Chapter Sixty-Three: Prove That It Belongs to You

“Oh—so it was yours all along?” Chao Xu’s eyes curved further, drawing out her tone as she looked down at Shen Lu with a mischievous smile tugging at her lips. She spoke as if nothing was amiss.

“Actually, you might not know this, but this watch is a custom piece—an exclusive custom design. On the surface, all the watches look identical, but when you open them, there’s a place that reveals a special set of letters. My sister’s has the initial of her name. I wonder if yours does too.”

Her gaze, full of wicked amusement, swept lazily over Shen Lu’s wrist. Under those pure black eyes, Shen Lu felt as if she’d been stripped bare and thrown under the blazing sun, every lie burned away with nowhere left to hide. She swallowed hard, her pitiful eyes brimming with fear.

No one had told her the watch was engraved with a name!

“You—you let go of me first!”

Terrified her secret would be exposed, Shen Lu struggled desperately, trying to wrench her wrist free from Chao Xu’s grasp. Chao Xu, bored of holding onto this fragile little flower, simply released her hand.

Having braced herself to pull back, Shen Lu was caught off guard when the opposing force suddenly vanished. She tumbled to the ground, rolling awkwardly and letting out a miserable cry.

“Pfft.”

The delicate flower became a dirt-stained blossom. Unable to help herself, Chao Xu burst into laughter.

But the next moment, someone rushed over to play the hero for the little flower.

“Hey, do you even know what you’re doing!” A girl wearing a red Scottish skirt and a single ponytail, her face brimming with righteous indignation, jogged over. She slapped Chao Xu’s hand away and hurried to help Shen Lu up from the ground.

“Lu, are you alright? Did he hurt you?”

A sharp pain radiated from her spine, and though Shen Lu’s features twisted in agony, she forced herself to maintain her fragile persona, managing a pale yet beautiful smile.

“Don’t worry, Bei Bei. Chao Si just wanted to see my watch, but I wasn’t willing, so he grabbed my wrist and insisted. He only knocked me over by accident.”

A man grabbing a girl’s hand, by common standards, was nothing short of indecent.

Prompted by Shen Lu’s words, the girl’s protective instincts surged. Shielding Shen Lu behind her, she shouted at Chao Xu, “Who do you think you are! You really think you can do whatever you want just because you’re rich?”

Her name was Su Bei Ru. Like Shen Lu, she came from an ordinary family and was considered Shen Lu’s close friend. Her personality, if phrased kindly, was straightforward and bold; if not, she was simply naive. She always followed Shen Lu around, fearless in confronting others, making her quite the qualified guardian.

While Shen Lu’s words sounded as if she were defending Chao Xu, they actually targeted him, urging him to leave if he didn’t want to be called a scoundrel.

But Chao Xu knew that if she let Shen Lu go today, the watch would likely just “disappear” tomorrow.

She wasn’t moved, fiddling with her fingers as she chuckled, “Don’t be so sure. Your watch? You haven’t even proved whose mark is engraved on it.”

So it really was just about the watch.

Su Bei Ru, unable to bear it, retorted, “It’s just a watch, barely worth fifteen or twenty bucks. You think we’re short on cash? Lu, just give him that stupid thing!”

As she spoke, Su Bei Ru, still fuming, tried to pull the watch off Shen Lu’s wrist and toss it at the feet of the lazy youth, as if to prove they didn’t care about that worthless piece.

But Shen Lu, who had only been pretending to be weak, turned pale at Su Bei Ru’s words. Her feeble hands clung fiercely to the watch on her wrist.

“Bei Bei, wait, don’t be impulsive!”

They say the poor play with cars, the rich play with watches. The rarer and finer the timepiece, the more collectors covet it. She’d already looked up the price of this watch; it could fetch hundreds of thousands, at the very least!

The things she’d swindled from Chao Si had mostly been sold off, and the money was nearly spent. This watch was her last lifeline—she absolutely couldn’t give it back!