【Don’t black out every single time, come on, the plot’s this good, let us watch a little longer~】
Chu Li pretended not to see those comments.
Fortunately, at the most intimate, crucial moments, the comments never showed everything, otherwise she’d have to live a life of celibate restraint forever.
Shen Zhe’s waist was lean and strong, he’d been into sports since he was young. That same explosive readiness he had on the field, he brought fully into bed with her too.
Well.
Aside from the money, he did have some use after all.
Chu Li yawned, lying in his arms. To his earlier question about feeling somehow “off,” she didn’t answer directly: “Maybe you really have gotten a little weaker lately.”
Actually, she’d only just found out herself that she was the female lead of a restricted-rated novel.
She’d need a few more days to get properly used to it.
When she woke the next day, Shen Zhe had already left.
Two pillows, creased, had fallen off the bed onto the floor, the room in disarray. She sat up, bathed in a room full of morning sunlight.
Her alarm rang, it was Qin Mian, calling to get her up for work.
“You’ll never guess who showed up at our studio today.”
Chu Li played along. “Who?”
Qin Mian lowered her voice on the phone, sounding mysterious. “Shen Zhe’s big brother. He brought his secretary along, said he wants to work with us.”
“But he said he wants to talk to you in person.”
Chu Li stretched lazily, got up, changed clothes, and threw on a jacket. She told Qin Mian she’d head over, see her in ten minutes.
“Still, I keep feeling like Shen Jichu has some other agenda.”
Once Chu Li arrived, Qin Mian whispered to her, “You think, could he be trying to pay you off for the breakup, just in some roundabout way this time?”
Shen Jichu was arrogant and aloof, usually far too busy.
The deals he handled were mostly in the hundreds of millions, for him to suddenly come looking for their tiny little studio was more than a little strange.
Qin Mian analyzed it every which way and could only land on one conclusion: he was here to break up the happy couple.
【Silly girl, you’re still stuck in ancient-literature mode. Why not consider that your studio’s about to skyrocket to fame along the way?】
【Qin Mian: the sky’s falling. Thought her best friend was love-brained, when actually plenty of men are secretly after her behind the scenes.】
Chu Li saw yesterday’s secretary, and beside him, Shen Jichu sitting there drinking coffee.
He was dressed in a suit again, his shirt immaculate, buttons all the way up, nothing like a character out of a restricted-rated novel.
His gaze was restrained too, aside from that one flicker of subtle hostility yesterday when facing Shen Zhe.
“Miss Chu, sit.”
Shen Jichu, like a businessman, had already drafted up a contract, and asked her, following procedure, in a flat, matter-of-fact tone, whether she intended to sign.
Chu Li nodded.
Whatever his motive, he was still delivering money to her door. She skimmed the contract, found nothing unusual, and picked up the pen to sign.
She kept her head lowered, her expression focused.
Her soft, light-brown hair spilled down over her pale neck. Her lashes curved slightly, and her handwriting, like her looks, was neat and unassuming, with no hint of sharpness.
There was a cup of tea on the table. As she lowered her head, her hair was about to brush against it: “Oh, careful.”
So Shen Jichu reached out a fingertip.
In the honeyed sunlight, he caught that lock of hair. Lightly, like a breeze: “Be careful, don’t get it wet.”
Chu Li looked up at him. “Thank you, Big Brother Shen.”
She seemed to catch something stir briefly in the depths of his eyes.
Then Shen Jichu, as if jolted awake, let go and pulled back abruptly, saying, a little too quickly to cover himself, “It was nothing.”
As if he’d only just remembered, the woman in front of him was his little brother’s girlfriend.
Shen Zhe really wasn’t good enough for her, really did deserve to be sent abroad to work on his character.
Yesterday, when he’d suggested Chu Li break up with him, he’d been considering it from both their perspectives, for both their sakes. Nothing more behind it.
He also felt he owed her something.
Which was why he’d proposed the collaboration today.
【Shen Jichu’s still got way too strong a moral compass, no wonder the original plot needed all sorts of drugging tropes to get things moving. Not like the proactively scheming Pei Mo, or the dark-room-building Jiang Qinian.】
【Even though he looks so restrained right now.】
【But later he’ll be half-unbuttoned, bowing his head despite being the one on top, begging Li Li to kiss him, such a satisfying contrast for an untouchable ice queen type.】
A few more bullet comments drifted by, detailing various scenarios from the original plot.
They’d get blocked eventually, but she caught them in time.
Chu Li: “…”
Half-unbuttoned?
She looked at Shen Jichu in front of her, unable to quite picture that decadent scene.
His shirt right now was buttoned all the way to the top. Only the movement of his throat was visible, below that, nothing could be seen at all.
As if sensing her gaze.
Shen Jichu’s hand, holding the pen, tightened slightly. “What is it?”
What was she looking at?
As if lost in thought, studying him. Her gaze held nothing particular, seeming simply curious, except it happened to trail down along his tie.
Her gaze held nothing strange.
But he himself felt scalded by it somehow, not daring to meet it head-on. As if it might expose some deeper, hidden thought in him, rising up like a wave of heat.
Shen Jichu asked what was wrong.
Chu Li pulled her gaze back, answering plainly, “It’s warming up today, aren’t you hot, Big Brother Shen?”
She meant nothing else by it.
She genuinely thought that, dressed like this, he must be uncomfortably warm.
