Wu Jin watched with his own eyes as Fu Juncheng angrily stormed into the bedroom and locked the door behind him, only then realizing something was wrong.
Who knew when Fu Juncheng had pulled off such a trick, quietly changing the lock on his bedroom door all by himself?
In the past, when had Fu Juncheng ever failed to enthusiastically crawl over to please him, only to be pushed away in disgust?
Yet now…
Wu Jin was dazed for a few seconds before raging, “Fu Juncheng, what are you doing hiding in there?”
Naturally, Fu Juncheng couldn’t admit through a closed door that he was doing it to ward off a wolf.
He coughed a few times, putting on a convincing act while his words dripped with obvious perfunctory evasion, “I think I might have caught a cold, I don’t want to pass it to you.”
“…”
“You know how heavy the rain was last night.”
Wu Jin could tell that Fu Juncheng’s words were filled with heavy sarcasm, directly shifting the blame onto him.
“You…”
The words at the tip of his tongue were forced down as Wu Jin suppressed his anger, pulling a cigarette from his pocket to light it.
Forget it.
This little punk was being stubbornly defiant right now, but the time would naturally come when he would have to beg for mercy.
For now, he would just let Fu Juncheng throw his tantrums.
When the time came, he would make this person pay back every single bit of grievance he had suffered.
Inch by inch, he would take it all back.
Begging for mercy wouldn’t work either.
Thinking of this, Wu Jin sneered with a twitch of his lips, his thoughts suddenly shifting to rumors he had heard about Xu Yaozhou returning to the country.
Perhaps he had been blinded by anger from Fu Juncheng, but he had almost forgotten about such an important matter.
Just as he prepared to contact Xu Yaozhou, his phone suddenly rang with a call from his assistant.
The person on the other end hesitated and stammered. Wu Jin’s mood was already ruined by Fu Juncheng, so he impatiently urged, “Spit it out if you have something to say.”
The other side hesitated for a few seconds, “Someone just came forward to say that last night…”
“What?”
“When we went to give Fu Juncheng trouble last night, someone stepped in to help him.”
Hearing this, Wu Jin walked a bit further away and scoffed, “You couldn’t even handle two people. Useless.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, a wave of suspicion washed over Wu Jin.
He had investigated all of Fu Juncheng’s social circles. Because of his withdrawn personality and family background, he basically had no friends.
Who on earth would help him?
On the other end of the phone, the assistant mustered up his courage and stammered, “The person said the young man who stood up for Fu Juncheng looked a lot like someone from the Xu family, so they didn’t dare act rashly. They were afraid of accidentally hurting the wrong person, and if things went poorly with you, that would be one thing, but the Xu family is someone we can’t afford to offend either. What, what if…”
“…”
Wu Jin fell completely silent for several full seconds, “Are you sure you didn’t see wrong?”
Xu Yaozhou standing up for Fu Juncheng?
They were people from completely different worlds. How could that be possible?
Fu Juncheng originally thought that after Wu Jin angrily slammed the door and left that day, he wouldn’t bother him for quite a few days.
It would be best if they never crossed paths again until death.
For one, he would solve a trouble, and for another, Wu Jin wouldn’t later try to push him to his doom just to clear his name in front of Xu Yaozhou.
When it came down to it, Wu Jin was just sick in the head. Wasn’t this pure self-inflicted torment?
Who would have expected that the very next day, Wu Jin would call him again just as Fu Juncheng was stepping out of the subway station while yawning.
He casually bought a cup of soy milk at a roadside shop, wearing an oversized hoodie that covered most of his face while lazily biting down on a straw, only to hear Wu Jin say, “Go out with me tonight. Stay quietly at home and wait; I’ll send someone to pick you up later.”
Fu Juncheng asked inexplicably, “What for?”
Wu Jin surprisingly had the patience to explain, “The Xie family’s charity banquet.”
Hearing this, Fu Juncheng immediately laughed, “Aren’t you afraid I’ll start a fight with Xie Chen?”
Wu Jin said coldly, “In an occasion like that, you should know your own boundaries.”
“Fine,” Fu Juncheng said, “But I’m still…”
The words “don’t want to go” were already on the tip of his tongue when Fu Juncheng suddenly thought of something, pausing instantly. He immediately flipped the script, “Since you’ve put it that way, let’s go together.”
Probably not expecting Fu Juncheng to agree so readily, Wu Jin froze for a moment.
Fu Juncheng said, “I’ll give you a surprise when the time comes.”
Wu Jin: “…”
If he had heard such words in the past, Wu Jin wouldn’t have thought anything of it and would have just laughed it off.
Hearing Fu Juncheng say it now after such a long time, Wu Jin instead narrowed his eyes, curious about what kind of tricks this person could pull off. Thinking this, his tone gained a hint of playful amusement, “Alright, I’ll be waiting.”
