Since Yu Xiu was banned, Lin Yushu hadn’t seen him for a long time.
Even though he deliberately covered his face, only revealing his eyes, it was evident that he was a well-endowed actor with a slender body and proportions that were not ordinary.
Both of them were over 1.8 meters tall, but when others stood next to the Lamborghini, they felt that the 1.2-meter height of the car wasn’t short. However, when Yu Xiu stood there, his long legs seemed to surpass the height of the car roof.
“He’s looking for the boss,” someone whispered, curiously glancing towards the pit room.
Receiving the signal, Yu Xiu immediately intended to follow the gaze of the crowd, but Lin Yushu took a step forward, blocking his path.
“What business do you have with Song Qiming?” Lin Yushu asked.
Standing at only 1.78 meters, half a head shorter than Yu Xiu, but this was his territory, and he didn’t show any weakness in his demeanor.
“Are you his friend?” Yu Xiu half-lowered his gaze, assessing Lin Yushu. His tone wasn’t particularly polite. “Take me to him.”
Lin Yushu stood still. “If you have something to say, you can tell me.”
“You?” Yu Xiu raised an eyebrow, a hint of impatience flashing in his eyes. “Who are you?”
If Lin Yushu guessed correctly, perhaps what Yu Xiu wanted to say was: “Who do you think you are?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” Lin Yushu replied indifferently. “Anyway, I know who you are.”
Upon hearing this, the onlookers immediately started discussing, “Who is he?” “Why does he seem a bit familiar?”
Yu Xiu frowned, glancing at the people around him, and said to Lin Yushu, “Let’s talk somewhere else.”
Actually, Lin Yushu didn’t want to talk to Yu Xiu in front of so many people either. In retrospect, the reason he stepped forward seemed to be due to an inexplicable sense of possession. He felt that Yu Xiu needed his permission to talk to his boyfriend.
A strange possessiveness indeed.
In the end, Lin Yushu led Yu Xiu to the pit room.
Song Qiming was testing the power of the Civic. When he saw Lin Yushu coming in, he was about to speak but stopped when he saw Yu Xiu behind Lin Yushu.
“Yu Xiu is looking for you,” Lin Yushu said concisely.
After saying this, he leaned against the nearby workbench, showing no intention of avoiding the situation.
Yu Xiu glanced at Lin Yushu, seemingly not wanting anyone else present, and said to Song Qiming, “I have something to ask you.”
“You can ask,” Song Qiming left the dynamometer, went to the computer desk, picked up a bottle of mineral water, and took a sip.
However, Yu Xiu remained silent for a long time, obviously waiting for Lin Yushu to leave on his own.
Seeing this, Song Qiming put down the water bottle and walked to Lin Yushu’s side, saying, “If you want to ask about your ban, yes, I was involved. If you want me to introduce overseas resources to you—”
At this point, Song Qiming put his arm around Lin Yushu’s shoulder, raised his chin, and pointed at him. “It’s Mr. Lin’s idea.”
Lin Yushu looked at Song Qiming in surprise, a bewildered expression on his face. When did I introduce resources to him?
But he quickly figured it out. Song Qiming must have done something behind his back.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Yu Xiu removed his mask. Compared to a few weeks ago in the advertisement, he had clearly become thinner, with a sharper jawline and a fierce look in his eyes. “Do you think you can make up for it with a little favor after slapping me?”
“I didn’t slap you, you should go find your dad,” Song Qiming said, retracting his arm from around Lin Yushu’s shoulder and folding his hands in front of his chest. “As for introducing overseas resources to you, I didn’t want to be too ruthless.”
“No need.” Yu Xiu walked forward, grabbed Song Qiming’s collar abruptly. “Are you just pretending to be kind for someone’s sake?”
The two of them were about the same height, although Song Qiming’s body was more sturdy, Yu Xiu’s veins bulged on the back of his hand, indicating that he wasn’t someone to be messed with.
Seeing that a dispute was about to erupt, Lin Yushu quickly stood up straight and tried to stop Yu Xiu’s actions, but Song Qiming raised his hand to stop him, indicating that it was fine.
“I wasn’t doing it for you anyway,” Song Qiming said, prying Yu Xiu’s hand off and pushing him aside. He then straightened his collar, which had been messed up, and said, “I don’t know where you heard about me, but I didn’t intend for you to find out about these things, nor do I expect you to be grateful.”
“I won’t be grateful,” Yu Xiu replied with a wry smile. “You people from the Shao family have such characteristics. You don’t even bother asking if others are willing, you just forcefully try to do good for them. How come you didn’t get elected to move China?”
This was Lin Yushu’s first encounter with Yu Xiu, and he didn’t know before that Yu Xiu had such a venomous tongue.
