Chapter 459: 483 You Are Merely an Accessory (Please Subscribe and Vote)

Noon.

Inside a restaurant in Yeouido, Seoul, Li Juli, who had arrived early and sat in the corner booth, kept her gaze fixed on the entrance.

This was a Western-style restaurant located amidst the office buildings of Yeouido; the lunch rush had just passed its peak, and only a few scattered tables of customers remained in the shop.

The seat she had chosen was in the deepest part of the restaurant.

With her back to the wall and facing the door, the entire entrance and exit of the restaurant, as well as the movements of all the seated guests, were within her field of vision.

As soon as she spotted Lin Xiuyuan pushing the door open and entering, her eyes immediately followed him.

After entering, Lin Xiuyuan first stood at the doorway and scanned the layout of the restaurant, and then their gazes met accurately in mid-air just like that.

Li Juli lifted her chin slightly; she did not wave, but merely signaled toward her direction with her eyes.

Lin Xiuyuan then nodded at her and walked over, bypassing several empty tables.

Before long, Lin Xiuyuan arrived in front of her, pulled out a chair, and sat opposite her, with a small square table covered by a white tablecloth separating the two of them.

After sitting down, he raised his head to glance at the opposite side and said softly, "Sorry, there was a bit of traffic on the way, I'm a little late."

"It's fine, I only just arrived a moment ago myself." Li Juli sat in her seat, her hands folded and placed on the tabletop.

It was her next sentence that carried a hidden meaning: "I actually thought you would be even later."

That phone call from just a moment ago had also left Li Juli frowning and analyzing things by herself for quite a long time.

Those strange sounds on the other end that were desperately suppressed but still leaked through.

They had made her mind wander through so many images.

So, while saying this, Li Juli's eyes kept scanning the young man opposite her.

She scanned from his face to his shoulders, and from the fingers he used to hold his water glass to whether his collar was buttoned up properly.

It was just a pity that Lin Xiuyuan opposite her remained the same as ever.

He even looked back at her with a smile while she was observing him.

Their gazes collided once more in mid-air; the arc of his lips was slightly wider than when he had first entered, and his eyes looked straight into hers without dodging or looking away.

Then he opened his mouth to ask, "Why are you looking at me like that? Is there something strange about me?"

Lin Xiuyuan was not stupid; he had figured it out.

The person opposite him had likely heard something, but he certainly wouldn't admit to it—it was too embarrassing.

Seeing that Lin Xiuyuan had no reaction, Li Juli shook her head, "Nothing, let's order first."

"Sure, let's order." Lin Xiuyuan also picked up the menu on his side, flipped through two pages, and did not expose her.

Meanwhile, Li Juli, far away in the Apartment in the year 25, was currently lying limp on the sofa, completely drained of strength.

Her sexy, fair body was covered only by a thin cashmere blanket, one corner of which hung off the edge of the sofa and dragged on the floor.

At the same time, her hair was scattered across the cushion, with a few strands dampened by sweat still sticking to her temples and the sides of her forehead, not yet completely dry, and a pale pink flush that had yet to fully dissipate remained on her cheeks after the peak had faded.

Her eyelids were half-drooped, her eyelashes trembled occasionally, and her lips were slightly parted.

The rhythm of her breathing seemed to have returned to a steady state.

One must know that not long ago, she had gone out of her mind and tried to tease someone.

It couldn't even be called teasing; it was more like some kind of reckless provocation.

Relying on the fact that she was sitting on top of the other person, she felt it was quite interesting, so she didn't stop, but instead twisted a few times, adding fuel to the fire.

And then she suffered for it.

That acupuncture technique where every needle hit the spot was a full-scale counterattack launched by someone after being provoked into a rage, directly flipping her from that triumphant "knight" position to the completely passive side.

Every needle was fast, accurate, ruthless, and steady, piercing her precise meridians, leaving her dizzy and falling apart; she couldn't say a word, and even the sounds of her begging for mercy were squeezed out from the back of her throat.

By the time everything finally calmed down and her brain regained its basic functions, Lin Xiuyuan had already finished showering.

Then, she was scooped up from the bed by him, wrapped in a blanket, and sent back to this side of the year 25 through The Gate.

After placing her on the sofa, Lin Xiuyuan crouched beside it, kissed her forehead lightly like a dragonfly skimming the water, and whispered a few words in her ear.