He genuinely wanted to see what kind of surprise Fu Juncheng could bring him.
Meanwhile, after hanging up the phone, Fu Juncheng was imagining the headache Wu Jin must be having, and his mood was already more than half improved when a camera flash suddenly went off nearby.
Glancing over slightly, he noticed a schoolgirl-looking girl behind him. As her eyes met his, she excitedly tugged on her friend’s sleeve and exclaimed in surprise, “Look, look! So handsome!”
“Could that actually be Xu Yaozhou?”
“No way, Xu Yaozhou is way more handsome, duh!”
“Hahaha, I’m dead, why didn’t you say it was Fu Juncheng?”
“Get lost, get lost, the Fu dog is ugly as hell, how dare you compare him to my Xu Yaozhou.”
Fu Juncheng: “!”
Taking pictures of him was fine, but saying his looks were subpar? Could he tolerate that?
Fu Juncheng angrily bit down on his straw. As he passed by the glass window of a nearby shop, his casual gaze landed on the faint, shadowy reflection of his figure above.
Though the original body’s face looked identical to his own, perhaps due to malnutrition, he was much thinner than before, carrying the look of someone who couldn’t lift anything heavy or shoulder any burdens. No wonder others always felt he was easy to bully.
He truly looked as frail as a willow in the wind.
Fu Juncheng rubbed his wrists.
That fight the other night had been satisfying, but the sore back and aching waist afterward were something he hadn’t expected. Hitting someone actually hurt your own hands, which meant the original body really hadn’t gotten physical with anyone before.
Tsk.
Such a pitiful good baby, how did he end up getting ruined into a paranoid wreck later on?
Fu Juncheng sighed inwardly, his feet already strolling lazily over to the group of girls.
The young girls had been laughing and joking, never expecting that the handsome guy they had secretly photographed would suddenly walk over as if wanting to strike up a conversation with them.
For a moment, they blushed furiously, feeling both embarrassed and flustered, too shocked to say a complete sentence.
Fu Juncheng looked at their beet-red faces and offered a half-smiling reminder, “You dropped something.”
The girl standing dead in the center froze, taking a long time to snap back to her senses.
Looking helpless, Fu Juncheng had no choice but to slightly raise his chin, gesturing toward the doll pendant that had fallen on the ground, and repeated itself, “The charm on your backpack fell off.”
Hearing this, the girl blinked, finally reacting. She hurriedly and awkwardly picked up the doll charm lying by her feet and repeatedly expressed her thanks.
Fu Juncheng turned to leave.
Only to hear the girl shyly speak up, stammering for a long time without managing to finish a full sentence, “C-can I add your WeChat, I…”
Fu Juncheng refused without even thinking, saying with a half-smile, “No need, I’m ugly and I don’t use WeChat.”
The other party: “???”
“Though that doll of yours is pretty cute.” Fu Juncheng pointed at it and remarked offhandedly.
“You like Xu Yaozhou too?” The girl’s eyes lit up, “This was from the fan club earlier, if you like it, I can give it to you?”
Fu Juncheng hadn’t originally planned to take anything from them.
Yet when his gaze swept across the palm-sized Q-version doll charm, he nodded against his better judgment.
The girl happily handed over the doll. Fu Juncheng caught it in his hand, looking it over a few times while still feeling several burning gazes directed at his direction from the opposite side.
Fu Juncheng turned around, then remembering something, turned back to ask, “By the way, are there any recommended hair salons around here?”
The girl hesitated for a moment, looking somewhat reluctant, and instead of answering, asked back, “Since you also like Xu Yaozhou, why don’t you join our Xu Yaozhou fan group?”
Fu Juncheng: “???”
The girl said, “If you join the group, I’ll tell you.”
Fu Juncheng: “!”
The charity banquet hosted by the Xie family sounded nice, a noble act of doing good deeds and accumulating virtue, but everyone knew it was just a business banquet wrapped in the guise of charity used for networking and putting on pleasantries. Basically, all the prominent figures with faces and names in the industry were present.
The highest-profile among them all belonged to the Xu family.
The eldest son of the Xu family put on quite a show. As soon as he stepped out of his luxury car, he was swarmed and surrounded right in the center by a crowd. As the heir of the Xu family, the media naturally wouldn’t let go of such a prime reporting opportunity, especially since Xu Jiaming also had a younger brother who was the ultimate traffic magnet in the entertainment industry:
Xu Yaozhou, an existence akin to the very peak of the industry.
Born as a wealthy young master of a prestigious family paired with unparalleled topic popularity, everyone knew that as long as a headline carried Xu Yaozhou’s name, they never had to worry about nobody clicking to read the article.
