argued before and Lu Yuxue did not like Song Caitang, it made sense for her to notice where Song Caitang had gone and what she was doing. Everything could be explained in reasonable terms.

But that was assuming that Empress Chen was not involved.

Once her involvement was added to the mix, then none of these reasons might be the only reason why Lu Yuxue was doing all these things.

Zhao Zhi really couldn’t understand Lu Yuxue. He had never understood her.

“What in the world are you thinking about?” He stared hard at her. “Everything you’ve done, every step you’ve taken. Did you weigh the pros and cons properly? Have you thought through everything clearly?”

Not only was his stare solemn, but so was his voice. He sounded like he was full of sighs, as though he had come back from the future, and it made one feel…an indescribable sense of despair and disappointment.

Lu Yuxue’s eyes trembled.

She realized now that her cousin’s behavior wasn’t the same as before.

The murderous air around him was obvious. He did not want to tolerate any further, he did not want to drag this on anymore. He…must have made a decision of sorts.

This decision was related to her, and it was definitely nothing good.

She couldn’t help but hold her breath as she clutched her handkerchief tightly and tried to think of a plan.

And while she was silent, the murderous glare in his eyes intensified and he was now glaring at her like she was his enemy!

For the sake of one Song Caitang, he was willing to go this far!

Lu Yuxue finally had no choice but to accept a hard truth. This man…seemed like he would never belong to her. Never. No matter how hard she tried.

That really broke her heart.

“Why…why don’t you like me?” Her voice was weak and tense, as though she was squeezing it out of her throat. Her eyes reddened as well.

Zhao Zhi frowned. “Why must I like you?”

“We grew up together, we went through the same experiences, the same past, even the same hobbies…” Lu Yuxue was speaking from the heart this time. Her lips trembled and tears welled up in her eyes. “You’re a man, so I understand if it took you a while to understand my feelings toward you. But later on, you actually forgot her, so you should have fallen for me! I’m the only one who knows your past, who understands everything about you, who likes you, who cares for you, who stayed by your side for so many years and did so many things for you without complaining or regretting them!”

Toward the end, her voice grew stronger and louder, as though she was right to say all of these things.

She simply could not understand where she had failed. All these years, she worked so hard and did so much just so that she could get his love in return, a love that was right next to her. Why was he so unwilling to give his heart to her?

Zhao Zhi nearly snorted out loud. “So, finding a source of Millet’s Dream and getting Consort Ping to feed it to me was also for my sake?”

Lu Yuxue was silent for a moment as tears poured down her cheeks. “It was…really for your good.”

“For my good? It was for yourself, wasn’t it!” By this time, Zhao Zhi no longer wanted to help her maintain this perfect image she had of her reality. He was going to smash this bubble of hers without any sympathy. “You’re an orphan girl who’s all by herself. In order to gain a good and stable position in this large household, in order to have this level of respect and luxury, you had to do a lot. The most important thing at hand is to gain the favor of Consort Ping. But what I can give you is a bright future. Brighter than what you have now. You want me to remember you, to become besotted with you, to do everything for you. Correct?”

Lu Yuxue was too stunned to speak.

“What happened to me back then, what the consort’s plans were and where everything originated, my guess is that you had no idea. You just sensed that the consort wanted me to quieten down and better still, if I could lose my memory or something. And that’s when your mind started working, right?”

She didn’t have to answer him. Her expression told him that his guess was right. “But what you didn’t know was that the consort meant memory loss in quotation marks, but you meant it for real.”

“Regardless of what decision the consort made after that, my guess is that you wanted to be the one to see me wake up. After all, if a person forgot everything, then they would develop some reliance on the first person they saw after waking up. If this first person was kind and gentle, then they would feel safer with this person, but at the same time, this first person would be able to exercise greater control over the other person. You thought that if you were the first person I saw when I woke up, then it was very likely that I would fall for you, correct?”

Lu Yuxue’s hand trembled and she accidentally hit the teacup. The cup rolled onto the floor and broke into several pieces, while the light yellow tea spilled onto the floor.

