Xiao Bai hurriedly arrived at Yimate.
Yan Su Ang was still stubbornly refusing to leave Ma Rui’s office.
Gao Qin said helplessly, “Are you seriously planning to go public?”
“If Xiao Bai agrees.”
Gao Qin raised an eyebrow. “Then I’m relieved.”
Yan Su Ang smiled unconcernedly. “Don’t worry. I’ll get my license soon enough.”
Gao Qin checked his watch. “Judging from when I called him, he should be here soon.”
Yan Su Ang jerked his chin toward the door.
“What?”
“Aren’t you leaving?”
Gao Qin said, “This appears to be Yimate.”
Yan Su Ang smiled. “Are you sure you want me to go outside?”
“Our security guards aren’t vegetarians,” Gao Qin said unhurriedly. “If you think you can snatch someone away from between their ten fingers, dream on.”
Just as he finished speaking, the internal line rang.
Yan Su Ang efficiently pressed the answer button.
The secretary said sweetly, “Xiao Bai is here.”
Yan Su Ang’s voice became even sweeter. “Send him in.”
Xiao Bai pushed open the door. Gao Qin pointed outside. “Xiao Bai, go wash the restroom until it smells like chocolate, then come back.”
Xiao Bai froze.
“He’s going through an adolescent-hormone surge. Ignore him.” Yan Su Ang stood up, pulled Xiao Bai aside to sit down, and gently asked, “How drunk was Jia Zhi Qing?”
“He threw up a lot.” The smell still seemed to linger in Xiao Bai’s breathing.
“You…” Yan Su Ang’s expression suddenly changed. His fingers gently touched Xiao Bai’s cheek. “What happened to your face?”
“What?” Xiao Bai looked at him blankly. “Did I get a pimple?”
Yan Su Ang forced down the anger rising in his chest and said calmly, “There are finger marks.”
Xiao Bai thought about it. “Oh. He probably hit me accidentally when I was about to call you.”
“You were calling me… and he hit you?” In his mind, Yan Su Ang violently pulverized the three characters making up Jia Zhi Qing’s name countless times.
Seeing his anger, Xiao Bai hurriedly explained, “No. He just didn’t want you coming to pick him up. He didn’t do it deliberately. Don’t be angry at him.”
Looking at the anxiety in Xiao Bai’s eyes, Yan Su Ang forcibly stretched his lips into a smile and enunciated word by word, “I am not angry. I am not angry at all. Not even slightly. I have absolutely no thoughts whatsoever of having him torn apart by five horses or dismembered into ten thousand pieces.”
Xiao Bai relaxed in relief. “Mm. That’s good.”
Considering Jia Zhi Qing was at least his cousin, Gao Qin finally interrupted this dangerous topic. “Where is he now? Is he okay?”
Xiao Bai said, “Mm. He’s fine. Director Lian is taking care of him.”
The harmonious atmosphere broke off in an oddly abrupt way.
Yan Su Ang rubbed his nose, his eyes full of schadenfreude.
Gao Qin glared at him coldly. “Who was the one who said it would be a good idea to let the outsider Lian Jue Xiu play chauffeur?”
Yan Su Ang spread his hands. “Once a person gets enthusiastic, not even the Arctic Ocean can freeze him. You have to appreciate Lian Jue Xiu’s Lei Feng spirit—volunteering himself so selflessly.”
Elio’s Notes: Lei Feng is a Chinese cultural symbol of selflessness and helping others. “Learning from Lei Feng” became a common expression for volunteering or doing good deeds.
“You were obviously the one who encouraged him.”
“I was simply dealing with the facts. Jia Zhi Qing didn’t want to see you and didn’t want to trouble me, so that left Lian Jue Xiu. How was I supposed to know he’d finish being chauffeur and then become the nanny too?”
Gao Qin suddenly stood up.
Yan Su Ang knowingly asked, “Where are you going?”
“To catch an adulterer in the act.”
Yan Su Ang’s eyes rolled slightly, and he immediately volunteered. “We’ll come too.”
