47. Malone

"Then let's break up."

Having said these words, Duan Nanzhou turned and left without looking back, leaving Ma Long standing frozen in place.

Duan Nanzhou had come to see Ma Long this time to clear the air and understand what was truly going on, but Ma Long's attitude once again was one of evasion, unwilling to face the situation head-on.

Even when confronted with Duan Nanzhou's questioning—"Can't you even explain the gossip online to me?"—he remained unwilling to say anything more.

Therefore, Duan Nanzhou felt that this relationship of hers had also reached its end. It all stemmed from some meaningless initial reason for getting together, followed by an inexplicable silent treatment and rumors with other persons without a single word of explanation.

At this moment, Ma Long was frantically dancing on all of Duan Nanzhou's trigger points. Duan Nanzhou felt that no matter how rational she usually was, there was simply no need for it at this moment.

Thus, dropping those words, she left. Ma Long, who had consistently refused to speak and communicate, was left behind in the same spot, still failing to chase after her to say anything.

From this point on, the breakup of the two shocked their surrounding family and friends. However, seeing that neither side was willing to elaborate, everyone else could only walk on eggshells, unsure of what to do.

It wasn't until a month or two later,

while Ma Long was training, that he overheard Liu Shiwen and Duan Nanzhou chatting on a phone call, and couldn't help but sneak closer to listen.

However, he was a bit too far away to hear clearly, and Ma Long's petty movements were far too obvious, having already been spotted by several of his close brothers.

Thinking back to when they first learned about the breakup, these brothers had rushed over immediately to ask what was going on, telling Ma Long that if they had quarreled, he should be the first to apologize and soften up toward the girl, otherwise how could a relationship last? Yet that stubborn little Ma stubbornly refused to utter a single word.

In the end, his good friends could do nothing more, leaving behind only the parting remark, "You will definitely regret this," before dropping the subject.

Now, more than a month later, he finally couldn't resist inquiring about her. It was also because Duan Nanzhou had deleted all of his contact information directly when they broke up, leaving Ma Long with no way to find out how she was doing.

"I'll go ask for you!" Xu Xin couldn't bear watching Ma Long like this; if he wanted to know, he should just ask openly. For the sake of his good brother, he went to Liu Shiwen to fish for information.

Before long, Xu Xin returned with a look of shock still lingering on his face.

"What is it?" Ma Long asked, pretending to be indifferent, though the tension in his heart was known only to him.

"Nanzhou has resigned, and she's not in Beijing anymore..." Xu Xin hadn't expected that a breakup could impact them both to this extent.

"What?" Ma Long was startled, already beginning to reflect: could it be because of him that Duan Nanzhou was so deeply hurt that she even left Beijing?

"Yeah, I heard from Xiao Zao that Nanzhou is somewhere abroad now. The name was too long so I didn't remember it, but anyway, she's no longer in the country!" Xu Xin finished passing along the gossip and went back to training; the coach nearby had been glaring at him for a long time.

After that, Ma Long's mind kept looping this piece of news. He wanted to ask more, but had no way to do so, falling once again into his own inner turmoil.

Moreover, as these days passed, time taught Ma Long that even if Duan Nanzhou didn't love him and was merely playing with him, he would have been fine with it. It was only his past self who couldn't figure things out, and now that he regretted it, it was too much of a cliché—he had ruined the relationship entirely with his own hands.

If anyone asked Ma Long why he would say such a thing, and why he had given Duan Nanzhou the silent treatment back then, it wasn't just because of the so-called reason they got together; that was nothing at all.

It was because, a few days before the incident, Ma Long had gone to visit his girlfriend for a date, only to overhear her video chatting with her best friend. The words she spoke left him frozen in his tracks.

"I've never liked him at all, you know that. Otherwise, why would I have turned him down..."

At the very first sentence, Ma Long had assumed there was some new suitor in his girlfriend's life lately, never expecting that the subsequent words would leave him standing at the door chilled to the bone.

"I just wanted to sleep with him, you know. His figure isn't bad!" After saying this, Duan Nanzhou even let out a dismissive click of her tongue, her entire tone dripping with toxic indifference.

"I'll play with him a bit more and then dump him! Why would anyone think I'm being serious? You guys actually took the acting seriously?"

"Hahahahahahaha, is my acting really that good? Then he must have believed it for sure! You have no idea how hilarious he looks every time he says he loves me..."

