The night was hazy, the sky as clear as water.
It was past 2 a.m., and the long, dark street was deserted. The bar, however, was lively. The moment Fu Ye stepped inside, the deafening music nearly made her ears ring. The stark contrast between the quiet outside and the raucous noise inside was almost jarring.
She approached the bartender and asked, "Where's Lu Ling?"
Fu Ye wasn't a frequent visitor to the bar, but the staff here all knew her well.
"Mrs. Lu… um, Miss Lu… She's…" The bartender, usually obsequious, suddenly seemed hesitant, avoiding her gaze. "She's in a meeting with clients. It might not be convenient for her to see you."
Fu Ye's smile was faint, but her tone carried a sharp edge: "There's no need to call me Mrs. Lu anymore. Lu Ling and I are done. I'm not here to make trouble. I just need to discuss work with her. If business is delayed because of this…" She trailed off, leaving her words hanging ominously.
The bartender studied Fu Ye's calm demeanor. She didn't seem like she was here to catch her ex in a compromising situation but rather genuinely to talk business. He decided not to block her way. "Miss Lu is in private room number nine. I'll take you there."
Inside the private room, Lu Ling was indeed entertaining clients. Besides her, there were representatives from two different companies present.
She lounged lazily in the middle of the room, an air of nonchalance about her. On either side of her were rows of people waiting to toast her, all wearing ingratiating smiles.
Lu Ling sipped her drink with disinterest, offering only the bare minimum of acknowledgment.
Among this crowd, there was one figure that stood out—a petite young woman wearing a pink tulle dress, her high-heeled shoes tied with delicate straps. Her entire outfit sparkled like a meticulously crafted Barbie princess.
She sat next to Lu Ling, sneaking sips of alcohol. Each time she took a sip, her face flushed red, her eyes watered, and she looked on the verge of tears.
The lively atmosphere in the room abruptly froze when Fu Ye appeared.
Everyone exchanged uneasy glances, unsure of what to do.
Fu Ye walked in with a faint smile and said casually, "Don't mind me. Continue as you were."
Sensing the tension, someone quickly made space for Fu Ye to sit. She took the seat without hesitation, her expression calm, though her tone carried a hint of exasperation. "What's the deal with involving Lou Yuzhu in this? When did you become so underhanded?"
Fu Ye was accustomed to giving Lu Ling face in front of others. Even her accusations were whispered, as if she didn't want the others to overhear.
If it weren't for the dozens of unanswered calls, Fu Ye wouldn't have come all the way here.
The woman, who had remained aloof and silent until now, suddenly raised her voice. "Xiao Luo, I built this company from the ground up. If I assign someone to a position and get called underhanded for it, does that make sense? Is my money just lying around for others to dictate how it's spent? Even passing dogs want to meddle in my business now?"
Her words struck like a whip. The entire room fell silent. You could have heard a pin drop as no one dared to breathe loudly.
The man named Xiao Luo took a good twenty seconds to process what had just happened. He threw a glance of apology at Fu Ye, but his words still supported Lu Ling. "Miss Lu is absolutely right. That's just unreasonable!"
With at least a dozen people in the room, Fu Ye had never been humiliated like this before. Her lips turned pale, and tears welled up in her eyes as she stormed out, nearly sobbing.
Lu Ling didn't follow her, and no one else dared to either. Instead, the group resumed their drinking, their earlier laughter feeling somewhat forced.
The girl in the pink tulle dress tilted her head, mumbling to herself, "Passing dog? Is that a metaphor?"
Lu Ling pulled her closer by the waist and murmured, "That's right. You're very clever."
* * * *
With work adjustments in place, the company announced a three-day weekend, including Saturday and Sunday, for her to rest before training the new recruits next week.
Lou Yuzhu slept until noon that day. After drinking a bit too much last night, her head was pounding. Dazed and groggy, she touched her swollen lips, a fleeting image flashing in her mind.
The parrot wasn't on the bed. She looked around and finally found Tao Tao curled up inside the coconut shell hanging in the cage.
That's strange…
Although she had made that little coconut shell bed for Tao Tao, the parrot never liked sleeping in it. Tao Tao always preferred snuggling on her neck.
Why the sudden change today?
Standing in front of the birdcage, Lou Yuzhu leaned over and poked the hanging coconut shell. It swayed like a swing at her touch.
Within seconds, a little green head peeked out. Tao Tao clicked its beak a few times, preening its chest feathers while chirping softly.