“You?” Gao Qin frowned. But the moment his gaze met the calculating smile on Yan Su Ang’s face, he understood. “You can come. But if there happens to be some bloody scene that leaves a certain someone traumatized and permanently afraid of the future, thereby condemning another certain someone to spend the rest of his life as a toad who can never taste swan meat, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
A bloody scene?
Yan Su Ang’s mind automatically conjured several unpleasant images involving bloodstained bedsheets.
Judging from the demonic state Lian Jue Xiu entered while filming, his animal instincts were clearly very well preserved. Seen that way, Jia Zhi Qing’s chances of surviving intact really did seem quite low, while his chances of leaving no bones behind seemed alarmingly high.
Yan Su Ang had originally intended to use the two of them as teaching material to show Xiao Bai that men and men could also have their own romantic happiness. But thinking about it now, there was a very real possibility that this particular teaching material would be an example of what not to do.
While he stood there wavering and weighing his options, Gao Qin had already opened the door and strode away. He certainly did not want to arrive and actually see his cousin with blood all over his lower body, pitifully biting a bedsheet and crying.
Because if Jia Zhi Qing were the one doing that…
It would be terribly lacking in aesthetic appeal.
The office was suddenly left with only Xiao Bai and Yan Su Ang.
Yan Su Ang tenderly stroked the red marks on Xiao Bai’s cheek, taking the opportunity to cop a feel.
Xiao Bai looked at the clock on the wall. The hour and minute hands had just met at two o’clock. He immediately became anxious. “I have to go to class.”
“So soon?” He had not finished touching him yet. Yan Su Ang was reluctant to stop.
“My class is at two. I’m going to be late.” Xiao Bai stood to leave.
Although Yan Su Ang was extremely unwilling to let him go just like that, class was important, so there was not much he could say. There’s plenty of time ahead, he comforted himself.
Xiao Bai was just about to open the door when it suddenly swung inward from the outside.
Seeing that Xiao Bai’s face was about to suffer a second injury, Yan Su Ang reacted quickly and pulled him aside. He glared unhappily at Gao Qin, who had slipped half his body through the doorway. “Did you forget to put tires on the car? Or forget to buy insurance before reincarnating?”
Ignoring his sarcasm, Gao Qin looked at Xiao Bai. “Does your apartment have a security door?”
“Mm.” Xiao Bai nodded. Although it was something they had found secondhand and was not particularly sturdy, Jia Zhi Qing had said it could at least serve as a deterrent. Xiao Bai had not understood what deterrent meant at the time, but a few days later he thought he had figured it out. There was probably so much rust on the security door that thieves would assume the household was poor and be deterred from entering.
Gao Qin naturally held out his palm. “Your house key.”
Xiao Bai obediently took out his key and placed it in Gao Qin’s hand.
Gao Qin grabbed it and immediately turned to leave.
Watching from the side, Yan Su Ang sighed repeatedly. “Xiao Bai. You can’t casually hand your house key to other people.”
“But Brother Gao Qin isn’t ‘other people.’”
“Even if it’s someone you know, you can’t guarantee they don’t have ulterior motives.” The moment he said ulterior motives, Yan Su Ang suddenly felt slightly guilty. At the instant Gao Qin received the key, what had surged through Yan Su Ang’s heart was clearly envy. Pure envy.
Xiao Bai blinked. “Brother Gao Qin is so rich. Compared with me, shouldn’t he be the one in danger?”
“But he isn’t cute,” Yan Su Ang muttered under his breath.
“Do thieves care whether the person they steal from is cute?” Xiao Bai tilted his head slightly, his lips rosy and moist.
Yan Su Ang felt the wolf inside him beginning to awaken again, howling for him to swallow this little white rabbit whole. But the little white rabbit was not mentally prepared, and neither the time nor the location was right. He could only forcibly suppress the desire burning in his chest and say hoarsely, “Mm. That depends on what they’re trying to steal.” At a moment like this, he had no choice but to be grateful for Feng Ya Lun’s spirit of sacrifice, which had thoroughly removed Gao Qin from the list of potential perverts.
Xiao Bai reached out and patted his cheek with concern. “Your face is very red.”
“……” Of course it was. There was a raging fire burning inside him. How could his face possibly not glow from the flames? Seeing Xiao Bai suddenly fall silent, hope immediately rose in Yan Su Ang’s heart. Has he finally understood my feelings from the flames burning on my face?
