Not long after lying down, he drifted off to sleep. Yet, half-asleep, he heard the deafening crash of the front door being forced open. As the sounds of two different worlds collided, his heart violently hammered, and he sat bolt upright, preparing to bolt outside before realizing with a jolt that he had already died once.
The pink decor of the room and the tall, long-legged figure of Zhao Xingjian reminded him that he was safe now.
Zhao Xingjian stood at the foot of the bed, eyeing him with suspicion, though he refrained from asking any questions he had zero desire to care about Chu Minghe.
Yet Chu Minghe reacted quickly, swiftly regaining his composure as he tossed off the quilt and slipped into his slippers. “Is it coming from downstairs?”
Zhao Xingjian fixed a steady gaze on him, letting the matter drop as both tacitly pretended nothing had happened.
“Downstairs. Sounds like the backyard.”
Without even having time to change his clothes, he hurried downstairs alongside Zhao Xingjian.
Upon reaching the ground floor, they found the other four occupants had already emerged. Lin Dingshi kept his voice lowered because the commotion in the backyard was still ongoing, accompanied by the squawking of chickens.
“What’s going on? Chicken thieves?”
Chicken thieves wouldn’t be clumsy enough to cause such a massive racket. This was the suburbs; wild cats or stray dogs were far more likely culprits.
Chu Minghe offered reassurance: “I’ll go check it out.”
Zhao Xingjian reached out and caught him by the arm.
“Brother Minghe,” Lin Dingshi glanced left and right before casually snatching up an iron rod from the base of the wall, “take this with you. It’s safer.”
Recovering his wits from Zhao Xingjian’s grip, Chu Minghe chuckled and turned back with an amused, helpless look. “If it was a person, they would’ve run off ages ago. It’s probably just a stray cat or dog.”
An accident of this scale wouldn’t happen during a professional reality show production; their security measures were still exceptionally well-implemented.
Still, to ease Lin Dingshi’s worries, he accepted the iron rod only for Zhao Xingjian to snatch it right out of his hand the second it touched his palm.
“I’ll take it.”
With that, Zhao Xingjian strode ahead toward the source of the noise, leaving Chu Minghe to follow closely behind at his flank.
Creeping around to the backyard, the group found nothing out of the ordinary except for a section of the chicken coop that had caved inward.
Standing at the rear of the pack, Zhang Qing let out a breath of relief. “Making a mountain out of a molehill—gave me a fright…”
“Eep! There’s a rat!”
A furry tail darted across a shadowed corner, though a creature of that size was definitely too big to be a rat.
Just as Chu Minghe prepared to step closer for a better look, Lin Dingshi let out a loud shout, drawing everyone’s attention.
Zhao Xingjian spotted it too, raising the iron rod to swing, but Chu Minghe intercepted his wrist with lightning reflexes.
“Don’t hit it, just scare it off. That’s a weasel.”
“A weasel?”
While they were talking, the “giant rat” dragged a plundered egg along the base of the wall and scurried out of sight.
Chu Minghe inspected the chicken coop. Inside, several chickens craned their necks toward the circle of light they brought; fortunately, only the section covered by the waterproof tarp and iron sheet had collapsed, and the wooden fencing underneath just needed a quick patch-up.
“Killing one will curse your financial luck.”
Zhao Xingjian frowned. “You believe in that sort of thing?”
Chu Minghe righted the knocked-out wooden stake, used the iron rod Zhao Xingjian handed him to tap it securely back into place, and shook it to test its sturdiness before pulling the iron plate and waterproof tarp back down over it.
“I don’t believe it, just playing it safe what if it’s true and you miss out on making money?”
“Besides, even if you kill this one, there are plenty more. You can’t guard against every single one of them. Just hammer the fence down tighter and collect the newly laid eggs tomorrow morning.”
Fortunately, the fencing was spaced tightly enough that the “giant rat” couldn’t have squeezed through normally; it had only managed to drop a single egg because it collapsed the structure.
Watching his fluent, methodical actions, Zhao Xingjian realized he possessed an unusual depth of familiarity with such matters, completely missing the practiced ease with which Chu Minghe swung the iron rod to hammer the wooden stakes.
Naturally, Lin Dingshi offered sweet praise: “Brother Minghe knows so much!”
Standing at the back, Zhang Qing lingered for another moment before yawning, tugging an open-mouthed Zhang Congsheng by the arm, and turning to leave. “As long as nothing’s wrong. Time for bed, time for bed.”
【How does he know so much? Did he go off to undergo some immortal tribulation over the past few years? Curious.】 【Isn’t this just basic common sense? Hasn’t anyone watched cartoons?】 【Cartoons? Are you for real?】 【Maybe marrying into high society requires special training courses, who knows.】 【Training courses for marrying into high society: instead of tea appreciation or wine tasting, they teach you how to sneak around chicken coops at night to check if weasels are stealing chickens and eggs?】 【Stop guessing, folks. Drop the stereotypes and watch these husbands dish out sugar.】 【Squeal—did you see them grab wrists just now? Commemorating He-Jian’s very first intimate physical contact since the show started.】 【The score board just ticked up by +1. Who got it? Don’t tell me it’s still Chu Minghe?】 【Rigged! I don’t even know what the scoring rules are. Did the director get paid off?】 【Sister above has lost her mind. If you’re paying off someone, wouldn’t you just give yourself the prize? Why waste money converting points into charity for Little Er?】 ……
By the time they returned to their room, the broadcast cut-off time was fast approaching. Among the three pairs of husbands, one remained calm, one was overflowing with honeyed sweetness, and the final pair was actively at war.
