The Secret of the Yoga Club: The Women's Identity is Not Simple

I woke up at 10 o'clock.

A sliver of pale light shone through the gap in the curtains, casting a thin, elongated shadow on the floor. Lin Feng opened his eyes, feeling dizzy and lightheaded, his temples still throbbing, but his hands, which had been taut all night, finally stopped trembling.

I lay on my back in bed staring blankly at the smoke detector on the ceiling for about half a minute.

Shangguan Jinghong was still lying beside him.

She turned to face him, the thin strap of her deep purple silk nightgown slipped down one shoulder, revealing a large expanse of pale skin below her collarbone.

The lace trim at the neckline clung loosely to her shoulders, and sunlight streamed through the gaps in the curtains, falling on her bare shoulders and giving her pale skin, which rarely saw sunlight, a faint golden hue.

Lin Feng glanced at her, his gaze sweeping over her slender shoulders and neck before moving away. He hadn't been in the mood last night, and now his mind was even more complicated, though his body's instinctive reaction still retained a trace of warmth.

He gently lifted the covers to get out of bed, but the slight movement still woke Shangguan Jinghong. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she slowly opened her eyes.

"Awake?" She raised her hand to pull the slipped shoulder strap back into place and sat up, supporting herself on the mattress. The silk fabric draped down her body, outlining the soft curves of her waist.

She didn't say much, but reached out and pressed on the back of Lin Feng's neck, continuing the massage she hadn't finished doing last night.

My thumbs gently applied pressure along both sides of his cervical spine, a bit more force than last night, rubbing away the tense muscles. Then I pressed on his temples, my fingertips circling his forehead to soothe him.

Lin Feng was forced to lower his head, closing his eyes and letting her strength seep into his stiff muscles. The fatigue that had accumulated over the past few days seemed to dissipate a little.

After an unknown amount of time, Shangguan Jinghong finally withdrew his hand, lifted the covers, and got out of bed from the other side. "Go wash up first, I'll have someone bring breakfast up."

Lin Feng picked up his phone from the bedside table; several unread messages lay on the screen.

Upon opening it, the first message was from Ye Qinghan, sent in the early hours of last night.

"Lin Feng, let's not do this anymore. I hope you won't blame me. You're so much younger than me, I shouldn't have dragged you into this, and I shouldn't have disrupted your life. Sometimes I even feel guilty in front of Shen Qianqian. After thinking about it for a long time, I still think we should stop here, let's end this here."

Lin Feng stared at the message, his thumb hovering above the screen for a long time.

He scrolled up the chat window and saw two more messages sent over an hour ago: "Are you okay? I didn't mean anything by it, I just wanted to know if you were hurt."

The next message reads: "I'm not blaming you, I'm blaming myself. I've never felt so sorry for myself before, and now I'm becoming less and less like myself."

After reading all the messages, Lin Feng turned off his phone and placed it on the bedside table. His heart felt heavy, and he didn't know how to reply for a moment.

Shangguan Jinghong poked his head out of the bathroom, a toothbrush still dangling from his mouth. Seeing him sitting motionless on the edge of the bed, he took the toothbrush off and asked, "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing." Lin Feng shook his head, got up, and went into the bathroom.

Breakfast was brought up by Kui Zi: white porridge, boiled eggs, steamed buns, and a few dishes of refreshing pickled vegetables.

Lin Feng didn't have much of an appetite, only eating most of a bowl of porridge and an egg. Finally, under Shangguan Jinghong's watchful eye, he reluctantly drank another half bowl of soy milk.

After finishing his meal, he leaned against the headboard and dozed off for a while. When he woke up again, the dizziness and headache had subsided considerably.

Kui Zi came again in the afternoon.

He changed into clean work clothes, put the bag of fruit he was carrying on the coffee table as he entered the room, and began to report on the progress of the work in a deep voice.

"The matter has been settled. After catching him last night, we searched him, took out his camera and phone, and deleted all the videos and photos on them. We also checked his cloud storage and backups to make sure there were no records. That guy was just a hoodlum from out of town who took five thousand yuan to do something for him; he had no background whatsoever."

He paused, then added, "I gave him a good scolding and warned him never to show his face at Hohai again, or utter a single word about it. He was so scared that he drove off that very night. That beat-up car was rented by him; it had nothing to do with him, so I didn't touch it. I've already spoken to the junkyard, so nobody knows about this."

Shangguan Jinghong sat on the armrest of the sofa, tapping his fingers lightly on his knee, and asked again, "Have you found out who's behind him?"

"I asked, and he said it was Master Ma, one of Zuo Ning's men, who hired him. He only asked him to take photos secretly, and he doesn't know anything else." Kui Zi scoffed, "With that little guts, he dares to take on this kind of job."

After listening, Lin Feng got up from the sofa, walked over to Kui Zi, and patted him on the shoulder. "You've worked hard, Brother Kui."

Kui Zi grinned, revealing a row of teeth yellowed from smoking. "Don't be so polite with me. This isn't the first time I've encountered something like this. When I was cleaning up places with Sister Hong, there were far more troublesome situations than this." After saying that, he nodded to Shangguan Jinghong, turned around, closed the door, and left.

Shangguan Jinghong stood up from the sofa armrest, walked to Lin Feng's side, glanced down and saw the bloodstains seeping through the gauze on his ankle again, and his brows furrowed.

She turned around, grabbed the first-aid kit, had Lin Feng sit on the edge of the bed, squatted down, unwrapped the old gauze, cleaned the wound again, applied iodine, and then carefully wrapped it with clean gauze.

After tying the last knot, she looked up at him and said, "Stay here for the next couple of days and don't go anywhere. I'll have someone clean your room every day and deliver three meals a day on time. Just tell Kui Zi if you need anything. Staying here will keep me company; it gets pretty boring being alone all the time."

Lin Feng nodded and did not refuse.

……

Meanwhile, in an old government guesthouse in Binzhou, the provincial capital, Ye Qinghan was standing by the window looking at the street scene outside.

The sky over Binzhou was hazy and gray, and the outlines of distant buildings were blurred by the mist.

Today she was wearing a crisp, dark blue police uniform, the epaulets of a third-level police inspector gleaming with a cold, hard silver light under the indoor lights. Her hair was meticulously combed, her makeup exquisite and aloof, and there was not a trace of anything amiss on her face.

The province's public security system had already held a closed-door work meeting this morning. She sat in the third row of the meeting room, near the aisle, holding a pen and taking notes in her notebook. Her expression was calm and focused, and no one could tell that anything was amiss.

But only she knew that she had subconsciously turned on her phone more than a dozen times since morning.

The chat window remained silent, showing the few messages she had sent in the early hours of the morning, without any reply.

My fingertips hovered over the screen, wanting to type something more, but then I felt it was absurd and laughable. I was the one who said it was over first, but now I couldn't help but hope for a message from the other person.

The wind outside the window swirled the fallen leaves on the ground, and Ye Qinghan sighed softly, turned off her phone screen, and turned back to her desk.

The meeting materials were spread out on the table, but she didn't turn a single page for a long time. The chaotic emotions in her heart, like the fog outside the window, couldn't be dispersed or sorted out.