Ningning's Unspeakable Secret

The Ascott. A fifty-five-square-meter business suite.

As a residence, fifty-five square meters was undoubtedly compact. Yet, to Lu Yuning, renting a place this spacious for just one person felt like an act of pure extravagance.

In fact, if it were any larger, she would probably be too scared of ghosts to fall asleep.

Even so, after seeing off the warm and considerate Zhou Jialu, Lu Yuning stood gazing at the exquisitely decorated, dazzling room. She felt a bit dazed... and a faint sense of unease.

Yes, she was uneasy. Theoretically, it was perfectly normal for well-funded enterprises to provide housing allowances.

Lu Yuning had a few high-achieving high school classmates working for Big Tech firms in major cities who reportedly received one or two thousand yuan a month just for rent subsidies.

The problem was, she didn't feel she was anywhere near as capable as them. Moreover, Su Bai's company... didn't exactly seem to be a nationally renowned corporation.

No matter how naive Lu Yuning might be, she realized that Su Bai's compensation package likely contained some... unspoken components.

Zhou Jialu seemed to have sensed her anxiety regarding this and offered a rather amusing reassurance:

"Don't worry, Su Bai won't force you to do anything. Since he's paying the price, just focus on your profession. As for sleeping with him... well, Su Bai absolutely won't mandate it. After all, there are plenty of girls lining up to warm his bed."

"..."

Zhou Jialu had sounded quite proud when she said that, making no attempt to hide the fact that she was already one of the women Su Bai had slept with.

It felt surreal. It was the first time Lu Yuning had encountered a girl with such a peculiar attitude in real life... She thought maybe her social circle was just too narrow.

No, that wasn't it.

Her previous flatmates—two girls who worked in nightclubs—seemed to share a similar mindset. When they found out she had been hired by Su Bai, they were incredibly envious and urged her to secure him as quickly as possible.

As for her own attitude toward Su Bai... well.

Young, wealthy, and handsome—he was practically a character who had walked right out of a romance novel. It felt so unreal. If Su Bai really liked her, what exactly did he like about her?

Lu Yuning had always had low self-esteem.

Consequently, on her first night at the Ascott, she suffered from insomnia.

It wasn't that the bed was uncomfortable or the pillows too hard. On the contrary, this place was so high-end that Lu Yuning simply wasn't used to it.

Did this mean... she was going to live a wealthy lifestyle from now on?

But more than the lifestyle of the rich, what Lu Yuning yearned for were the professional privileges Su Bai had promised.

Aside from designing the custom garments he required, she was free to use the rest of her time for her own creative pursuits.

Th-this was just too awesome... In Lu Yuning's original life plan, she thought she'd have to grind until she was around forty, becoming a named designer in the industry, before she'd have the chance to truly showcase her talent. She never imagined she would reach the top in a single bound like this.

As these thoughts swirled, Su Bai's face involuntarily floated into her mind again.

...

As a girl who had developed physically quite early, Lu Yuning...

Even back in middle school, she had... Although she was introverted and didn't date, there were still objective needs—the choices of destiny, so to speak.

The difference was that in the past, Lu Yuning's mind only held vague, idealized male figures based on general concepts—in other words, virtual characters and scenarios she had blindly concocted herself.

But now, her mind was filled with Su Bai.

It was largely because more than one person had hinted that Su Bai was interested in her, so naturally, her thoughts drifted in that direction.

Besides, this was the first time in her life that a guy—who wasn't family—had treated her so well.

Lu Yuning was not an ungrateful woman. Some women had incredibly strange temperaments: you treat them well, and they take it as a sign of their own high status and look down on you.

You ignore them, and they panic, chasing after you like lapdogs.

Their temperaments hardly resembled carbon-based life forms; they were more unpredictable than the most chaotic of pets.

However, Lu Yuning's thought process was simple: Su Bai treated her well, so she... well, she liked Su Bai!

This affection might have come on too strong and too fast, but she couldn't help it. Su Bai had given her the thing she loved most: the opportunity to design fashion independently...

And so, with her head filled with random thoughts...

Yes, it only took three minutes.

On one hand, Su Bai was excellent material for her imagination; on the other, it was due to Lu Yuning's own physical constitution.

Since childhood, she had harbored an unspeakable secret: her body was... excessively sensitive.

For instance, when she was little and her mother held her foot to clip her toenails, she would find it unbearably ticklish and laugh endlessly.

Because of this, Lu Yuning learned to bathe herself and clip her own nails at a very young age... quite the independent little angel!

Three minutes was already...

If she went full speed, it probably wouldn't even take two minutes to...

To be honest, Lu Yuning felt there was something wrong with her body. Would she be despised by her future boyfriend for being like this?

This was one of the sources of her inferiority complex.

Girls with sensitive and delicate minds are like that; they feel insecure about all sorts of strange things.

If Su Bai knew about this, he would surely let out a hearty, appreciative laugh.

How could a boyfriend despise this? It was a pure, unadulterated advantage.

After resting for a while, Lu Yuning went at it again...

And again...

...

"Wait, if I've soiled the sheets, do I have to call the front desk to change them? Or... Ugh, oh no..."

Suddenly, Lu Yuning realized a very awkward fact: this was not the small bedroom she used to live in.

Back there, she kept plenty of spare bedsheets prepared, and she even placed a waterproof pad underneath the sheets—these were lifestyle habits she had maintained for years.

However, in this Ascott studio suite, Lu Yuning couldn't find any spare sheets.

She didn't know how to call room service, either. As a poor kid who hadn't seen much of the world, she felt that calling room service for such a bizarre reason would be a challenge on the level of social suicide...

In short, late-night Lu Yuning was in a bit of a panic.

Gritting her teeth, she decided to make do on the sofa for the night. She would wait until she woke up tomorrow and ask Zhou Jialu for advice at a convenient time during the day.

Come to think of it, having a considerate friend was truly a blessing. After all, she couldn't exactly go ask Su Bai about such an embarrassing predicament, could she?