Xiao Bai thought for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction. “You really do have a healthy complexion.”
“……”
He was certainly both angry and lustful right now, but healthy was not the word for it.
Yan Su Ang rubbed his forehead helplessly. “Don’t you have class?”
“Oh, right.” Xiao Bai immediately demonstrated his rabbit-like nature, hopping through the doorway. After three steps, he abruptly stopped, turned toward the very “healthy-looking” Yan Su Ang, and waved. “Bye-bye, Great God.”
“……”
And when exactly was Xiao Bai planning to stop randomly switching back from “Yan Su Ang” to “Great God”?
Su Ang… Ang… Either one would be perfectly good.
Yan Su Ang suddenly felt that victory was not quite in sight after all, and the future did not seem nearly as dependable as he had thought.
Gao Qin arrived outside Xiao Bai’s apartment, smoothly inserted the key, and opened the door with movements so natural it might have been his own home.
The moment the door opened, he heard a chaotic series of bumps from the bathroom, followed by Lian Jue Xiu roaring.
With the door closed, his voice sounded somewhat muffled.
“Lie still. Don’t move!”
“Lift your ass!”
“Ah! What are you doing? That hurts!”
“……”
If those three sentences had been divided between two people, Gao Qin could have understood them. But since all three had come from the same person, the situation was simply too strange.
So he directly pulled open the bathroom door.
Inside the bathtub—
Jia Zhi Qing was naked and lying facedown.
Pinned beneath him was Lian Jue Xiu. His shirt was completely soaked, sticking to his body like transparent tape while concealing absolutely nothing. The legs extending from the bathtub were still clad in suit trousers, though they had fared no better than his shirt.
Jia Zhi Qing hugged him like a pillow, completely unaware of anything as he smacked his lips and slept.
So if the present situation had to be summarized in a single sentence, it would be: naked drunk substitute actor molests suited man in bathroom.
Lian Jue Xiu turned his head and saw Gao Qin. His face immediately turned bright red. “What are you staring at? Never seen people taking a bath before?” Water from the showerhead continued striking his head, making him look as bedraggled as humanly possible.
If Jia Zhi Qing had not smelled so atrocious—and then transferred that stench onto him—who would have bothered helping him bathe?
Gao Qin released a long breath of relief inwardly and said leisurely, “I’ve never seen two grown men squeezed together in one bathtub.”
“Aren’t you going to help?!” Lian Jue Xiu ground the words out through clenched teeth, looking as though if Gao Qin did not come over immediately, he would strangle Jia Zhi Qing on the spot just to make a point.
Gao Qin lounged against the doorway, his gaze wandering from Lian Jue Xiu’s neck all the way down his chest. “Are you sure you want me to help?”
“……”
Damn pervert!
“Forget it. Get out.” With that mouth of Gao Qin’s, if Lian Jue Xiu let him help now, who knew what disgusting conditions he would demand in return later?
“You’re not planning to take the opportunity to…”
“I’m not that desperate.” Lian Jue Xiu deeply regretted his own terrible eyesight from before. What kind of spell had he been under to ever think this pale monkey looked appetizing? The moment he finished washing his car, he was going to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist. Damn it!
Gao Qin took hold of the door and was about to close it when he suddenly added, “If you intend to make him take responsibility afterward, I can serve as a witness.”
“Get lost!”
The door slammed shut.
Gao Qin sat down on a chair and checked the time. He still had a meeting that afternoon.
The trouble surrounding Feng Ya Lun had been over for quite some time. It was about time for him to come back.
Lian Jue Xiu had said that he had only enrolled Feng Ya Lun in a short-term course back then. Counting the time, it should be nearly finished. Gao Qin really ought to start paving the way for his return.
The bathroom remained chaotic for a while longer.
Lian Jue Xiu finally emerged wearing his coat, looking utterly miserable. “Did you come here to catch us in the act?”
Without blinking, Gao Qin lied, “I happened to be passing by and came upstairs to borrow some water.”
Lian Jue Xiu looked at him sideways. “I’ll call Xiao Bai and ask where he keeps the arsenic.”
