Although the morning incense-burning ceremony performed by Zhang Ma, a remnant of feudalism, was absent, Yu Yuan still woke up around six o’clock, only this time he was awakened by hunger.
The night before, after Gu Shaocheng took his medicine, he and his entourage disappeared. He was starving and struggled with his conscience for a long time, but he didn’t have the courage to knock on the nanny’s door. Yu Yuan was really afraid that if he opened the door, he would be met with more than a dozen nannies who would make him a midnight snack. He would rather go to sleep on an empty stomach.
In fact, after Aunt Lin’s accident, the nannies were all on tenterhooks, fearing that their employer might go crazy again and cause them to become paraplegics as well.
So since then, apart from Zhang Ma and the bodyguard team, only two nannies are left on night duty. Unless there is nothing else, the nannies will stay in the nanny room. They will only be called out by the call bell if Gu Shaocheng or Zhang Ma have any needs at night.
Yu Yuan rubbed his empty stomach, and after a moment’s hesitation, he sat up. In order to find food, he had to face the excessive levels of harmful substances, the nannies, at the villa.
Just as he was pondering how to persuade Gu Shaocheng to reduce the number of nannies, the door to the room was pushed open from the outside, and Gu Shaocheng, who had disappeared all night, reappeared, exuding a chilling aura.
Yu Yuan was wearing a loose bathrobe, the sash of which was loose from sleeping all night and had not yet been straightened, revealing a small patch of fair and smooth chest. The stray hairs he tried to blow to cover his forehead were now messy from his sleep, revealing his already outstanding face.
Upon Gu Shaocheng’s arrival, Yu Yuan’s rounded black eyes narrowed slightly. Due to the insufficient morning light, he even touched the corners of his eyes with both hands to adjust the focus. After confirming, Yu Yuan smiled nervously at Gu Shaocheng, then got out of bed to make room for him and began to think about how to greet his respected “old father”.
Although the two were some distance apart, and he had become somewhat familiar with Gu Shaocheng, the sudden appearance of a living person when they were alone still made him tense, not to mention the two tall and burly doormen with a very strong presence guarding the door.
Gu Shaocheng saw him squinting to adjust his vision and immediately remembered that the other person had said he couldn’t see clearly without his glasses the night before… He was now fully awake and confirmed that everything at that time was not his hallucination. Thinking of this, his temples twitched a few more times.
Even though his memory was confused, he still believed that Yu Yuan did it on purpose. However, the item had already been retrieved, and the other party could only use the same excuse once.
Thinking of this, Gu Shaocheng reached out his hand behind him. The bodyguard standing outside the door immediately understood and handed him the brown paper bag. Gu Shaocheng walked to the bedside while Yu Yuan kept dodging him, casually threw the paper bag on the bed, and said coldly, “Your things.”
Yu Yuan’s eyes widened slightly as he immediately thought of his lost glasses and cell phone.
He instantly forgot his social anxiety and excitedly opened the paper bag. He first placed his phone, which had automatically shut down, on the wireless charging pad on the bedside table. Then, under Gu Shaocheng’s gaze, he took out a pair of black-rimmed glasses that had broken in the middle.
Gu Shaocheng’s eyes, which had been brimming with a hint of impending storm, stopped abruptly upon seeing this. Broken? He was about to question the bodyguard in charge of retrieving the items when Yu Yuan blurted out, “Oh, it was broken.”
Gu Shaocheng, who had just thrown the brown paper bag onto the bed, darkened his face. Yu Yuan belatedly realized the ambiguity in his words and immediately shook his head vigorously, nervously explaining, “No, no, no, I didn’t mean to blame you. It’s nothing, these glasses aren’t worth much, it doesn’t matter if they break. No, no, the impact you threw wasn’t very hard…”
Yu Yuan was so nervous that he started to speak incoherently, which made Gu Shaocheng’s face grow darker and darker until the bodyguard at the door explained, “Sir, the glasses were already broken when they were retrieved from the wedding car.”
Upon hearing this, Yu Yuan quickly chimed in, “I told you it wasn’t you!” He then nodded solemnly, as if to say, “I know you might thank me, but it’s not necessary. It’s all what I should do!”
Gu Shaocheng: “…”
Yu Yuan would never wrong an innocent person, and even if Gu Shaocheng did it, he really wouldn’t care. The lens was intact, and he could just spend a few dozen yuan to replace it with the same plastic frame. Compared to the kindness Gu Shaocheng had shown him, it was nothing.
Gu Shaocheng took a deep breath, shifted his gaze to the messy bed, and asked in an unfriendly tone, “You slept here last night?”
Yu Yuan swallowed hard to ease his tension, then nodded obediently. On the first night, Zhang Ma had mentioned that the master required the two of them to stay together, but he wasn’t sure if that would be necessary later.
Although he was a staunch atheist, he greatly respected personal beliefs. For those who believed in the master, simply following his instructions would serve as a placebo, and since he received so many benefits, he would naturally cooperate as much as possible.
So after a brief struggle, even though he was a hundred times unwilling to sleep with someone, he still stayed because he was concerned about the impact this would have on Gu Shaocheng.
Upon hearing this, Gu Shaocheng rubbed his hand between his thumb and forefinger, his voice indifferent: “You want to sleep with me that badly?” Even if he wasn’t there, you still had to put on a show… The man’s deep, magnetic voice inevitably carried a hint of sarcasm.
However, from the first time Yu Yuan met Gu Shaocheng, Gu Shaocheng had always been in a strange and ambiguous mood, and he was like that to everyone. Yu Yuan naturally assumed that Gu Shaocheng was born that way. As an oddball with a strange personality in the eyes of others, Yu Yuan was socially awkward, but he was still very tolerant of other people’s personalities.
