Jiang Mohai’s chest vibrated slightly as he chuckled offhand. “Rong Ning, you’re drunk.”
Rong Ning’s gaze grew sluggish. He faintly sensed that Jiang Mohai had already rejected him.
“No, I am completely sober!”
“Ah-Ning, I am un…”
“I know! There’s no need to emphasize it again.” Rong Ning grew somewhat agitated, his anxious and urgent emotions no longer containable as his voice trembled. “So what? Does it affect the fact that I like you?”
“Ah-Ning…” Jiang Mohai lowered his gaze, a flash of uncharacteristic panic darting through his eyes, though his tone remained completely unruffled, calm and collected as usual. “The Jiang family is very complicated…”
“Jiang Mohai!” Rong Ning tightened his grip on Jiang Mohai’s wrist, interrupting him once again without a trace of politeness.
Rong Ning rarely called him directly by his full name like this unless he was extremely angry.
“Stop beating around the bush! Just tell me straight, is it a yes or a no?!” Rong Ning didn’t understand why this normally decisive and ruthless big shot was suddenly acting like an indecisive mother hen. Yes meant yes, no meant no, couldn’t he just give a straight answer?
Jiang Mohai remained silent, his gaze deep and unfathomable.
The surroundings were eerily quiet, yet Rong Ning felt increasingly panicked, distressed to the point of discomfort.
Jiang Mohai really seemed to be treating him like a neighborhood kid he had to look after…
The more Rong Ning thought about it, the more wronged he felt. Tears welled up in his eyes. Taking a long, deep breath to desperately suppress his emotions, he decided to try one last time. “Don’t treat me like the young master of the Rong family. I just want me and you—Mm!”
Before he could finish his sentence, Jiang Mohai suddenly turned the tables, pinning Rong Ning against the wall and cupping the back of his head as he crashed his lips down onto his.
“Mm…”
The man’s tongue pried open his lips and teeth, driving straight in to greedily suck away the sweetness that belonged uniquely to Rong Ning.
Jiang Mohai’s oppressive presence intensified by the second. Rong Ning was completely dazed by this sudden, violent kiss, his mind turning entirely blank until he was left gasping for air.
After a long while, Jiang Mohai finally pulled back slightly. Allowing them both a momentary gasp of breath, Jiang Mohai pinched Rong Ning’s jaw, forcing him to tilt his head up.
Rong Ning stared into the bottomless depths of Jiang Mohai’s pupils, maintaining a superhuman calmness even after the intense kiss, his emotions completely unreadable.
Seeing this side of Jiang Mohai for the first time, overbearing, forceful, and unreasonable, Rong Ning felt an inexplicable chill run through his heart.
Jiang Mohai let out a breathy laugh. “Scared?”
Tears pooled at the corners of Rong Ning’s eyes and his throat tightened, leaving him unable to speak.
“This is who I am, cold-hearted and using any means necessary to achieve my goals.” Jiang Mohai’s voice was dark and hoarse, his tone low and unhurried. “You and I were fundamentally two completely different kinds of people from the very beginning.”
“I don’t like men.” His voice was very low, tinged with a faint suppression and unwavering determination, yet it was painfully clear.
This was the first time Jiang Mohai had ever spoken to him in such a tone: serious, sharp, harsh, and carrying the unmistakable weight of a reprimand.
Like a sharp blade, it struck straight at Rong Ning’s heart.
Were all of Jiang Mohai’s gentle moments in the past just an act? Was his kindness all a deception for outsiders?
By this time, Rong Ning was wronged to the extreme, his pretty peach-blossom eyes shimmering with tears.
As expected, if someone doesn’t like you, they simply don’t like you. No amount of forcing it would ever work.
Jiang Mohai gathered his breath. The hand pinching the teenager’s jaw slowly lowered, his tone softening, though his eyes carried a few more layers of unnameable meaning. “However, Ah-Ning…”
“Liar!” Rong Ning barked out sharply, his brows furrowing in pain. After a moment of internal struggle, he shoved Jiang Mohai away hard. “Then please keep your boundaries, President Jiang. You don’t need to take care of me like this.”
Rong Ning’s tone was resolute, but only he knew how utterly shattered his inner world was at that moment.
Dropping those words, Rong Ning turned and walked down the stairs.
They were on the twenty-third floor. Rong Ning had no idea how he walked down every single step, nor how he managed to return to his apartment.
The living room lights were off. Rong Ning curled up by himself on the sofa, staring blankly into space.
He had given himself the courage, but Jiang Mohai hadn’t given him a chance.
The man just now had been so cold, completely unlike his usual gentle self.
His rejection felt set in stone.
The autumn wind rustled silently against the curtains. Rong Ning felt as though he had shattered into pieces, weak and helpless to the point where even his breathing grew paper-thin.
After a long while, he snapped back to reality and let out a long sigh through his nose.
Knowing the outcome wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; at least he wouldn’t be strung along anymore, that feeling was far more agonizing.
Fumbling to pull out his phone so he could use its light to turn on the lamp, he suddenly remembered the video call he had promised his best friend that afternoon. Deciding not to get up, he tapped open WeChat.
From midnight until now, he had received countless birthday blessings from good friends. Rong Ning didn’t click into them one by one; he went straight to Liang Qiaoxin’s chat.
“Happy birthday! My big baby!” Liang Qiaoxin’s pleasant voice rang out from the phone.
Noticing that the lights were off on Rong Ning’s end, she asked curiously, “Where are you? Didn’t you go out to celebrate?”
“At home.”
“Turn on the lights! Let me admire my beauty.”
