Jiang Yue was truly terrified. He had suffered from a fear of heights since childhood, and the sensation of having half his body suspended in mid-air made him feel nauseous. He pressed his lips tightly together, suppressing the involuntary tears of physical distress threatening to spill over.
“Put me down, please. I’m sorry.” This time, his tone softened considerably, laced with a sob as he said it through gritted teeth.
Hearing his voice, Qi Jiahe sighed. With one hand, he grabbed Jiang Yue’s jacket, and with the other, he supported Jiang Yue’s legs, pulling him up with a strong heave.
Jiang Yue’s legs turned to jelly. He slid down along the railing and sat slumped right at Qi Jiahe’s heels.
Qi Jiahe squatted down and gently patted his back, trying to comfort him: “Are you alright now? Lay off the cursing from now on. I’ll treat you well, after all, we’re the ones whose names are on the marriage certificate.”
Jiang Yue buried his face in his knees. After a long while, he slowly raised his head, glaring fiercely at Qi Jiahe, his eye rims tinged with red.
“You jerk! Get lost!” Grabbing Qi Jiahe’s pant leg, Jiang Yue gave it a fierce tug as he hauled himself up from the ground. He shoved Qi Jiahe hard, turned around, and headed downstairs.
After pushing Qi Jiahe away, Jiang Yue’s legs felt a bit wobbly as he walked down the stairs. He sat down on the sofa, placed his phone right in front of him, and forced himself to look calm.
Qi Jiahe had graduated from the same high school as him, except that Qi Jiahe had gone abroad for university and returned after graduation to make his mark in the entertainment industry. Two years ago, who knew what madness had seized his father, but he had actually forced him and Qi Jiahe into an arranged marriage, and the reason was simply a business alliance!
Back in high school, Jiang Yue had presented as a marshmallow-scented omega, which had cost him quite a bit of his dignity, and Qi Jiahe had mocked him for it for so long. He had originally thought they would never cross paths again, never mind that Qi Jiahe would end up becoming his alpha.
Over the past two years, he hadn’t gone home for major holidays, and he had turned down all events that involved Qi Jiahe, all to prevent the awkwardness of running into each other.
Standing by the railing, Qi Jiahe looked down and saw that Jiang Yue’s phone screen had remained stuck on that exact page. A faint smile played on his lips as he walked down the stairs.
“Are you angry? Are you really mad?” Qi Jiahe caught sight of Jiang Yue’s half-dark expression, his voice easy and unhurried.
He walked downstairs, came right up to Jiang Yue, and purposely stopped within his field of vision. With his arms crossed over his chest, he struck a provocative pose.
Jiang Yue averted his gaze, not wanting to look at his face, yet Qi Jiahe’s figure drew his eyes like a magnet.
The anger inside Jiang Yue was burning, but he had no choice and met Qi Jiahe’s bright, shining eyes.
The corners of Qi Jiahe’s mouth curved upward, a flash of mischief gleaming in his eyes.
He knew that this little prank had genuinely hit Jiang Yue’s sore spot.
Watching Jiang Yue’s flustered and exasperated appearance, Qi Jiahe felt a secret sense of amusement.
“You really hold a grudge, don’t you, Jiang Yue?” Qi Jiahe said with the smug grin of someone who had scored an easy victory. “Still, you really need to work on curing that fear of heights. After all, you’re going to have to do wire work when you act.”
Jiang Yue gritted his teeth hard, his face turning gloomy as his hands clenched into tight fists.
“What on earth do you want?” Jiang Yue widened his eyes, sparks of fury flashing within them.
He suddenly stood up and glared at Qi Jiahe: “When did you become so talkative?!”
He was a head shorter than Qi Jiahe, and his voice lacked the deep resonance of Qi Jiahe’s. Standing up face-to-face like this, his imposing aura was severely diminished.
Seeing Jiang Yue’s agitated state, the smile on Qi Jiahe’s lips grew even wider, a hint of complacency flashing across his eyes.
“I didn’t say anything much, just giving you a friendly reminder,” he said, spreading his hands in a feigned display of innocence.
Jiang Yue stared at his face, feeling like he was about to grind his back molars to dust. He clamped his jaws shut: “Big Movie Emperor, what business is it of yours to meddle in this?”
