After Marrying the Aloof Beauty, I Totally Fell for Her - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: You and MY Are Now Friends

After walking out of the café, An Ning didn’t ride her bike. She strolled slowly down the bustling street. By now, the sky had darkened, and the neon signs of the shops along the street had begun to glow in vibrant colors. Groups of young people laughed and chatted as they walked by. The mingled aromas of various street foods teased the appetite of every passerby.

She weighed the bag in her hand and still felt that everything that had just happened was unreal.

Her match turned out to be none other than Ms. Mu. And not only that…

“Do you want to marry me?”

She recalled the expression on Mu Yan’s face when she said those words.

Although the woman’s expression didn’t change much, her lips were pressed tightly together, and she looked at An Ning intently—like her answer was of utmost importance.

She couldn’t say no.

An Ning wasn’t even sure what short-circuited in her brain at the time. Over and over, her mind had only those four words.

Had her fear of Mu Yan become so ingrained that rejecting her wasn’t even an option?

They were going to register for marriage next Monday… It still felt like a dream.

An Ning stopped at her usual beef noodle shop and took out her phone to ground herself in reality.

Dorm 302 Group Chat

I’m Not Jealous: I’m at Li’s Beef Noodles right now. Anyone want me to bring back food?

Empress Huang Has Arrived (Huang Lu): ‼️

Luzhou Moon (Lu Lin): She’s here! She’s here! She’s here!

Waaah (Chen Ying): Never mind the food. What happened over there?? Spill!

I’m Not Jealous: …It’s hard to explain.

Luzhou Moon: What’s hard to explain? Just say whether it worked or not.

I’m Not Jealous: Uh… I guess it worked?

Luzhou Moon: Fireworks.gif I can’t believe Ning Ning is the second one in our dorm to get into a relationship!

Empress Huang Has Arrived: Sharing link—Shocking! Couple with 85% compatibility reveals: even their body scents spark desire!

I’m Not Jealous: Huang Lu, stop. The internet is not lawless.

Waaah: Something this big and you’re just having noodles? Ning Ning, go to Yuan Yuan BBQ and buy 200 yuan worth of skewers, and grab some fruit beer. I’ll come pick you up. BBQ party tonight, my treat!

The group was buzzing with excitement, but An Ning felt a bit out of place. She knew her roommates were genuinely happy for her, but she couldn’t tell them that she wasn’t starting a relationship—she was getting married. And it was a marriage without love, purely for mutual benefit.

She now understood why Chen Ying hadn’t told them about her own marriage.

At the barbecue shop, the owner gave her two extra skewers. “Such a pretty young lady looking all gloomy. Here, eat more. You’ll feel better when you’re full.”

Was it that obvious?

An Ning touched her face and forced a habitual smile. “Thank you! I’m not unhappy, just deep in thought.”

Her emotions always seemed to fluctuate wildly when it came to Ms. Mu.

Before long, Chen Ying arrived on her little white electric scooter, smoothly stopping in front of the shop. She hung the skewers on the handlebars, and An Ning sat on the back seat hugging the fruit beer. The scooter wasn’t very powerful, and now that it was carrying two people, it slowly cruised back toward the dorm.

Bright streetlights lit the way, and the summer night breeze felt gentle and comforting. Hugging the box of fruit beer, An Ning looked at Chen Ying’s back and asked, “Ying-jie, what did you feel like right after you got married?”

Sensing her confusion, Chen Ying spoke gently, “Don’t stress yourself out. Just think of it as making a new friend. My wife and I started as friends. Over time, I realized being with her felt really comfortable, and it just naturally happened.”

“Mm… I see.” An Ning helplessly realized that even Chen Ying, who had gone through something similar, couldn’t really offer a reference—because Chen Ying had fallen for her match.

Her relationship with Mu Yan… was hard to explain. If she had to, she could only compare it to Tom and Jerry, with Mu Yan being the cat.

Back at the dorm, the four of them laid out yoga mats in the middle of the room, set up a small table, and had a feast. Throughout the night, Huang Lu kept pestering An Ning for juicy details about the matchmaking, hoping to use it as inspiration for her next matchmaking novel—until Chen Ying shoved a mouthful of potato chips into her mouth.

Lu Lin was obsessed with the cup An Ning brought back. She had no resistance to cute things and kept asking where she got it.

An Ning was going to say it was a gift from the café and that she could keep it, but when she looked at the clumsy, adorable little dog on the cup, she just couldn’t bring herself to say it. So she simply said it came with the drink.

By the time she finished washing up and climbed into bed, it was already 10:30 p.m. According to An Ning’s body clock, it should’ve been time to sleep, but unusually, she wasn’t the least bit sleepy.

After tossing and turning for a while, she couldn’t help but open WeChat.

“You and MY are now friends. You can start chatting.”

Mu Yan’s contact sat quietly in her list. The profile picture was a simple little doodle of a cactus—clean lines but surprisingly expressive.

An Ning clicked into her Moments. Completely blank. It wasn’t just that posts were hidden after three days—she hadn’t posted anything at all.

Yep, totally her style. Just as An Ning was about to exit WeChat, her phone slipped and smacked her in the face.

Rubbing her stinging cheek, she looked back at the screen—only to find that the chat window with Mu Yan now had a sticker in it.

It was her go-to sticker: a cute golden retriever happily pouncing at the screen.

An Ning: “!”

She quickly tried to delete it—but just after she did, another message popped up.

This time, it wasn’t from her.

MY: Put it back.

An Ning: “…”

Isn’t Ms. Mu supposed to be busy? How did she just happen to see that?

Frustrated at her own bad luck, An Ning resent the sticker and wondered if she should explain herself.

I’m Not Jealous: Sorry, Ms. Mu, I touched it by accident.

MY: It’s fine.

An Ning let out a sigh of relief, quickly set her phone aside, and finally managed to fall asleep after applying two patches to her sore face.

Meanwhile, in a brightly lit art studio, a slender woman set down her now-silent phone and looked at the canvas in front of her.

It was a portrait of a suffocating woman. Her features were twisted, her eyebrows tightly knotted together. She looked like she was both struggling and resigned.

The color palette was dark, heavy with a sense of oppression. The painter’s precise, sharp strokes imbued the entire image with a life-or-death tension.

Even the most discerning art critic would be hard-pressed to find fault with it—it was, by all accounts, world-class.

Except in the eyes of its creator.

The woman stared at the painting for a long while before slowly taking it down from the easel and tearing it apart piece by piece with painstaking care.

“Trash.”

She walked into her bedroom and sat in front of a bathtub filled with water. The reflection on the surface twisted and distorted her features under the flickering light.

Mu Yan stared at her warped reflection, her gaze calm yet weary—like a traveler who had been searching for water in the desert for far too long.

Have you found the soul of painting yet?

Yes. She found it the day An Ning left.

She slowly lowered her head until the tip of her nose touched the water, rippling the surface. Until her face completely overlapped with the reflection in the water.

It lies within my pain.