Wei Zhenye’s whole body stiffened. He froze on the bed.
He Zheng’s acting had been too convincing. He hadn’t noticed at all that he was pretending to sleep.
This was bad. Extremely awkward.
He Zheng still hadn’t let go, his arm wrapped around Wei Zhenye’s waist. In a voice only the two of them could hear, he said, “You’ve got some nerve.”
The tone lifted slightly, teasing.
Wei Zhenye pulled the blanket over his head and said dully, “Stop teasing me.”
“What?” He Zheng laughed. “Who’s teasing who?”
“…”
“Who said they couldn’t sleep, then turned over and secretly kissed me?”
Under the blanket, Wei Zhenye clenched his teeth and forced out two words: “A dog.”
As soon as he said it, He Zheng started laughing. It was the loudest he’d ever laughed. In the middle of laughing, he even cursed once. Wei Zhenye couldn’t take it anymore, suddenly threw off the blanket, pushed himself up to sit against the headboard, crossed his arms, and stared at him with a blank face.
“How did it feel to kiss me?” He Zheng added fuel to the fire. “Say something. Chickened out?”
He stared straight at the red mole under Wei Zhenye’s eye and curved his lips. “Not continuing?”
“…”
He suddenly leaned closer, stopping at a distance where just lifting his face slightly would make it easy to kiss.
Wei Zhenye didn’t move. He didn’t dodge.
Taking it as agreement, He Zheng put a hand on the back of his head, pulled him closer, closed his eyes, and kissed the mole under his eye.
When he opened his eyes again, Wei Zhenye still hadn’t moved, his face tense, staring straight back at him.
He Zheng smiled helplessly. “You’re supposed to close your eyes when kissing, little puppy.”
Wei Zhenye still didn’t speak.
He Zheng leaned in closer and closer, their noses only a few centimeters apart. He raised an eyebrow. “Still not closing them?”
Wei Zhenye’s Adam’s apple moved. He grabbed He Zheng’s chin, lifted his face, and kissed him hard and directly on the lips.
“You asked for it,” Wei Zhenye said in a hoarse, low voice.
He Zheng smiled and hummed, prying open his mouth. The hand on the back of Wei Zhenye’s head pressed harder, leaving him no room to retreat.
Wei Zhenye had always said he had poor self-control, and He Zheng believed him. But at this moment, Wei Zhenye proved one thing with his actions—he was actually very capable of self control.
Only two seconds after being pushed down by He Zheng, he grabbed He Zheng’s shoulders and pinned him beneath him instead.
Both hands braced on either side of He Zheng’s head, he looked at him—his hair messed up from the kissing, chest rising slightly, but his eyes still clear.
Even though his mind was full of desire, and his body was painfully hard, Wei Zhenye still remembered what he had promised that day at the night stall: “I won’t go too far. I know my limits.”
Now was not the time.
He really wanted to touch He Zheng, but it wasn’t the time.
He rolled to the side, got off He Zheng, said nothing, and went to the bathroom to take a cold shower.
He Zheng licked his lips, his eyes full of amusement.
Water splashed loudly in the bathroom. Wei Zhenye showered for at least half an hour. When he came out, he got a call—his company was urging him to go back for a meeting.
His clothes were still half wet. He didn’t have time to change. He went downstairs first to buy breakfast for He Zheng and brought it up. Before leaving, he also took out a bag of trash. The whole time, he didn’t dare look at He Zheng once.
After seeing him off, He Zheng collapsed onto the bed, smoked a cigarette, opened WeChat, and scrolled through Moments.
He didn’t have many contacts. Most were small actors who ran around sets together. Their posts were either makeup selfies or boxed meals. Nothing interesting.
His finger slid down casually. A video flashed by, and he scrolled back up to look. It was posted by Yang Cheng the day before yesterday—hugging a blonde, blue-eyed woman while dancing in a club.
He clicked into Yang Cheng’s Moments. Almost all of it was the same flashy stuff—sports cars, cigarettes, women. The rich playboy combo.
As he kept scrolling, his finger suddenly stopped.
He saw a familiar figure.
In the video, two tall, slim men stood together. One of them showed a familiar bamboo-leaf tattoo. Black short-sleeved shirt, black pants, black baseball cap, even a black mask—everything black, completely covering his face.
