Chapter 14: Questioning One's Character
"What are you crying for?"
Yu Xian’s temples throbbed with a dull ache. Crying, much like the tinkling of that bell, was something she deeply abhorred; both stoked a simmering irritation and impatience within her.
"Eldest Miss, if you spend recklessly like that again, I won't go bail you out. Match your actions to your abilities—I hope you understand that."
Ming Ruixi nodded, only belatedly grasping the implication beneath her words: "Yu Xian, does that mean you forgive me?"
Yu Xian countered coldly, "Who said that?"
"Then what more do you want?!" Ming Ruixi had thought she was off the hook from being a humiliated canvas tonight, only to find Yu Xian still had another trick up her sleeve.
Yu Xian laid the paintbrush onto the desk, leaving the brush tip hovering out over the edge. Lowering her eyes toward the palette cradled in her left hand, her right thumb and index finger unconsciously rubbed together.
In her mind, those two sentences echoed on a persistent loop:
—Those people's hands are so filthy—how could this lady ever touch them?!
—Who knows what kind of bacteria other people have on their hands? How disgusting is that!
Her hands harbored plenty of bacteria that repulsed the young lady...
Which was why she virtually never touched her hands, even deliberately releasing her grip early whenever tossing errand tips in the past.
"Yu Xian! What exactly do you want?!" Noticing that she had lapsed into deep contemplation without revealing a clue of what she was plotting, Ming Ruixi felt a swell of irritation. She certainly had no desire to stand stripped bare before her indefinitely.
"If you're not going to speak, then this lady is heading back."
With that, Ming Ruixi turned around to get dressed. The very next instant, however, a voice stopped her in her tracks.
"Hold it."
Eldest Miss Ming turned her head abruptly, only to have a finger press unexpectedly against the curve of her chest. Through the soft, sickeningly cold slick of pigment, her face first drained of color in shock. Then, realizing that Yu Xian was using her bare finger to smear paint over her, she was so furious that smoke practically puffed from her head.
"Yu Xian! What are you doing?!" Ming Ruixi felt profoundly humiliated. Who on earth used bare hands to paint? Allowing her to paint with a brush was already granting her immense face—how could this woman dare to push her luck and humiliate her like this?
Compared to Eldest Miss Ming's frantic panic, Yu Xian appeared far calmer and more composed: "Didn't you say you wanted me to forgive you?"
Startled by the initial shock, the young lady had shifted two steps back, but froze instantly upon hearing that. Just then, Yu Xian's finger glided down along the plump, snow-white fullness of her curve, the pad of her finger pressing directly against the rosy bud through the thinned layer of smeared pigment.
Yu Xian perceived the distinctly different texture as well. Her eyes flickered with a subtle gleam before she withdrew her hand without batting an eye.
A vivid blush crept up Ming Ruixi's ears. Her mouth, usually so full of haughty retorts, suddenly stumbled and stammered: "B-But you can't... h-humiliate this lady like this!"
By the end of the sentence, her pitch rose sharply as if attempting to bolster her own courage, her shame-filled, gorgeous eyes glaring at her with an anger on the brink of erupting.
Yu Xian remarked with detached coolness, "Then you can leave tomorrow."
"..."
Ming Ruixi's fury was snuffed out in an instant by those words. Clenching her fingertips, she pressed, "Yu Xian, do you truly have to humiliate this lady this much?"
Yu Xian said, "And do you think I ought to run a charity?"
Ming Ruixi was struck speechless. She knew full well there was no such thing as a free lunch in this world, but... but painting like this was simply too degrading!
And her hands... how filthy they were.
Stained with paint, yet insisting on touching her directly.
Eldest Miss Ming's willow-leaf brows knit into a tight knot. Biting down hard on her lower lip, she turned her head away to avoid looking at her. Under the white incandescent light, her slender swan neck appeared remarkably graceful and fragile, the hesitant look on her face showing she was actively weighing her options.
Yu Xian waited leisurely; she was in no rush.
A moment later, the young lady's yielding voice sounded, though the tone remained thoroughly drenched in disgust: "This lady will allow you to paint with your hands, but from now on you are not permitted to casually throw me out. Furthermore, you must wash those hands before touching this lady."
Yu Xian glanced at her own hands. They were nowhere near the pampered state of the heiress's hands, which were maintained with hundreds of thousands of yuan every month. From years of holding brushes and doing hard labor, the pads of her fingers were even somewhat rough.
"As long as you don't commit a major blunder, I won't casually kick you out."
Still, she detested how this heiress constantly wielded that look of disgust and air of superiority to sort people into high and low classes. Back then, she had the wealth and status to be willful; why was it that now, when she was clearly the ruined one, she could still retain every shred of arrogant vanity and point fingers at her?
And so, Yu Xian met her gaze with an icy, unyielding tone: "But I will not wash my hands."
She intended to touch her with these exact "filthy" hands.
Yet Ming Ruixi misinterpreted her meaning, assuming she simply found it too troublesome: "Then... would it be fine if this lady washes them for you?"
Yu Xian's brow furrowed. Before she could react, Eldest Miss Ming turned, stepped outside, and brought back a basin of water, setting it on a nearby table. Taking Yu Xian by the wrist, she moved to lower her hand into the water to wash it.
A split second before her fingers met the water's surface, Yu Xian wrenched her hand free, her expression turning frost-cold: "I said I'm not washing my hands."
Ming Ruixi stared at her blankly: "But if you don't wash them, your hands are filthy."
