Chapter 16

Soon, the two of them arrived at the party venue.

The entire bar had been reserved for the celebration. Lin Mo led Chu Yunmiao over to greet the hosts, and only then did Chu Yunmiao learn that tonight’s birthday stars were two people—Fang Juanlin and Fang Juanyu.

The siblings were twins. Fang Juanlin was the Alpha older brother, while Fang Juanyu was a young Omega girl. Like Lin Mo and Chu Yunmiao, they were first-year students at Huaqi University, but they were in different classes. Everyone was busy with training and classes, so they didn’t usually have much chance to interact.

When Fang Juanlin saw that Chu Yunmiao had really come, he was especially happy; Fang Juanyu, on the other hand, was so shy she nearly forgot how to speak.

Lin Mo secretly tugged at Chu Yunmiao’s sleeve and complained, “Look at the trouble you’ve caused.”

Chu Yunmiao looked confused. “What do you mean?”

Lin Mo said, half-serious and half-joking, “Juanyu is the Omega young lady the Fang family keeps in the palm of their hand. She usually looks cold and reserved even when she’s talking to me. But the moment she saw you tonight, she got this excited? She’s probably into you.”

Chu Yunmiao understood what she meant and couldn’t help a light cough.

Still, she remained cautious and reminded Lin Mo, “Don’t make random guesses. Fang Juanyu might just be respectful because of my identity. Don’t go slapping labels on people for no reason.”

Lin Mo curled her lip. “Tch, I’m not blind.”

But she still took the opportunity to say a few good words for her childhood friend’s sister. “The Fang family is a famous noble house, too. Juanyu’s status should be good enough to be your consort, right? Hey, if you like her, I can help you two get acquainted later?”

Chu Yunmiao gave her a shove. “Don’t mess around.”

Lin Mo grinned. “Don’t worry, I know my limits.”

Chu Yunmiao: “……”

Somehow, hearing Lin Mo say something like that only made her more worried. But the occasion wasn’t right, and the Fang siblings were right nearby. She didn’t want to keep arguing with Lin Mo, so she temporarily pushed the matter down and decided she’d make things clear with her later, once they were back at the dorm.

But very soon, what happened next made Chu Yunmiao realize Lin Mo hadn’t been talking nonsense just now.

As specially invited guests, aside from the Fang siblings themselves, she and Lin Mo drew the most attention in the bar. After a round of drinks, Fang Juanlin personally came over to invite them to play a game.

Chu Yunmiao wasn’t interested in joining and politely declined, but Fang Juanlin said, “It’s not the kind of drinking game you’re imagining. I promise tonight’s amusement is something you’ve never seen before!”

Lin Mo’s interest was piqued. “Really? What kind of amusement?”

Fang Juanlin kept them guessing. “Go over there and you’ll know.”

Lin Mo tugged Chu Yunmiao along. “Come on, let’s take a look!”

Chu Yunmiao couldn’t refuse again, so the two of them stood up and followed Fang Juanlin into the largest private room.

Fang Juanyu was already waiting inside. When she saw Chu Yunmiao enter, she immediately came over to greet her. “Long Princess!”

Lin Mo sneezed and rubbed her nose. “What’s that weird smell?”

Fang Juanyu glared at her indignantly, but Lin Mo, being a complete straight-arrow, remained utterly oblivious.

Chu Yunmiao quickly smoothed things over. “You smell… really nice. Is that a new perfume?”

She remembered that when she first saw Fang Juanyu earlier, the smell on her wasn’t nearly this strong.

Fang Juanyu immediately brightened again and nodded. “Mm, cough, I changed to a new perfume. Uh, do you like it?”

Her words carried an unmistakable implication; the perfume seemed to have been prepared specifically for Chu Yunmiao.

Chu Yunmiao offered a polite smile. “I don’t know much about this, but… it feels pretty nice.”

Fang Juanyu smiled until her eyes narrowed. “I’m glad you like it.”

She led Chu Yunmiao to the sofa in the private room and sat down beside her before introducing, “My brother found an amazing diviner. I heard she restored an ancient method of divination called Tarot. It’s supposed to be very accurate.

“Long Princess, why don’t you try it too?”

Chu Yunmiao didn’t believe in this sort of thing.

But Fang Juanyu was sitting right next to her, and she couldn’t just get up and leave in front of the birthday girl. So she reluctantly agreed. “Really?”

