Milady's Fine Gentleman 261 Slipping

Teng Man Rui dozed off out of exhaustion. When she woke up from her slumber, her room was pitch-black.
It was around eight in the evening.
She found herself alone in her room, in her own nudity, in the middle of disarray.
Having been reminded of what had transpired during that afternoon, she felt her soul abandon her. Teng Man Rui cupped her two hands on her mouth in a silent gasp, eyes flickering with discernment.
Lifeless, Teng Man Rui dragged herself towards the bathroom and decided to clean herself in the tub. In the mirror, she could distinguish clearly the marks of that afternoon's desecration. She averted her eyes as a strong feeling of disgust reeled her into feeling as if she would have wanted to throw up.
For hours, she submerged herself in the lukewarm water. It somehow soothed her weary soul.
She leaned her head onto the edge of the tub and closed her eyes.
'How am I going to face Zhu Li Qiang?'
Eyes still closed, her brows met together in a frown.
'I'm cursed.'
Somehow she got tired of crying. No tears were left unshed.
'I want to sleep forever.'
'Can I just sleep forever?'
'I'm tired.'
As she was immersed in her thought bubble, her body sunk deeper into the water until she was completely lying on the tub's bed. Uncaring, she stayed in that position for a long time.
Only stillness remained in the bathroom. No movement nor sound broke it until a faint knock was heard against the door.
"Young Miss, are you there? You have a visitor downstairs, Miss." The maid relayed the message and patiently waited for her acknowledgment or answer.
Nothing came.
She knocked again. She opened the bedroom door gingerly and took a peek through a small slit. "Sorry to intrude, Young Miss. I was just tasked to let you know. I'll get going."
The maid was baffled because Teng Man Rui wasn't the type to sn.o.b them even if there was a vast difference in their status. After all, they were just maids. The young miss always treated them kindly and would always respond to them even with a simple grunt or hum.
The maid scratched her head. There was certainly something unusual yet she could not point out what specifically. 'Maybe it's just the room. The lights were off as if there's no one here. 'Oh, it feels eerie in here.'

"I'll just come back, Young Miss." She called out softly to let her know. She realized that the young miss was in the bathroom as she discovered the lit bathroom from the slit under the door.
She shuddered as she left the room. The door closed with a soft thud.
In the bathroom, Teng Man Rui was still immersed in the bathtub. Her forehead was wrinkled and her brows formed inverted arches which reflected her uneasy heart.
'I want to sleep forever, please.'
'I'm sorry, Mom. Dad.'
'Zhu Li Qiang, I'm sorry.'
'I love you.'
Teng Man Rui could feel life slipping away from her. Finally, she could sleep for eternity.
***

"The Young Miss is still occupied at the moment."
The maid went back down in the receiving area of the Teng mansion from her short plight on the second floor where the room of the Young Miss was located. She informed the Young Miss's guest who had requested an audience with her.
'Thankfully the young masters are not here or else he would have been interrogated bad.' The maid, Chichi, thought playfully, giggling at the sides. She found the guest quite handsome. 'Perhaps he came from a prominent family too. He looks pretty well off. He can be a good match for our Young Miss, too. The man from this afternoon seems to have rivals left and right. Our Young Miss is extremely likable!' She felt proud while stealing gazes at Zhu Li Qiang.
The guest was worried sick all afternoon. Teng Man Rui was not answering her phone.
They were supposed to go back to Hangzhou together in the morn, at the break of dawn since the lady still had some appointments to attend to the next day.
However, she hadn't been answering her phone. It was so unlike her. It made Zhu Li Qiang rush over to the Teng mansion to see for himself how she had been. Call it a premonition.
He could not explain it but he was nervous to the extent that there were agitated b.u.t.terflies in his stomach who kept on fluttering their wings inside. He was sweating profusely too.
'Come on, Man Rui.'
'Come down. Let me see you for a while.' He thought. He sent out a text message of the same context, too.
Still, there was no response.
He glanced at the grandfather clock at the farther end of the receiving area. He could not help his right foot from tapping on the wooden flooring of the Teng ancestral house.
"Excuse me, can you check again? Maybe she has forgotten about the guest. Sorry." He asked the maid, Chichi who had not left him, and who was simply standing by the wall near the grandfather clock. He shot her an apologetic smile.
The smile must have worked as the maid scampered to get her young miss.
Trickles of sweat dripped down Zhu Li Qiang's forehead. 'There's something strange today', he thought glumly. Uneasiness crept from inside him and crawled onto his skin akin to a mist which silently shrouded him without any signs or symptoms.
He wiped his sweating forehead with his handkerchief as he ma.s.saged his stomach that had never stopped churning.
As he was doing so, he heard a bloodcurdling, heartwrenching scream from the second floor.
Automatically, his mind could only think of one person, one name.
'Man Rui!'
Without delay and with such big manly strides, his forehead and back still sweating profusely, he ran and made his way towards the plight of stairs until he reached the source of the scream. His heart was beating loudly against the walls of its ventricles. Internally, he prayed and prayed for everything to be alright.