Gao Qin glanced toward Jia Zhi Qing, who had been abandoned alone in the bathtub. “You’re leaving him like that?”
“What else do you want me to do?” The moment the subject came up, Lian Jue Xiu had an entire stomachful of grievances to pour out. “You’re his cousin. Yan Su Ang is Xiao Bai’s knight. No matter how you look at it, I’m just Random Passerby A, right? For Random Passerby A to do this much is already the height of kindness.”
“Leaving someone naked in water makes it easy to catch a cold, which can lead to pneumonia, and from there…”
“All right, all right!” Lian Jue Xiu resignedly ran back into the bathroom and bent down to lift Jia Zhi Qing.
Perhaps he had been struggling for too long. A wave of dizziness struck him, and he uncontrollably stepped backward half a pace and leaned against the wall.
Gao Qin frowned. “Are you okay?”
Lian Jue Xiu waited until the stars swimming before his eyes slowly faded, then shot Gao Qin an irritated look. “Thank you for your landlord-style compassion.”
Gao Qin shrugged. “I was worried you’d drop him.”
“……”
Lian Jue Xiu staggered into the bedroom carrying Jia Zhi Qing. He was preparing to dump him down and leave when Jia Zhi Qing suddenly opened his eyes. His black-and-white eyes were as clear as the sky at sunrise, little points of brightness shimmering within them.
“Awake?” Lian Jue Xiu’s voice was dangerously quiet.
Jia Zhi Qing suddenly reached out, wrapped both arms tightly around his neck, and before Lian Jue Xiu could recover from his shock, planted a huge kiss directly on his mouth.
At first Lian Jue Xiu was slightly dizzy from being kissed. Then the foul breath coming out of Jia Zhi Qing’s mouth made him extremely dizzy.
After kissing him, Jia Zhi Qing stared blankly at him for a long moment before suddenly bursting into loud sobs.
“What wonderful thing did you do this time?” Gao Qin leaned against the doorframe and looked at him.
Lian Jue Xiu knelt on one knee on the bed, lowered Jia Zhi Qing, then thumped his own aching waist. “Why don’t you ask your cousin what wonderful thing he did?”
Gao Qin actually turned toward Jia Zhi Qing. “What wonderful thing did he do?”
Jia Zhi Qing bit his lip, tears pouring down his face. “Waaah… Le Qing doesn’t want me anymore.”
Gao Qin said, “Mm. Apparently her fever finally broke.”
“Waaah… and I even kissed her.”
Under Gao Qin’s interrogating stare, “Le Qing” raised both hands to proclaim his innocence.
“But…” Jia Zhi Qing sobbed, “after I kissed her, she suddenly got ugly.”
“……”
Gao Qin struggled to restrain the red-eyed Lian Jue Xiu, who was preparing to rush over and strangle the tearful man who had just called him “Le Qing,” and forcibly dragged him outside.
When they reached the ground floor, Yan Su Ang was standing around observing the foul-smelling car.
Seeing him, Gao Qin raised an eyebrow. “Why are you here? You finally stopped clinging to Xiao Bai?”
“Xiao Bai has class.”
“Then go home, read the script, and think about your acting.” After saying this, Lian Jue Xiu looked at his car and frowned. “I’d better call a tow truck.” He pulled out his phone.
Seeing that both Lian Jue Xiu and Gao Qin looked perfectly normal, Yan Su Ang concluded that Jia Zhi Qing had clearly retained his chastity and there was no entertaining spectacle to watch. He prepared to drive away.
Seeing this, Lian Jue Xiu hurriedly lowered his phone. “Wait. You’re driving me home later.”
Yan Su Ang got into his car even faster. Without looking back, he said, “Ask Gao Qin.”
The Lamborghini’s speed was first-rate. Before either man could react, it had already vanished at the end of the street.
Lian Jue Xiu looked at Gao Qin.
Gao Qin looked at the water still dripping from the cuffs of Lian Jue Xiu’s trousers, took out a fifty from his wallet, and handed it over. “Here. Take a taxi. Whatever’s left can be your tip.”
“……”
Lian Jue Xiu coolly snatched the money away. “Free money is free money.”
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