Song Wan’s brain information processor was somewhat broken down. His trouser leg moved slightly, and when he came back to his senses, he found that Gu Jingzhou had closed in on him at some unknown time.
The sofa was too soft, so Song Wan rubbed backward and retreated a bit, saying, “S-Sorry, I went into the wrong room.”
After speaking, he anxiously looked around in all directions.
The Japanese teacher inside the suite did not know where he had gone, and only he and Gu Jingzhou were left in the room.
“Who are you looking for? Jiang Shen?”
A large hand suddenly grabbed Song Wan’s ankle, using direct force.
“Ugh!”
Song Wan’s body slid downward, lying on the sofa in a strange posture. After retreating for a long time, he finally returned to his starting point.
Trembling with fear, Song Wan locked eyes with Gu Jingzhou and quickly defended himself, “No, actually, it’s all a misunderstanding. I wasn’t looking for him.”
The other person’s strength was immense, as if he could snap Song Wan’s ankle with the slightest bit of exertion.
Song Wan gasped in pain, sucking in a cold breath, and heard Gu Jingzhou speak coldly from above his head.
“Song Wan, don’t play tricks with me. Don’t blame me for not warning you… The drugs in this room were planted by you, right?”
Gu Jingzhou’s gaze seemed to have penetrating power, capable of seeing through a person’s thoughts in an instant.
Song Wan felt like a fish on a cutting board. “It wasn’t me…”
“Then why were you holding your breath?” Gu Jingzhou pinched Song Wan’s cheek. “Speak, why did you drug the place? Was what you originally intended to give to Jiang Shen meant for him?”
Cold sweat oozed from Song Wan’s back, and the color drained completely from his face.
The opponent’s rank was too high, and his intuition was too sharp.
Gu Jingzhou’s parents had passed away early, and now he only had one close relative, the female protagonist Gu Xuan.
Song Wan did not dare to imagine if Gu Jingzhou found out that he had gone so far as to drug and ruin the male protagonist’s purity just to break up the male and female protagonists, whether he would flatten him for the sake of his sister’s romance.
He must absolutely not let Gu Jingzhou know the original owner’s evil motives, and it definitely could not be anything disadvantageous to Gu Xuan!
Time passed second by second, and Gu Jingzhou’s patience was running out.
His palms were scorching hot, yet the skin he was gripping felt ice-cold.
Tonight, he shouldn’t have appeared here, but his subordinates said that Gu Xuan had come to the Marriott Hotel.
Gu Xuan was someone he had watched grow up with his own eyes, and she was only nineteen. She was so young that he would never allow anyone to touch her, not even Jiang Shen.
Upon receiving just a single phone call that went unanswered, Gu Jingzhou had rushed over himself.
Only, Gu Jingzhou had not expected to be played. This place was obviously a trap. He had originally thought it was aimed at him, right up until the woman waiting on the bed spoke gibberish and called out Jiang Shen’s name to him.
“Unwilling to talk?” Gu Jingzhou’s patience was exhausted.
This drug was naturally potent; the fact that he had stubbornly held on until now without an outburst was already a miracle.
Because Song Wan had been dragged downward just a moment ago, the shirt that had been neatly tucked into his waistband came loose, exposing a small section of fair waist that was particularly eye-catching in the dim environment.
Gu Jingzhou glanced at it, and his gaze immediately turned dark and unfathomable.
The young master of the Song family was very pretty, except that his heart was extremely malicious this was how others evaluated Song Wan.
Gu Jingzhou exhaled a breath of hot air, feeling for the first time that those gossiping people were right.
Song Wan indeed looked good, with a pair of peach blossom eyes that were very alluring, a slender waist, long legs, and a face so small it could be covered with a single palm.
Gu Jingzhou released Song Wan’s ankle, reached out, dark ink churning in his eyes.
Song Wan thought that his feigned silence had angered Gu Jingzhou, and that Gu Jingzhou was now going to put him back in the furnace to be remade.
His breathing was rapid, and his slender, dense eyelashes trembled violently. The moment Gu Jingzhou reached out to clamp his chin, he cried out loudly.
“I was wrong! I planted the drugs!”
“I really did give them to Jiang Shen, but I did all of this because I like Gu Xuan!”
Gu Jingzhou froze, a rare trace of astonishment flashing across his eyes. “What did you say?”
“I said I like your sister!” Song Wan’s voice was deafening.
“I was blinded by love, wanting to crowd Jiang Shen out from by Gu Xuan’s side, and did this out of a moment of impulse!”
“B-But I’ve already woken up to reality now! True love is letting go and fulfilling others. I don’t like her anymore, as long as she’s happy. I promise I will never disturb them again. Jiang Shen and Gu Xuan, forever!”
Song Wan spouted nonsense indiscriminately. Gu Jingzhou’s tie, which was half hanging around his neck, suddenly slipped onto his face, feeling a bit itchy, but Song Wan did not dare to reach out and scratch it.