"Tao Tao, why didn't you sleep with Mommy last night?" Lou Yuzhu gently cupped the parrot in her hand, lifting it out of the coconut shell. With her thumb, she rubbed the soft feathers near its ear.
Initially, she had been against letting Tao Tao sleep on her bed. She had read plenty of stories online about people accidentally crushing their pet birds while sleeping.
She was scared, but there was no winning against Tao Tao's domineering ways. If she didn't let the little parrot sleep on the bed, Tao Tao would slam itself against the cage, its tiny body thudding repeatedly against the bars.
Thankfully, Lou Yuzhu was a quiet sleeper. Ever since she started sharing the bed with Tao Tao, she'd been extra careful to avoid tossing and turning.
But now, this little troublemaker had decided, out of the blue, to sleep in the coconut shell bed instead. Lou Yuzhu couldn't help but worry—what if something was wrong with Tao Tao? Birds couldn't speak, so the only way to gauge their health was by observing unusual behavior.
As if confirming her suspicions, the soft pink beak nipped her hand, suddenly refusing to be held. Tao Tao lowered its head, pecking insistently at the fingers gripping its throat until Lou Yuzhu winced and let go. Flapping its wings with a puff of indignation, Tao Tao flew over to the branch perch by the window.
That was even stranger…
Then Lou Yuzhu remembered the living room had a security camera installed. Grabbing her phone, she opened the app and rewound the footage to last night, right after she came home.
The video played, and what she saw made her soul leave her body.
The two figures in the video—herself and Tao Tao—went from a tug-of-war at the doorway to clinging to each other, eventually collapsing onto the sofa.
What happened next was even more mortifying.
She had pinned Tao Tao down and started kissing it relentlessly, as if she were a cat high on catnip. She kept sniffing its face and the scent of its neck, all while cradling its angelic little appearance and behaving utterly disgracefully. She was like a madwoman, licking and biting its mouth, even prying Tao Tao's mouth open to force a wet kiss.
In the end, she watched in horror as Tao Tao froze, looking utterly petrified, before reverting to its bird form. It bolted, flapping wildly back into the cage and diving into the coconut shell bed, trembling all over.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Somebody save me!" Lou Yuzhu screamed internally, furiously mashing the delete button on her phone to erase the incriminating footage.
This had to be fake! There was no way she could have been that perverted!
Her mind was blank. She collapsed onto the bed, utterly dumbfounded by her drunken antics on the surveillance footage.
What the hell was wrong with her? Had she been single for so long that she'd developed some kind of… problem? This was terrifying!
Lou Yuzhu's face burned with embarrassment. Stealing a guilty glance at Tao Tao, she felt a pang of self-consciousness.
With just that one glance, she witnessed the small bird, which had been standing on its perch, suddenly fly back into the cage. Tao Tao used its beak to shut the cage door, one claw gripping the tiny wooden ladder as it climbed back into the coconut shell.
"..."
This was too much. Lou Yuzhu completely broke down. "Hey, don't get the wrong idea, okay? I'm not like that! I'm not interested in birds! I'm heterosexual, you understand? I don't even like women, let alone female birds!"
She was babbling nonsense at this point.
Tao Tao popped out of the coconut shell, strutted nonchalantly down from the bed, and pecked at the wood shavings lining the cage floor. It then carried the shavings back into the shell.
Over and over, it repeated the same action.
Lou Yuzhu's expression grew increasingly alarmed. She exclaimed in a panicked voice, "Hey, hey, hey! What are you doing building a nest? Are you going to lay eggs? I—! I didn't even do anything to you! Don't you dare get pregnant!"
She suddenly remembered something Fu Ye had once told her: If a parrot believed it had mated, even without a male partner, it could still lay eggs—albeit infertile ones.
Now she was utterly shaken. Was Tao Tao really going to turn into an expectant mother?
No, absolutely not…
Lou Yuzhu marched over to the birdcage and reached inside, scooping out all the wood shavings from the coconut shell to prevent Tao Tao from nesting.
Each time she reached in, Tao Tao pecked her hand in protest. She eventually grabbed the little bird and set it outside the cage.
After clearing out the coconut shell, Lou Yuzhu pointed a finger at the chubby little parrot's belly and sternly said, "You are not allowed to get pregnant. You've got school to attend, and you need to focus on studying! You're going to suffer the hardship of education, not the burden of parenthood!"