Chapter 6 – Choose Your Weapon

> **TONIGHT'S EDEN HOUSE GUEST: SHEN RUOXI**

Again.

She didn't smile this time. Not like before.

The villa buzzed around her—some eye rolls, some murmurs. A few curious glances. And Gu Zeyan? Still unreadable, still unmoved.

But the moment she was asked to choose her companion, she paused.

This time, she looked around the room with the air of a queen surveying a war council.

Then she said clearly:

**"Li Shixun."**

He blinked. "Me?"

She tilted her head. "You wanted answers. Let's go find them."

---

### **Eden House – 8:17PM**

Dinner was on a lower terrace this time, right beside the water. The air was thick with salt and unresolved tension.

Li Shixun sat down across from her, still confused.

"You didn't have to pick me," he said. "I didn't mean to—"

"I know what you meant," Ruoxi interrupted gently. "You wanted to call me out. So I decided to call you in."

He blinked.

She picked up her wine. "I don't mind being questioned. I mind being underestimated."

"Then help me understand," he said quietly. "Why do you act like none of this matters?"

Her gaze dropped for the first time that night, but only briefly. Then she looked back at him.

"It does matter. Just… not the way you think."

She leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes suddenly sharper than before.

"When I flirt, I'm choosing to give. Not to trick. You think I play with people because I'm cruel. I'm not. I'm careful. Flirting is my way of testing—who sees me, and who just sees what they want to win."

He didn't interrupt. He just listened.

"I touch people because I grew up in a world that was cold and transactional. You learn, after a while, that words aren't always enough. So you laugh. You lean in. You make people feel like they matter, just for a moment."

She smiled faintly. "Even if they don't return the favor."

Li Shixun's voice was gentler now. "Has anyone ever made you feel like *you* matter?"

She didn't answer right away.

Then: "Once. And now he's walking away."

---

They didn't touch that night. No hand grazing. No teasing.

Just conversation.

And maybe that was what made it more intimate than anything she'd done before.

---

**Confessional booth, later that night.**

Li Shixun, eyes steady:

"She's not fake. She's defensive. There's a difference."

He looked off to the side, thoughtful.

"She's not the kind of person you pin down. She's the kind of person you wait for… and hope she stops running."

---

**Back at the villa…**

Gu Zeyan stood by the pool, staring at the lights in the distance—the faint glow from Eden House barely visible across the water.

He didn't say anything.

But when another contestant tried to joke about "Ruoxi collecting men like stamps," he didn't laugh.

He just said, "She's not collecting. She's protecting."

Then he walked off into the dark.