Winning the brand-new title of personal driver, Shen Li finished up his workload that afternoon, handed the rest over to Ling Feng, and left the company before five o’clock.
Right now, offending anyone was out of the question, especially that particular master.
At five o’clock sharp, he arrived at the JH Corporation building.
No one in the Jiangcheng business circle was unaware of what JH stood for: the J corresponded to Ji, and the H corresponded to He, since Ji Zhouye’s mother’s maiden name was He.
Ji Zhouye’s father and mother frequently and publicly flaunted their deep affection, so Shen Li naturally knew the origin of the name.
With such a wholesome family environment, the son they raised naturally excelled in every aspect.
Five minutes past five, Ji Zhouye walked out of the office building.
Shen Li watched him approach. His demeanor was noble and poised, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and a physique so perfectly proportioned it was impossible to look away.
As Ji Zhouye drew close to the car, Shen Li stepped out of the driver’s seat and opened the rear door. Since he was going to be a driver, he had better have the right mindset for the job.
“President Ji, please.”
Ji Zhouye gave him a faint, cool glance before sliding inside.
Shen Li closed the door, hopped back into the driver’s seat, and asked, “Head back to the villa?”
Ji Zhouye closed his eyes, leaning back against the headboard of the seat with an air of casual exhaustion, and let out a soft “Mn.”
Shen Li started the engine. Noticing Ji Zhouye’s fatigue, he asked, “Are you very tired?”
“It’s fine.”
Shen Li didn’t press further. After the car had been driving for about two minutes, the person in the back seat spoke up: “Go to your place.”
“What?” Shen Li was caught off guard, not registering it immediately.
“Your luggage,” Ji Zhouye said slowly. “If you don’t want to go back there, I can have someone buy you new ones. My clothes don’t quite fit you properly anyway.”
Shen Li stared in silence.
“President Ji, you really didn’t need to add that last part.”
Ji Zhouye was taller than him, so his clothes ended up looking a bit oversized on Shen Li’s frame.
Shen Li made a U-turn and headed home to pack his things.
He used to live in the old family estate, but after Jiang Qing’s financial crisis hit, he sold it against Zhou Lifen’s fierce objections.
Now, he lived in an apartment he had purchased himself. While it wasn’t particularly large, it was more than enough for his daily life.
Ji Zhouye accompanied him upstairs. Standing before the front door, Shen Li lingered, hesitating to punch in the door lock code.
After his last shouting match with Zhou Lifen, he had changed the entry code.
Shen Li had no idea what had gotten into him at the time, but on a whim, he had changed the code to Ji Zhouye’s birthday.
Seeing him standing there motionless without entering the passcode, Ji Zhouye looked at him with a neutral expression. “What are you spacing out for?”
Under Ji Zhouye’s gaze, Shen Li bit the bullet and punched in the code: 0809.
Looking at those digits, Ji Zhouye’s eyes flickered with an unfathomable meaning.
When Ji Zhouye didn’t ask, Shen Li felt a prick of guilt and hurried to explain: “When I was changing the passcode, I meant to input my own birthday, but my fingers slipped and I pressed the wrong buttons.”
Their birthdays were close together; Shen Li’s was on August eighth.
The explanation sounded rather weak and unconvincing. If you input the wrong code by mistake, you could always change it back right away, but he hadn’t changed it, and he hadn’t made a mistake at all.
Deciding it was better to keep quiet, Shen Li pushed the door open and gestured for Ji Zhouye to step inside.
He retrieved a bottle of water from the refrigerator for Ji Zhouye, but when he turned around, he found him still standing in the entryway, his gaze fixed deeply on a picture frame sitting on the cabinet.
Realizing something was amiss, Shen Li rushed over, flipped the frame face down on the table, and nervously handed over the water. “No need to change your shoes, just have some water.”
The knuckles of the hand gripping the water bottle turned stark white.
That photo frame held a picture of him and Ji Zhouye back in their freshman year of college. In the past, Zhou Lifen used to wander in and out of his apartment as she pleased, so he had never dared to display it out in the open. But now that the lock code had been changed, Zhou Lifen wouldn’t be coming back here anymore.
Combined with their recent reunion, the long-sealed photograph had found its way back out onto display.
Even so, he only dared to place it right by the entryway, casting a quick glance at it as he left and another when he returned.
He wouldn’t dare put it on his nightstand or the coffee table for fear that seeing it too often would make it impossible to forget. Life was still long, and he couldn’t afford to waste away his entire existence anchored to a single person.
Ji Zhouye took the offered water and walked into the living room.
