Once inside, Liang Jiming wanted to head to his bedroom, but seeing Yao Zhen’s lingering expression of resentment, he sighed and sat down in the living room instead.
Xiao Wei brought over the phone he had just bought, registered with a local SIM card, and had even thoughtfully applied for a new WeChat account. To the current Liang Jiming, a phone was essentially a tool for research. Although he had lost his memory, his basic cognition and common sense were intact; he wasn’t incapable of self-care, and a phone made things easier.
Yao Zhen stretched his leg out and gave him a little kick.
Liang Jiming looked up.
The young master tapped his WeChat QR code and held it out. “Add me.”
After exchanging contact info, Yao Zhen huffed and changed the contact nickname to [Wife].
Liang Jiming asked him, “I can’t use my old WeChat?”
Yao Zhen shot back, “Do you remember the login password?” Without waiting for an answer, he spread his hands. “You don’t remember the password, and your old SIM card is lost so you can’t verify it. How else are you going to use it?”
If I actually let you use it, how am I supposed to keep this show going?
Liang Jiming said no more. He looked down at Yao Zhen’s name in his contacts, his feelings complicated. Since he opened his eyes two days ago, the world had been a blank slate. This unreliable young master was currently the only anchor in his perceived reality. It was a strange, subtle feeling.
Suddenly, a barrage of transfer notifications popped up. Yao Zhen had sent him five consecutive transfers, each for the maximum limit of 200,000—a total of one million.
“Pocket money. Take it.”
Liang Jiming was speechless. The “ten-billion-dollar heir” thing seemed to be true; a million was just pocket change to him. Yao Zhen felt perfectly at ease; his favorite thing was throwing money at people—he did it when he was happy and when he was not.
Just a million. He considered it a “service fee.”
Liang Jiming hesitated. Being penniless truly wasn’t an option. He originally only wanted to accept one transfer, but the thought of Yao Zhen’s tearful, reproachful look from earlier made his scalp tingle. He didn’t want to be nagged or pestered again, so he simply clicked “accept” on all of them.
Yao Zhen ignored him after that, turning on the TV and curling up on the sofa to play games. Liang Jiming continued to fiddle with his new phone. There wasn’t much to do; he only installed a few basic apps.
He caught a glimpse of Yao Zhen’s pale leg resting on the edge of the sofa. The young master’s toes curled slightly in excitement over the game—the skin was blindingly white. Liang Jiming looked away, returning his focus to the screen.
He also changed the nickname for his contact.
[Benefactor]
“…What’s the situation with my family?” Liang Jiming asked, trying to fill the silence. “Do they know I’m here with you?”
Yao Zhen’s eyes never left the game screen. “You don’t have any family; your parents passed away a long time ago. You didn’t even go to college—you just started working right away.”
Liang Jiming: “…”
Yao Zhen’s words weren’t entirely false. Liang Jiming was his rival, so naturally, he had made it his business to know his enemy. The man had been raised on the charity of others and possessed a cold nature; he was an ambitious wolf with eyes only for profit, obsessed with climbing the social ladder.
But he had gone to school, and he had excelled. He was a top graduate from a prestigious law school and had interned at Shen Zhijie’s law firm during his undergraduate years. After all, one couldn’t climb to the top on looks alone; Jinghe wasn’t that shallow.
Liang Jiming asked again, “How did we meet?”
Yao Zhen spun a lie effortlessly. “You worked for a security company and were dispatched to my family’s firm. Later, you became my private bodyguard.”
As he spoke, he suddenly remembered the question Liang Jiming had asked yesterday. He finally shifted his gaze, stretching out a leg to rub his toes against Liang Jiming’s thigh. “Want to ask how you caught this Young Master’s eye again?”
Liang Jiming watched him in silence.
Yao Zhen tilted his head. “You have a good face.”
He stared at Liang Jiming’s overly handsome face—the sharp, smooth contours, the deep-set eyes beneath a prominent brow. He was impeccably handsome.
That was his only redeeming quality.
“You used to be very obedient. You did whatever I told you to do,” Yao Zhen said with a beaming smile. “If I told you to go east, you never went west. If I told you to kneel, you’d never stand…”
“Did the Young Master find a boyfriend or raise a dog?” Liang Jiming interrupted coldly, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Yao Zhen gave him a light kick. “You never used to talk back or annoy me like this.”
Liang Jiming grabbed his restless ankle. “So as long as someone is willing to be your dog, they can get into the Young Master’s bed?”
“What are you talking about?” Yao Zhen tried to kick again but was pinned down by Liang Jiming’s preemptive grip. He questioned him with displeasure, “What do you take me for? Am I that kind of person? You’re not just looking down on me; you’re looking down on yourself!”
The stony expression on Liang Jiming’s face softened slightly. He fell silent and released him.
Yao Zhen thought to himself that this was an easy win. He kept his toes rubbing against Liang Jiming’s leg. “Baby what are you thinking about?”
Liang Jiming raised his eyelids. “If the Young Master truly likes me”
“…” No, I actually hate your guts. Yao Zhen didn’t blink. “If I didn’t like you, would I have brought you here? I’m rotting away in this godforsaken place every day; if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have made it. You, on the other hand, always worry that you’ll hold me back or ruin me, so you try to run. Who does that?”
He had found a perfect excuse for their previous “fight” and Liang Jiming’s attempt to leave. Sure enough, once those words were out, Liang Jiming had no way to refute them.
If he were still the shrewd, eagle-eyed lawyer he was before the amnesia, he would have exposed Yao Zhen’s little tricks in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, he was currently as blank as a sheet of paper.
Though he still felt a vague sense of oddity, Liang Jiming now believed about seventy or eighty percent of the story regarding their relationship.