Fang Juanyu nodded and called over the diviner nearby.

The diviner sat down across from the two of them.

“What would the guests like to divine?”

Chu Yunmiao just wanted to get through this and find an excuse to leave, so she answered, “...Anything.”

At that, Fang Juanyu directly made the decision for her. “Marriage fate! Let’s divine her marriage fate!”

The diviner naturally had no objections. She nodded and began shuffling the cards. After laying out the deck, she asked Chu Yunmiao, “Please draw three cards according to your heart.”

Things had come to this point already, so Chu Yunmiao cooperated and did as she was told.

She randomly picked three cards from the deck and let the diviner flip them over one by one.

Lin Mo had originally worn a disapproving expression, but now she seemed to have become interested too, squeezing over to join the excitement.

The most anxious of all was still Fang Juanyu.

“How is it, how is it?” she pressed the diviner.

The diviner answered unhurriedly, “The cards show… the guest’s fated partner has already come to her side.”

Chu Yunmiao: “……”

She wasn’t interested, so Lin Mo asked for her instead. “What does fated partner mean?”

The diviner said, “You can understand it as the destined companion.”

At that, Lin Mo looked meaningfully at Chu Yunmiao and Fang Juanyu beside her. “Oh, now I get it.

“Anything more specific? What is this destined companion like?”

The diviner studied the card spread and said, “The bond between this guest and her fated partner was planted long ago. Judging by the guest’s age, they should have known each other since childhood. However… due to some external factors in the middle, the two were separated for a period of time and should have only recently reunited.”

Chu Yunmiao: “……”

She hadn’t taken this so-called divination seriously, but after the diviner said all that, an inexplicable name suddenly surfaced in her mind.

Childhood acquaintance, separated in between, reunited recently…

Wasn’t that just Yu Changning???

She was her fated partner?!

Chu Yunmiao gave her head a hard shake and looked at the diviner. “...Are you sure?”

The diviner smiled gently. “That is what Tarot is telling me.”

Chu Yunmiao: “...Oh.”

What divination? Clearly, not a single word of it could be trusted.

After a pause, the diviner went on, “This future companion of yours has excellent qualities in every respect and is among the best of her peers. However, her personality may be a little spoiled, and her possessiveness is very strong. If you want to handle this relationship well, you must remember to comfort her at all times.”

Chu Yunmiao: “……”

Fine, that was getting more and more ridiculous.

Then suddenly, she heard a murmur from beside her.

Fang Juanyu softly objected, “I’m not spoiled!”

Chu Yunmiao turned in confusion and happened to meet her gaze. The young girl’s face was flushed pink; she looked a little shy as she turned away, but soon she looked back at Chu Yunmiao again.

This time, it was Chu Yunmiao who grew uncomfortable and looked away.

Fang Juanyu didn’t mind. She took a deep breath and asked the diviner again, “Then… will there be any obstacles in this relationship?”

The two of them, one daring to ask and the other daring to answer, and the diviner nodded. “Yes.

“The cards show that the external obstacle to this relationship comes from one side’s family, and it is very likely to be a highly authoritative older woman in the family.”

Fang Juanyu’s mouth opened in surprise. “You mean there’ll be an older woman in the family opposing this relationship?”

The diviner gave a slight nod. “You could understand it that way.”

Nearby, Lin Mo and Fang Juanlin both frowned in thought. Lin Mo even rubbed her chin and said, “No one would look down on our class monitor, so the obstacle has to be coming from the class monitor’s side. A very authoritative older woman… hmm, that would be…”

Halfway through, she seemed to realize some astonishing truth and covered her mouth in shock.

Chu Yunmiao was helpless. “You all don’t actually believe this, do you?”

It was a bit rude to say something like that in front of the diviner, but the whole situation was simply too strange; she couldn’t stop herself.

Lin Mo was openly casual. “Didn’t she say it was very accurate? Maybe she really hit the nail on the head.”

Then she asked Chu Yunmiao, “Class monitor, tell me—if, cough, your family opposed you being with the person you like, would you stick to your own choice or listen to your family?”

Chu Yunmiao took a deep breath. “My mother and Mama are both very reasonable people. They were in love of their own accord. I don’t think they’d oppose me being with someone I like.”

Lin Mo shot Fang Juanyu a knowing look and smiled. “That’s good, that’s good.”

Chu Yunmiao really couldn’t stay any longer.

