135: Chapter 135 My body can be given away, but my voice can't.

Lin Fan didn't ask again and lowered his head to continue working.

The cubicle wasn't big—just a narrow gap squeezed between two rock walls, with sea breezes occasionally blowing in from the Karst Cave entrance, carrying one or two muffled sounds that were impossible to identify.

Su Qingxue's fingers clenched the shirt beneath her, gripping it tight, loosening, and then gripping it tight again.

Her eyes stared at the rock wall overhead and began to count.

One strip, two strips, three strips.

Four strips, five strips, six strips.

Seven strips...

By the twelfth one, she couldn't count any further.

It wasn't that she couldn't count clearly.

It was that her attention had been dragged away.

Her breathing went wrong first.

Su Qingxue loathed this body of hers.

It was rebelling against her.

Her brain said no, but her body said cut the crap.

Su Qingxue hurriedly withdrew her gaze from the rock wall, closed her eyes, and began silently reciting things in her mind.

The third-quarter financial report of Shengtang Group.

Operating revenue increased year-on-year by percent... no, she couldn't recite it.

Not a single number would pop out.

She changed to another one: Article 7, Paragraph 3 of the company's articles of association.

Paragraph 3, board resolutions must be passed by two-thirds of all directors... no, that wouldn't work either.

Her feet weren't obeying her either.

She wanted to endure this matter with the expression she used for signing contracts, finish the process, stamp it, and turn around to leave.

But her back was sweating.

Her earlobes were burning.

In Su Qingxue's twenty-six years of life, it wasn't like she had never gotten close to a man.

During college, she had dated a boyfriend—a senior from the Wharton School, coming from a Boston old-money family, playing golf while wearing Ralph Lauren, and keeping Brahms's symphonies in his car.

After dating for two years, holding hands, and wrapping arms around waists, that was as far as it ever went.

Every time the atmosphere reached that point, the moment the senior's hand touched her waist, it was like touching burning porcelain, and he was guaranteed to pull it back within three seconds.

It wasn't that he didn't dare; it was that he didn't want to.

Therefore, throughout their two-year relationship, Su Qingxue was a blank sheet of paper when it came to this matter.

Immaculate, untouched, without even grazing the edges.

It wasn't that there was no opportunity; it was that all men turned cowardly in front of her.

Twenty-six years.

A blank sheet of paper.

Now, this blank sheet of paper was clenched in Lin Fan's hands and crumpled into a ball.

Su Qingxue could clearly feel the texture of those hands.

Rough, hard, with calluses on the palms and fingerprints like sandpaper; when pressed against her waist, her skin was chafed until it was both itchy and painful.

Su Qingxue let out a soft "hiss".

Very brief.

Leaking through the gaps in her teeth, as if she had been pricked by something.

Then she tightly shut her mouth.

Her teeth were clenched, and the muscles on her cheeks tightened into two ridges.

No sound.

This was the bottom line she had drawn for herself.

Her body could be surrendered, but not her voice.

Making a sound meant admitting defeat.

Su Qingxue had never lost at the negotiating table, and she couldn't lose in this matter either.

This wasn't some matter of mutual willingness.

This was a transaction.

It was the consideration she paid with her body, a bargaining chip exchanged for safe positioning and material quotas.

A transaction.

She recited silently in her heart.

Once, twice, three times.

Then Lin Fan changed his method.

Su Qingxue's back of the head bumped against the soft cushion.

A syllable squeezed out from her throat; she didn't even have time to stop it, and only realized it after it escaped her lips.

The sound wasn't loud.

Muffled, short, pushed out from her nasal cavity.

But the cubicle was only this big, and the rock walls would echo.

Crystal clear.

Su Qingxue's face burned instantly.

Burning up from the root of her neck all the way to the tips of her ears, as if someone had splashed a basin of boiling water onto her face.

She clenched her teeth and turned her face away, burying half of her face into the fabric of the shirt.

Her eye sockets grew hot.

It wasn't pain.

It wasn't grievance.

It was anger.

Anger at herself.

Anger at this useless body.

A twenty-six-year-old blank sheet of paper became wrinkled the moment it was touched by hands belonging to someone with a monthly salary of 3,500.

Lin Fan lowered his head and glanced at her.

The corners of his mouth curved up.

"President Su."

"Shut up."

"Just now you..."

"I said shut up."

Lin Fan didn't continue, but that curve was already hanging there and couldn't be taken back.

A body belonging to someone with a monthly salary of 3,500 had caused a female CEO worth tens of billions to lose control of her voice.

This was more effective than any evaluation.

Half an hour later.

The cubicle quieted down.

Su Qingxue lay on the soft cushion, the shirt crumpled into a lump beneath her, her hair completely disheveled, sticking in strands to her forehead and neck, matted with sweat.

Her breathing wasn't completely leveled out yet.

Her chest rose and fell, with a wider range than usual, but she was suppressing it, one breath at a time, very slowly.

The red on her cheeks had faded by half, but not completely.

Her earlobes were still burning, and below her collarbone lay patches of uneven crimson.

Her eyes were closed.

It wasn't because she was sleepy.

It was because she didn't want to open them.

What was there to see if she opened them?

Look at Lin Fan? Look at this cubicle? Or review what kind of sounds she had just let out?

Especially those last few minutes.

She bit her lips until they bled.

It hadn't held it back.

Su Qingxue placed her forearm across her eyes to block the light.

Then she heard the movement beside her.

Lin Fan was putting on his pants.

Then came the sound of a bottle cap being unscrewed.

"Have a sip of water."

Su Qingxue didn't move.

"Your lips are chapped."

Su Qingxue removed her arm from her face and opened her eyes.

Her gaze fell upon the water bottle being handed over.

She looked at it for two seconds before reaching out to take it.

She unscrewed it, tilted her head back, and took a gulp.

After drinking the water, Su Qingxue's movements were very natural, no different from casually placing a bottle of mineral water on the desk after finishing it in her office.

However, her wrists were trembling.

Slightly—so slightly that one wouldn't notice unless paying attention.

Su Qingxue wanted to stand up.

She braced her hands on the soft cushion, exerted force upwards with her waist, but as her knees bent, she failed to get up.

Her legs had turned to jelly.

She tried again: pressing her right hand against the rock wall and supporting the ground with her left hand, she exerted herself for a long time, but the moment her hips left the soft cushion by two inches, she sat right back down.

"Hiss..."

Her tailbone struck against the hard stone at the edge of the soft cushion, hurting her so much that she bared her teeth.

Lin Fan turned his head back and glanced at her.

Su Qingxue's face turned red in a "whoosh".

It wasn't the red of shyness, but the red of extreme humiliation.

The female CEO of Shengtang Group, a woman who took over a company with a market value of tens of billions at age twenty-six, couldn't stand up, sitting on a dirty soft cushion with her two legs trembling like a middle school student who had just finished running an 800-meter race for the first time.

"Don't look."

"I'm not looking."

Lin Fan did turn his head back, but that line at the corners of his mouth couldn't be reined in.

For her third attempt, this time she found a protrusion on the rock wall, grabbed it with both hands, pushed off the ground with her feet, and finally stood up.

But as soon as she stood steady, her legs shivered, and her whole body leaned to the left, her shoulder crashing against the rock wall, preventing her from falling.

This time Lin Fan couldn't hold it back.

"President Su."

"What is it?"

"Is your inability to stand up right now due to poor physical strength from not eating much these past few days, or is it because..."

"Shut up."

Su Qingxue's voice pitched up by half a degree.

Lin Fan raised his eyebrows.

"I was just asking..."