The air in the office seemed to have its oxygen drained following Zhi Ai’s earth-shattering announcement, leaving only a suffocating stagnation.
Su Yuqing’s eyes widened.
Her brain seemed to refuse to process the information she had just received.
She even wondered if her ears were experiencing some functional disorder after the constant shocks of the past few days.
“Oh, and then?”
Almost entirely by instinct, she asked with a nearly numb calm.
Su Yuqing tried to use this indifferent attitude to hide the stormy waves crashing within her heart.
“What does you checking out have to do with me? Since when has your private life been my business? Why are you telling me this?”
She deliberately emphasized the words “private life” and “my business,” trying to draw a clear line across a boundary that had long since blurred.
Zhi Ai looked at her current state—the forced composure and the desperate attempt to distance herself—as if she were watching an extremely amusing sight.
She let out a soft sigh.
There was no helplessness in that sigh, only the playful teasing of a cat toyed with by a mouse.
“Sigh…”
She ignored all of Su Yuqing’s questioning and changed the subject on her own, her tone as relaxed as if they were discussing what to have for dinner.
“So, my dear manager, when exactly are you getting off work, meow? I’m getting a bit impatient waiting.”
This sudden leap in topics caught Su Yuqing off guard.
She froze for a few seconds before subconsciously answering.
“Off… off work? Probably… in two or three hours.”
She tried to use work as a shield, but she immediately realized that this lie was fragile before the shrewd little cat.
She reluctantly added, “However, strictly speaking, I don’t really have anything else to do right now. I finished all of today’s tasks this morning. My efficiency was super high! As long as—”
She looked up and gave Zhi Ai a meaningful glare.
“As long as your brain doesn’t suddenly short-circuit and you don’t start making trouble for me on a whim…”
She hoped, almost with a hint of pleading, that Zhi Ai would hear the hidden meaning in her words:
‘Please, just leave. Let me be alone for a moment.’
“Well then.”
Su Yuqing worked hard to make her conclusion sound reasonable.
“Even if I sneak out early now and run home to sleep, there shouldn’t be any problem in theory.”
It seemed she hoped the option of “going home to sleep” would make Zhi Ai lose interest.
However, that was exactly the sentence Zhi Ai had been waiting for.
Her glass-like eyes instantly lit up, as if she had finally heard a long-awaited signal.
A bright smile that brooked no refusal bloomed on her face.
“In that case—”
She clapped her hands cheerfully, the sound crisp.
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
“Go? Go where?”
The heart Su Yuqing had just let down suddenly tightened again.
A strong sense of foreboding gripped her once more.
“Where are you going? And why should I go with you?”
Zhi Ai looked at her with an expression that said “isn’t it obvious?”
She pointed a slender finger toward the ground floor.
“Why, to help me move my luggage, of course!”
She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“I have so much luggage. It’s all piled up in that little security booth on the first floor. If we don’t go get it soon, the security guard’s face is going to be darker than the bottom of a pot!”
“Move… move your luggage?!”
Su Yuqing felt her blood pressure soaring.
“For something like that… couldn’t you just find a professional mover?! Or call a local delivery service! A courier would work too! Do you absolutely have to come here to torment me?! I’m your manager, not your private laborer!”
Hearing this, Zhi Ai didn’t get angry.
Instead, she tilted her head and put on an expression of concern that seemed incredibly sincere but was actually infuriating.
“But I’m doing this for your own good, meow.”
She spoke earnestly, as if advising a child who didn’t know any better.
“Look at you, guarding this crappy job, slumped in a chair from morning till night. You barely exercise a few times a whole year. Everything you put in your mouth is either some delivery food made with gutter oil or little colored sugar-water drinks with three-no labels.”
“If you keep this up, your health is going to be completely ruined! I’m creating an opportunity for you to exercise!”
“Ah, stop, stop, stop! Enough!”
Su Yuqing interrupted this “caring” speech, unable to take it any longer.