A moment later, the living room lit up. Seeing the utterly devastated expression on Rong Ning’s face through the video feed, Liang Qiaoxin roughly guessed the reason and said indignantly, “Did Jiang Mohai make you mad? Did you get dumped again?”
Rong Ning dropped the act, breaking down in tears and crying like a child. “This time it’s a thorough, complete dumping… Wuwu…” He hadn’t managed to voice his feelings the first two times, but just now, the rejection had been utterly ruthless.
Jiang Mohai didn’t like men. He didn’t like Rong Ning.
In his heart, Rong Ning was just the young master of the Rong family, a young master who needed meticulous care…
“He’s such a scumbag! He ruffled my hair, pinched my cheeks, and even kissed me, my first kiss is gone!” Rong Ning wailed through a face full of pear blossoms drenched in rain.
“Dead straight guy! If you don’t like me, why the hell did you kiss me?! So annoying… Wuwu…”
Rong Ning was crying miserably, but on the other end, Liang Qiaoxin grew more excited the more she listened. “You actually kissed?!”
“We kissed, wuwu… and he kissed me for so long.” If he had known, he wouldn’t have made wishes so casually.
Liang Qiaoxin covered her mouth to hide a smile, but she was caught by Rong Ning, which only made him grieve even harder as fat, golden tears rolled down his cheeks.
“You dead girl, you’re making fun of me!”
Liang Qiaoxin gave a light cough, reining in her curiosity to start offering serious comfort. “Stinky man, daring to break my best friend’s heart! Just watch me come back and strip him of his clothes, drag him out to the streets to parade for forty-nine days!”
Rong Ning instantly stopped crying, hiccuping through his sobs. “No! I haven’t even seen what he looks like yet, how can you strip him naked for other people to see?!”
“Then make him kneel and apologize to you!”
“No, a man’s knees are worth gold; he can only kneel to heaven, earth, and his parents.”
Liang Qiaoxin was so exasperated she laughed. “He treated you like that, and you’re still defending him. Then what do you want to do?”
“I, I…” Rong Ning lowered his gaze, his little expression pitiful. “I don’t want to see him anymore. I want to move out.”
“Move out where?”
“I don’t know, but I’m definitely not going back to the old family estate.”
An idea flashed in Liang Qiaoxin’s mind. “I have a villa in Beijing. I’ll look up the address and send it to you later. I’ll give it to you to live in, how’s that?”
Rong Ning rolled his eyes at the screen. “Too much trouble! Keep it to enjoy yourself.”
Seeing that Rong Ning had stopped crying, Liang Qiaoxin giggled. “Baby, did you receive the birthday gift I mailed you?”
Rong Ning looked at the pile of large and small gift boxes in the entryway, sniffed, and gave a muffled “Mn.”
The two best friends chatted idly for a bit longer before hanging up the video call. Rong Ning rubbed his sore, stinging eyes and got up to unpack his deliveries.
Car keys, property deeds, diamonds, a whole bunch of things were unboxed. When he unwrapped a purple crystal, the corners of Rong Ning’s mouth twitched upward, he didn’t even need to look to know this was from Liang Qiaoxin.
Clutching the purple crystal, he slumped down onto the floor of the entryway. Remembering how Jiang Mohai had said he was going to give him a gift, a gift he hadn’t even seen the shadow of before they had a falling out, a fresh wave of stinging sourness washed over his nose.
Knock, knock, knock…
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of knocking on the door.
Rong Ning got up and opened it. Seeing the person standing outside, a look of disgust crossed his face, his brows knitting together as he demanded ungraciously, “What are you here for?”
Rong Chuhexuan swept his gaze past the purple crystal cradled in Rong Ning’s hands before his eyes landed on Rong Ning’s disheveled face. “Why didn’t you come home today? Mom and Dad wanted to celebrate your birthday with you.”
Rong Ning had seen their messages. He had originally planned to go back after his birthday, but now, being in such a foul mood, he didn’t want to go back at all.
His shoulders slumped and his voice lacked any strength. “Don’t waste the effort. You can go back.”
“Rong Ning, what’s wrong with you?”
Displeasure written all over his face, Rong Ning glared up at him before letting out a cold scoff. “What I do has nothing to do with you! There are no elders here, so who are you trying to play the good guy for?! Unbelievable!”
With that, Rong Ning reached to close the door.
Rong Chuhexuan blocked it swiftly. “I was only worried about you, I have no malicious intent.”
“Don’t think that just because you have ‘Rong’ in front of your name, you get to act like my older brother. I don’t need unrelated people caring about me!”
“You have some prejudice against me. We should sit down and talk it through properly.” Rong Chuhexuan’s tone remained unruffled, like a scholarly gentleman, modest, polite, and well-mannered.
“There’s nothing to talk about!” Rong Ning rejected him outright, the anger in his heart creeping up to his brow. “Can’t you just let me pass? Wouldn’t it be better if we just pretended to be strangers?”
Rong Chuhexuan let out a soft sigh and began speaking on his own accord, “Sending you abroad really was Mother acting on her own accord; she never expected you would just agree to it directly. Later, when she found out your health was poor, she felt quite guilty too, and entrusted people to pick you…”
“Hmph!” Rong Ning let out a contemptuous scoff. “You mean I brought this on myself?! You guys couldn’t wait to roll this young master as far away as possible so you could cement your positions in Dad’s heart!”
Rong Chuhexuan let out a long breath, trying his best to steady his emotions. “I know you’ve suffered a lot of grievances. I apologize to you on Mother’s behalf.”
“Cut the act, watch out for lightning strikes!” Utterly impatient, Rong Ning shoved hard against Rong Chuhexuan’s arm. “Go away, don’t come bothering me when I have nothing going on!”