The two of them remained at a stalemate just like that. Song Wan didn’t know whether his fabricated explanation could fool Gu Jingzhou or not.
Song Wan’s breathing was completely disordered, and the more he thought about it, the more aggrieved he felt.
He was a patient suffering from a serious illness, having endured five years in bed and taken countless types of medications. No matter how he struggled, he couldn’t escape the fate of death. Having finally transmigrated into a healthy body, he hadn’t even had time to catch his breath before being told he was going to die again.
He only wanted to live, so why was it so difficult?
The tie blocking his view grew slightly damp.
Gu Jingzhou raised his hand and pulled it away, only to discover that Song Wan was actually crying.
Song Wan tightly bit his lower lip, not wanting to make a sound. He was already a grown man in his twenties; shedding tears in front of someone else was too embarrassing.
However, the sorrow and grievance in his heart could not be stopped for a moment, so he could only turn his head away, sobbing quietly and shamefully.
It was unknown how much time had passed.
It might have been as long as a century.
Gu Jingzhou’s fingers gripping the tie exerted so much force that his knuckles turned white. He took a heavy, deep breath, released Song Wan’s chin, and stood up.
“Give you five seconds, get lost.”
Song Wan’s sobbing voice paused. With red eye corners, he looked incredulously at Gu Jingzhou’s back, clearly not having reacted yet.
Gu Jingzhou was planning to let him off the hook?
Was his bluffing technique really that good?
Could this be a trap?
Gu Jingzhou lifted his chin, his Adam’s apple rolling fiercely. “One…”
Screw whether there’s a trap or not!
Not waiting for him to count to two, Song Wan scrambled up from the sofa in a fluster and panic. “Alrighty then.”
“Hey Song Wan, why aren’t you answering your phone? Did you look at the message I sent you on WeChat? Something huge has happened!”
Early the next morning, Song Wan, who had narrowly survived, was still sleeping under the covers when he was jolted awake by a phone call from Du Bingqiao.
“What huge thing?” Song Wan rubbed his still sore and swollen eyes, asking in a muffled voice.
Du Bingqiao urged anxiously, “My people told me the plan failed! Jiang Shen didn’t go to the Marriott last night!”
Song Wan hummed indifferently. “Mhm…”
Du Bingqiao asked, “Why aren’t you surprised at all?”
Song Wan replied, “…”
If you experienced what I went through last night, you wouldn’t be surprised today either.
Du Bingqiao acted like an ant on a hot pan. “Jiang Shen should have known long ago that it was a trap, so he didn’t go. He probably also knows that we were the ones who did it. Aren’t you afraid of his retaliation?”
This sentence did manage to wake Song Wan up.
That’s right, although Jiang Shen didn’t fall for the trap, if Jiang Shen knew he was the one who did it, he still wouldn’t let him off the hook. It seemed this didn’t change the original plot much at all.
Song Wan couldn’t sleep anymore and bolted upright from the bed. “Does he have evidence?”
Du Bingqiao answered, “Probably not. My people do clean work; he’s only guessing right now.”
Song Wan breathed a slight sigh of relief, but before this breath could be completely let out, he suddenly thought of a detail that was easily overlooked. “Oh no.”
Du Bingqiao asked, “What’s oh no?”
Song Wan hurriedly kicked off the covers and got out of bed. “The camera!”
Seeing their young master rushing down the stairs like a wildfire as if there was some urgent matter, the cooking auntie greeted him with a smile, “I boiled sea cucumber porridge this morning. Do you want to try some, Wanwan?”
The Song family treated their servants very well, and many of them had been working here for over ten years, so everyone was used to directly and affectionately calling Song Wan by his childhood nickname.
Song Wan replied without looking back, “No thanks, Auntie!”
Arriving at the Marriott Hotel once again, facing the familiar room number 1608, the events of last night were still vivid in his mind.
With lingering fear, Song Wan swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and taking advantage of the hotel cleaning auntie turning her head to throw something away, he slipped inside like a thief.
The suffocating scent from last night was gone, and the curtains had been pulled open, allowing sunlight to spill onto the sofa.
The auntie had already cleaned the room; the throw pillows on the sofa were neatly arranged, but there were deep and shallow marks crisscrossing the surface of the velvet sofa, and even obvious fingernail scratch marks.
These were left when Song Wan had grabbed subconsciously because Gu Jingzhou had hurt his ankle the night before.
Unable to bear looking at it, Song Wan averted his gaze and walked over to the television set across from the bed. He clearly remembered that the original owner had hidden the camera in the crack of the television cabinet back then.
Reaching out to feel around, Song Wan remained vigilant against any movement at the doorway.
However, he felt around the top, bottom, left, and right of the television cabinet three times, and touched absolutely nothing.
“How could this be…”
Stunned, Song Wan squatted in place. The blood began to flow backward from the soles of his feet, growing colder the further up it went, until his entire body’s blood froze solid.
“Where is the thing?”