They were likely words of comfort and warning, such as "get some good rest" and "don't provoke me at a time like that next time."

Li Juli was so angry that she buried her face directly into the sofa cushion; she didn't even have the strength to curse back, and could only let out a half-dead groan in response.

Afterward, she was left alone lying on the sofa, staring blankly at the ceiling until now.

During this time, every time her fingers inadvertently touched certain places, her whole body would tremble violently.

That kind of trembling was not something she could control; it was a conditioned reflex produced by her muscles and nerves after excessive stimulation, and the slightest touch would send a jolt like electricity from her scalp to her toes.

She had tried three times, and all three times she shook so hard that even her toes curled up, and she still hadn't recovered even now.

It made her bite her lip and curse Lin Xiuyuan over and over again in her heart.

If it weren't for the fact that her stomach didn't hurt, she would have really called an ambulance to see if she had a ruptured corpus luteum.

An experience of this intensity would be nuclear-level for any woman with a normal physiological structure.

Thinking of this, Li Juli looked at the ceiling and murmured, "You really are too vengeful."

Inside the restaurant.

In the blink of an eye, Lin Xiuyuan, who had reached the dining stage, was eating the steak in front of him while looking at Li Juli opposite him with some amusement.

"Juli xi, if you have something to say, just say it. Staring at me and chatting with me in circles like this is such a waste of time."

As he spoke, he set his fork on the edge of the plate and picked up a napkin to wipe the corners of his mouth.

"Isn't it better to be direct, just like when we were on the phone? I'm not one of your people, so there's no need to follow your set of rules here; just be direct. Skip those unnecessary social padding stages."

"Alright, actually I just wanted to put on a bit of a show first; after all, we aren't that close yet."

Hearing this, Li Juli also put down her knife and fork, then continued with some emotion, "But since you've said so, Xiuyuan, then I won't beat around the bush and will just say it."

"Mm-hmm, that's much better." Lin Xiuyuan nodded, picked up his fork again, skewered a piece of beef, and put it into his mouth.

"Actually, it's nothing much; I just wanted to ask, is what you told us yesterday, Lin Xiuyuan, true?" As Li Juli said this, her eyes remained fixed on Lin Xiuyuan's pupils.

She had seen too many people who boasted at the dinner table but acted timidly when sober, so she needed to use this most direct method to judge how much truth there was in his words.

To this, Lin Xiuyuan nodded quite naturally, "Why would I lie to you about that? Of course it's true. But it's normal for you not to believe it; after all, it is a bit absurd. It's like a pie falling from the sky—you're afraid to eat it, right?"

When he reached the end, he laughed out loud himself.

Li Juli didn't deny it and responded softly, "Yes, it's too unexpected."

If such a selfless act of devotion were to happen to anyone, as long as they had a shred of reason, they would find it hard to believe, let alone agree to it immediately.

Then, the corners of Lin Xiuyuan's mouth twitched slightly, and a faint, soft laugh hummed in his nasal cavity.

The words that followed were clearly more direct and unadorned than everything that had come before.

"If it's just like this, then I'll be blunt. The reason I'm willing to do this actually doesn't lie with you, or rather, it doesn't lie with you, Baolan, and Park Soyeon. The people who make me treat things this way are Zhiyan, Enjing, and the others; you three are just incidental. If I put it that way, Juli, can you understand?"

Lin Xiuyuan drew that line of demarcation right in front of Li Juli, just as plainly as that.

He drew it clearly and cleanly, without the slightest ambiguity or equivocation.

And Li Juli, sitting opposite him, although she had kept saying she wanted to talk directly, when it really came to this point—hearing Lin Xiuyuan tell her so bluntly, so unreservedly, and as directly as could be, "You are just an incidental"—...

She really couldn't hold it together anymore.

A feeling, indistinguishable between anger or a sense of pride being cracked, burned from the base of her spine, traveling up that bone line segment by segment until it steamed at the back of her head.

It made her so angry that she clenched one hand into a fist under the table.

Afterward, she used every bit of her last-resort reason, blocking it all at the exit of her thoughts, and pushed that urge to curse, little by little, into a "cold storage" of forced calm.

But while the powerful force of reason could control her mouth, it couldn't fully control her facial expressions.

Although the corner of her mouth twitched to one side and her teeth were slightly clenched, the spark in her eyes—which showed she was a bit broken—was more direct and naked than she had originally imagined.

