Since Wang Shuo claimed he was hungry, Xu Qiduo naturally had to arrange the finest and most delicious food available for him.
The only catch was that Xu Qiduo had already eaten lunch before rushing over, meaning every burge of breath he let out tasted faintly of crab. It was a terrible waste of fine dining when he could only sit there and watch.
So dinner essentially turned into Wang Shuo eating while Xu Qiduo stared blankly.
Putting aside his deep-seated prejudices against Wang Shuo for a moment, the guy genuinely looked striking.
With his sharp, sword-like brows, starry eyes, broad shoulders, and narrow waist, it was no wonder so many bottom-tier guys threw themselves at him head over heels.
Yet from Xu Qiduo’s perspective, he simply couldn’t look past all the glaring flaws.
Matters of the heart were supposed to be consensual, and since Xu Qiduo’s unrequited affection was entirely self-inflicted, he wouldn’t harp on that. But considering how chaotic Wang Shuo’s private life was, paired with his infuriating habit of always making Xu Qiduo foot the bill, his handsome face lost all its appeal.
If he could look as drop-dead gorgeous as Zhou Mengxing, he might forgive a few things. But relying solely on a generic pretty-boy appearance just gave Xu Qiduo endless reasons to complain.
As a young scion born to a wealthy family, Wang Shuo’s table manners were naturally graceful.
Sitting directly across from him, Xu Qiduo propped his chin on his hand. While his gaze seemed fixed on the other man, his mind was long wandering off to parts unknown.
“Sir, your water.” Until a familiar voice snapped him back to reality.
He blinked and focused his eyes. Oh, look at that, it was none other than the very same waiter from Wang Shuo’s hotel bed!
Good grief, the guy literally started his shift the moment he woke up!
Xu Qiduo’s gaze darted back and forth between Wang Shuo and the waiter, hiding his inner awkwardness behind a facade of mild annoyance.
Yet beneath that calm exterior, he was screaming silently in his heart.
Good heavens, he was genuinely too exhausted to keep up this charade of acting out soap opera scenarios!
Could these NPCs please stop popping up with such overachieving dedication!
Unfortunately, his frantic mental screams neither summoned the system nor altered the plot.
Wang Shuo also recognized Qiao Fan.
The moment he lifted his gaze, their eyes met.
Just as Xu Qiduo braced himself in nervous anticipation, expecting some dramatic subplot to erupt right then and there…
Wang Shuo simply looked away first, took a sip of the water the waiter had brought, and calmly resumed eating.
Xu Qiduo stared at Wang Shuo in genuine astonishment.
Has this scumbag actually cured himself of his old habits?
Noticing Xu Qiduo’s fixed stare, Wang Shuo offered a rare, indulgent smile and murmured, “I was harsh on you in the room earlier, and that was my fault. We have been friends for so many years, so let’s both take a step back and let it go, alright? Do not let some insignificant stranger ruin the relationship we built over all these years.”
Look at that, just look at that! This was the classic scumbag move of pulling up his pants and refusing to acknowledge anything! And tossing out that casual line about being friends for years was just another way of slapping him with a permanent good-guy badge.
If he were the original Xu Qiduo, hearing Wang Shuo speak in such a tender tone and making such a huge concession for his sake would have sent him soaring into the clouds with joy, driving him to lick the dirt off Wang Shuo’s shoes with even greater dedication!
Too bad he was a transmigrated soul with a normal, clear-headed brain… but then again, so what! He still had to fulfill the duties of Xu Qiduo!
He forced himself to nod with an understanding expression while screaming curses internally: Scumbag! Total stinking scumbag!
It wasn’t until he finally dropped Wang Shuo off at his residence that Xu Qiduo collapsed in an exhausted heap across the back seat of the car.
Heaven only knows how draining it was to maintain a character persona right in front of the target character.
“Third Young Master.”
Through the rearview mirror, Xu Qiduo locked eyes with his driver, Uncle Li.
Uncle Li spoke up quietly, “You look terribly tired.”
