Taking advantage of Zhao Sheng pretending to be drunk and lying facedown on the table, Shen Du quietly slipped out of the private room as well. Otherwise, if Zhao Sheng started asking questions later, he would never get any peace and quiet.
Only after leaving the hotel did he send a text message, telling Zhao Sheng to fend for himself.
Zhao Sheng replied indignantly: Betraying your friend for a pretty face! Did you run off to stalk that little celebrity?
Shen Du couldn’t be bothered to entertain him.
When Zhao Sheng received no reply, he called him instead. “Hey, Shen Du, what’s gotten into you? Weren’t you the one telling me just a few days ago that the entertainment industry was filthy and that only your pure and flawless white moonlight was above it all? And now, just because someone looks good, you’re asking me to help him? How did I only just realize you’re a shameless face-con?”
Whenever Zhao Sheng gossiped, he talked like a machine gun, chattering endlessly. Shen Du wisely chose to set his phone aside and let his childhood friend ramble to his heart’s content. Once Zhao Sheng had finished, he simply hung up.
Shen Du approached everything he did with an emphasis on cause and effect. He also took a moment to consider why he had helped Ye Nanqi.
The image of Ye Nanqi in the restroom surfaced in his mind. His head had been tilted back, his eyes closed. He had looked pale and exhausted, completely unlike his usual elegant, spirited self.
—Just looking at him had been irritating.
The Ye Nanqi in Shen Du’s impression shouldn’t have looked like that.
It had annoyed him, so he’d lent him a hand. Nothing wrong with that.
When Shen Du returned home and opened the door, something pressed down on his foot. He lowered his head and saw Ye Nanqi.
Apparently too drunk to think straight, Ye Nanqi had leaned against the door after returning home and drifted off. Who knew how long he’d been there?
Shen Du casually switched on the light and nudged his shoulder with the tip of his foot. “Get up.”
Ye Nanqi had an excellent tolerance for alcohol-related behavior. Even drunk, he never made a scene. After Shen Du woke him, he covered his eyes with one hand, looking uncomfortable for a while. Only after some time did he lower his hand and look up at Shen Du through half-lidded eyes. His face was faintly flushed, as though someone had lightly brushed rouge across it.
He was blocking the way, but Shen Du wasn’t about to step over him.
“Don’t lie here.”
Ye Nanqi clearly hadn’t recognized who he was. In a drunken haze, he reached out.
“…Hug me.”
Seeing his flushed face and how adorably drunk he looked, Shen Du reached out almost as if bewitched and pinched his cheek. Only then did he come back to his senses.
“Hmm?”
Ye Nanqi looked a little aggrieved. “If you don’t hug me, I’m not getting up.”
“…”
Shen Du thought for a moment.
“Baby Ye, how old are you?”
As he spoke, he bent down, intending to pick Ye Nanqi up and dump him to one side.
Ye Nanqi sensed the danger immediately and shot upright. He looked up at Shen Du with an aggrieved expression, his eyes slightly reddened. His thin lips were parted, revealing a beautiful little lip bead. They looked moist and soft, tinged with a faint peachy pink, as though inviting someone to kiss him.
Shen Du glanced at them and immediately felt his scalp go numb. Ye Nanqi remembered very little about that night, but Shen Du remembered quite a few of their intimate moments, including the softness of those lips against his own.
Still dazed with drunkenness, Ye Nanqi stared at him for a long while before finally recognizing Shen Du.
He drew out his name in a slurred voice.
“…Shen Du.”
Shen Du folded his arms, curious to see what this drunk cat would do next.
Ye Nanqi said, “You fucking idiot.”
Shen Du: “…”
After a moment of silence, Shen Du walked around Ye Nanqi, intending to return directly to his room. He had only taken two steps when he heard a thud behind him.
Ye Nanqi had collapsed again.
Shen Du paid him no attention. He went to his room, showered, and changed his clothes. When he came downstairs, however, he discovered that Ye Nanqi was still sleeping beside the door.
Although the house had central heating, the floor was still cold. Sleeping there all night wouldn’t be good for his health.
Young Master Shen naturally had a handsome but cutting appearance. He looked at Ye Nanqi, who was sprawled out like a corpse, with undisguised disdain. Nevertheless, he eventually went over and picked him up.
He didn’t have the patience to carry the whole job through to completion. He simply deposited Ye Nanqi on the sofa, covered him with a thin blanket, and was just about to turn away when Ye Nanqi rolled over and his phone fell out.
Shen Du casually picked it up. His eyes happened to catch the screen just as it lit up with an incoming text message.
