The Investment

Shen Yueji sighed. She hadn't wanted to dig all this up again, but since Lin Ting had asked, staying silent would only let the others dig out most of it anyway — better to say it herself. "Cheng Chi couldn't live with the humiliation of being dumped one-sided, so he came to me and said he'd pay me to perform my duties as his girlfriend. I ignored him."

In Lin Ting's mind, victory: Cheng Chi, that absolute scumbag!

Shen Yueji paused, her voice level, without a ripple. "Later, my little sister at the welfare institute had a relapse of her congenital heart disease, and the director — the mother who raised us — was diagnosed with cancer. I became the one who went back on the breakup. I thought, if I went back and played the obedient girlfriend, I could get some money. Maybe that would make things a little easier for my sister and the director."

She'd thought she had already walked out the other side of it, but memory hadn't finished with her. Doing her best to keep her voice steady, Shen Yueji went on. "After that, Cheng Chi transferred schools, and we never saw each other again. But I didn't join the army because of him. It was because my sister passed, and then the director passed, and the welfare institute I grew up in was demolished. I didn't want to stay in Yu City anymore. I happened to see a recruitment brochure for college student enlistment, so I went."

She surfaced from the memory and turned her head — only to find Lin Ting already sobbing, tears streaming down her cheeks faster than the back of her hand could catch them. "Wuuwuu, Yueji, I'm sorry, I didn't know you'd been through so much. It's all Cheng Chi's fault, that scumbag — how could he do that to you..."

Lin Ting leaned over and gave Shen Yueji a hug, arms wrapped tight. Just like the hug Shen Yueji had given her that night in her room on the second floor.

She had never known. All this time she had assumed Shen Yueji had always steered her own life freely — never imagining what hard ground it all grew from.

What had looked like a dashing decision to enlist was, in truth, a choice made with no other options left, after losing everything that resembled a home.

And it hadn't even been a home. A welfare institute is a shelter for orphans.

Shen Yueji hadn't shed a tear herself, but the Young Miss was crying like the world had ended. She patted Lin Ting's back, keeping her tone light. "Well, all of that is in the past, and I've grown into someone pretty great, haven't I? If anything, I owe the army — without it I wouldn't be this confident. I'm quite formidable these days."

That part was true. Without enlisting, she would never have become this steady and bright. The resilience forged in those years was the one thing she had truly earned on her own.

That evening, back at the Sheng villa, Lin Ting stormed into the living room without even finishing changing her shoes. Sheng Zeyun was on the sofa with his tablet; he looked up at the commotion, and before he could get a word out, Lin Ting planted herself in front of him, hands on her hips, and poured out everything she had heard that day from beginning to end. From the bet to win Shen Yueji, to the money offered as humiliation, to her going back to beg for her sister's and the director's sake, to the sister and the director passing one after the other, the welfare institute demolished, Shen Yueji enlisting alone — the more she said the angrier she got, until she finished with a vicious curse: "Cheng Chi is truly a piece of work!"

Sheng Zeyun set down the tablet, pulled her to sit beside him, and stroked her hair with fondness, his voice gentle. "Cheng Chi was in the wrong, but dating is a matter of two willing people..."

He never finished. He caught the way Lin Ting's face darkened in an instant, her eyes saying clearly: try defending Cheng Chi one more word. Sheng Zeyun understood at once — one more word in Cheng Chi's favor and he would absolutely not be getting into bed tonight. He pivoted without missing a beat, his tone earnest: "Then tell me — what would you like to do?"

Lin Ting sank back into the sofa, her puffed-up anger slowly giving way to something earnest. "Cheng Chi, I can't do anything about. Right now I just want to be good to Yueji. Kinder, and kinder still. You have no idea what a good girl she is. She pulled me out of that lost, drifting life I used to live. She's like the morning sun still carrying dew."

Listening, Sheng Zeyun felt a faint sourness rise in his chest. He knew how much Shen Yueji had changed Lin Ting — dragged her out of that state where she shrank into corners, taken her running, boxing, to the camp to shoot, and made that one phone call that finally got him and Lin Ting truly talking to each other. Without Shen Yueji, he and Lin Ting might indeed have needed far longer to find their footing, and the misunderstandings that should never have existed would only have deepened.

He considered a moment, then spoke. "I hear that camp you keep visiting, Wufan Camp, is a partnership between Shen Yueji and her army buddies. Why don't you invest and expand the place? If the camp does well, she'll have one more layer of security."

Lin Ting's eyes lit up. "You're so clever! If I just handed her money it would feel too much like charity — she'd have a hard time refusing, but it wouldn't be right. Sheng Zeyun, you're the best!"

Praised so directly, Sheng Zeyun looked at her shining eyes and smiled in understanding. A little thing, so easy to please. And this girl whose eyes held nothing but him — she was his wife.

A contentment called happiness wrapped itself around him, softening a man who was usually cold and hard.

The next day, Lin Ting finished breakfast and hauled Shen Yueji out the door in a whirlwind.

Shen Yueji sat beside her, still baffled. She'd been perfectly normal when they got home last night — why was the Young Miss suddenly running on high voltage today?

When the car reached the camp, Jiang Shuyun was at the range taking equipment inventory with Zhong Fangming and Ke Lanyi. Lin Ting marched straight up to them the moment she was through the gate and got right to the point. "I want to invest in the camp and expand it. Let's discuss how to do it."

The registration book nearly slipped out of Jiang Shuyun's hands. "What?"

"I said, I want to invest. Add shooting lanes, expand the grounds, buy equipment. Whatever you're missing, I'll fund it." Lin Ting's tone was crisp.

Jiang Shuyun froze for two seconds and glanced at Shen Yueji, who shrugged with a face equally in the dark. But Jiang Shuyun asked nothing further — she closed the book and clapped her hands, smiling. "Alright, Young Miss. Let's go inside the shed and talk details."

From that day on, Lin Ting's title at the camp changed from "Young Miss" to "Her Royal Highness."

It had started when Ke Lanyi led off with "Miss Moneybags" — but after a few tries it didn't sit right; somehow the title sounded too much like teasing.

Quick-tongued Zhong Fangming changed it one morning while handing Lin Ting her water: "Her Royal Highness, your water, please." It rolled off the tongue, it sounded pleasant, and it spread from there.

Jiang Shuyun thought it fit perfectly. Lin Ting arrived every day with pastries or fruit in hand, and was now planning indoor shooting lanes and a lounge on top of it — wasn't that precisely a princess from a TV drama, come to inspect her fief?

The first time Lin Ting heard the title, she laughed for ages. That day she was sitting under the camp's newly built pergola drinking tea when Jiang Shuyun came over with a plate of cut fruit, set it on the small table before her, and bowed with perfect precision: "Your Royal Highness, your fruit."

Lin Ting took the plate, eyes curving with laughter. "If I'm the princess, then when Sheng Zeyun comes, doesn't that make him the prince consort?"

The others traded glances and snickered. Shen Yueji, crouched to the side cleaning her gun, looked up at Lin Ting, unable to shake the feeling there was something deliberate behind that smile. Sure enough, Lin Ting set down the fruit plate and added, unhurried: "One of these days I'll have him come play the prince consort. A proper hands-on experience."

The little prank forming in her mind was already quietly taking shape.