Wooing my Bodyguard Wife

"Xue Ning!" Jingwei got up with his shaky legs and reached out for Xue Ning's retreating figure, but ended up bumping his legs against the table top. "Oof - "

Xue Ning turned back in concern, only to see Jingwei rubbing at his leg as he tried to get up.

"Sit back down, you nearly died!" She scolded, running back to shove him back into the seat. "Wait for the ambulance to arrive!"

"You called an ambulance for me?" Jingwei asked, touched.

"Was I not supposed to?" Xue Ning asked sarcastically, her hands on her hips.

"And while we're at it, how can you put your Epi-pen in the furthest drawer? What if you needed it and you couldn't get it in time?!"

"Well, guess I would die then?" Jingwei answered, giving a small shrug with a hesitant smile. Hopefully Xue Ning would find it amusing enough to crack a smile at him.

However, Xue Ning's face blackened further at his response. Jingwei's own smile fell off his face, clearly it was not the time for jokes. He reached out for her, tugging her closer to him. Xue Ning reluctantly let him, still staring down at his face, unimpressed and upset.

"Yes I was very stupid, and I would be dead if not for you. I'll line the walls with Epi-pen from today onwards." Jingwei promised, making sure to look appropriately sorry and very grateful that he did not die at his dining table thanks to a single cookie.

He must have scared Xue Ning. Mentally, he vowed to make it up to her, someway or another. The moment she found something she wanted, he promised he would move heaven and earth to get it for her.

"Damn right you will," Xue Ning agreed, nodding her head. Finally this man seemed to understand that this was not the time for jokes. Xue Ning's heart was still beating in double-time at that sudden death scare.

"Speaking of, why did you even order honey cookies when you know you're allergic?" She asked, ready to yell at him now that he's no longer in danger of keeling over.

"Not to mention, how could you be so stupid to even eat one without checking?"

"I didn't order it!" Jingwei said, raising his hands up in surrender. "I swear, it wasn't in my order list. I think one of the vendors just gave me a tin because we bought so much from them."

"...Jingwei, none of us ordered anything from a bakery. How would these stalls even have cookies lying around to give us? Don't you think it's weird?" Xue Ning pointed out, casting a suspicious look at the small tub of unlabelled cookies still sitting undisturbed on the table, save for the one Sun Jingwei ate.

That one cookie nearly killed him.

"But I've ordered from these stalls before," Jingwei rationalised, frowning to himself. "I ate their food and it tasted good, that's why I decided to reorder from them.

"I wanted you to have a good first meal with me to celebrate you moving in. Guess that's out of the question," He added sadly, slumping against the chair in defeat. Truly, man proposes, God disposes! Heaven really ruined all his best laid plans.

"... The food was good," Xue Ning said, because he looked so despondent that his lunch plan went awry. Strangely enough, it was upsetting her. "The terrible part only started when you ate that cookie and nearly died."

"Trust me, I do not wish to repeat that again." Jingwei said dryly, rubbing a hand over his face. No one told him that nearly dying would be so exhausting. Then again, no one around him had the habit of nearly dying.

"Man, I can't wait to tell my family that I nearly died from a biscuit. They're going to destroy me."

"And they should." Xue Ning replied heartlessly. "Didn't you learn not to eat random unlabelled things?"

"Actually I didn't! Why would I, when no one would have the guts to poison me?" Jingwei said, gesturing to himself. "If anything happened to me, my family would wipe the culprit and 7 generations of their families out of existence."

He had a point. The same way apex predators never needed to fear getting eaten, wealthy, privileged people like Sun Jingwei never needed to fear assassination attempts, simply because the risk and consequences outweighed the reward.

Until now.

"Well, now someone tried to kill you via your honey allergy. How many people know about this allergy of yours?" Xue Ning asked.

"Not many, it's not public knowledge," Jingwei said, shrugging. "I didn't want to let many people know that I could die via ingesting honey, that's just asking for trouble."

Xue Ning felt a cold chill shoot through her, and she had to sit down.

"So, someone from your life that knows you well-enough could have possibly sent you these cookies to kill you?" Xue Ning asked, and Jingwei could only nod in acknowledgement, remarkably blase for someone who had one foot in the grave.

"Xue Ning, darling, don't overthink things first," He said reassuringly, grabbing her clammy sweaty hands to hold again. It was testament to how frazzled Xue Ning was after the incident that she let him, instead of shoving him aside.

He gently rubbed her hands until they became warmer. "There's no evidence that this was an assasination attempt," Jingwei said soothingly.

"It could have just been a stall owner wanting to suck up to a high paying customer - it's not the first time something like that happened! Also some stalls do give free samples for customers to try. It's just bad luck that I got something that I was allergic to, and we can't blame the stalls, they didn't know."

Jingwei's words made logical sense, but deep down, her intuition was telling her there was more to this incident.

"I still think this incident is suspicious," she insisted. "We'll need to investigate which stalls gave you the cookies, and interrogate them!"

She was not resting until she got to the bottom of this.

After all, what kind of stall would give free samples and then not label the tin with the name of the cookies or the company label? How would anyone know how to repurchase them if they did like it?

Either someone was terrible at marketing their cookies, or they wanted to kill Sun Jingwei with them!