“Your husband?” Qi Jiahe hesitated for a few seconds, letting out the three words syllable by syllable.
Your husband.
For a split second, Jiang Yue’s mind went completely blank, and his anger flew right out the window. Frowning, he asked, “What?”
Qi Jiahe didn’t say anything. A moment later, as Jiang Yue snapped back to reality and tried to steady his emotions, he blurted out: “You… how dare you provoke me?!”
A flicker of surprise flashed across Qi Jiahe’s eyes, only to vanish instantly. He deliberately leaned in closer to Jiang Yue, lowering his voice to ask, “Do you really think I’m provoking you?”
Jiang Yue widened his eyes, a trace of doubt flashing in his gaze.
Qi Jiahe’s words had shaken him slightly, making him start to doubt whether Qi Jiahe was really just teasing him on purpose.
Deciding not to bother answering the question, he grabbed his phone, shot Qi Jiahe a sidelong glance, and marched right past him toward the stairs, walking straight into a room under Qi Jiahe’s watchful gaze.
Click. The bedroom door was locked from the inside.
The smile on Qi Jiahe’s face faded slightly. He turned around, spotted Jiang Yue’s suitcase, stretched his arms, and yawned as he walked toward where the luggage had been left.
The entertainment gossip post on Weibo had already been deleted long ago, and his manager had used his Weibo account to do some PR work, riding the wave of traffic to promote his new drama and an upcoming variety show.
Sometimes Jiang Yue felt that a manager’s career really required this level of quick-witted resourcefulness.
There were still plenty of questions left under his Weibo post:
——Did Jiang Yue-yue really marry the Movie Emperor two years ago? There hasn’t been any interaction between them at all!
——Can the Movie Emperor please treat my son well.
——My son is a soft little Omega, and the Movie Emperor is an overbearing Alpha. They actually look pretty well-matched.
——I thought about it for half a second and decided to betroth my son to you!
Using his burner account, Jiang Yue desperately wanted to reply and scold them one by one, but since they were all his own fans, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Instead, he used his alt account to start a new thread:
——I don’t think they’re a good match at all, so please stop trying to force this pairing. Jiang Yue hasn’t even been associated with Qi Jiahe once throughout his entire career.
After posting it, Jiang Yue felt a wave of satisfaction wash over him.
He let out a long sigh of relief. It looked like Qi Jiahe had indeed handled the situation properly.
Before he even had a chance to praise Qi Jiahe in his heart, a knock echoed at the door.
Jiang Yue genuinely wanted to slap a single sweatdrop emoji onto his forehead to express his speechlessness.
“Jiang Yue! Stop sulking! Come out and help me!” Qi Jiahe’s voice came from outside the door as his knuckles tapped a few times against the wood.
Jiang Yue clicked his tongue, throwing two punches into the empty air to release his lingering frustration.
“Coming, coming! Stop making a racket!”
He pulled the door open to find Qi Jiahe holding a suitcase in each hand, one of which was still half-open, looking utterly ridiculous and comical.
Jiang Yue bit down gently on his lower lip, struggling hard to hold back a laugh as he stared at him and asked with a puzzled expression, “What do you need help with?”
“You threw a temper tantrum, stormed inside, and locked me out. Which room am I supposed to stay in?” Qi Jiahe looked at him with affectionate, melting eyes, making him look just like a pitiful little puppy.
The Movie Emperor truly lived up to his title; the man could pull off a performance anywhere, anytime.
Seeing Qi Jiahe’s comical appearance, Jiang Yue finally couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing.
He took one of the suitcases from Qi Jiahe’s hand and teased, “So even our great Movie Emperor has things he can’t handle. And here I thought you were Superman.”
Seeing that Jiang Yue was laughing, Qi Jiahe dropped the thought of how to coax him further and followed Jiang Yue toward a room next door.
The door was pushed open, and the scent of crisp room freshener drifted into the air. As Qi Jiahe walked inside, his eyes caught two booklets resting on the bedside table.
“Oh!”
“Oh!”
Jiang Yue set his suitcase aside, and upon hearing the sound, instinctively looked back: “Check it out?”
“…” Qi Jiahe raised his hand to pick up the two small red booklets, waving them right in front of Jiang Yue’s face. The words Marriage Certificate were starkly printed across the covers.