Hearing this, he didn’t detect a trace of sarcasm. Instead, he wanted to explain honestly to his benefactor father, but to avoid getting nervous and rambling, he first composed himself.
Seeing that he was silent with his head down, Gu Shaocheng felt that he had touched a sore spot, and coldly curled his lips to drive him away: “What a pity, you can only sleep in another room as the lady.”
What a pity? What’s there to pity? Yu Yuan couldn’t help but smile after hearing this, his face beaming with “Yay! Yay!”
This made Gu Shaocheng pause in pressing the call bell. Before he could even give any instructions to the nanny, Yu Yuan said impatiently, “Okay, okay, then you can rest first!”
After saying that, he picked up his phone, turned around and left, walking briskly towards the glass door between the two rooms. Even the tuft of hair on his head was full of joy.
Gu Shaocheng: “…”
At the same time, the call bell rang, and the nanny’s respectful voice came through.
Gu Shaocheng closed his eyes briefly and followed his original instructions: “Change everything in the master bedroom.” However, lacking the necessary audience, his deep voice was devoid of any unnecessary emotion.
*
Yu Yuan quickly finished showering and eating, partly to minimize the time he spent with the nannies, and partly due to separation anxiety from his phone.
The Wang family truly sold him into this situation. Apart from the wedding robe that couldn’t be reused, all he wore was an undershirt and trousers. Perhaps because they found it troublesome, they didn’t bring any of the luggage he received from the Wang family.
If it weren’t for the dryer in the villa, he would have had to wear a bathrobe the whole time, so he thought he would never get his phone and glasses back. He never expected that Gu Shaocheng would take his words to heart, staying out all night and still helping him find his things… He couldn’t find a better explanation than that he was stubborn but soft-hearted. He truly deserves to be his second father, whose kindness is deeper than the sea!
Yu Yuan held his breath and pressed the power button, feeling a mix of anticipation and nervousness. He was terrified that a series of missed call notifications would pop up as soon as he turned on the phone; just thinking about it made his scalp tingle.
Fortunately, there were no missed calls or long strings of unread voice messages. The few messages in his clean chat list were all from his only friend, Ye Qiutang, who was helping him take care of his seriously ill adoptive mother.
The only way for his adoptive mother to survive is a lung transplant. She is currently lying at home, relying on an oxygen concentrator to stay alive while waiting for a lung donor. Yu Yuan did not want to upset her adoptive mother about the Wang family’s situation at this time. Fortunately, Yu Yuan entered the national training team in his second year of high school and obtained a guaranteed admission to Yunnan University. This time, he used the excuse of going out to participate in a competition training camp to temporarily leave for a period of time, and his adoptive mother naturally believed him.
Only Ye Qiutang knew that he was marrying the sickly man who had a notorious reputation to bring good luck. He was not only mentally ill but also had a history of violence. Although his initial message was as lighthearted and joking as possible, telling him not to worry, everything was fine with his adoptive mother, the other party became more anxious after waiting for a long time without receiving a reply.
Ye Qiutang: [Where are you? If all else fails, don’t force yourself. I’ll sell my ass to help my aunt get a lung transplant!]
Seeing the screen full of anxious question marks that followed, Yu Yuan quickly replied: [Yes]
Then, in response to Ye Qiutang’s comments about selling his ass: [Don’t use my mother as an excuse for going into prostitution!! /pointing and gesturing.jpg]
Ye Qiutang replied instantly: [Oh dear, why did it take you so long to reply? I was so worried, sob sob!]
Yu Yuan was too lazy to correct the nickname Ye Qiutang had given him, and sent a disgusted emoji: [I almost lost my phone, Gu Shaocheng just found it for me.] Thinking of the low-resolution version of the drama he’d seen the night before, Yu Yuan continued tapping: [Don’t worry, everything’s fine here, Gu Shaocheng is a very nice person, those rumors are probably all false.]
Although Gu Shaocheng told Uncle Lin to retaliate, he couldn’t do what Zhang Ma did to Aunt Lin back then, directly knocking her down the stairs and smashing her into a glass coffee table, causing high-level paraplegia. After rolling down, Zhang Ma only suffered a leg fracture.
However, those people later left along with Gu Shaocheng, and he didn’t know what happened afterward. But perhaps out of gratitude, he had a natural trust in Gu Shaocheng, and the other party should not be the kind of spoiled rich kid who deliberately hurts people for fun as rumored online.
After Yu Yuan finished explaining for Gu Shaocheng, he wanted to ask Ye Qiutang when he would be going to his adoptive mother’s place at noon. He wanted to video chat with her, but Ye Qiutang, who hadn’t replied for a while, sent a link first, followed by a series of question marks: [Yuan’er, don’t lie to me, are you really safe over there?! !!]
Yu Yuan clicked on the link with a puzzled look. The title was eye-catching: “Famous Rich Second-Generation Kid Acts Lawlessly and Maliciously Injures Someone Again!!!”
The accompanying video is only a few seconds long, showing the latter half of Zhang Ma’s tumbling and howling. Even though the shooting distance is far and the image is zoomed in so much that it’s almost pixelated, Zhang Ma’s pig-like screams are still very loud.
The blogger said that someone leaked the information to him using a secondary account. The injured elderly woman in the video was Gu Shaocheng’s housekeeper. The tragedy of the paralyzed nanny case five years ago was being repeated in the home of a super-rich second-generation.
Yu Yuan watched the video again. From the zoom-in and shaking of the footage, she could roughly deduce that someone was secretly filming with a mobile phone. It was obvious that there was a mole. Suddenly, Yu Yuan had a flash of inspiration—it was time to reduce the number of nannies!