Qi Xi had just picked up the water glass on the table to take a sip, trying to ease the awkwardness, and at Gu Yan’s words, immediately choked and started coughing.

Gu Yan, the source of all this, remained perfectly calm—despite having just dropped such a devastating line, he delivered it as though simply stating a legal fact. Seeing her cough, he walked over with a somewhat helpless look and gently patted her back to help her catch her breath.

Once she’d recovered enough to find her voice, Qi Xi realized her own voice was trembling slightly from his alarming words. “Why do you say your sister knows? She was in the study the whole time, she only came out after we’d, after we’d already straightened ourselves up…”

Gu Yan’s face carried a mix of helpless embarrassment, but more than that, certainty. He glanced briefly at Qi Xi’s chest, then quickly looked away, his voice low and slightly hoarse. “We did straighten up. But apparently not well enough.”

“Hm?”

Gu Yan’s ears had gone slightly red. He still wasn’t looking at her, but his voice answered her question anyway. “Your buttons.”

Only then did Qi Xi instinctively glance down at her own chest—and the moment she did, her entire face flushed crimson.

The three buttons that had come undone earlier had, in her frantic haste, been misaligned by two positions, leaving what should have been smooth fabric across her chest bunched into an unmistakable little pucker where one button had clearly escaped its proper hole—impossible to miss.

Qi Xi felt like she could barely breathe. She turned away and, in a daze, began redoing the buttons—whether from nerves or sheer shock, it took her three tries to get them all properly aligned.

But… even if the buttons were misaligned, even if Gu Xuehan had noticed, surely that didn’t necessarily mean she’d connect the dots to anything else, right?

Qi Xi clung to one last thread of self-deceiving hope. “Attorney Gu probably wouldn’t jump to conclusions like that. Maybe she’d just think I was careless and buttoned myself wrong before leaving the house.”

Gu Yan glanced at her, saying calmly, “My sister never loses things. Especially not a spare key. She’s an extremely careful person.”

So…

Qi Xi felt like she couldn’t breathe. “So when she made a point of saying, right before she left, that she might lose the spare key and needed to give it back—that was actually…”

Though it clearly pained him to say it, Gu Yan didn’t have the heart to lie to her. He nodded calmly. “Yeah. My sister returned that key on purpose.”

He cleared his throat and looked away. “It was probably her subtle way of telling me she won’t be an accidental third wheel again—so we can feel free to date here without worrying… As for why she stayed hidden in the study instead of coming out right away, that was probably her giving us enough time to avoid an awkward moment. That alarm was probably deliberate too—to warn us, so things wouldn’t get too embarrassing…”

Qi Xi still tried to hold onto some denial. “Even the wisest person makes mistakes sometimes. Sure, Attorney Gu is extremely careful and meticulous at work, but people only have so much energy—maybe she really was careless this one time, focused on work as always. Maybe she really was just in the study looking for a book.”

Unfortunately, Gu Yan gave her no room to keep deceiving herself. He looked her straight in the eye, calm as ever. “That book she said she was looking for was hers to begin with. She’d already finished reading it—that’s why I borrowed it from her in the first place. There’s no way she’d need to borrow it back again.”

“…”

Qi Xi stared blankly up at the ceiling, with no idea how she’d ever face Gu Xuehan again tomorrow. She grabbed a throw pillow to cover her eyes and slowly slid off the couch, looking like a walking embarrassed emoji. “Gu Yan, maybe we should just break up tonight and get it over with.”

Getting caught dating was one thing, but the most mortifying part was getting caught mid-almost-something, buttons completely misaligned—Qi Xi felt like this was about as close to total social death as it got. Short of breaking up with Gu Yan on the spot and fleeing the planet, there seemed to be no way to salvage the situation.

“No need to break up.” Though a little embarrassed himself, Gu Yan was still far more composed than Qi Xi. “What’s done is done, anyway.”

What did he mean, “what’s done is done”?!