Was it really that obvious? He was tired, yes… and his soul was exceptionally exhausted.
Xu Qiduo straightened his posture slightly and offered a weak defense, “Not really.”
Uncle Li had been driving for Xu Qiduo for several years. Although they didn’t chat excessively on ordinary days, their shared hours on the road made them quite familiar with one another.
Unlike the rest of the Xu family members who loved picking apart his flaws, Xu Qiduo had never bothered to hide his sudden, drastic personality shift in front of Uncle Li ever since transmigrating.
After all, he couldn’t possibly spend hours acting like a shameless doormat in front of Wang Shuo, only to climb into the car and continue emo-ing over why the guy didn’t love him back!
If he had to keep up the act every single second of the day, he would surely suffer a mental breakdown!
He just hadn’t expected Uncle Li to say, “Actually, if you no longer harbor feelings for the Wang family young master, you would probably feel a lot lighter if you just let go.”
Xu Qiduo froze for a second before probing cautiously, “How did you know?”
“Because compared to how you used to be, whenever you spend time with the Wang family young master nowadays, you clearly lack any sense of anticipation or joy.”
He could fool Wang Shuo with his acting, and he could fool outsiders, but it seemed he could never fool the people who stayed closest to him.
Uncle Li spent countless hours accompanying Xu Qiduo; compared to his actual family members, they spent far more time together.
“Is it that obvious?” The driver’s razor-sharp observation skills sent a shiver down Xu Qiduo’s spine.
A simple driver could read his emotional shifts with such terrifying accuracy.
“Do not fault Uncle Li for sticking his nose into your business, but I watched you grow up from a child.” Uncle Li’s gaze remained fixed on Xu Qiduo through the rearview mirror.
Filled with guilt, Xu Qiduo lowered his eyes and kept silent, deciding to listen to what the older man had to say first.
“I know you genuinely cared for the Wang family young master for a few years, but when that affection gets met with prolonged silence day after day, can you really call it genuine fondness anymore?”
“Uncle Li has lived through enough to know that when simple affection twists into a stubborn obsession, the only person who suffers is yourself.”
This steaming bowl of unsolicited chicken soup for the soul washed right over Xu Qiduo’s head.
Seeing that Xu Qiduo was actually listening, the driver continued, “Uncle Li is speaking to you out of personal bias now. Although it was the Eldest Young Master who gave the instructions… I still watched you grow up, and I want to tell you that you are still young with many years and paths ahead of you. You cannot fixate on just one person forever. The Eldest Young Master worried you would lose your way, which is why he arranged everything for you in advance.”
Hearing that, the boulder that had been weighing heavily on Xu Qiduo’s chest finally dropped.
So it turned out to be an order straight from Xu Qizhi.
It seemed that even if his behavior exhibited anomalies during his role as Xu Qiduo, nobody had actually caught onto the truth of his transmigration yet.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, Uncle Li kept delivering his steady stream of advice. “The Eldest Young Master asked me to talk some sense into you…”
“To tell me to let go?” Xu Qiduo didn’t even need to guess what his big brother had instructed Uncle Li to say.
That eldest brother of the Xu family treated Xu Qiduo with a level of care that went far beyond ordinary sibling affection.
“The Eldest Young Master also suggested that I advise you to see a therapist, to check whether your obsession has run too deep and created a mental block.”
Seeing a therapist, however, was crossing well into the territory of exaggeration.
It wasn’t like he wanted to be obsessed. Who in their right mind wanted to play the village idiot and chase someone around all day?
After a brief internal debate, Xu Qiduo settled on a diplomatic middle-ground response. He told Uncle Li, “I know. What I feel for Wang Shuo is no longer genuine affection, just an unhealthy obsession. But since he has accompanied me for so many years, asking me to drop him overnight is simply impossible. Go back and tell my big brother to give me some time, and I will slowly adjust myself.”
He would adjust things right up until his plot requirements were met and he unbound from the system. The very second that happened, he vowed never to look at Wang Shuo ever again.
