Who are you calling baby?
Chi Anyu quickly typed back, “What were you just sending? Who were you messaging? Why did it come to me?”
Xie Junyi: “Nothing. I mistyped.”
Chi Anyu curled the corner of his lips. It was hard to imagine Xie Junyi calling someone baby.
Xie Junyi sent another message: “I saw you weren’t in your room. Did you go out?”
Chi Anyu: “Yeah, I came to the company to deliver documents to my dad.”
Xie Junyi sent another photo, followed by a deep voice message, the final syllable deliberately drawn out: “When are you coming back? I learned how to make another pastry.”
Chi Anyu saw this message and complained to System, “I feel like Xie Junyi has nothing to do all day and just loves asking where I am.”
System said in a low voice: 『That’s your illusion. You should be worrying about what you’ll do when the villain returns to the Xie Family!』
Chi Anyu: “…” A hopeless situation.
Xie Junyi chatted about random family matters, trying to keep Chi Anyu talking a little longer, but Chi Anyu was gaming on his phone and brushed him off.
The sunset glow faded. Father Chi’s meeting still hadn’t ended, and Chi Anyu couldn’t be bothered to wait any longer. He stretched and prepared to head back.
He was just about to turn off his phone when the screen pushed a news alert at him. Now his phone was full of reports that his mother was preparing to get engaged to the Shen family, and it had already trended.
Chi Anyu sat quietly in the chair. Outside the floor-to-ceiling window, the sunset’s afterglow passed through the glass and left a faint golden light in his hair. He swiped his phone screen, reading the pushed news more seriously than he ever had before.
If he looked at it from Chi Anyu’s perspective, as long as his mother could walk toward happiness, he actually didn’t blame her for divorcing his father back then.
After all, life was so long. No one should be bound by an unhappy marriage.
Chi Anyu turned off his phone and closed his eyes, leaning back in the executive chair. His long lashes rested over his eyelids. Half of his face was bathed in light, and beneath the hazy glow there was a beauty shaped by time.
Suddenly, the phone rang.
Chi Anyu abruptly opened his eyes.
He took out his phone and saw that the caller ID said Mother.
Chi Anyu lowered his eyes. He probably guessed what it was about. After taking a deep breath, he still slid to answer.
On the other end of the phone, a gentle female voice soon came through, as if from another lifetime: “Yu Yu, how have you been lately?”
Chi Anyu gripped his phone tightly, his heart instantly tense. In a low voice, he called out the strange yet familiar address, “Mom…”
Wen Yue leaned against the yacht railing. The sea breeze blew her hair into a mess. As her hair fluttered, her red lips parted slightly. “You should already know, right? Mom is about to get engaged.”
Although he already knew about this, Chi Anyu was so silent at this moment that he did not know what to say. He could only stammer, “Yeah, then… congratulations…”
“Yu Yu, do you resent me for what happened back then?”
Chi Anyu froze. A bitter ache rose in the tip of his nose, but he still smiled and said, “I’m not a little kid anymore. It’s long over. I’m doing pretty well now. Anyway, my dad only has me as his one son, so he won’t treat me badly.”
A faint smile appeared at the corner of Wen Yue’s lips. She brushed the messy bangs behind her ear. “Then you’ll come to Mom’s engagement ceremony, right?”
Chi Anyu nodded. “Yeah, I’ll go. Is he good to you?”
Wen Yue knew who Chi Anyu meant. She bit her lip with a smile. “Your Uncle Shen is very good to me. When you meet him, you’ll know. He also has a son a few years older than you.”
Chi Anyu completely relaxed. He chatted with Wen Yue for a few more minutes until Father Chi came into the office, and only then did he hang up.
Chi Fei was also unusually quiet today. After entering the office and glancing at Chi Anyu, he said nothing. Chi Anyu wasn’t sure whether his dad knew about his mom’s engagement.
He looked at his dad, wanting to speak but hesitating.
Father Chi simply tidied up a little, then looked up at Chi Anyu and said slowly, “We father and son haven’t gone out for a meal alone in a long time. I’ve had the secretary book a private room. Let’s go eat tonight.”
Chi Anyu swallowed back the words on the tip of his tongue. In the end, he followed his dad downstairs, got into the passenger seat of his dad’s car, and went to an upscale dining room.
Inside the private room.
Chi Fei looked at Chi Anyu across from him and said in a deep voice, “A-Yu, be nicer to Little Xie. He may very well be the young master of the Xie Family who was lost outside. Letting him live in the Chi Family was actually selfish on Dad’s part. If one day Dad isn’t around anymore and he returns to the Xie Family, maybe he’ll be able to help you out of old ties.”
Chi Anyu’s brow twitched. Whether Xie Junyi would help him or not, he didn’t know. But in that absurd plot, once Xie Junyi went back, he would be finished.
Chi Anyu curled his lips. “Dad, then you’d better live a long life. I don’t have the skill to hold on to the Chi Family fortune.”
Chi Fei rubbed his temples. It was precisely because he worried about Chi Anyu’s future that he had always been preparing for the worst.
“Have you been getting along very well with the Eldest Miss of the Qi Family lately?” Father Chi changed the subject. “I’ve also had some cooperation with the Qi Family recently. If you have feelings for her, a marriage alliance based on mutual affection wouldn’t be impossible.”
Chi Anyu almost spat out his tea. He was actually covering for Qi You, but for now, he couldn’t tell his dad the truth, so he could only muddle through.
“It’s okay, I guess. Let’s talk about the marriage alliance later.”
Father Chi nodded. He was about to say something else when the waitstaff began serving the dishes, so he let the topic drop.
“I heard from Aunt Liu that Little Xie has been cooking for you lately. You shouldn’t keep bossing him around like that.”
Chi Anyu shot back, “That was all Xie Junyi’s own idea! How can you blame that on me?”
He wasn’t wrong. Lately, Xie Junyi had been the one proactively asking what he wanted to eat.
System 07 said it could testify that the villain had become a bit too obedient.
Chi Fei thought of something and sighed again. “Forget it. Since he’s treating you well now, you should treat him well too.”
Chi Anyu started shoveling rice into his mouth and ignored Father Chi. In the end, he even forgot to ask his dad about his mom’s upcoming engagement.
That night, after returning to the Chi Family with Father Chi, Chi Anyu had just sat down when Qi You sent him a sticker pack.
Chi Anyu: “??? What’s wrong?”
On the other side, Qi You thought it over and still felt it was necessary to give a reminder. After agonizing for a while, he sent Chi Anyu a message: “Anyu, don’t sleep too deeply tonight.”
He could be sure that the hickey left on Chi Anyu’s neck was definitely Xie Junyi’s doing. But for Chi Anyu to not know about it, there was only one possibility: Xie Junyi had been sneaking kisses in the middle of the night.
Chi Anyu became even more confused: “??? Why? Why are you suddenly telling me this?”