However, these verbal attacks had no effect in front of Song Qiming. Song Qiming looked at Lin Yushu in confusion and asked, “What is ‘move China’?”
Lin Yushu: “…”
Can we just argue properly? Why ask such a question?
“He’s praising you,” Lin Yushu answered, picking up where they left off, and said to Yu Xiu, “I’m also sorry about the ban on you—”
“Who are you?” Yu Xiu interrupted Lin Yushu directly, no longer concealing his bad temper, and furrowed his brow. “What business do you have here?”
“Hey.” Just when Yu Xiu grabbed Song Qiming’s collar, Song Qiming showed no anger. But seeing Yu Xiu being so impolite to Lin Yushu, he immediately stepped forward to warn, “Watch your tone.”
“It’s fine,” Lin Yushu didn’t need Song Qiming to stand up for him. He pulled Song Qiming back and took the opportunity to say something that Yu Xiu wouldn’t like, “Every breach of contract fee you received went through my hands. If I wanted to, I could have easily added a zero to the amount you received.”
Increasing the amount of the breach of contract fee was also a “sweet date” from Lin Yushu to Yu Xiu.
Someone as proud and arrogant as Yu Xiu would definitely not appreciate this kind of help. Lin Yushu didn’t intend to mention it, but since Yu Xiu was being so impolite, he naturally didn’t care about Yu Xiu’s feelings.
“Hmph.” Yu Xiu smiled, but there was no humor in his eyes. “Birds of a feather.”
“So, are you here today to seek revenge?” Lin Yushu leaned back on the workbench, placing his hands on the sides of his legs. “You shouldn’t be looking for us if you want to settle scores, right?”
In other words, the main culprit behind all of this was Yu Xiu’s father, Shao Hexu. Yu Xiu should go find him instead.
“I never had any expectations for that scum in the first place. I’m not surprised that he would do something like this,” Yu Xiu said coldly, looking at the two of them. There was a clear warning in his tone. “But as for you, don’t interfere in my affairs anymore. Put away your hypocrisy, I don’t need it.”
With that, Yu Xiu put his mask back on and left the pit room.
After a while, the sound of engines could be heard from outside, indicating that Yu Xiu must have vented his anger on the accelerator pedal.
Song Qiming withdrew his gaze from outside and asked Lin Yushu inexplicably, “Why was he so angry?”
Lin Yushu raised an eyebrow and asked, “What have you been doing behind the scenes?”
Because of Song Qiming’s actions, he was unjustly implicated as well.
“Don’t I know some people in the European and American circles?” Song Qiming said innocently, “So I just recommended him to a few directors.”
Lin Yushu wasn’t surprised that Song Qiming had such a wide network of connections, considering that among his rumored boyfriends was a movie star.
He asked curiously, “Why are you suddenly being so kind? When we banned Yu Xiu before, you said that damaging others’ interests was unavoidable.”
“Yes, but…” Song Qiming came to Lin Yushu’s side and leaned on the workbench, sighing, “I don’t want you to think that I’m terrifying.”
Lin Yushu was momentarily stunned before realizing that this was his previous evaluation of Song Qiming.
“You said that when striving for interests, don’t only focus on the benefits,” Song Qiming continued, “It’s true that this is unfair to Yu Xiu, and I wanted to compensate him a little, but it seems I’ve made things worse.”
Lin Yushu also hadn’t expected his big bad wolf of a family member to be so obedient at times.
“If you want to compensate, can you do it more discreetly?” Lin Yushu sighed and twitched the corner of his mouth, “If I were Yu Xiu, I’d be angry too.”
But Song Qiming’s intentions were not wrong. Yu Xiu had already won the Best Actor award in China, so venturing overseas would be a good choice.
By then, not to mention Fang Lan, even Shao Hexu wouldn’t be able to do anything to him.
“I just wanted to help,” Song Qiming shrugged in incomprehension.
“So, this is what he called hypocrisy,” Lin Yushu sighed helplessly, turned around, stood in front of Song Qiming, and looked at him, saying, “Song Qiming, you don’t need to change anything for me. Just do what you’re good at. Your decisiveness and your schemes are your strengths. Don’t become indecisive just because of a casual remark I made. That’s not like you.”
“Then…” Song Qiming tilted his head, seemingly unable to determine whether being terrifying in Lin Yushu’s eyes was a good thing or a bad thing.
“I’ll handle the things you’re not good at,” Lin Yushu said, “Even if I want to compensate Yu Xiu, I won’t be as clumsy as you.”
“Okay, I’ll leave it to you,” Song Qiming said, pulling Lin Yushu into his arms, “But, I happen to have something I’m not good at.”
“What is it?” Lin Yushu asked.