【J has been staying home recently to prepare for his new project. F hasn’t made any moves. Everything is normal.】
Shen Du’s movements paused.
There were initials concealing someone’s name, and a text message with an unclear implication.
Was Ye Nanqi having someone keep watch on somebody?
For some reason, Shen Du immediately thought of Jiang Yuanyu.
His expression turned cold as he placed the phone on the table.
His rationality prevented him from immediately shaking Ye Nanqi awake and confronting him. Instead, he turned and went to the kitchen, where he made a bowl of hangover soup. When he returned to the living room, he set it on the table, then went upstairs to think about something else.
—Actually, Shen Du hadn’t been very drunk on the day of Jiang Yuanyu’s wedding. It was just that his consciousness had been terribly hazy. After waking up that day and watching Ye Nanqi leave, he’d gone to get himself checked. The examination revealed traces of drugs remaining in his body.
Someone had drugged him at Jiang Yuanyu’s wedding, which had led to the entire chain of events that followed.
The audacious bastard responsible still hadn’t been found.
Early the next morning, before Shen Du even had the chance to splash a basin of cold water on Ye Nanqi to settle the score, his own mother ambushed him.
Her newly acquired precious son, Baby Ye, was still unconscious from his hangover, curled up miserably on the sofa. His long legs had no choice but to bend, and his brows were tightly knitted. Neither the place nor the position in which he was sleeping could possibly be comfortable.
He might even have been having a nightmare.
But none of that was within Shen’s mother’s consideration. She took one look and immediately exploded.
“Shen Du! You little bastard! Is this how you treat Nanqi? Why did you make him sleep on the sofa? Did you take advantage of your mother being away to bully him?!”
Shen’s mother had high blood pressure. Shen Du didn’t dare talk back. Afraid that one retort might send her blood pressure soaring, he could only endure her anger with an expressionless face.
Ye Nanqi gradually woke up and heard Shen Du being scolded. He didn’t open his eyes immediately. After listening for a while, he finally understood what was happening.
Remembering that Shen Du had helped him the previous night, he felt a little embarrassed about adding insult to injury. Supporting his forehead, he sat up and weakly reassured Shen’s mother.
It was practically chaos for a while. Fortunately, Shen’s mother’s anger came quickly and went just as quickly. Clutching her chest and feeling sorry for Ye Nanqi, she declared that she would hire a housekeeper to look after the two grown men while also keeping an eye on Shen Du.
Shen Du said, “Mom, why don’t we get a paternity test this afternoon?”
Shen’s mother shot him a look. “There’s no need for a test. With that rotten temper of yours, if you weren’t my biological son, I would’ve strangled you to death long ago.”
Ye Nanqi suppressed a laugh, then went upstairs to wash up. When he came back down, he looked around and spotted Shen Du cooking porridge in the kitchen. From behind, Shen Du looked almost as though he were about to ascend to immortality and ride the wind away at any moment.
Ye Nanqi did his utmost to keep his expression under control. With a rather virtuous, good-wife-and-mother air about him, he offered to help Shen Du.
But Shen’s mother stopped him and said earnestly, “Leave him alone. In our family, cooking is their job. If a man can’t even cook properly, how does he expect to find himself a wife? Don’t be afraid of that little bastard. We’ll stand up for you. If he dares bully you, tell us immediately. We’ll make him go to the countryside and kneel in the ancestral hall for three days!”
Ye Nanqi nodded sincerely. To maintain his image, his smile practically radiated some mysterious holy light.
“Shen Du treats me very well, Mom. Don’t worry. Don’t you trust your own son?”
Only then did Shen’s mother nod in satisfaction.
When Shen Du finally brought out the porridge, looking helpless as he served them, she pointed at the things she’d brought along and smiled warmly.
“I heard from your mother that you like crab roe buns, so I picked some up along the way. Give them a try.”
Ye Nanqi felt a sudden warmth in his heart. For some reason, his eyes grew a little red, and even his throat tightened.
Ever since one calamity after another had befallen his family, he had been the one taking care of everyone rather than relying on his frail mother. It had been a very long time since he’d experienced the feeling of someone constantly thinking of him and caring about him.
Ye Nanqi, who was usually so eloquent, composed, and quick-witted, suddenly found himself at a loss for words. After a long moment, he lowered his lashes and smiled.
“Thank you, Mom.”
After accompanying the two of them through breakfast, Shen’s mother gave Shen Du another round of instructions before finally leaving with peace of mind.
As soon as Shen’s mother left, the relatively warm atmosphere in the house vanished without a trace.