She casually found an excuse. “I… need to use the restroom.”

Before anyone could react, she left the private room directly.

The restroom of the upscale bar was very clean. Chu Yunmiao washed her face inside, calmed herself for a moment, and then came back out.

What she hadn’t expected was that Fang Juanyu was waiting for her outside.

The young girl’s cheeks were a little red, making her look even more delicate under the bar lights. She looked at Chu Yunmiao and said something that made no sense at all: “Long Princess, I really didn’t expect us to reunite under these circumstances. I’m so happy you came to my birthday party.”

Reunite?

But Chu Yunmiao couldn’t remember ever meeting Fang Juanyu before.

She felt a little awkward. After a brief hesitation, she managed two words: “...Really?”

Fang Juanyu nodded.

Recalling the past, she said, “The last time we met, we were still little kids who didn’t understand anything! I never thought… in the blink of an eye, we’d both be adults. Tell me, isn’t this exactly the fate the diviner mentioned?”

Chu Yunmiao spoke tactfully. “...Things like that are just for fun. It’s best not to take them seriously.”

In any case, she didn’t believe a single word of it.

Fang Juanyu froze for a moment, but she didn’t get discouraged. “That’s how you see it? Mm, but it’s fine. I’m already very happy that we got to meet again.” She held out a delicate card. “My contact information is all on here. I-I hope you’ll contact me when you’re free.”

Without giving Chu Yunmiao any chance to refuse, she stuffed the card into Chu Yunmiao’s hand and shyly ran off.

Chu Yunmiao let out a soft sigh and casually tucked the card into her coat pocket.

She didn’t know why she was so popular with Omegas; clearly, there was no way she had Alpha pheromones on her…

But right now, all she wanted was to leave this place as quickly as possible. After thinking it over, she sent Lin Mo a text and took a car back to school on her own.

Vehicles weren’t allowed into campus, so Chu Yunmiao walked all the way from the east gate back to the dormitory area.

The night breeze was gentle. She’d been walking for nearly twenty minutes, but she still felt a strange fragrance lingering on her body. She was very familiar with it; it was the perfume from Fang Juanyu’s private-room scent earlier. When the two of them had been sitting close together on the sofa, the smell must have transferred from Fang Juanyu to her then.

Chu Yunmiao tried to identify the exact composition of the fragrance, but it came and went too faintly to catch clearly. After thinking for a moment, she took the name card out of her pocket and held it beneath her nose to sniff.

Sure enough, the scent on the card was even stronger. But before she could make sense of it, she noticed someone standing downstairs by her dorm building. That person also spotted her, stepping out of the darkness into the lamplight, and only then did Chu Yunmiao recognize them.

Her steps faltered. “Yu Chang... Instructor.”

Yu Changning glanced at the slip of paper in her hand; the frown that had already been faintly creased on her brow tightened at once.

She read the name on the card. “Fang... Juanyu?”

Chu Yunmiao had been anxious a moment ago, after all. A few hours earlier, she had disobeyed Yu Changning and secretly slipped out to attend the party. But now, hearing Yu Changning speak, her attention was diverted.

“You know her?”

Yu Changning’s expression told her that Fang Juanyu was not a stranger to her.

If Yu Changning really knew Fang Juanyu, then there was a very real chance that she and Fang Juanyu had indeed met when they were young.

But Chu Yunmiao found it strange. She had an excellent memory, yet she still couldn’t find any trace of Fang Juanyu in it.

She pressed Yu Changning again. “Did we see her before? She...”

Before she could finish, Yu Changning reached out and snatched the card away; at the same time, she half-restrained Chu Yunmiao and pressed her against the lamp post.

Chu Yunmiao fell silent at once. Her sharp sixth sense told her she was in a very dangerous situation.

“You sneaked out, and you still have the mind to worry about other people?” Yu Changning narrowed her eyes. Her low, steady breathing sounded like the murmur of some beast. “Yunmiao, you’ve been naughty.”

As soon as she finished speaking, she raised her hand and brought it down, neither lightly nor heavily, on Chu Yunmiao’s bottom.

Smack—

The long night was silent; that crisp sound echoed clearly beside the Long Princess’s ear. For the Long Princess, it was less a physical punishment than a spiritual humiliation.

Blood rushed to Chu Yunmiao’s head, and her whole face flushed bright red. She glared at Yu Changning with eyes that looked as if they might spill tears at any moment.