On the other side, separated from He Yao by a single wall, Pei Zhiwen had a look of obsessive scarlet pooling in the depths of his eyes. The veins on the back of his hand resting against his leg bulged, and the chill emanating from him gradually grew, like all things in winter frozen solid by frost.
Waiting for a ray of sunlight to warm and melt it.
He Yao’s words echoed in his mind.
“Don’t scare Lu Jiayan away again.”
Pei Zhiwen lowered his narrow, hooded eyelids, pulled a small unlabelled plastic bottle from his pocket, and unscrewed the cap. Walking as he poured, he tipped two white pills into his mouth, expressionlessly biting the pills into pieces bit by bit.
His mouth filled with a bitter medicinal taste. As if he had lost his sense of taste, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed the crushed medication down.
The next day was the weekend.
Lu Jiayan’s internal clock woke him up punctually at seven-twenty in the morning.
Before leaving the club yesterday, he had sent a message to Pei Zhiwen to report and inform him that he was leaving first. The other man hadn’t replied, so he simply hailed a cab back to his apartment. Throughout the entire night, the chat interface between them still ended with his own sentence “I’m heading back first.”
Such an arrogant, self-centered style was typical of Pei Zhiwen.
It was classic “seen but too lazy to reply.”
Days without work were extremely pleasant; waking up early and not sleeping in kept the whole day feeling wonderfully long.
Lu Jiayan leisurely finished his carefully prepared homemade breakfast, washed the dishes, washed the fruit in the refrigerator and placed it in a fruit platter, brewed a cup of hand-drip coffee, and took a book out to the balcony for some photosynthesis.
Left undisturbed as he usually was, he could spend the entire day relaxing.
But right now.
Knock, knock, knock.
Suddenly, a knock sounded at the door.
Lu Jiayan raised his eyes, looking through the window at the rhythmically knocked heavy door.
Closing his book and placing it on the glass coffee table, he stood up and walked to the entryway.
The moment the door opened, he discovered that the visitor was a handsome young man in a suit.
Behind him were a few figures moving in and out, a group of employees in uniform uniforms moving suitcases and heavy cardboard boxes out of the elevator, stacking them up as if they were moving houses.
“What are you all doing?” Lu Jiayan asked.
The suit-clad young man bowed with a polite smile. “Mr. Lu, my name is Liu Yan, and President Pei’s personal assistant. He instructed me last night to bring his personal items and luggage here to get settled in at your place.”
Lu Jiayan’s gaze shifted horizontally to land on the cardboard boxes leaning against the wall by the door.
“Pei Zhiwen is going to live here?”
Liu Yan answered, “That is President Pei’s intention.”
Lu Jiayan thought silently.
The thirty-square-meter apartment was pitifully small.
To the left of the entryway were the kitchen, dining area, and bathroom. Near the right, an open bookshelf partitioned off a small room just big enough to fit a five-foot bed and a lazy sofa, and further right was the balcony.
Has Pei Zhiwen gone mad?
Leaving a luxurious villa spanning hundreds of square meters behind, he insists on coming over to squeeze into this place with him.
Lu Jiayan had thought that Pei Zhiwen’s mention of being at his beck and call over the span of a year meant, whenever he wanted to do it, he would send a message, and Lu Jiayan would only need to take a shower and rush over to the address provided.
He never expected it to mean cohabiting.
Was it just to make sleeping with him more convenient?
“Then you guys can move it inside.” Lu Jiayan wouldn’t make things difficult for Liu Yan by forcing him to take his things away. He stepped half a step to the side to expose the entire doorway for them to move in and out, pointing to the empty space beside the dining table. “Just pile the things here for now.”
Liu Yan nodded. “Alright, Mr. Lu.”
As a highly paid personal assistant, naturally he couldn’t just move the luggage inside and leave.
Lu Jiayan watched as Liu Yan pulled out a utility knife and sliced open the tape sealing the cardboard box, then deftly took out folded and categorized clothing, shoes, ties, and expensive luxury goods.
Seeing this, he stepped forward. “Let me help.”
Liu Yan replied, “It’s fine, Mr. Lu. I’ll just organize it, no need to trouble yourself.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Every spot here has an organizational pattern,” Lu Jiayan said, clearing out most of the wardrobe space and hanging up brand-new clothes as he spoke. “You can take the items out of the boxes and place them on the bed, leave the rest to me.”
Hearing this, Liu Yan agreed.
Although it looked like a lot of cardboard boxes had been brought in, there actually weren’t that many items once organized.
At most, it filled up the space Lu Jiayan had cleared out a while ago, adding a hint of another owner’s presence to every single corner of this room.
The two of them finished cleaning up quickly.
It was done in about an hour.
Liu Yan tidied up the trash and prepared to leave, stopping at the door to drop off one last sentence: “Mr. Lu, President Pei asked me to tell you that there are matters in Beijing he needs to handle, so he probably won’t be back until around eight-something tomorrow night.”
Lu Jiayan gave a slight nod. “Got it.”
Actually, it wouldn’t have mattered even if Pei Zhiwen hadn’t reported his whereabouts.
With the person gone and the door closed.
The cozy apartment was once again left with just Lu Jiayan and the newly moved-in belongings belonging to Pei Zhiwen.
Lu Jiayan looked around the room. The apartment now held items that didn’t belong to him, yet they stood in pairs as if it were the love nest of a passionately dating couple, stirring a subtle emotion in his heart.
He really couldn’t fathom Pei Zhiwen’s thoughts.
The man always acted entirely on personal whim, never discussing things with others, let alone allowing a plaything kept by his side to have any ideas of their own.
Take right now.
As the young master of a wealthy elite family, why would Pei Zhiwen wrong himself by coming to live together with him in this apartment that wasn’t even as big as the bathroom in any random Pei family property?
Was he just looking for something fresh?
A bed 1.5 meters wide would appear rather cramped with two adult males sleeping together. Back when he chose it to save money, the mattress wasn’t soft. For Pei Zhiwen, it would undoubtedly feel like lying on a cold floor.
After a brief moment of deep thought, Lu Jiayan decided to head out.
When he returned after finishing his errands, passing by the convenience store downstairs, Lu Jiayan paused for two seconds of contemplation and decided to go inside to stock up on some essential daily supplies.
“Hello, what can I get for you?” the cashier smiled politely at the newly arrived customer.
Lu Jiayan’s gaze shifted downward to land on the contraceptives placed right next to the gum display in the front row.
Looking closely, he noticed the sizes did not include extra-large.
“Excuse me,” Lu Jiayan asked, “do you have any larger sizes?”
“We don’t.”
Maintaining her smile, the cashier educated the handsome young man before her, “Our store generally only carries four sizes: extra-small, small, medium, and large.”
Hesitating for a moment, Lu Jiayan ultimately chose to grab a box of large sizes to pay, just to avoid suffering later.