“I didn’t mean to do that…” She quickly stood up and instinctively tried to clear up the mess.

But Zhao Zhi wasn’t done. “Not jus that. In order to achieve this aim, you even made arrangements for many other things. For example, you got the person Consort Ping instructed to take care of me to go elsewhere. This was something simple for the Cousin Young Mistress well loved by the consort who had lived in the house for many years. You wanted to possess me for yourself, so you took the time to cook up some nice stories to make me trust and rely on you, to make me have eyes for no one else but you.”

“Then again, I actually have to thank you. If you did not tell that person to go elsewhere, I wouldn’t have been able to make it out of the house I was trapped in despite being drugged and barely able to walk. I was able to escape this household that had imprisoned me, and I was able to meet Song Caitang. If not for you, I wouldn’t have taken a fancy to her, or fallen in love for her, or be willing to do anything for her, and to finally marry her.”

Lu Yuxue couldn’t bear it anymore. She was on the verge of a breakdown as she shook her head, causing tears to fly left and right. “Stop! Don’t go on anymore!”

Zhao Zhi continued to stare intently at her, like an eagle watching its prey. “Everything you’ve said, everything you’ve claimed was for my sake, was actually all for yourself. What you are in love with is not me, but the position of being the mistress of this household. You are touched by your own definition of self-sacrifice and you’re trying to blackmail me with the words “for your good”? Not only have you tried to make me believe you, but you’ve also managed to brainwash yourself very early on!”

Lu Yuxue covered her ears and shook her head desperately. “That’s not true! It’s not true! Don’t go on anymore! Don’t go on anymore!”

This time, Zhao Zhi really stopped talking about this. He suddenly asked a completely different question, “So, when did you start this alliance with Empress Chen? Hmm?”

Lu Yuxue suddenly froze. “Cousin…what are you talking about?”

Her expression also froze in this moment.

The tears on her face, the regret in her heart, the fear and wariness in her eyes, how hard she was biting her lips from shock…

Zhao Zhi sighed inwardly. It was true, then.

Lu Yuxue was really working for Empress Chen.

He didn’t understand Lu Yuxue’s line of logic when it came to why she chose to live this way, but he was very used to her expressions. If this matter didn’t exist at all, then she would have ignored everything he said because she was so worked up. But not only had she responded to his question, but she suddenly froze like that. The nervousness, fear and shock were about to burst from within her. It was as though her entire body was asking: how did you know?!

“You think you can still hide it?” Zhao Zhi kicked a stool on his left and it stopped right in front of Lu Yuxue. “Sit down and tell me about it.”

Lu Yuxue bit her tongue so hard that it started bleeding. The taste of blood snapped her out of her shock. She also realized she couldn’t wriggle her way out of this.

Her cousin was so clever, he had found out despite how careful she had been, how cleverly she had disguised everything. What was the point of hiding it from him?

This was probably…the last time she would be able to speak to him.

Lu Yuxue quietly sat down and she looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Did you…already know about it a long time ago?”

Zhao Zhi tapped his knuckles against the table. “What did you do on the day Song Caitang went missing? What is your deal with Empress Chen?”

“I didn’t mean it…I just really like you…” Lu Yuxue covered her face and began to wail loudly. “I didn’t know Empress Chen at all, initially. The news about where to find Millet’s Dream came from her, but I only found out after you had taken it. She was actually trying to test me. After she was certain that I was really obsessed with you and devoted to you, she contacted me…”

“She said that I can become the next Consort Ping and she would bless our marriage, as long as I listened to everything she said. I just wanted to marry you and spend my life with you here, so I didn’t want harm to come to this household. So, I also raised some conditions. I said I would not do anything that would hurt you or your household, and the empress agreed to it. And it’s true that she didn’t force me to do much, I just needed to keep an eye on anything out of the ordinary… But nothing out of the ordinary really happens in this house. You’ve always had the heart of a soldier, so you were more often fighting wars than being at home. Aunt doesn’t like to go out, and even when she’s expected at certain parties, she would refuse to go, saying that it was not appropriate for a widow. She doesn’t do much on most days and eventually even let me take charge of the household servants and expenses. Besides earning a little money from salt shipping, she doesn’t do anything else. I couldn’t report much to the empress…”

Lu Yuxue was still crying as she looked up at Zhao Zhi. “I really didn’t betray you! I didn’t betray this house!”