He Zheng frowned slightly and opened the video. Yang Cheng was in casual clothes, showing his face, standing with his hands on his hips in a lazy pose, pointing at the screen and saying, “Don’t compare yourself to others too much. Just live honestly as yourself. But if you really have to compare—then compare laser rain.”
As the words fell, the heavy metal mechanical intro blasted out: URBBR GROUgan!
Strong, powerful drumbeats mixed with a loud, hype club-style chant. In the video, the two men started dancing at the same time. The one with tattooed arms moved smoothly and naturally, with just the right amount of force. A short elbow-turn combo flowed clean and slick. In contrast, Yang Cheng looked completely wild, shaking his head like he was on something, acting like an overexcited street kid.
He Zheng couldn’t help laughing out loud.
He had thought Wei Zhenye was just joking. He didn’t expect him to actually know how to dance “laser rain.”
What surprised him even more was that every move had its own feel. Especially next to Yang Cheng, Wei Zhenye looked especially pleasing to watch.
The video had been posted a year ago, before He Zheng appeared. Back then, Wei Zhenye and Yang Cheng had been extremely close friends. With Wei Zhenye’s quiet personality, the fact that he was willing to go crazy and mess around with Yang Cheng showed that their relationship was even better than people imagined.
They joked and insulted each other all the time, but the truth was clear. During the eight years He Zheng was absent, it was Yang Cheng who filled that space beside Wei Zhenye.
An indescribable feeling rose in He Zheng’s chest. Halfway through the video, he lost interest and stopped watching.
He got out of bed to wash up. The bathroom was still warm and damp. Wei Zhenye hadn’t touched any of his things and had only used a tiny bit of shower gel.
Thinking about how Wei Zhenye had been standing naked in the same spot just minutes earlier, He Zheng couldn’t help recalling that kiss.
It had been Wei Zhenye’s first kiss too, yet he hadn’t been awkward at all. If anything, he had quietly taken the lead.
He hadn’t closed his eyes, forcing himself to stay clear-headed, holding back his most basic desire, watching He Zheng slowly lose himself.
He Zheng had once felt the urge to rely on Wei Zhenye. Back then, he didn’t understand why he would feel that way toward a boy four years younger than him. But at the moment Wei Zhenye got off him and chose to take a cold shower, He Zheng finally understood.
Some people’s good manners come from deep inside. Like a jar of aged wine—the longer you taste it, the more precious it becomes.
…..
At seven in the morning, He Linlin finished her night shift and came home, bringing a package with her.
It was a stack of scripts.
Heavy and thick in his hands. When He Zheng opened it, his heart started pounding uncontrollably. This was the first time he had ever owned a script that belonged only to him.
After carefully reading for half an hour, he gently closed it. What Du Guosheng had said about the difficulty of this role was true.
The film was tentatively titled The Ghostwriter. It centered on a mental illness called dissociative identity disorder, commonly known as multiple personalities.
The main character was a writer who had suffered sexual abuse from his mother as a child. At seventeen, he split into a second personality to share his pain. This second personality was female, liked writing and dressing up, and would take control of the body during the creative process. His extreme talent made the characters in his writing feel vividly real. He became famous with his first novel, but when he started writing the second, the second personality suddenly went dormant and disappeared.
The protagonist anxiously sought medical help. The doctor congratulated him, saying that as long as he stopped relying on the second personality, he could return to a normal life. But no one expected that, for him, art mattered more than life itself. He began trying every possible way to wake the second personality. After reaching an almost unhealthy level of obsession, he finally succeeded.
In the last seven days of his life, he wrote a million-word novel without sleeping or eating properly, then suddenly died in his study. His family organized and published the manuscript, which sold extremely well. The illness sparked widespread public discussion, and mental health began to receive more attention—but the price was the life of a genius writer.
There was no romance in the entire film. The actor playing the lead needed to cross-dress. In that sense alone, He Zheng was indeed the most suitable choice.
But in terms of acting skills alone, He Zheng honestly wasn’t enough to carry it.
He looked at the cast list at the back. There were no traffic stars—everyone was a serious, highly skilled actor. Even the production team was made up of some of the top crews in the country. His presence felt both sudden and unreasonable.
He Zheng had a strong feeling that this film would be a turning point in his career—either pushing him to the top or destroying his acting dream for the rest of his life.
He had to act well.
This was the chance Wei Zhenye had fought for him. He couldn’t let it go to waste.