…He just found it a bit hard to accept.
Yao Zhen sat up, his face zooming in toward Liang Jiming without warning.
“Baby, why don’t you ask how much you liked me?”
Liang Jiming looked at the smug, cunning eyes inches away and spoke numbly: “How much?”
“You,” Yao Zhen raised a hand, tracing circles over Liang Jiming’s heart, “said you loved me to death. You said you’d give me anything and were even willing to die for me.”
Liang Jiming frowned almost imperceptibly. That’s far too ‘lovestruck.’
He found that even harder to accept.
Seeing Liang Jiming’s complicated, indescribable expression made the young master feel incredibly satisfied. Playing with an idiot was indeed fun.
………..
In the afternoon, the manager brought over two more contracts for Yao Zhen to sign.
Yao Zhen rolled his eyes, took the pen, and flipped straight to the last page. Seeing this, Liang Jiming spoke up: “You’re signing without even looking?”
Yao Zhen was too lazy to read them and pushed the contracts toward him. “Ah-Ming, you read them for me. If you’ve seen them, it’s the same as me seeing them.”
Liang Jiming said, “I’m just a bodyguard. Can I really review contracts for you?”
Yao Zhen nodded. “If I say you can, you can.”
He actually wanted to test just how deep the man’s amnesia went.
Liang Jiming asked, “Since this place barely makes any money in a year, yet you spend money like water, neglect your work, and are impatient when resolving guest conflicts… aren’t you afraid of running through your savings?”
Yao Zhen propped his chin on his hand and smiled at him. “Are you worried about me?”
Liang Jiming said faintly, “With you handing out a million in pocket money at a time, I’m just afraid you’ll go bankrupt and I won’t find a second benefactor like you.”
Beside them, the manager—who was trying his best to act like a piece of invisible furniture—was floored.
A million in pocket money just like that? If someone offered him that kind of cash to be kept hidden away, he’d jump at the chance too!
Yao Zhen was delighted. “Then, baby, you better serve me well. If you keep me happy, I might give you even more.”
It was only a million. He could just act cute with his mom, and the money would be in his account in no time.
The manager’s mouth, which had hung open in envy, slowly closed. Forget it, he thought, without that face and that body, this isn’t money an ordinary person can earn.
Liang Jiming ignored the nonsense and flipped through the documents.
Both were service procurement contracts written in Chinese. Liang Jiming read them with extreme care. Though his memory was gone, his professional instincts remained razor-sharp. Cross-referencing with local laws and regulations he looked up on his phone, he began circling and marking the contracts with a pencil.
The manager didn’t take him seriously at first, but soon he was genuinely shocked. Contracts that the legal department had vetted two or three times actually had several detailed loopholes picked out by this man.
“Young Master Yao, he…”
The manager wanted to ask where on earth he’d picked up such a treasure, but Yao Zhen shot him a warning glare. The manager swallowed his words, not daring to say another thing.
Liang Jiming handed back the revised contracts. Yao Zhen glanced at them and tossed them to the manager. “What do I even pay you people for?”
The manager was speechless.
After dismissing him, Yao Zhen gave Liang Jiming a big thumbs-up, though he was really praising himself: “My taste is truly impeccable.”
Liang Jiming shook his head slightly. Over the past few days, he had been constantly questioning his own taste and standards. But in front of his “benefactor,” he decided to keep that to himself.
On his phone, a group chat full of his wealthy, idle friends was lighting up. They were asking if the typhoon had passed so they could fly over and “visit him in prison.”
Yao Zhen typed lazily: [Hurry up and get here. This Young Master is officially off the market. I’ll show you my sweetheart [Grin].]
The group exploded: [WTF!]
[Zhen-ge, you finally did it? Someone actually caught your eye? Yoyoyo~]
[Calling them ‘sweetheart’ already? Is it a cutie or a hottie?]
[Foreigner! A blonde with long legs and curves is the best!]
[Hurry, drop a photo so we can inspect the goods!]
Yao Zhen laughed and cursed: [Get lost~]
He casually sent a candid shot he’d just taken of Liang Jiming’s profile. He hadn’t held the phone steady, so the photo was a bit blurry, but anyone with eyes could see that Yao Zhen’s “sweetheart” was a man.
The group: [!!!]
The silence of the crowd was deafening. Yao Zhen didn’t bother explaining; as long as he was having a good time, that was enough.
Zhao Zihua messaged him privately: [Holy shit, holy shit! Is that person in the photo Lawyer Liang? He’s with you? You guys actually got together? Aren’t you two rivals?!]
While others might not recognize Liang Jiming, Zhao Zihua did. Liang Jiming was the external legal counsel for his father’s company, and Zhao Zihua had dealt with him plenty of times. More importantly, he knew that Yao Zhen and Liang Jiming were like fire and water because of Shen Jinghe.
When that photo popped up in the group, he thought Yao Zhen had been possessed!
Yao Zhen: [[Smile]]
Zhao Zihua: [Dog Head Emoji]
Yao Zhen: [Don’t ask, and don’t meddle. Zip your lip and pretend you know nothing.]
Zhao Zihua: [Just tell me first, is it him?]
Liang Jiming went to the wet bar to brew some coffee. He came back and handed a cup to Yao Zhen, sliding it across the coffee table toward him.
Yao Zhen arched an eyebrow.
Liang Jiming said calmly, “It’s only right to serve the Young Master.”
Since being “lovers” was hard to accept, he would treat it like serving a benefactor. He would do his best to keep the young master satisfied.
Yao Zhen beamed and picked up the coffee cup. He quickly replied to Zhao Zihua
[Yes.]