Television dramas loved using a specific trope where wealthy elders stepped in to tear two lovers apart, tossing a massive stack of cash at one of them with the arrogant demand, “I will give you five million, now leave my son.”
While that trope was undeniably dramatic, what awaited Xu Qiduo back home was something with the exact same emotional equivalence, courtesy of his eldest brother: an arranged man named Zhou Mengxing.
When he walked into his bedroom and found Zhou Mengxing sitting inside, he was so bewildered that he actually backed out to check the hallway.
He looked to the left, then to the right. The hallway decor definitely belonged to his house.
“Why are you in here?” This was his home, and his personal bedroom to boot. But having Zhou Mengxing sitting inside it felt decidedly surreal.
Without answering, Zhou Mengxing simply shifted his gaze from the book in his hands to look up at Xu Qiduo.
Caught off guard by that steady stare, Xu Qiduo panicked slightly and let his wild imagination run completely unchecked. He asked hesitantly, “Did you… did you sign an indenture of servitude?”
“Pretty much.” Zhou Mengxing’s calm tone instantly confirmed Xu Qiduo’s wildest suspicions, matching the hints everyone else had been dropping over the past two days.
Xu Qiduo hurriedly swung the door shut behind him, took two steps forward, backed up, and nervously locked the door tight.
He hurried over to stand right in front of Zhou Mengxing and whispered, “What on earth are you doing?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing?”
Zhou Mengxing’s unruffled composure stood in sharp contrast to Xu Qiduo’s frantic panic.
Weren’t they saying Zhou Mengxing was the top scorer on the college entrance exam? What on earth was going on inside that supposedly brilliant brain of his?
He asked in absolute bewilderment, “What do you mean, what do I mean! I am asking why you sold yourself off to the Xu family to pull a stunt like this!”
“What stunt? You mean marrying you?” Zhou Mengxing casually tossed a heavy bombshell right into his lap.
Xu Qiduo stood frozen in absolute jaw-dropping shock.
After frantically reviewing every single plot event he had experienced since transmigrating alongside all the future plot points he could recall, he finally managed to squeeze out an incredulous question: “What did you just say?”
“Back then, I was so destitute I could not even afford a single meal. Do you have any idea how much hospital bills cost per day? At the time, I was working three jobs simultaneously, yet it was not even enough to pay off the accumulating interest on my loans. The debts hanging over my head were so massive that if I relied solely on my own ordinary earnings, I might never have dug my way out of the gutter in this lifetime.”
This was the first time Xu Qiduo had ever heard Zhou Mengxing string together such a long monologue.
“It was the Xu family that offered me a lifeline and pulled me out of that abyss. Not only did they clear away every single cent of my debts, but they also funded my continued education. Entering the Xu family has already achieved a complete class leap for me, so paying a price in return is entirely my own voluntary choice.” Zhou Mengxing was undeniably clear-headed.
He had known precisely who he was dealing with and why he had stepped through the doors of the Xu family from the very beginning.
Sorting through Zhou Mengxing’s words, Xu Qiduo finally pieced it together. “So… you knew about this from the very beginning?”
Now it was Xu Qiduo’s turn to be utterly dumbfounded. It was one thing for the main protagonists of a novel to have utterly unhinged plots, but he was just a cannon-fodder NPC! Was dropping a plotline this wild on him really necessary?
“Then what are you doing here in my room right now…?”
“I am here to cultivate our relationship.” Zhou Mengxing delivered the line with such absolute deadpan seriousness that it sounded vastly more mission-oriented and methodical than anything someone with actual plot tasks like him would say.
Xu Qiduo frantically waved his hands in panic. “No, no, no, absolutely not.”
Seeing that Zhou Mengxing remained entirely immovable and impervious to persuasion, Xu Qiduo had no choice but to raise his hands in a gesture of absolute surrender. “Listen, I can handle my own mess. I will talk to my big brother and clear up this whole misunderstanding about our relationship, so please do not take this so seriously.”
Zhou Mengxing merely arched an eyebrow, looking entirely unconvinced by his promises.