Qi Xi got worked up. “Gu Yan, you can’t just lie there and take it! You can’t just give up like this! If you hadn’t kissed me like that earlier, your sister never would’ve caught us! You need to take responsibility! Otherwise what am I supposed to look like in your sister’s eyes from now on!”

Gu Yan seemed to think it over, then said calmly, “That works too. Take tomorrow morning off, go get your household registration booklet.”

“…What?”

“We’ll go straight to the marriage registry.”

Qi Xi’s face flushed hot, her head spinning. Flustered and indignant, she said, “What are we going to the marriage registry for?”

Gu Yan brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek, his voice low and coaxing. “To take responsibility for you.”

“That’s not the kind of responsibility I meant!” Qi Xi felt a rush of blood to her head. Normally quick-witted in situations like this at work, she now found herself stammering. “I mean you should take responsibility by clearing my name—at least go explain things to your sister!”

Gu Yan’s eyes widened. “What is there to explain? Isn’t the evidence already airtight? Is there any way to reverse it?”

Qi Xi’s temper flared. “Gu Yan, we’re evil lawyers, remember? Have you ever seen a lawyer openly admit their client’s guilt? If the other side has no evidence, deny everything. If they do have evidence, argue about its authenticity, legality, and relevance! Even if we can’t poke holes in the evidence itself, that’s no reason to just roll over and give up—shouldn’t we at least try some jurisdictional objection or other delay tactic to stall the proceedings?”

She cleared her throat and launched into her “brilliant” argument. “Just go explain that we’re simply close friends and colleagues from school, that when your sister arrived we behaved with total propriety, nothing happened at all. My buttons were just misaligned because I’m careless, always messing them up. You didn’t do anything wicked to me, and I didn’t do anything wicked to you…”

Unfortunately, Gu Yan didn’t back her proposal. He stared at her. “But I definitely did do something wicked to you.” He leaned in close to her ear, his tone almost innocently earnest. “And I’m going to keep doing even more wicked things to you.”

Being a lawyer really was an evil profession—it had clearly corrupted even Gu Yan!

But Gu Yan seemed to have forgotten that Qi Xi was an equally evil lawyer herself. She turned her head and caught his unsuspecting earlobe between her lips, murmuring, not to be outdone, “Then I’ll do very, very wicked things to you too!”

Gu Yan’s wickedness, apparently, wasn’t quite up to par.

Because Qi Xi’s counterattack quickly threw him completely off balance.

His earlier composed act turned out to be exactly that—an act. He pushed her away almost in a panic, got up abruptly, and headed for the kitchen, his voice still husky, his walk noticeably stiff, clearly holding something back. “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

Qi Xi protested. “I don’t want water! Don’t go!”

But the more she tried to hold him back, the faster he fled, tossing an oddly insistent warning over his shoulder as he went. “No, you need water. You have to drink water.” Apparently flustered enough that his logic had started skipping around, he added, “Girls need to drink more water for better skin…”

Qi Xi blocked his path, striking a stubborn pose. “Are you saying my skin isn’t good enough right now?”

Gu Yan looked genuinely helpless. “That’s not what I meant, you—”

Qi Xi cut him off deliberately before he could finish, nodding as if it made perfect sense. “Well, I guess it’s true—the skin on my face isn’t as nice as the skin elsewhere on my body. Why don’t you check for yourself? It’s really smooth and soft, I don’t think I need any more water at all. If you don’t believe me, you can touch it…”

As she spoke, she made a show of reaching for her buttons.

The instant her fingers touched the top button, Gu Yan’s urgent voice cut through. “No need!”

With that, the man fled toward the kitchen like he was making an escape, leaving Qi Xi doubled over with laughter on the couch. She felt like some kind of femme fatale, toying with and teasing a man—but…

But teasing men really was fun.

Qi Xi decided that ever since falling in love, she’d apparently gotten a little more wicked herself.