Quick Wear: Child Bearing System

Chapter 8

The maids, even as they stood over her, seemed momentarily stunned. Their smug smiles faltered. One muttered under her breath, her voice edged with envy, “She even looks pretty like that.”

“Let’s go,” the other hissed, uneasy with the sudden tension in the air. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

They left quickly, their hurried footsteps fading down the path until only silence remained.

The garden grew still once more. The only sound was the faint dripping of water from Harriet’s hair, falling onto the cold stone beneath her.

She took a slow, steady breath and pressed her palms against the wet ground, pushing herself up. She simply gathered herself, brushed her soaked hair back, and straightened her damp dress with trembling fingers.

A soft sigh escaped her lips barely audible, but it carried something heavy.

Then she began to walk. Her steps were slow, deliberate, steady.

And her path led directly toward him.

For the first time in a long while, Shen Wenyu found himself unsure of what he felt. Something twisted beneath his ribs an unfamiliar blend of irritation and intrigue.

He watched her approach, the faint sunlight catching the sheen of water on her hair. The scent of jasmine and rain lingered in the air around her, subtle but undeniable. She hadn’t noticed him yet; her eyes were distant, her lips pressed tightly together, trying to mask the tremor of what had just happened.

When she finally did see him, she froze. Surprise flickered across her face, fleeting but unmistakable.

Almost instantly, her expression smoothed over, composure sliding back into place. “Brother-in-law,” she greeted softly. Her tone was polite, her voice calm so steady it almost felt unreal after the scene he had just witnessed.

He didn’t reply right away. His gaze lingered on the droplets clinging to her lashes, the soft pink rising on her cheeks from the cold, the faint shimmer of water trailing down her neck and disappearing beneath the fabric of her dress.

His expression remained unreadable, but something shifted in his eyes.

It was curiosity. A reluctant, unwanted kind of admiration.

Finally, he spoke, his tone low and even. “You should change before you catch a cold.”

Harriet blinked, then gave a faint nod. “Yes,” she answered quietly.

As she walked past him, the air changed again. The soft scent of jasmine brushed against him like a whisper before fading into the distance. He turned his head slightly, watching her retreating figure her back straight, her steps measured and calm despite everything.

He didn’t know why he couldn’t look away.

Perhaps it was because she hadn’t cried. Because she tried to defend him earlier that stirred something unknown. Because even after being drenched, insulted, and humiliated, she carried herself with a dignity that neither her soaked dress nor trembling hands could erase.

That quiet resilience so unyielding yet gentle unnerved him.

He told himself it meant nothing. That she was only a nuisance, an inconvenience in a house already filled with ghosts of his past.

But as her silhouette disappeared beyond the corridor, the silence she left behind felt heavier than before.

And Shen Wenyu realized slowly, begrudgingly that this woman he had dismissed so easily had become something different.