Naturally, the eager questions hurled by the scrambling reporters gradually shifted in tone: “Young Master Xu, may I ask when your younger brother Xu Yaozhou returned to the country? Will he be attending tonight’s banquet?”
Xu Jiaming’s face darkened, and the speech he had carefully prepared ahead of time didn’t get to use a single word.
The next second:
“Isn’t that Xu Yaozhou?”
“Why is Xu Yaozhou with Elder Xie?”
They watched as Xu Yaozhou, the very protagonist the media had been inquiring about, stepped down from another car and was directly escorted into the inner hall alongside Elder Xie himself. Although they were two generations apart, their conversation made them look like old friends. Compared to Xu Jiaming, Xu Yaozhou looked much more like he was representing the Xu family at the banquet.
Following right behind them was Xie Chen. The usually arrogant and overbearing young master of a wealthy family wore a rare, listless expression on his face, until he caught sight of Wu Jin. Only then did a hint of his arrogant demeanor resurface as he scanned the surroundings and asked in confusion, “Just you by yourself?”
Before Wu Jin could answer, Xie Chen asked again, “Why aren’t you sitting inside? What are you doing out here?”
Wu Jin cast a meaningful glance at Xu Yaozhou, who was looking over upon hearing the commotion, and smiled, “Waiting for someone.”
As he spoke, his gaze slowly and gently landed on Xu Yaozhou’s face, looking as though he couldn’t bear to look away even for a second.
It wasn’t until Xu Yaozhou turned completely in his direction that Wu Jin’s gaze locked onto a tiny, faint scratch at the corner of Xu Yaozhou’s eye, causing him to instantly knit his brows together.
It wasn’t obvious at all.
Yet it was hard for anyone not to notice.
After exchanging a few simple pleasantries with Elder Xie, Wu Jin finally found an opportunity to converse with Xu Yaozhou: “It’s been so long, yet you’ve grown so distant from me?”
Xu Yaozhou glanced at him indifferently without taking up the conversation.
Wu Jin said with a deep voice, “You injured the corner of your eye? How did that happen?”
Before he could wait for Xu Yaozhou’s answer, someone interrupted their conversation ahead of time.
With a complicated expression, the assistant glanced at Xu Yaozhou before lowering his voice to speak to Wu Jin, “President Wu, the person has been picked up.”
He truly couldn’t guess what on earth his boss was thinking.
Keeping a canary to gaze upon and reminisce was one thing, but now, merely hearing that the canary might possibly know the white moonlight, he had actually thrown caution to the wind and willingly brought his unspeakable canary right before the white moonlight.
What kind of crematorium situation was this?!
And to make matters worse, that canary was…
For no apparent reason, he had hit his rebellious phase, and goodness knows if he found out he was merely a substitute and decided to just completely self-destruct and let loose.
Hearing the assistant’s words, Wu Jin choked on the words stuck in his throat, and he was just about to issue a reprimand.
Suddenly, he saw Xu Yaozhou bypass him entirely and look straight past him. Xu Yaozhou’s gaze flickered, freezing for a few seconds. Even though his thin lips remained lightly pressed together, the emotions swirling in the depths of his eyes couldn’t be faked.
The original detached expression on Xu Yaozhou’s face melted away like spring snow the moment he caught sight of a certain someone’s figure, and smiles overflowed unstoppably from those dark, limpid peach-blossom eyes.
Wu Jin narrowed his eyes and turned his head to look back as well.
Wu Jin: “!”
In his line of sight, Fu Juncheng was wearing a loose black hoodie. With his long limbs and tall frame, he exuded vibrant energy amid the meticulously dressed crowd, inexplicably radiating a student-like aura.
Yet he had paired it with an eye-catching head of white hair, tinged with a soft grayish hue.
It made his already striking facial features appear even deeper and more captivating, displaying a certain sharp, piercing beauty. Yet those slightly drooped outer corners of his eyes carried a kind of innate, innocent charm, creating a stark contrast.
A gentleville harboring hidden daggers often looked just like this.
Wu Jin had originally intended to use this banquet to blunt Fu Juncheng’s sharp edge.
Little did he know that rather than attending the banquet as a guest, Fu Juncheng looked much more like he was here to smash the place up.
Amid countless gazes, Fu Juncheng walked casually up to Wu Jin. Acting as though he hadn’t expected to run into Xu Yaozhou here, he paused for half a second before shifting his gaze back to Wu Jin, handsome brows slightly raised: “I said I was going to give you a surprise.”
Wu Jin: “!”
Fu Juncheng: “Surprised?”
Fu Juncheng had originally wanted to dye his hair green for Wu Jin’s sake.
As it turned out, some alternative non-mainstream youth happened to have dyed his hair green too, and his hair quality wasn’t very good either, making him look a bit like a melon.
It looked extremely tacky.
Not cool at all.
White hair was much better.
Both cool and stylish.