But Zhao Zhi felt no pity for her. “Empress Chen has been really good to you, huh.”

Lu Yuxue bowed her head and slowly bit her lip. “I don’t know why either… Perhaps she found me pitiful. She never asked for more out of me and she would even reward me from time to time.”

“How did she get into contact with you?”

“The empress has a trusted nanny by her side by the surname Sun.”

A nanny by the surname Sun?

Zhao Zhi narrowed his eyes as he lowered his voice a little. “All the plans and arrangements you needed to carry out were all instructions given through Nanny Sun?”

“Of course,” Lu Yuxue nodded. “I would have loved to see the empress, but my status…makes it impossible. Aunt hardly goes to the palace and wouldn’t bring me along each time she goes either. Over all these years, I’ve only seen the empress twice.”

“The deal was made during one of those meetings?”

Lu Yuxue paused to think, then shook her head. “It was all through Nanny Sun. During the two times I met the empress, she was always very kind to me, like an ordinary elder in the family. She liked me very much and didn’t say much else. Besides, the palace is full of eyes and ears that are constantly paying attention to everything that’s going on, so it would be too hard to say anything in secret…”

When she got to this point, she suddenly realized what her cousin was driving at. Empress Chen had never given any instructions personally, so…could someone else be using her name to do all these things?

But after thinking about it, she didn’t think that was true. “I don’t think my deal with the empress was a sham. Many of the things I received were made for only members of the royal family, so a maid or nanny would never get their hands on such things. Also, I had been given so much help over the years…”

She looked up at Zhao Zhi and said softly, “I am only an orphan girl with no family and no influence. Without the help of others, how could I have become known as a beauty of Bianliang whom everyone wants to marry?”

Zhao Zhi ignored that part. He just felt that the empress was someone impossible to read. She was already so careful when it came to a small matter of getting a woman of low status to work or her. She did not see to things personally, so she could blame someone else for it very easily even if she were found out… She could be involved in many more frightening things and nobody would know.

“What about what happened with Miss Song?” He glared at her again with no warmth in his eyes.

Lu Yuxue couldn’t help but shudder. “I don’t know who did it, who they could be or where they came from. I only received instructions from Nanny Sun to cooperate… I didn’t do much either. I just guessed where you would go, and how you would handle something like that. I also helped to antagonize Song Caitang, and the best would be to affect her so much that she would not be as aware of her surroundings as usual. Then I went to a few other spots to observe what your team was doing and misled them…”

“I didn’t want this to happen either. I’ve never tried to harm another person like this before. It’s just that Song Caitang doesn’t deserve to live on this earth, she shouldn’t have taken away what belongs to me…”

Zhao Zhi was too lazy to retort.

At the end of everything.

Zhao Zhi placed an intricately made, small, long-necked bottle on the table and looked at her. “I rarely kill women. Since you’ve taken care of Consort Ping for so many years, I’m providing an alternative way out that will not embarrass you. Deal with this yourself.

Lu Yuxue stared at the white, small bottle on the table for a long time before slowly taking hold of it with trembling hands.

She…was not surprised by how things had ended. She felt like she had dreamed about this before.

When?

It seemed like it was back when…she was able to laugh and cry whenever she wanted to.

“I will find a good place for your body to be buried. I hope you will cherish your next life and that we never meet again.”

After he said those words, he stood up and walked confidently and briskly out of the door.

There was where the sunlight shone in from. It was brilliant, dazzling, and too bright for her to look at without squinting.