Ever since stepping out the door, Li Sheng felt his arm throbbing with pain. At this moment, he was in no mood to banter with him, and said impatiently to Yuan Ye: “What? Did my brother even tell you how we go to bed?”
Yuan Ye stepped a couple of inches closer, suddenly turning dead serious: “What I talked to you about earlier, how are you considering it?”
Li Sheng found it strange. He didn’t remember discussing anything with Yuan Ye; these past few days seemed to have been entirely consumed by family matters, and today seemed to be their first encounter—what matter was he talking about? Seeing his expression, Yuan Ye knew that he hadn’t taken the cooperation seriously at all, and walked back to the kitchen to continue cooking.
Yuan Ye was an extremely meticulous person. From his level of cleanliness and order to his strict self-discipline regulations, one could tell he was someone who had undergone professional training. Li Sheng simply didn’t believe that someone wholly devoted to the military district would make any friends outside, let alone remain as steady as a mountain amidst such a crisis. “You must be a soldier too, right?”
Yuan Ye ladled the simmering soup into a soup bowl, arranging them one by one on the dining table: “I am deeply honored that you can discern my inherent nature of goodness and loyalty.”
“Not hard to tell. I could figure it out just by looking at your demeanor and your attitude when talking with my brother.”
“Mhm.”
“Are you working as an undercover agent?”
Yuan Ye found it amusing: “I’m doing business in a deadpan, serious manner. Doesn’t it look like it?”
“Not at all. From the very beginning when I heard the rumors about you, it didn’t look like it at all—stuff like parents being ordinary employees, rising straight to the top without background or money. Ghost stories like that are only believed by naive little fangirls.”
In the brief pause while holding his chopsticks, Yuan Ye lowered his upper body, pressing very close to Li Sheng, and asked earnestly: “Then what do I look like?”
Li Sheng turned his body aside, sitting in his chair and preparing to eat: “At first glance, you look unscrupulous—probably couldn’t make it in the military district and got kicked out.”
After a long pause, Yuan Ye pulled Li Sheng’s rice bowl over, poked at the rice a few times with his chopsticks to let it cool down slightly, before handing it back to him with a spoon placed beside it. “Six years ago, because of a mission failure, I had no choice but to go into hiding. I changed my identity, stripped away my disguise, and went into business. By making the business a bit bigger, perhaps people wouldn’t pay attention to me anymore. The military district gave me a new identity and a new life, but I haven’t been home in six years. I haven’t even dared to make a phone call, nor dared to contact my parents. At the beginning of this year, that gang was finally arrested, so I can go home this year. What I said about partnering up with you wasn’t a lie.”
Li Sheng picked up the spoon, taking a sip of soup from time to time. All the dishes had been cut by Yuan Ye into suitable sizes so that Li Sheng could easily scoop them up. Enduring loneliness, fear, and longing in isolation to survive six years—yet external society made these six years sound so effortless. Li Sheng raised his head to look at Yuan Ye. Yuan Ye still maintained a soldier’s posture, with a straight figure and upright sitting posture. At this moment, if a police siren sounded outside, he could easily imagine the speed at which Yuan Ye would charge toward the formation.
Noticing Li Sheng’s gaze, Yuan Ye didn’t look up, instead refilling Li Sheng’s emptied soup bowl: “Let’s talk about you. Why did you break up with that guy named Wei Heng?”
“It’s like you’ve never seen a gay person before. Why are you so fixated on this kind of thing?”
“You guessed right, it really is my first time seeing one. Especially the other day after drinking, seeing you squatting by the roadside made me even more curious.”
“No need to be curious. We don’t have that many stories; it was flat beyond description. He didn’t love me, so we broke up.”
“Then you’re quite pathetic—wouldn’t it be fine to just find someone who loves you?”
“When you talk nonsense, you’re quite pathetic too.”
Yuan Ye curved the corners of his mouth, took his own rice bowl to the sink, and returned to his seat carrying two glasses of water, placing one cup in front of Li Sheng. Because his hand was inconvenient, Li Sheng ate extremely slowly, and he constantly felt Yuan Ye’s two direct gazes staring right at him, turning what should have been a fine meal into an overstuffed, bloated experience.
After the meal, Yuan Ye started cleaning up the kitchen. His speed was very fast. Once he finished everything, he went to the study to rummage around for a while, then pulled out a stack of papers and tossed them right in front of Li Sheng.
“Let’s talk about official business. The matter of cooperating with me—you didn’t take it seriously at all and completely forgot about it. Take a look at the contract; this is the first step of your entrepreneurial venture. You won’t find a more considerate business partner than me.”
Li Sheng suddenly remembered this matter. Afterward, Yuan Ye had never brought it up again, so he had assumed Yuan Ye was just casually talking. He never imagined that even the contract would be fully drafted, with every clause clear and distinct. There were only three partners listed. When he saw Yang Shu’s name, he cursed him from head to toe in his heart: the bastard had everything settled without dropping a single hint, acting all giggly and playful with him every day, only to turn out to have jumped ship long ago.
Knowing that this would be Li Sheng’s reaction upon seeing the contract—and similarly, when Yang Shu had seen Li Sheng’s name on the contract earlier, his expression was practically identical—Yuan Ye couldn’t help smiling: “Looked it over?”
Li Sheng set the contract down, furrowed his brows slightly, and said: “I’ll think about it some more.”