Once his luggage was packed, Shen Li emerged from the bedroom dragging his suitcase. Ji Zhouye was seated on the living room sofa, the bottle of water left entirely untouched on the coffee table.
Ji Zhouye lifted his gaze to look at him, his expression unreadable, carrying a sharp chill in his voice. “Care to explain what that photo is about?”
He still hadn’t managed to dodge it.
Shen Li’s expression shifted slightly before he quickly plastered on a casual, unbothered grin. “Don’t I look exceptionally handsome in that picture? I just like to admire my own good looks every time I come and go. What else did President Ji think it was?”
Seeing his cheeky, provoking attitude, Ji Zhouye’s tone dropped to an absolute freeze. “Get over here.”
For a split second, Shen Li felt his scalp tingle. Facing that predatory expression, he had no choice but to drop his suitcase and shuffle forward at a snail’s pace.
Even during those few slow steps across the room, he didn’t forget to try and pacify Ji Zhouye. “President Ji, let’s keep our emotions in check. We can talk things out nicely.”
“Talk things out my foot.” Seeing how sluggishly he was moving over a mere few steps, Ji Zhouye stood up abruptly, gripped his wrist with firm authority, and shoved him down onto the sofa.
Pinning Shen Li beneath him, Ji Zhouye trapped his hands and leaned down to kiss him fiercely.
Shen Li’s breathing turned ragged. Time seemed to blur as the kiss grew increasingly intense.
The evening sunset streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a warm hue across the room.
Yet even the thirty-plus-degree summer heat couldn’t melt away the icy chill radiating from the man hovering over him.
Driven to the point of suffocation, Shen Li retaliated by biting hard onto Ji Zhouye’s thin lips, forcing him to pull back.
Seizing the opening, Shen Li lashed out with his foot and kicked him. “Ji Zhouye, are you out of your mind? Who kisses people like this?”
The dark, gloomy edge in Ji Zhouye’s expression eased up slightly. He stood up from Shen Li’s body, his brow arching with amusement as he looked down at him. “Then how should I kiss you? Show me.”
Scrambling up from the sofa, Shen Li put some distance between himself and this dangerous individual. “Ji Zhouye, you are an absolute freak, shameless and utterly vile.”
The corners of Ji Zhouye’s lips curved into a seductive hook. “Would you like me to help refresh your memory about who it was that kept begging me to kiss him while we were in bed?”
“Shut your mouth.” A faint, unmistakable blush bloomed across both sides of Shen Li’s cheeks. He snatched a throw pillow off the sofa and hurled it straight at Ji Zhouye. “You aren’t any better yourself, Ji Zhouye.”
Neither of them was any better than the other; caught in the dizzying haze of passion, the feelings buried deep within the bottom of their hearts had been completely exposed without reservation.
Ji Zhouye picked up Shen Li’s suitcase, and the two of them walked out the door together.
Before long, the news of Jiang Qing’s miraculous revival created a massive uproar throughout the business community. Everyone in the circle had assumed Jiang Qing was completely beyond saving, believing that lasting this long was nothing more than a death rattle.
No one expected that overnight, Jiang Qing would undergo a complete metamorphosis. While it couldn’t fully recover its former glory, it had successfully secured a firm footing in the commercial world once again.
Business figures everywhere speculated wildly about just how powerful Jiang Qing’s backers must be. They cycled through every wealthy and influential name in the entire circle, yet not a single person dared to guess it could be JH Group.
Some whispered that he must have been kept by a sugar daddy. Whatever external rumors floated around, Shen Li paid them no mind, letting everyone speculate as they pleased.
While Shengyang Group was doing well, it fell considerably short compared to a Jiang Qing that had successfully weathered its economic crisis.
Since Sheng Wan had previously given Shen Li a hard time, the top executives of Shengyang Group personally showed up to offer an apology the moment they realized how the tides had turned.
Having witnessed more than enough worldly politics, Shen Li didn’t put on airs or give the Shengyang executives the cold shoulder. He simply remarked that they could look into future collaborations if the opportunity arose.
Relationships in the corporate world rarely contained true sincerity; it was all just a performance for the stage.
Everyone understood the underlying rules, so there was no need to make things awkward unless you were as overwhelmingly powerful as JH, never lacking for partners.
However, just because he chose to let bygones be bygones didn’t mean JH felt the same way. A significant number of crucial pending contracts for Shengyang Group suddenly fell through, and no one could figure out why.
Speculation ran wild that Jiang Qing Group had staged a major comeback and that Shen Li was exacting revenge on everyone who had given him a hard time before.