“First of all! Thank you for your ‘concern’! Second, although I have a mortgage on my back and the pressure isn’t small, my quality of life isn’t so pathetic that I’m living like that! The gutter oil and unlabeled sugar-water are pure slander!”
“Oh? Is that so?”
Zhi Ai shrugged noncommittally and then immediately switched to an urging tone.
“Then stop talking nonsense and get moving! If we stall any longer, it’ll be dark! Otherwise, heaven knows how long it’ll take you to clear out a room for me tonight!”
“Wait, wait, wait—!!!”
Su Yuqing finally caught the most critical and terrifying part of the girl’s words.
She stood up abruptly, her hands braced on the desk.
She leaned forward and stared fixedly at Zhi Ai.
“What did you just say?! What do you mean you need me to clear out a room for you tonight?! Let me ask you, if you aren’t staying at the hotel anymore, where exactly are you planning to take all that luggage…?”
The terrifying guess in her heart was screaming wildly, but she still held onto a glimmer of hope.
She hoped she had simply misheard or would receive a different answer.
However, Zhi Ai delivered the fatal blow.
A smile so bright it was almost cruel appeared on the idol girl’s face.
In the most innocent tone, she announced the final plan for this “invasion.”
“To your house, of course!”
She tilted her head slightly, as if announcing wonderful news.
“Starting tonight, my new home is your room! Are you happy?”
*Boom—!*
Su Yuqing felt as if a thunderclap had exploded in her mind, leaving her ears ringing and her vision blurred.
She staggered, only managing to stay upright by gripping the table.
“You… where are you going to let me live…!?”
Her voice trembled with extreme shock and anger.
Zhi Ai tapped her chin with her fingertip, seemingly thinking for a moment, then gave a “perfect” solution. Her tone was as light as if she were handing out candy.
“You? You can stay in the living room.”
She raised her hand and pointed toward the office door, as if she could see through the walls directly into the small living room of Su Yuqing’s home.
“From what I saw, the sofa in your living room—its length, width, and that slightly irritating hardness—is actually quite suitable to serve as your bed.”
She didn’t stop there.
She smiled and added one last twist of the knife, reopening Su Yuqing’s most painful memory.
“Besides, didn’t you already successfully spend a very, very ‘wonderful night’ on that sofa during my last visit? You should be used to it by now, meow.”
These mocking words were like salt rubbed harshly into Su Yuqing’s unhealed wound.
Fear, humiliation, anger… every emotion exploded at that moment!
“Impossible! That’s absolutely impossible!”
She practically shrieked, refusing with every ounce of her strength.
“Don’t even think about it! I will never agree! That’s my home! What right do you have…!”
Watching Su Yuqing’s fierce resistance, like that of a trapped beast, the effortless smile on Zhi Ai’s face finally faded away bit by bit.
She sighed softly.
That sigh no longer held any playfulness, but rather a hint of impatient pity.
“Sigh… how troublesome.”
She whispered to herself.
The last trace of feigned warmth in her glass-like eyes vanished, leaving only pure desire for control.
“It seems—”
She slowly looked up, her gaze falling like a physical weight on Su Yuqing’s chest, which was heaving violently with emotion.
Her voice was gentle, yet it carried an unquestionable authority.
“I need to help you properly remember… exactly what kind of attitude a pet should have when dealing with her master, meow.”
Before she finished speaking, in the reflection of Su Yuqing’s suddenly constricted pupils, Zhi Ai unhurriedly leaned over.
She picked up the white plastic bag that had been ignored this whole time.
Then, under Su Yuqing’s terrified gaze, her slender fingers reached into the bag and searched.
Soon, she steadily pulled out an object that they were both incredibly familiar with—and incredibly fearful of.
The Crimson Collar.
It hung quietly between Zhi Ai’s fingers like a sleeping venomous snake.
In that moment, it snapped its cold, vertical pupils open, locking onto the prey it had long ago selected.
Even the light in the office seemed to dim slightly as that collar appeared…