The moment the words left her mouth, Ming Ruixi belatedly realized: this woman deliberately wanted to use those filthy hands to humiliate her.
"Yu Xian, I never imagined you were this kind of person!" Ming Ruixi's face shifted abruptly, snapping in a sharp, delicate fury: "This lady truly judged you wrong! Just because I let go of the money a little early back then, was it worth being this petty and vengeful?!"
Yu Xian didn't feel like arguing with her. Sitting down, she said evenly, "If you can accept it, shut your mouth."
"You!"
Eldest Miss Ming choked on her own anger. After a tense standoff lasting a dozen seconds, she ultimately had to yield, sitting across Yu Xian's lap with her eye rims burning red in indignation.
She began to feel the strokes Yu Xian laid down on her skin one by one. The somewhat rough pads of her fingers, once tempered by the slick texture of the pigments, took on an unexpectedly gentle, soothing touch. Ming Ruixi could feel those fingers tracing across her sternum, tapping, pressing, and blending with practiced, professional technique.
Yet, for some reason, she couldn't stop shivering. Ming Ruixi convinced herself it was just her deep-seated revulsion toward those filthy hands—after all, being humiliated like this, who could remain pleased?
Still, she couldn't help recalling the shallow whimper that had escaped her lips last night. Was that truly an issue with her own body?
Could Yu Xian have done it on purpose?
She definitely did it on purpose!
Why else would an exalted heiress like her moan out of nowhere without cause?
Without bothering to verify, Ming Ruixi settled on this assumed truth. Lifting her eyes toward the focused woman, she asked hesitantly, "Yu Xian, you artists who create work like this... do—do your minds stay completely pure and free of stray thoughts?"
Yu Xian's hand slipped past the intended boundary, straying into an area it shouldn't have touched. Looking up at the young lady, her tone turned sharply stern: "What do you mean by that?"
She hadn't anticipated that her integrity would be called into question by this heiress yet again today.
When luck ran out, even drinking water could choke a person. Back then, one of Ming Ruixi’s lackeys had framed her for stealing a necklace worth hundreds of thousands of yuan. In the beginning, Eldest Miss Ming's immediate reaction had also been to interrogate her with suspicion, asking whether she had taken it or not.
Even though her innocence was proven afterward, she could never forget the young lady's distrustful questioning: "Yu Xian, did you take the necklace? If you did, just bring it out and this lady won't hold it against you."
In the eyes of others, her poverty made her the most natural suspect.
Even Eldest Miss Ming had believed so.
Sensing Yu Xian's dark, icy scowl, Ming Ruixi bit her lip: "Nothing."
Yu Xian, however, pulled her hands back and ceased painting altogether, her voice as frigid as ice: "I'm not in the mood to paint anymore. Go back."
Panic seized Ming Ruixi: "Yu Xian, what is wrong with you?! You've already started painting, and now you want to kick me out again! You have zero integrity!"
"This lady didn't even say anything bad about you—why do you have to take everything so seriously?" Ming Ruixi couldn't comprehend her at all. Seeing that she was truly about to call it quits and had already begun scraping the palette clean, Ming Ruixi hastily grabbed her hand, dragging it back toward her chest while fighting down her temper: "Hurry up and paint this lady!"
Once the painting was finished, today's debt would be wiped clean!
How could she let her abandon it halfway?
Pulled back against her chest, Yu Xian's fingers exerted slightly too much force in the struggle, her fingertips brushing against Eldest Miss Ming's collarbone. The stark, slender line of bone was instantly smeared with stained pigment.
In her original composition, the artwork was never supposed to reach that high.
"Yu Xian, hurry and paint!" Ming Ruixi ordered in a delicate, irritated huff.
Yu Xian closed her eyes, forcing down the memory of past slander and the biased stares of others deep into her chest, refusing to let those negative emotions disrupt her composure any longer.
"Don't ask questions like that again in the future," she said coldly.
"Fine, fine, fine! This lady promises you! Just hurry up and paint!"
Observing her frantic fear of a canceled deal coupled with that transparent disgust toward her "dirty" hands, Yu Xian let out a quiet scoff in her heart. Dipping her fingers into the pigments once more, she resumed.
Still, it had to be said that the supple canvas of Eldest Miss Ming's skin provided an entirely unique texture, coaxing out painting techniques distinct from working on a rigid wooden board.
Even... her inspiration felt subtly different.
Yu Xian extended her ring finger and pinky to wipe away the paint that had smeared past the outline. In that delicate motion of dabbing and rubbing, she suddenly detected a faint, damp moisture seeping against her knee.
"What are you painting this time?" Eldest Miss Ming hadn't noticed the shift in her expression. Seeing that the colors on the palette had shifted to deep crimson—unlike the soft pink from last night—she deduced it wasn't the Palace Pink plum blossoms.
Gathering her focus slightly, Yu Xian replied evenly: "Sunset Rose."
The plum blossoms had already been transferred to the wooden board; she had no desire to paint them a second time, so she had switched subjects.
"Oh..." Completely oblivious to the changes in her own body, Eldest Miss Ming asked, "You're not going to take photos as a keepsake once you finish, are you?"
Feeling the patch on her knee growing increasingly damp, Yu Xian abruptly lifted her head—only to see Eldest Miss Ming covering her chest with both arms, declaring with absolute certainty and a spoiled pout: "I'm telling you right now, this lady will never pose for those kinds of photos. If you dare take pictures, this lady will turn completely hostile toward you."
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