Du Nan's eye twitched as he begrudgingly gave his permission, warning us to maintain a polite facade because the Fang family was far too powerful to offend, and with that, the sisters sprinted back to their rooms to prepare, their competitive spirits clearly heightened.
An hour later, our arrival at the airport caused an absolute sensation, the air thick with the whispers and stunned stares of onlookers who had never seen such a gathering of breathtaking women in one place. But my sisters remained blissfully indifferent to the chaos they were causing, their entire world narrowing down to me. I felt the weight of their collective, sharp gazes pressing against me like physical blades, and I could feel cold sweat tracing a path down my spine as I braced myself for the inevitable storm.
At that precise moment, a girl stepped off the plane, her figure elegant and swaying, her eyes obscured by dark, mysterious sunglasses as she moved through the terminal with a radiant smile, her heart fluttering with the thought of seeing me again.
"It's been such a long time, Brother Ji," she murmured to herself, her thoughts drifting back to that sweltering summer years ago when we were children. The memory of my promise to marry her, and the taste of her first kiss, brought a glistening, tender moisture to her eyes, and she wondered, with a heart full of desperate hope, whether I truly intended to keep my word.
On the other side of the terminal, our group reached the VIP reception room. Zi Yuan leaned in, her voice dripping with venomous warning as she instructed me to dive straight into her arms should that bad woman attempt to take advantage of me, her fingers tightening possessively around my arm as she pulled me closer. I felt an awkward, suffocating pressure as I tried to explain that I was here to greet my fiancée, and that our current behavior might be inappropriate, but I didn't even get the chance to finish my sentence.
My ear was suddenly snatched by Du Zi Yuan, who twisted it with enough force to make my vision blur, her voice sharp as glass as she demanded to know if I was actually serious about marrying the girl, threatening to break my legs if I dared suggest it again. The other sisters closed in around me, their cheeks puffed out in indignant fury, their movements predatory and suffocating.
Just as I felt I was caught in a lethal trap, the door to the room creaked open, and a small, delicate head peeked inside. Fang Baobao's face lit up with overwhelming joy at finally seeing the man she had been pining for all these years, her body poised to leap toward me in an outpouring of long-repressed affection. But as she stepped through the door, her expression curdled into a mask of pure, freezing rage.
She saw me standing there, hemmed in by my sisters and looking far too intimate with them for her liking, and her gaze darkened as she remarked with a sharp, biting edge that my skills had certainly improved over the years, sarcastically asking whether I was currently juggling multiple lovers at once.
Before I could even draw breath to defend myself or explain the suffocating situation, Du Zi Yuan stepped forward, her voice cutting through the air like a blade, tauntingly asking the newcomer if she was already feeling jealous.
"I don't recall little Ji ever saying he loved you," I heard one of them counter, and the air in the room instantly curdled with hostility. As I watched Fang Baobao's knuckles turn white from the sheer force of her grip, I knew the situation was spiraling toward a disaster I couldn't contain.
She didn't flinch. Her chin lifted in a display of defiance as she retorted that it was clearly just a case of the sisters suffering from age-related memory loss, insisting with fierce conviction that I had explicitly promised, back when we were just children, that I would take her as my bride when we grew up.
The silence that followed was suffocating, and as my sisters' gazes locked onto me, burning with a mix of betrayal and lethal curiosity, I felt the walls of the room closing in.
"Is this true, little Ji? Did something like that actually happen?" they demanded.
I couldn't help but scratch the back of my head, my face heating up with a mortifying blend of embarrassment and dread as I stammered, "I — well, I suppose I might have said something like that."
The consequences were instantaneous and agonizing. Four hands descended upon my waist, pinching the soft flesh with surgical precision and twisting until I was forced to stifle a cry, while Fang Baobao, oblivious to the physical toll she was taking on me, struck a proud pose with her hands on her hips, her eyes shimmering with a joy she couldn't hide.
"Brother Ji, I'll let you off the hook for that," she declared.
Du Zi Yuan wasn't about to let the matter rest, her voice dropping to a dangerous low register as she demanded I explain that the childhood promise was nothing more than a foolish joke. I felt like I was losing my mind, caught in the middle of a war zone when all I had wanted was a peaceful meal, and as I hesitated, paralyzed by the competing demands of the women surrounding me, Zi Yuan turned her venom toward Baobao, lecturing her on how one shouldn't take the idle pranks of childhood seriously.
Watching the two of them stare each other down, their eyes crackling with sparks of animosity, I knew I had to intervene before one of them actually snapped, so I desperately pleaded for a truce, suggesting that since Baobao had come all the way to Jiangcheng, we should just try to have a pleasant meal together.
"I'll listen to whatever little brother Ji wants," Zi Yuan purred, suddenly leaning her head against my shoulder while casting a triumphant, mocking glance toward Baobao, who quickly mimicked the submissive act, cooing that she, too, would do whatever Brother Ji desired.
She reached out to take my hand, but she was thwarted when Du Lala intercepted, snatching my arm away and tucking it securely behind her own back, leaving Baobao to pout, her cheeks flushing a deep, frustrated pink. I felt like a prize being fought over by predators, and as I was herded toward the exit, I did my best to ignore the stares of the airport crowd, my heart racing as I quickened my pace toward the waiting Rolls-Royce.
Du Qian had been waiting for us, her frazzled nerves visibly settling the moment I emerged, a reaction that confirmed my lingering suspicion that I was little more than a tranquilizer for their unhinged spirits. But her relief vanished in a heartbeat. The sight of her sisters clinging to my arms like sirens sent a fresh, irrational spike of fury through her, and she found herself spiraling into a dark, toxic fantasy where she imagined locking me away in a basement, a place where I would belong solely to her, safe from the grasping hands of our kin. She recoiled from the morbidity of her own thoughts, terrified by how rapidly her grip on reality was slipping.