Being a Sea Queen Isn't for Everyone
“Hmph. I didn’t need you to tell me.”
Suddenly Lu Ziqiu felt as if a lime-scented breeze had wrapped itself around him. The faint fragrance was enough to color the backs of his ears a deep, guilty red.
When Wen Yin heard him, she lifted an eyebrow. The cool precision of her face took on a strange, seductive tilt for a moment. As the footsteps behind them faded, Lu Ziqiu felt an unexpected hollow open up in his chest.
“Shao, your fish is burnt.” Xiang Zhou, after a long moment of hesitation, lowered his voice to a whisper. He’d noticed Shao Yinan looking at Wen Yin with an odd intensity.
Xiang Zhou squinted, thought flickering across his face. Where had he seen Wen Yin before...?
“Senior… how do you eat this?” Wen Zhi stuck out her lower lip in exaggerated displeasure. She hadn’t liked lunch at all. After tasting Jiang Shihuai’s cooking the night before, she’d already decided it couldn’t compare to the savory roast fish Wen Yin had made—Jiang’s was small, dry, and borderline inedible.
Two bites in, Wen Zhi found an excuse to retreat to her room. Stay another minute and she’d either starve or moan herself into a craving fit.
The production team had been considerate—guests were given an afternoon break with no scheduled activities, just free time so the stream could show their “real” lives. Jiang Shihuai walked back to his room, still sticky from seawater that had dried on his skin, stomach aching from two half-meals. He was starving.
And, somehow, an image had lodged itself in his head: Wen Yin moving around the kitchen, small and efficient, strangely domestic. He couldn’t help the private thought that a woman who could cook wasn’t such a bad thing.
The stream was quiet during the midday pause. Fans drifted between different rooms’ feeds, not bored so much as content to watch their favorites in idle moments.
Jiang had just changed when he noticed two figures at the little yard’s gate: Wen Zhi and Lu Ziqiu, laughing as they stepped inside. Up close he could see Lu’s large, veined hand wrapped around Wen Zhi’s slender wrist. A flush had bloomed on her cheeks; their easy banter carried a smudge of flirtation in the air.
Wen Zhi caught Jiang’s eye for a fraction of a second and tensed, but she didn’t pull away from Lu.
Following her glance, Jiang saw Xiao Mo standing with a cup in his hand, features drawn and serious—arched brows, a chill about him as if frost clung to his shoulders.
“Senior! Xiao Mo! You guys awake?” Wen Zhi’s voice was thin with mock distress, but she recovered quickly, freeing her wrist from Lu’s grasp with a practiced shrug. “We just went down to the beach with Zi Qiu. The sand was so slippery—had to have Zi Qiu hold my hand the whole way.” She puckered her lips and cooed in a deliberately sweet tone that made the men visibly relax.
Lu Ziqiu snorted softly, his gaze lingering appreciatively on both of them. If Wen Zhi hadn’t explained their relationship earlier he’d have been ready to misinterpret everything. The memory of what she’d whispered to him on the shore warmed him, even if he kept it all inside.
Wen Zhi clearly hadn’t expected to run into the others and threw herself into full-on coquettish mode to keep things light. Her performance worked—laughter chased off any awkwardness.
[Zhi Zhi is so popular!] scrolled across the stream’s chat. [It feels like all three guys are into her—how will she choose?]
But not everyone was impressed. As viewers replayed the earlier interactions, skepticism spilled in the comments.
[Feels like Zhi Zhi’s playing all sides at once… cozy with Lu just now, then suddenly distancing herself in front of Jiang and Xiao Mo? Total heartbreaker vibes.]
[Exactly. She’s a classic “sea queen” — always keeping guys on the line.]
[And poor Wen Yin—she didn’t do anything wrong, but now everyone’s cold-shouldering her?]
Chat split into camps in seconds. Once the names Wen Yin and Wen Zhi were invoked, fan factions flared; it was a livestream spectacle, and the audience loved to be outraged.
Wen Yin herself didn’t know any of this. She sat by her window, watching the “queen” fish in her sister’s little pond of admirers. When the rooms had been assigned she was the last to pick, so she’d gotten the worst one—window turned away from the sun, a tree outside blocking most of the light. It had one advantage: nobody in the yard could peek inside.
Seeing Lu behave like a lovesick fool while Wen Zhi cajoled him, Wen Yin couldn’t help the small curl of a smile. Her face, usually cool and distant, flickered with blackly amused eyes.
So the little dark lotus was more restless than she’d supposed... she thought. A faint derisive laugh slipped out of her—part scorn, part self-mockery. Of course. If her sister had no tricks up her sleeve, Wen Yin wouldn’t have ended up where she had.
After the midday rest, the guests shook off the morning’s fatigue. Wen Yin sat on the edge of the bed, perfectly still, and that stillness drew a following of its own—people screenshot her every motion and plastered the images on her fan pages.
[Who doesn’t love a cool beauty?] the messages fawned.
As the sun slanted toward evening, painting the room in a tired orange, Wen Yin had watched Wen Zhi and the three men chase each other back and forth all afternoon and felt an honest weariness take hold.
Being a sea queen, she thought, isn’t as easy as it looks.
A high, trembling voice cut through the quiet. “Senior! Xiao Mo! Zi Qiu!”
Wen Zhi stumbled in, tears pouring down her face in fat, dramatic drops. She looked aggrieved to the point of being speechless; her eyes were raw and rimmed red.
The three men who’d been called immediately sobered, their casual airs melting away as they rushed over.
“My little darling, what happened?” Lu Ziqiu was the first to blurt, his normally low voice thick with worry—calling her “little darling” in the kind of tone that made everyone in the room melt.
“Y—your necklace…” Wen Zhi choked out between sobs. “I can’t find it…”
Lu’s brows drew together. That necklace had been his gift to her when she returned from abroad.
“Think carefully…” he said, voice clipped.
“Necklace?” Qian Shuzhi handed her a tissue, eyes anxious. “Could someone have taken it?” He slapped a hand over his own mouth as if the suggestion had betrayed him.
“But—” he hesitated and didn’t finish the sentence. Xiao Mo’s tone was flat. “But what?”
Qian Shuzhi glanced toward Wen Yin with a sheepish look, embarrassed. “At noon, I saw Teacher Wen head toward Zhi Zhi’s room,” he said.