Chapter 67: Embarrassing Memories

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Amidst the hazy water mist, warm vapor condensed into droplets on the tiled wall, slowly sliding downward.
Lin Xiao raised her head. Ahead of her, Ye Wei stood with her back to the showerhead.
Water droplets cascaded down her fair back, making a slight detour as they brushed past the hollows of her waist before continuing downward over her full curves and two slender, pale legs.
The lingering steam cast a soft, dreamlike filter over the scene unfolding before her eyes.
It made one want to ask: the black before your eyes is not truly black, so what kind of white is the white you speak of?
"Xiao Wei, aren't you done rinsing yet? I'm waiting to help you lather up with body wash!" Lin Xiao said with a smile in her memories.
"Hmph! You little pervert, trying to take advantage of me again!" Ye Wei turned around, tucking a wet lock of hair behind her ear.
This simple movement only served to accentuate her ample cleavage.
Ye Wei walked over to the edge of the tub and sat down on the step beside Lin Xiao.
"So huge!" Lin Xiao exclaimed. "Such an astonishing natural gift~ Could it be that you robbed all the nutrition meant for brain development?"
Ye Wei instantly puffed out her cheeks. "You're the one without a brain! You're just jealous because you've got nothing at all!"
Lin Xiao feigned a regretful sigh. "There's nothing I can be done, I suppose I'll just have to experience the texture through yours~"
With that, she pumped out a generous dollop of strawberry-scented body wash, worked it into a rich lather between her palms, and scrubbed it straight over.
"Hey! What are you doing?" Ye Wei let out a soft cry.
So soft!
Lin Xiao sighed. "Your boyfriend is truly blessed! By the way, you two have been dating for several months now, and you're still keeping him under wraps? When are you going to bring him out so I can meet him?"
Ye Wei's expression grew somewhat unnatural. "Don't even mention it, we've already broken up! And I was the one who initiated it!"
"How could that be?" Lin Xiao paused mid-scrub. "Didn't you love him very much? How could you bear to break up?"
"It was only after we got intimate that I realized he was a bit of a freak. I tried my hardest to adapt, but I still couldn't accept it," Ye Wei bit her lower lip. "According to him, it was all trained into him by his ex-girlfriend."
Lin Xiao immediately perked up, whipping the bath sponge to generate even more bubbles. "What kind of freakishness are we talking about? Tell me everything! I'll give you a full-body massage as payment~"
Without waiting for Ye Wei's consent, she reached out with both hands and began rubbing all over Ye Wei's body.
"I already told you it's freakish, and you still want to hear it?" Ye Wei wriggled her body, her tender, fair skin flushed with pink. "Hey, hey! Where do you think you're putting your hands?!"
"That part needs to be washed clean, otherwise it's easy to catch an infection!" Lin Xiao said with a laugh as she scrubbed. "Hurry up and tell me, I want to hear it!"
Blushing, Ye Wei pushed away Lin Xiao's wayward hands. "It's just... he insisted that I... lick his feet... He said that was the only way to truly express love."
Lin Xiao widened her eyes. "You didn't actually do it, did you?"
"I loved him very much and didn't want to let him down, so I tried my best..." Ye Wei's voice grew fainter and fainter.
"You are so humble~ You silly girl!" Lin Xiao opened her arms and pulled Ye Wei into an embrace.
Their two bodies pressed tightly against one another.
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"But he just kept getting worse! Later on, he wouldn't even wash his ass before..."
Ye Wei couldn't go on. She paused, skipping over that detail. "I was furious, but he said that was how he always showed affection to his ex-girlfriend!
If you truly love someone, how could you ever find them dirty?
Don't you think he and his ex-girlfriend are absolute freaks?"
Seeming to recall something, Lin Xiao said somewhat unnaturally, "...Is it really that bad? Maybe it was just his way of showing intimacy?"
"What made me the absolute angriest wasn't even that, but the fact that he constantly claimed he felt insecure. Because his feelings had been hurt by his ex-girlfriend, he expected me to take care of his fragile heart," Ye Wei complained indignantly.