“Writing a speech for an economic forum,” Song Qiming looked pitifully at Lin Yushu, “I don’t want to write it.”
Just as Lin Yushu was about to refuse directly, the voice of Lu Zibo suddenly sounded outside the pit room, “Boss, are you done yet?”
Lin Yushu immediately tensed up, pushed Song Qiming away, and stepped back two meters, creating a clear boundary between them. “I’m asking you, are you done?”
Song Qiming: “…”
He glanced at Lu Zibo expressionlessly and said, “It’s okay now, let’s get in the car and give it a try.”
Lin Yushu hadn’t written a speech in a long time. Whenever he needed to deliver a speech, the draft was usually provided by the staff.
Of course, Song Qiming could also have the staff write it, as the economic forum wasn’t as important as the S-power press conference and could be handled with some generic remarks.
But the tricky part was that Shao Guangjie was also speaking at the economic forum, so none of the staff dared to write the speech for Song Qiming.
Initially, Lin Yushu only agreed out of a momentary softness, and he could have changed his mind.
However, his Civic had been upgraded by Song Qiming to a 550 horsepower beast, leaving his circle of car enthusiast friends green with envy. It was really difficult for him to say “no” to Song Qiming’s face.
Through this incident, Lin Yushu finally understood that Song Qiming’s greatest strength wasn’t scheming against others but rather…manipulating him.
After a busy morning, Lin Yushu finally found some time to open a blank document and started typing the opening of his speech: “Hello, everyone. I am Song Qiming, the head of S-power at Yong Xing Motors.”
And then what?
It had been a while since Lin Yushu had written anything, and his mind was blank. He searched the internet for news articles about last year’s economic forum, hoping to find some inspiration. However, his attention was diverted by the popular search bar on the right side of the webpage.
“Yu Xiu spotted again, having a late-night rendezvous with the young master of Yong Xing?”
Lin Yushu wasn’t usually interested in gossip, but today he inexplicably clicked on the link. He was greeted with photos of Yu Xiu and Song Qiming taken from a hidden angle.
The photos were taken on that night, and Lin Yushu was also present. However, due to the angle, only half of his body was visible, and his face was blurred out, possibly because he was deemed unimportant.
The caption below the photos read: “Yu Xiu suspected to have found a new sugar daddy, identified as Song Qiming, the heir to the Shao family and a rising star in the investment circle.”
The comments below the article were even more absurd, speculating about Yu Xiu’s sexual orientation now that Song Qiming had publicly come out. Some focused their attention on Song Qiming, saying he had found yet another boyfriend.
Lin Yushu took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.
Just then, his colleague, Zhan Ting, appeared at the door of his office and knocked. “Did you see the trending topic?”
“Yu Xiu and Song Qiming?” Lin Yushu maintained a calm demeanor and casually replied, “It’s not true.”
“I’m not so sure,” another colleague walked over with a coffee cup in hand. “Don’t you think they make a perfect match?”
—Holding a coffee cup, the signature of a gossip enthusiast.
Lin Yushu knew that the topic wouldn’t easily fade away, so he had to go along with it. “Since when did Yu Xiu start liking men?”
“Didn’t you see the gay film he starred in?” Zhan Ting looked at Lin Yushu with a mix of surprise and curiosity. “There have been rumors about him being gay for many years, but there hasn’t been any solid proof.”
“Being single is the best proof,” another colleague chimed in. “Have you ever seen him involved in any dating rumors with female celebrities?”
“All of this is not important,” another colleague joined the conversation with a cup in hand. “The focus should be on our Boss Song. His orientation is definitely towards men. Meeting Yu Xiu so late at night, there must be something going on.”
—That wasn’t a meeting, it was an argument.
“Don’t spread rumors like this,” Lin Yushu said indifferently. “Don’t forget that Boss Song is also our boss.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s not talk about it recklessly,” Zhan Ting suddenly realized. “It wouldn’t be good if it reached the boss’s ears.”
The colleagues quickly dispersed, but Lin Yushu’s anger didn’t dissipate.
Song Qiming and Yu Xiu were cousins, and now there were all these messy speculations. And why was he blurred out in the photos? Wasn’t he the legitimate boyfriend?
He and Song Qiming had appeared together in public before. How come there were no gossip tabloids speculating about him being Song Qiming’s rumored boyfriend?
Was it because he wasn’t good enough?
The more Lin Yushu thought about it, the angrier he became, and he immediately sent the speech draft he had written for a minute to Song Qiming.
【Lin Yushu: I’ve written the opening, now it’s your turn to continue.】
Song Qiming obviously had no idea what had happened and sent a Wowo emoji in response.
【Song Qiming: Received, lol.jpg】
One second later, two new messages popped up in the chat box.
【Song Qiming: ?】
【Song Qiming: Darling?】
