Beijing.
Yunting VIP floor, private room A888.
A group of elite young masters were attending a small gathering.
Near the corner by the floor-to-ceiling windows, several people were playing poker.
“I heard from He Yao that you exiled yourself to a small city called Jiangling?” The speaker was a flat-topped young man wearing a jacket, named Jiang Qingke.
He had a Pocky stick clamped between his teeth, holding the top end with two fingers while his other hand pinched his cards, casting a sideways glance at Pei Zhiwen, who was sitting on the sofa behind him with his long legs crossed.
Drawing a card and playing it, he bit the chocolate stick in half. “Aren’t you afraid someone will usurp the crown prince?”
The man sitting opposite Jiang Qingke was named Zhou Heng. He had single eyelids and a deeply cold, detached aura. Wearing a black shirt that gave him a mature air, his arms were full of vibrant power, his wrist bones prominent, and his veins visible. Drawing a single card and playing it, he lifted his eyelids and took over the conversation. “Who could compete with him?”
Jiang Qingke let out a short laugh. “I suppose that is true.”
Back then, the first thing Pei Zhiwen did after waking up from his car crash was to contact a psychologist, the second thing was to call off his engagement with Zhou Ruo, and the final thing was to officially take over the family business. Before leaving the hospital, he completely reshuffled the company’s systems, regulations, and personnel, boosting the company’s profit efficiency by ten percent through various projects.
Ever since then, Elder Pei no longer fussed over Pei Zhiwen canceling his engagement, gradually transferring the power in his hands to him. As for the other Pei family members who had vied for power, they were merely given verbal promises.
He Yao propped his chin up, looking bored. “Right now, our Ah Wen’s main focus is chasing his wife.”
Jiang Qingke raised a brow. “Lu Jiayan?”
Hearing this, Zhou Heng likewise lifted his eyelids to wait for the rest.
“Naturally,” He Yao tossed out two cards. “He is right there in Jiangling.”
Jiang Qingke gave a knowing, light laugh. “No wonder he exiled himself. Three years; it is enough time to win someone back and reconcile.”
The three of them were Pei Zhiwen’s lifelong friends, with a relationship so close they were practically thick as thieves.
The name Lu Jiayan was not unfamiliar to them. To outsiders, the stereotype was that Lu Jiayan was Pei Zhiwen’s little follower and plaything; but to them, it was nothing of the sort. A more fitting term to describe him would be Pei Zhiwen’s little boyfriend.
Even though Pei Zhiwen had never openly admitted it, as his friends, they clearly understood his thoughts.
Before his wings were fully grown, Pei Zhiwen had not wanted to thrust Lu Jiayan into the limelight.
Elder Pei held extremely high standards for his successor, allowing every offspring of the Pei family to have a chaotic personal life, but strictly forbidding it from being brought out into the open.
“I think it is going to be quite difficult.” He Yao glanced sideways at Pei Zhiwen, who was tinkering with something on the sofa.
The mere thought of how the opportunity he had delivered right to Pei Zhiwen’s lips, giving him a chance to explain his relationship with Zhou Ruo to Lu Jiayan, had been wasted made his heart ache.
The two of them were even playing some game, claiming they wanted to sign a contract where one was on-call at any time for a year.
“The truth behind the phrase love is hard to speak of continues to rise in value.”
As a lawyer, Jiang Qingke had once handled over a dozen litigation cases concerning relationships.
When people who loved each other failed to make it to the end, it was basically always a matter of personality.
Being stubborn, prideful, strong-willed, competitive, and sensitive, trivial matters would be viewed from three hundred and sixty angles. Everyone had their own opinions, and differing views would lead to arguments and debates, ending with neither side yielding and each clinging to their own perspective.
A very small minority were special cases where thoughts and behaviors formed a stark contrast, or perhaps the person they loved was simply not the best destination.
Zhou Heng glanced sideways at Jiang Qingke, who was once again biting down on a Pocky stick. “Counselor Jiang is quite the expert?”
Jiang Qingke raised a brow. “What can I do? I always have to be just a tiny bit more knowledgeable than Professor Zhou.”
Watching Jiang Qingke declare his last cards, He Yao felt his entire mood sour. “Can the two peasants stop feeding each other cards under the guise of chatting?”
He had already lost five consecutive rounds tonight, and the winner every time was still Jiang Qingke.