And Lin Xiuyuan, sitting opposite her, saw this expression, and the smile at the corners of his mouth deepened just a little, as if he were watching a reaction he had long expected to happen.

However, beyond the amusement, his eyes were also very bright.

Because this exquisite and attractive face before him was revealing another kind of vivid expression he rarely saw, all because she was "broken."

Then he remembered the beautiful figure he had just conquered at The Gate, who was currently sprawled on the sofa over at the '25' side, trembling even when she tried to turn over.

The two faces overlapped briefly in his mind, then separated in reality.

A subtle sense of overlapping made him unable to help but feel a sense of emotion in his heart.

Human pyramid, oh, human pyramid!!!

At this moment, Li Juli opposite him took about ten full seconds to forcibly suppress that nameless anger.

Then, she took a deep breath, and after returning to normal, she raised her eyes to look at Lin Xiuyuan again.

This time, her gaze was clearly sharper and more filled with gunpowder than before, and her tone was no longer the probing one that suppressed reason and curiosity; instead, it carried a bit of frustration, and even her form of address for him had changed.

"Then, according to your way of putting it, Xiuyuan-xi, does that mean if Baolan and I were willing, but Zhiyan and the others were not, you wouldn't help us redeem ourselves? Or rather, you wouldn't be willing to lend us the money?"

"Of course," Lin Xiuyuan said without hesitation.

He didn't even add an "I'm sorry" or a "but," giving Li Juli a crisp and clean refusal as if it were only natural.

"Then, is the plan regarding the Jiudian also unrelated to us?" Li Juli asked again.

This time, her hands were already pressed against the edge of the table, her body leaning slightly forward, and she sat up a bit straighter.

Seeing that Li Juli was still asking, Lin Xiuyuan simply made things clear.

"Yes, the entire premise is that if Zhiyan and the other two are willing, or want to do it, then I will help them. If it were you three, standing from the perspective of a friend, I wouldn't stand idly by, but it would be absolutely impossible to be this invested."

After hearing this, Li Juli took a deep look at the man in front of her.

It was as if she were seeing the person sitting opposite her clearly for the first time.

After a long while, her eyelids slowly drooped, and she looked down at the piece of beef on her plate that had barely been touched.

Finally, she murmured in a voice so light it was hard to hear, "How biased."

Lin Xiuyuan heard it, but he didn't explain anything.

Since he had already said it, why bother using other explanations to whitewash anything?

But Li Juli, after pondering with her eyes cast down for a good while, seemed to have twisted something that wasn't quite right in the wrong direction.

So when she raised her head again, there was an extra crease of confusion between her brows, and her eyes held more complex thoughts.

"So, is this your support for your own women, Xiuyuan?"

"??? What the hell?" Lin Xiuyuan was stunned for a moment, the expression on his face switching from the calm and composed look of just a moment ago to one of speechless bewilderment.

Then he laughed in spite of himself, "How did this get dragged into the topic of women?"

"Aren't you and Xiaomin, Zhiyan, and the others in the kind of relationship I'm thinking of?"

Regarding these relationships of one man and multiple women, Li Juli had already seen through them long ago.

It wasn't as if she hadn't seen it in this circle, nor was she some innocent girl; furthermore, it wasn't as if she hadn't seen similar examples in her own family.

That capable men have more than one woman by their side had long since ceased to be something to make a fuss about in the environment she had grown up in and the industry she had witnessed.

So when she asked this, there was no sense of moral judgment in her tone; it was more like confirming a premise she had already defaulted to as true.

Her expression wasn't coy or embarrassed either; her gaze was open and calm.

Instead, facing this inquiry, or rather, after hearing this answer, Lin Xiuyuan met Li Juli's probing eyes and shook his head very seriously.

He denied her guess.

But this action made Li Juli feel somewhat incredulous.

So she subconsciously replied, the words coming out quickly, as if she were just pinning the most direct conclusion in her heart onto her lips.

"That's impossible."

"Why must it be a romantic relationship for me to help?" Lin Xiuyuan asked back.

And Li Juli, feeling a bit broken, replied, "If it isn't, then on what grounds are you willing to invest so much? This makes no sense."

Honestly speaking, she had only thought of the romantic relationship aspect.

Lin Xiuyuan smiled and said, "What if it's just because I'm willing?"

"Then why can't it be us instead?"

"For you all, I am not willing."

Upon hearing this, Li Juli's eyelashes fluttered wildly!!!