The words that followed felt like needles piercing straight into Ma Long's heart. He no longer had the courage to step forward and ask Duan Nanzhou if she truly felt that way. His final shred of courage was simply turning around quietly and walking away, pretending he had never been there.

From then on, Ma Long's mind was filled with these words from Duan Nanzhou every waking moment. He could no longer think straight, let alone figure out what to do, so he hadn't contacted his girlfriend, sliding straight into that cold war.

Later, when Duan Nanzhou came to find him to clear things up, he finally mustered the courage to ask a few questions, all of which matched what he had heard that day. He no longer had any way to deceive himself into believing that Duan Nanzhou's words were false. Coupled with his constant recollections of prior fragments, it all felt like a terrifyingly accurate match.

Therefore, even when the scandal with Ishikawa broke out, he kept his breath bottled up inside and refused to offer any explanation. He didn't even know what he was competing against, lacking even the courage to say, "We're breaking up, I'm dumping you." Instead, he just maintained the silent treatment until he was ultimately dumped, ushering in the finale of a breakup.

However, this was entirely Ma Long's perspective. If Duan Nanzhou had known things looked like this, she would truly have been struck speechless; her romantic life always seemed fraught with coincidences and dramatic turning points.

The hurtful words Ma Long had overheard that day were, in reality, nothing more than Duan Nanzhou reciting dialogue to cosplay a web-novel villainess protagonist for her best friend. If anyone asked her why, she could only let out a dry laugh.

That university friend of hers changed hobbies every so often. Recently, the friend had become obsessed with listening to web novels, but complained that the professional audiobook narrators lacked emotion and failed to bring the stories to life.

Thus, she began harassing all her friends. To make her scheme feasible, she picked out the segments she most wanted to hear and made each friend read a specific passage. Nearly everyone in her social circle had been "harassed" by her at least once.

Duan Nanzhou had initially been too busy to entertain her, but she couldn't withstand the girl's invincible shamelessness and relentless barrage of sweet-talking flattery, eventually agreeing to read a section for her.

Who would have guessed the girl had even more demands: she insisted that Duan Nanzhou adopt the specific tone and emotion of the character. To avoid being pestered into doing it multiple times, Duan Nanzhou rehearsed the lines carefully, determined to get it approved on the very first try.

As for the villainess monologue she had been assigned, it was naturally what her friend wanted to hear. According to the friend, from the very first time she met Duan Nanzhou, she had imagined her as a heartless femme fatale wrapping all sorts of gods among men around her finger. Yet Duan Nanzhou turned out to be a career-driven workaholic who didn't experience her first love until she met Ma Long—which was simply a complete waste of such a gorgeous face.

Therefore, casting Duan Nanzhou to perform this villainess monologue was a way to "fulfill her dream." Didn't she see that her friend on the other side of the video call was already laughing so hard she couldn't breathe?

Through such a bizarre coincidence, neither party in the young couple knew the truth of the situation, leading them both into mutual misunderstandings. Yet a larger part of the blame lay in Ma Long's unwillingness to communicate proactively, choosing instead to stew endlessly within his own isolated world.

Under normal circumstances, Duan Nanzhou might have been willing to weather it out with Ma Long and see what was wrong, but she was dealing with a mountain of vexing troubles at work during that exact period.

She had originally thought shifting to a behind-the-scenes role would be wonderful, something she could do until retirement. At first, it really was fine, but suddenly the upper management began taking sides and forcefully dragged her into the fray, severely impacting her work.

Even though Duan Nanzhou wanted nothing to do with office politics, she was inevitably swept up by the broader toxic environment, even picking up a lot of inexplicable workloads and passive-aggressive mistreatment. She was already at her wit's end when she stumbled into this mess with Ma Long, leaving her stretched far too thin to cope.

On the day they broke up, Duan Nanzhou went straight back to the station and submitted her resignation letter. Since they were pulling such disgusting stunts on her professionally, it wasn't as if she desperately needed this job. Sister Duan possessed more than enough capability to live a carefree and financially secure life forever, so she simply said goodbye.

After bidding farewell to both her career and her romance, Duan Nanzhou felt that staying in Beijing was tedious, so she decided to embark on a global journey, thus kicking off her travel chronicles.

This was precisely what Xu Xin had managed to fish out from Liu Shiwen: Duan Nanzhou was currently somewhere abroad. Naturally, he had no way of knowing her exact whereabouts, as Duan Nanzhou's location was constantly shifting.

All in all, it was nothing more than a complete farce filled with misunderstandings and drama.