“My apologies.”
“Sorry.”
The two spoke in unison, yet neither of their faces wore the slightest trace of embarrassment.
He Yao noticed that the person being discussed had been sitting on the sofa tinkering with things all night, showing zero reaction or intervention even when his friends talked about him. In the past, he definitely would have snapped out a “Get lost” or “Are you all so idle?”
Seemingly recalling something, He Yao looked at Zhou Heng. “Right, what has Xiao Ruo been up to lately?”
Zhou Ruo was Zhou Heng’s younger sister, and the two siblings shared personalities and appearances that were practically carved from the same mold, cold, taciturn, and fiercely ambitious. The former was filled with ambition and had taken over her family’s enterprise as a corporate powerhouse, while the latter lectured and conducted research projects at Beijing University.
Zhou Heng said, “She just returned from abroad some time ago.”
He Yao poured a glass of juice. “We should call her out to gather and relax sometime. What is so great about being busy with work all day? You can appropriately date and play around with men’s emotions and bodies.”
Zhou Heng shot him a cold, sidelong glare. “Do not corrupt my sister.”
He Yao sighed.
What an unromantic fellow. No wonder he was still a virgin.
Pei Zhiwen sat on the sofa, lifting his eyelids slightly to take in the entire view of Beijing outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Skyscrapers rose straight from the ground, their neon lights converging into a river of silver.
The glass reflected the scene inside the private room, the bright, incandescent light, and the object he held in his hand catching the reflection.
It was a small, silver-gray USB flash drive embedded and sealed inside a hollow, spherical pendant.
Pei Zhiwen knew very well what was stored inside that sealed flash drive: over a hundred videos of himself and Lu Jiayan, their panting, their sweat, the surge of adrenaline, an activity that stimulated the nerve endings.
Just thinking about it was enough to make one’s blood boil.
For three years, Pei Zhiwen had relied entirely on these videos to soothe his irritable state of mind when he could not find Lu Jiayan.
“You spent the whole night tinkering just to make this unremarkable pendant?” Jiang Qingke sat on the armrest of the sofa. Currently trying to quit smoking, he always had a chocolate stick clamped in his mouth, biting and swallowing it in an attempt to curb the rising urge.
He Yao leaned over curiously. “What pendant?”
Catching sight of the hollow, spherical pendant in Pei Zhiwen’s hand, he saw a small rectangular object inside, resembling a hand-crafted bell. The sound it produced when shaken was not particularly crisp or melodious.
Compared to pendants one could buy with money on the market, this piece truly looked rather unremarkable.
“Made for Lu Jiayan?” He Yao asked.
Pei Zhiwen put the pendant away and gave his answer. “Yes.”
He Yao frowned, desperately wanting to blurt out: “You are so wealthy, yet you gift something so worthless?”
“I have matters to attend to, so I am leaving,” Pei Zhiwen stated, standing up. “Put tonight’s tab on my account.”
Jiang Qingke asked, “Are you not going to wait for Xiao Ruo to return? He Yao just said we should get together.”
The few of them often played together when they were young. As they grew older, each had to busy themselves with their careers, leading to fewer gatherings and more partings. The probability of all five of them managing to gather in a year was not high; out of ten invitations, they might manage one or two, and exceeding three times was considered a lot.
Pei Zhiwen straightened his cuffs. “Next time.”
“I will bring Lu Jiayan along.”
With those words, he offered a brief greeting and left.
He Yao drank his juice and watched Pei Zhiwen’s departing back with a helpless shrug.
Thinking about how his good friend was utterly incapable of expressing himself with words, he truly felt speechless.
Outsiders did not know, but the few of them were well aware that the engagement between Pei Zhiwen and Zhou Ruo was nothing more than a rumor put out to the public. In reality, a true engagement was completely impossible; its main purpose was to stabilize business relations between the Pei and Zhou families.
Now that the two had respectively become the heirs of their family enterprises, they had even less need for such illusory relationships to maintain their stock prices.
Jiang Qingke asked, “So Ah Wen’s purpose in transferring to Jiangling is what?”
He had assumed that, given Pei Zhiwen’s personality, he would have dragged the person back by force.
He Yao continued drinking his juice. “Being a dog for Lu Jiayan, obviously.”
Jiang Qingke laughed.
Zhou Heng chuckled.
What a remarkable theory about being a dog.