Seeing a middle-aged woman appear and speak to them so kindly, the short-haired girl swallowed hard. When she looked at Qin Yuan again, the earlier terror had changed.
“Wake your friend up,” Qin Yuan said to her before the girl could speak.
The girl was stunned. Caught in Qin Yuan’s gaze, which seemed tinged with coldness, she turned her head and gently woke her friend.
The moment her friend opened her eyes, her face was filled with bewilderment. She let out a startled gasp, but the short-haired girl immediately pressed down on her hand, using her eyes to signal her to stay calm.
“Young Master Qin, thank you.”
In a very short span of time, the short-haired girl had managed to piece together what might have happened last night.
If there had truly been any other circumstances, she probably wouldn’t have just been sleeping soundly next to her friend.
As for why Qin Yuan suddenly appeared in the room, this was his residence; he could be wherever he wanted.
Moreover, whether it was the girl’s imagination or not, she always felt that Qin Yuan’s mood wasn’t very good. Unlike the previous night when he had looked completely relaxed, a trace of sorrow permeated his brows.
It probably wasn’t because of them.
After all, they had only met yesterday.
“I remember we only drank a few cups of fruit wine yesterday.”
They had drunk fruit wine before, sometimes buying some from the supermarket to drink in the dorms. But what they drank yesterday, why did just a few cups make them lose consciousness?
Compared to her friend, the short-haired girl was much calmer.
Her clear eyes stared intently at Qin Yuan.
“How much do you know about Xu Tian?”
Qin Yuan placed his fingers on the sofa armrest. His fingers were slender and his knuckles distinct, a very handsome pair of hands. Both girls glanced toward his fingers.
“We’ve known him for a little over a month.”
“Is someone among them pursuing you?” Qin Yuan asked again.
The two girls exchanged glances and then shook their heads simultaneously.
“Then why do you think they suddenly treated you so well and brought you out to play?”
“Did they want to be friends with you?”
“Isn’t that why?”
Qin Yuan let out a chuckle.
“He handed both of you over to me.”
“What?”
The long-haired girl’s voice suddenly spiked in volume. Under Qin Yuan’s indifferent gaze, she bit her lower lip.
“Seeing that I seemed interested in you, he used someone else’s flowers to offer Buddha.”
“I have quite a few resources in my hands, and those guys all want to gain some benefits. They never had a chance before, but this time they happened to have the two of you.”
“But you didn’t…”
“I didn’t what? In your eyes, am I a good person?”
The two girls didn’t speak, but their expressions were enough to show that they believed Qin Yuan was a good person.
“If I were truly a good person, when I saw you drinking that high-proof liquor yesterday, I should have stopped you. But I didn’t do that.”
“I let you get drunk and then brought you to my home.”
“Yet you never harmed us.”
The short-haired girl still spoke up abruptly, her gaze exceptionally firm.
Faced with such a resolute gaze, Qin Yuan felt a sense of deja vu.
He tapped his fingers on the armrest. For a moment, no one spoke in the room, and only the sound of each other’s breathing could be heard.
“Xu Tian and his crowd play quite wildly, often finding people for everyone to hang out with. You two went out with them without knowing anything.”
Thinking of how one of those people was already a corpse at this point in his previous life, Qin Yuan felt quite uncomfortable inside.
Yet they actually thought he was a good person.
He was far from being one.
“Thank you.”
The short-haired girl offered words of gratitude as soon as she spoke.
Qin Yuan frowned and looked at her.
“At least for now, I don’t think you’re a bad person like you say. You protected us.”
“If it weren’t for you, just like you said, we’d probably be lying in a hospital right now.”
The girl retrieved their washed clothes from the bedside.
“I still believe there are more good people in this world.”
“I happen to think there are more bad people.”
After all, Qin Yuan himself was a bad person. If he weren’t a bad person, he wouldn’t have died.
“In the future, think things through from multiple angles and don’t trust others so easily.”
“Don’t drink random things you’re unfamiliar with.”
Qin Yuan stood up from the side of the sofa and walked toward the door.
Just as he was about to open it, a voice came from behind him.
“Why?”
“Since he handed us over to you, if you didn’t want the trouble, you could have completely dumped us by the roadside.”
Yet Qin Yuan had brought them home and even specifically arranged for the housekeeper to take care of them.
The short-haired girl couldn’t figure this out.
“I didn’t want to watch any of you die.”
Qin Yuan dropped those words and left.
As the door closed, the two girls looked at each other, both gripping the other’s hand tightly.
As it turned out, if not for Qin Yuan, might they have died?
Downstairs, Qin Yuan sat at the dining table eating breakfast. The housekeeper glanced upstairs, and a few minutes later, the two girls walked down wearing their own clothes.
The housekeeper smiled and urged them to have breakfast.
The two girls shook their heads; they needed to get back to school.
Qin Yuan lowered his head to eat his meal, avoiding any further eye contact with the girls.
Helping them had been a momentary impulse. He could help this time, but if they ran into trouble again in the future, what he didn’t know would have nothing to do with him.