"Whoever causes the pollution should clean it up! I wasn't the one who hurt him, so why should I be held responsible? It feels just like..."
Pondering for a moment, Ye Wei continued: "It's like going to a restaurant where a bowl of noodles clearly costs twenty yuan, but the owner insists on charging you forty yuan.
When you point out that the price is wrong, the owner insists it's because the previous customer didn't pay their bill, and forces you to foot the bill for them too! What kind of logic is that?"
Lin Xiao laughed and said, "Hahaha! What's even more infuriating is that the bowl of noodles you ate actually turned out to be the leftovers from the previous customer."
Ye Wei: "..."
She felt as though she had just been stabbed in the lungs!
She let out a long sigh and said, "Let's stop talking about it, let's stop! Just hearing about him brings bad luck!"
"Since you've broken up, stop covering for him. Who is this guy?" Clearly unwilling to drop the subject, Lin Xiao pressed on.
"You secretly dated a boyfriend yourself, and didn't tell me until after you dumped him! If we're going to talk, we both talk," Ye Wei protested.
Instead of blurting out the answers directly, the two of them began piece by piece to reveal details about their ex-boyfriends.
"He is 1 meter 79 centimeters tall."
"He is 27 years old this year."
"He is a native of Hongshan City in the west."
"He..."
As more and more details were revealed, a creeping sense of foreboding welled up in both of their hearts.
"What is his name?" *2
They spoke in unison.
"I'll count down from three, and we'll say his name together!" Ye Wei suggested.
"Okay!"
"3! 2! 1!"
"Guo Kai!" *2
Both of them froze instantly.
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(3/3)
A crushing wave of shame washed over them both, so intensely awkward they wished they could dig a hole and crawl into it.
"I..." Chen Han had never expected that all of her somewhat bizarre past experiences would be known to Ye Wei.
"You're that freak's ex-girlfriend?!" Ye Wei widened her eyes in shock.
The mere thought that all those humble, degrading things she had done in front of her ex-boyfriend were now known to her best friend made Ye Wei wish the ground would swallow her up.
And when she pictured her ex-girlfriend kneeling and fawning over Chen Han, the stark comparison made Ye Wei feel even more mortified.
As it turned out, she had ended up taking the sloppy seconds of her very best friend?
Her memories suddenly twisted at that moment, and Lin Xiao was thrust out of the memory by a fierce surge of embarrassment.
He blinked his eyes open and found the two girls in reality staring at him anxiously.
"Can you wipe it?" They asked in unison.
Lin Xiao did not answer immediately, instead closing his eyes once more.
He attempted to empathize with that memory.
But... he failed...
There was no helping it; from Chen Han's perspective, that memory was nothing but agonizing awkwardness.
She desperately wished she could wipe that memory completely from existence; otherwise, the extreme sense of shame would continue to hound her relentlessly.
Yet, Lin Xiao was a man.
His feelings toward that memory, aside from the awkwardness, inevitably carried a hint of voluptuous titillation and excitement, along with a dash of the thrill of voyeurism.
Since he could not purge these emotions from himself, achieving deep empathy with Chen Han proved impossible.
Lin Xiao opened his eyes and, meeting the expectant gazes of the two girls, spoke honestly:
"I can't excise this memory directly; achieving deep empathy with it is beyond me. But I can consider an alternative approach..."
Initially, as Lin Xiao explained, both girls had resigned themselves to despair, but upon hearing that he still had a way, Chen Han eagerly asked, "What other way is there?"
Lin Xiao pondered. Currently, he had two potential solutions.
The first option was for him to pull out a stun grenade, or use a similar method to jolt their brains directly into a state of disorientation.
That way, he wouldn't need a-empathy mode to forcibly excise the memory.
Only... that method was far too brute-force, and there was no telling what kind of lingering side effects it might leave behind.
Lin Xiao also worried he might misjudge the intensity and cause trouble for them.
Consequently, he proposed the second option: "May I ask for an assistant to help me?"
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