Ye Nanqi was actually suffering from a slight headache after his hangover. He hadn’t shown it in front of Shen’s mother, but once she was gone, he couldn’t be bothered to keep up the act. Without even glancing at Shen Du, he prepared to go upstairs and sleep for a while longer.
Unexpectedly, Shen Du called out to him.
“Ye Nanqi.”
Ye Nanqi turned back in surprise.
Shen Du was leaning against the edge of the table, his dark eyes as cold as frost crystallized on a winter night.
“Did you hire someone to follow Jiang Yuanyu?”
Ye Nanqi paused, immediately took out his phone, and checked the text message. His expression turned unpleasant.
“President Shen certainly has excellent manners. You actually snooped through someone else’s messages.”
Shen Du asked, “So you admit it?”
“Admit it?” Ye Nanqi raised an eyebrow in surprise and laughed. “Shen Du, all you have is a single letter, and you’ve already imagined an entire dramatic saga. I never knew you had a talent for writing novels. Why don’t you compile all those wild ideas of yours and apply for a Guinness World Record?”
As he spoke, however, Ye Nanqi was hesitating inwardly.
Should he use this opportunity to tell Shen Du about the potential danger surrounding Jiang Yuanyu?
But why would Shen Du believe him?
Still, if he merely dropped a hint, Shen Du would probably start paying attention, wouldn’t he?
Shen Du wasn’t fooled by Ye Nanqi’s evasions. He narrowed his eyes and studied him for a long while before asking, “Why did you hire someone to follow Jiang Yuanyu?”
—Even if Ye Nanqi wanted to cover it up, looking at Shen Du’s expression, there was no way he could hide anything.
Ye Nanqi had never been willing to tell anyone about Ye Mei. It was a shackle in his heart, locked tightly around the door to his soul.
He paused, then sat down elegantly on the sofa.
“Because I discovered that someone was following him.”
Shen Du was slightly taken aback by this unexpected answer.
“Xiao Jiang and I work for the same company. I noticed something unusual not long ago.” Ye Nanqi propped his chin on one hand and continued lying through his teeth with a perfectly straight face. “There were a few people who kept following him from a distance. They didn’t look like paparazzi or fans. They were acting furtively and suspiciously.”
Shen Du seemed to be considering how much of his story was believable. After a moment, he said, “But that doesn’t give you a reason to have someone follow him.”
“President Shen.” Ye Nanqi let out a mocking laugh. “What I do is none of your business. Who exactly are you to Jiang Yuanyu? And who are you to me?”
Shen Du didn’t let himself get provoked. He merely raised his chin.
“Call them off immediately.”
Ye Nanqi lifted his long eyebrows, about to speak, when Shen Du continued.
“Guess how many days you’d be detained for this kind of behavior?”
Ye Nanqi stared at him in disbelief.
“You’re going to call the police?”
“I won’t call the police.” Shen Du revealed a benevolent smile. “I’ll send the evidence to Yuanyu’s husband and let him deal with it.”
“…”
Ye Nanqi was left speechless.
He and Jiang Yuanyu were very close. And because Ye Nanqi had once pursued Jiang Yuanyu, the outstanding man who had returned from overseas and won the beauty’s heart had come to regard him as a thorn in his side. He was an absolute nuisance.
Shen Du might not do anything to him, but that man was another matter entirely.
Ye Nanqi had no choice but to send a message to the private investigator right in front of Shen Du, terminating the surveillance.
Although he knew that, to some extent, he’d managed to remind Shen Du to investigate what was happening around Jiang Yuanyu, it was still difficult to swallow the feeling of having been thoroughly outmaneuvered.
After returning to his room, Ye Nanqi called Wen Chen to discuss the previous night’s drinking session. Then he began figuring out how to turn the tables.
Moreover, having Shen Du discover that he’d hired someone to follow Jiang Yuanyu made Ye Nanqi realize that the saying “To pacify the outside, one must first stabilize the inside” did have some merit.
There were other matters he couldn’t resolve in the short term. If he could get Shen Du out of the way sooner, that would be a good thing too.
And so, when Shen Du returned home after a hard day’s work, went upstairs, and entered the bedroom, he was just about to change clothes and take a shower when he spotted someone lying on the bed.
The person had a slender, elongated figure and was wearing a black bathrobe. His calves swayed back and forth, and the skin occasionally exposed beneath the robe was astonishingly fair.
Apparently hearing the footsteps, Ye Nanqi, who had been lying on his stomach reading a book, looked up and flashed a brilliant smile.
“Honey, you’re home?”
Shen Du: “…”