Still, after this incident, if the two of them remained as naive as before, whatever happened next would simply be their own fate.
The girls walked out of Qin Yuan’s residential complex, almost getting lost within the estate before asking someone for directions to the outer gates.
Once by the roadside, the two of them finally felt a sense of grounding.
They had been too trusting. Experience brings wisdom, and they wouldn’t be so foolish again.
As for calling the police, they hadn’t suffered any actual harm, and they knew calling the police wouldn’t do any good.
Besides, neither of them wanted to cause trouble for Qin Yuan.
The two took a bus back to school, though even after leaving Qin Yuan’s place, the experience had left a deep imprint on both of their hearts.
Such a handsome and kind-hearted man, they both hoped that if they had any luck left, they might cross paths with him again, even if it meant just watching from afar.
After finishing breakfast, Qin Yuan went out, drove over to the company, didn’t stay long, and left again.
He went to a teahouse to drink tea. By noon, Xu Tian suddenly called him.
“How was Young Master Qin’s night?”
Xu Tian’s voice carried a probing undertone.
“Very stimulating,” Qin Yuan replied. His definition of stimulating had an entirely different meaning from what Xu Tian assumed.
“Naturally! No matter what, there were two of them, though they both passed out so it was probably still a bit lacking. I have some good stuff here; next time you come over, they won’t pass out and can properly keep Young Master Qin company.”
“Alright, sorry for troubling you.”
“What trouble? Being able to do something for Young Master Qin is something I’m sure many people dream of.”
“Is Young Master Qin free tonight?”
“I have some matters.”
“Let’s reschedule.”
Qin Yuan added another sentence.
“Sure, sure.” Xu Tian’s laughter on the other end of the line drilled into Qin Yuan’s ears. Even without seeing him, just hearing his voice made Qin Yuan look displeased.
Hanging up the phone, Qin Yuan sneered.
When all was said and done, Xu Tian was this arrogant simply because he had too much money.
If he had a little less money, he wouldn’t be breaking the law like this, pulling off fraudulent and harmful stunts.
And he even wanted to drag him into the muddy waters.
Last night had indeed been stimulating, he had gone to the boxing club to watch a boxing match, and the brutal fight between the two fighters was very exciting.
That worked out fine too. Since the people Xu Tian dug up were all being sent to him, it saved him from having to do extra work.
As for whatever minor things he needed to toss back in return, those were trivial matters.
Whatever he casually threw out, someone like Xu Tian might not even be able to fully handle it.
Twirling his phone, Qin Yuan thought for a moment and made a call.
“Register an entertainment company.”
“Young Master Qin, do you plan to enter the entertainment industry?”
The person on the other end sounded quite surprised.
“The money in the entertainment industry is much easier to make.”
“It doesn’t seem very viable lately. Regulations are strict, and a lot of big stars are getting into trouble recently.”
“That’s why you should do your research first and not blindly promote just anyone.”
Otherwise, it would just be a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at any moment.
Since it was an order from Qin Yuan, his subordinates naturally executed it immediately.
Setting up an entertainment company could be said to be effortless.
Coincidentally, there was a company that was struggling to stay afloat, so they simply bought it out.
The whole thing was resolved in half a day. It just goes to show that with money, there are very few difficult things in this world.
The subordinates immediately reported their progress to Qin Yuan: by purchasing the stock directly, the company was now under Qin Yuan’s name.
There were several film projects underway, some already filming, others still in fundraising. They could invest in whatever amount was needed.
Qin Yuan didn’t mind having too much money. Starting an entertainment company and doing some investing could also count as finding something to do for himself.
Otherwise, having too much idle time would make him constantly and uncontrollably think of a certain person.
That person had planted roots deep in his heart, impossible to uproot on a whim, so he had to use other methods to temporarily forget them.
The subordinate noted down the films Qin Yuan mentioned, these all stemmed from Qin Yuan’s memories of his previous life.
He distinctly remembered two particular films that no one looked favorably upon prior to their release. Midway through, their funding chains had snapped, dragging the projects out endlessly. But when they finally hit theaters, they became massive dark-horse hits.
The more successful of the two films had a modest budget of several hundred million, yet its final box office multiplied over tenfold. The investors made a fortune.
Now that he knew ahead of time, he wasn’t going to go against money. Being able to effortlessly rake in over a billion, he would firmly grasp such an opportunity.
There were a few other films as well. While they might not explode quite as wildly as those two, they still carried moderate box office potential.
Investing in them now, along with giving them a bit more promotion funding, meant that once they hit theaters, word-of-mouth would ferment as more people watched, yielding even greater returns.
Qin Yuan also had his subordinate compile a list of other films for him to review.
The subordinate immediately set out to gather the information.
Qin Yuan sat in the teahouse drinking tea. By the afternoon, Fang Chen arrived along with several other friends, and they sat down to play cards.
“I heard you gave someone tens of millions for free last night, Qin Yuan?”
A friend leaned in close to Qin Yuan and asked.
Qin Yuan lowered his gaze to his cards, avoiding eye contact with his friend.