Shen Jichu lowered his eyes. “I’m fine.”
He wasn’t one for words. Once the contract was signed, the secretary standing nearby gestured to him, meaning there was yet another string of work meetings waiting for him.
“Where’s Shen Zhe? What’s he up to today?”
Shen Jichu asked abruptly.
Even as he asked, he already had a rough answer in mind.
He knew his brother well enough, carelessly, recklessly indulgent. No doubt off racing again, or fooling around with some other girl his age without any sense of restraint.
Sure enough, the secretary glanced at Chu Li, his tone a mix of sympathy, and said, “It seems he went to see Miss Xia again today. I heard they’re discussing some business deal.”
Shen Jichu looked at Chu Li.
He didn’t know what he was hoping for, or maybe, in some low, unworthy way, he wanted to see her hurt, wanted her to end up despising Shen Zhe, ending this relationship.
Chu Li blinked, and in her light tea-colored eyes, let a matching flicker of hurt show through.
Might she get that five million after all, this time?
Shen Jichu misread her expression entirely, and simply handed her a tissue, telling her not to be sad. “Shen Zhe isn’t the right match for you.”
“You deserve better, going forward.”
Better in what way, exactly, he couldn’t quite say.
Their eyes met and quickly broke away, he rose and left with the secretary, disappearing from her sight.
But once back at the company, after finishing his meeting, he took a brief nap in his office and dreamed of a scene involving Chu Li.
Strange, it felt as if it were set just yesterday.
In the dream, Chu Li had drunk that cup of sweetened milk. Then the secretary, looking alarmed, told him a business rival had spiked it.
Dream-Chu Li asked him, just as she had today: “Big Brother Shen, are you hot?”
Was he hot?
He was.
In the dream, he undid the buttons of his own shirt.
One by one, slowly, unfastened. His unwrinkled tie tossed aside on the floor. Shen Zhe never appeared to interrupt this time, only she came alone, delivering the documents.
In the end, Chu Li put on his shirt.
Her figure was slight, and beneath the overly long hem, her pale legs showed. She seemed to have been made to cry a little, the corners of her eyes tinged pink, the rest of the scene blurred.
Shen Jichu only felt how real the sensations in the dream had been.
His own voice rang out after a long moment.
Different from his usual refined tone, tinged with something harsher: “Are you getting close to Shen Zhe for the money?”
“I’ve had you investigated.”
He’d watched her in secret before, sometimes from the floor-to-ceiling windows at the top of the building, looking down at her and Shen Zhe below.
Sometimes sitting in his car, in some hidden corner, watching her and Shen Zhe’s day-to-day life together, bit by bit.
In the dream, Chu Li had been made to cry from the teasing.
Her pale legs kept trembling.
In the end, he was the one who gave in, bending down to kiss her lips: “Isn’t it just money? I can give you that too, I’d really like to… kiss you senseless.”
The scene was lush and decadent, every sensation feeling real.
As if it were meant to happen.
【Huh, Li Li dodged the original restricted-content scene, and yet these guys are still dreaming it up on their own.】
【So good, more please, don’t put up so many mosaics.】
In the dream, he naturally couldn’t see these comments that existed beyond his reality.
When Shen Jichu woke up, he let out a breath.
He lay there with his eyes open for a long moment before realizing it had only been a dream. His whole body was wrapped in heat, his hair damp with sweat, and somewhere, an uncomfortable, swollen fullness.
He pushed himself up to sit.
He undid the button at his collar, and the heat gradually eased off, letting him regain his composure.
He was excited.
Excited because of that dream.
The dream just now seemed to have stirred up some genuine desire buried deep in him, tearing off the mask of the dutiful, harmonious older brother.
Even as the heat receded, the lingering feeling stayed with him, his fingertips trembling slightly.
【Feeling good?】
【This is barely anything, it was just a dream. Are you ready to actually compete with Shen Zhe for Li Li?】
Shen Jichu went to take a cold shower.
He splashed cold water on his face, and that indescribable feeling in his body finally receded.
Every afternoon, Shen Zhe would call him, reporting in his careless way on how his independent business venture was going.
“Bro, Miss Xia and her people agreed to invest today.”
“Pretty impressive, right?”
Shen Jichu made a low sound of acknowledgment, his voice unusually hoarse.
Shen Zhe, on the other end, asked in confusion, “What’s wrong with you, are you sick?”
Maybe so.
He really did feel a little sick.
Shen Jichu ignored the question, asking instead in that hoarse voice, “You went to see Xia Zhi, aren’t you worried Chu Li will get angry?”
Shen Zhe laughed, still as careless and unbothered as ever. “We were just talking, I didn’t sleep with anyone else. Why would Li Li get angry?”
“She never gets angry.”
Shen Jichu said nothing.
“By the way, bro.”
“I heard you went and signed a contract with her studio. That wasn’t about the breakup thing, was it?”
Shen Zhe’s tone turned hopeful: “Have you finally seen how good she is? Not still holding onto your old prejudice against her?”
His chattering went on and on in Shen Jichu’s ear, the words like a string of noise, passing in one ear and out the other, leaving no trace.
Shen Jichu made another low sound of acknowledgment.
As Shen Zhe kept chatting with him affectionately, as usual—
His first instinct, in that moment, wasn’t concern for his little brother at all, but the thought that that decadent dream from before—
If only it had been real.