“Why is the marriage certificate put here?”
Jiang Yue took the other suitcase from his hands, set them side by side, and replied with absolute nonchalance, “Looking at it makes me feel like I can divorce you any minute now.”
Qi Jiahe stood in place, watching him pack away the red booklets right before his eyes while a bitter-sweet smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
After getting Qi Jiahe settled in, Jiang Yue went back to his room to catch up on sleep. Having gotten his wish, Qi Jiahe lay down on the bed and started scrolling through his phone.
As soon as he opened Weibo, a tidal wave of notifications hit him. Figuring he had plenty of time right now, he tapped to check them, only to be immediately drawn to a specific post right as he opened the notification tab.
He quickly switched to the recommendation feed and rapidly opened that post.
It had been published just ten minutes ago.
This struck Qi Jiahe as very strange.
Entertainment News Report: [The previously published post has mysteriously vanished! Shocking! The romance between the Movie Emperor and a certain male celebrity surnamed Jiang is real! Netizens: An Omega and an Alpha, a match made in heaven.]
Qi Jiahe frowned. He had clearly instructed the technical team to delete everything clean back at dawn; why on earth was someone posting it again?
In this industry, once a post was deleted, it usually never resurfaced. He had paid people to scrub those posts completely clean, so how could there still be copies left?
And why was the publication time so early?
Qi Jiahe’s face darkened completely. In all his years in the industry, stubborn entertainment news agencies trying to use him for clout were vanishingly rare.
Gritting his teeth, he opened his call log and dialed a number.
After ringing for a full minute, the call was finally picked up on the other end.
Hearing the line connect, Qi Jiahe gave his orders directly to the person on the other side: “Don’t bother deleting the new post. Trace the people behind it directly, and get me results before tonight.”
“Qi-ge, should we really leave the post up? Won’t it cause trouble?” The person on the other end hesitated for a moment before asking in a hushed tone.
With a firm voice and a deep frown, Qi Jiahe exited the call interface as he watched the number of Weibo posts steadily climb. “Don’t you worry about that. Just do your job.”
The person on the other end acknowledged the order and hung up.
This matter definitely wasn’t just the work of a tabloid news agency; someone else was definitely pulling the strings behind the scenes. He didn’t really want to drag Jiang Yue into this mess, after all, Jiang Yue was just an ordinary Omega without any defense mechanisms.
He stood defenseless against the coercive pheromones of certain scumbag Alphas.
It seemed some industry heavyweight was really trying to drag them down into the abyss.
Qi Jiahe held a cigarette between his fingers and took a deep drag, letting the smoke linger in his mouth before slowly exhaling.
Clouds of smoke billowed in front of his eyes, and he raised a hand to wave them away.
“You guys are all packed. I hear this director is notoriously picky, and his variety shows always shoot these long, experimental formats.”
Having slept all the way until one in the afternoon, Jiang Yue was jolted awake by his manager’s phone call. He yawned as he listened to his manager’s nagging instructions, his eyes too sore to do anything but nod repeatedly.
“Got it…”
He was still exhausted, perhaps because the events of the day had been so overwhelmingly torturous that his brain desperately wanted him to sleep a little longer, though his stomach firmly disagreed.
His stomach was rumbling and kept growling. Although it didn’t hurt, the noise was driving Jiang Yue crazy with annoyance.
He sat up in bed, slipped on his shoes, and opened the door. The rich aroma of meat wafting through the air almost made him feel like he was floating.
“Qi Jiahe! What are you doing?!” Rubbing his eyes, Jiang Yue floated down rapidly from the second floor to the first, heading straight for the kitchen.
Qi Jiahe stood holding a soup ladle, scooping up a piece of braised pork rib and blowing on it slightly before bringing it near his mouth. “Well, look who’s awake, little Omega?”
“Are you hungry?”
Catching sight of him walking toward him with the ladle, Jiang Yue kept his expression completely neutral as he muttered, “A little, I guess.”
A little?
Qi Jiahe’s hand paused. The ladle hovered back and forth in front of Jiang Yue’s mouth. Seeing the corners of Jiang Yue’s lips pouting upward, a slight curve touched Qi Jiahe’s lips: “Beg me, and I’ll let you eat.”