Despite acting detached when dragging Zhang Congsheng away earlier, the moment Zhang Qing stepped back into his room, he slammed the door shut, grabbed Zhang Congsheng, and launched into a frenzy of pinching tweaking cheeks, twisting ears, and pinching the inner arms.
Zhang Congsheng clearly possessed ample experience surviving this routine, managing to block five or six strikes with his arms, though the back of his hand was left entirely devoid of color.
“Why are you pinching me again?! What kind of grown man spends his entire day pinching his own husband?”
Zhang Qing glared daggers. “What did you do, and you still have to ask? What were you staring at just now?”
“I wasn’t staring at anything! Sss… the live stream is still running! This is broadcasting live without any editing filters, so watch your mouth! Have some situational awareness, will you?”
If Zhang Qing had genuinely cared about the cameras, he wouldn’t have started screaming the moment they stepped inside; that trick simply didn’t work on him anymore.
“Am I the one lacking awareness, or are you? I asked you what you were looking at over there, and you better be honest!”
“Sss, stop pinching… I was looking at the rat, dammit! Have you ever seen a rat that big before?! A man stays a boy until the day he dies am I not allowed to be curious? Stop living like a mummy!”
【So intense! First time seeing a couple fight on a reality show.】 【Weren’t they staring right at Chu Minghe just now? Plague vectors lingering for a millennium.】 【Thrilling! Finally time for some bloodshed—I’ve been waiting ages for Chu Minghe and Zhang Qing to throw down.】 【Tomorrow marks the official recording kickoff, so I guess everyone’s dropping the act.】 【Tomorrow is the official start? Then what was today?】 【Little Er’s signature tradition: the preparatory adaptation phase. Anyone who doesn’t feel like filming tomorrow can pack up and leave—a rule carried over straight from Season 1.】 【That’s absurd. Can people really manage to drag Chu Minghe into this too? What did he even do today besides chase off a weasel and fix a fence? Throw batting eyelashes at other people?】 【Malicious forced-narrative unneeded. Zhang and Zhang’s duo has been bickering since they walked through the door this afternoon; their usual dynamic just got caught on camera as a live-capture scandal.】 【I call witness: Zhang Congsheng really was looking at the rat. He’s probably never seen a rat that massive and lightning-fast in his entire life.】 【I witness too, though he definitely looked shocked out of his mind watching Chu Minghe swinging an iron stake around. He probably never witnessed anyone’s wife wielding an iron bar like a riot cop before.】
Downstairs on the first floor, Lin Dingshi and Zheng Yuan heard the commotion echoing from across the hall, but dismissing Zhang Qing as someone he disliked, Lin Dingshi simply chose to ignore it. Upstairs, however, Chu Minghe and Zhao Xingjian remained entirely oblivious to the row.
Because upon returning to the room, Chu Minghe worried that the corporate mogul might harbor clean-freak tendencies and feel disgusted by his proximity to the chicken coop, he retreated into the bathroom for a second shower and changed into a fresh set of sleepwear.
When he emerged, he caught Zhao Xingjian rummaging through their luggage, retrieving the exact same set of undergarments Chu Minghe had previously stuffed back into his suitcase.
“Did it cut off?”
“The lights went out.”
Following his gaze, Chu Minghe noticed the little red indicator light had indeed gone dark, signifying the end of the day’s broadcast.
However, since this was his first time sharing a room with Zhao Xingjian yesterday didn’t count since Zhao Xingjian had been unconscious he felt a mild case of social anxiety acting up, prompting him to fish around for conversational fillers.
Fortunately, Zhao Xingjian retreated into the bathroom shortly after, though ten minutes later, reality had to be faced.
Stepping out of the bathroom, Zhao Xingjian walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling the mattress dip beside him.
This marked their first extended close-contact arrangement sleeping in the same room. Even stripped of its aggressive pink styling, the atmosphere inside the bedroom refused to soften into anything resembling relaxation.
“I’ll sleep on the sofa…”
As Chu Minghe made to slide away toward the edge, Zhao Xingjian pinned him with a forbidding frown.
“How are we supposed to split a single quilt?”
True enough evidently, the production crew hadn’t accounted for couples requesting separate beds.
“Go to sleep.”
Without a word of further debate, Zhao Xingjian switched off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into instant darkness.
Pausing in silence, Chu Minghe waited until he sensed Zhao Xingjian settle in before clutching his pillow and retreating back beneath the pink duvet.
Though Zhao Xingjian despised the color, absolute darkness erased visual distractions, lowering his psychological burden significantly.
Yet what he hadn’t anticipated was that tonight’s primary source of bedtime stress wouldn’t stem from the room’s pink decor, but rather… the continuous rustling noises emanating from beside him, repeating at intervals guaranteed not to exceed five minutes.
He never imagined that even after humbling himself to share a blanket with Chu Minghe, the ungrateful individual beside him would keep tossing, turning, and shifting without a moment’s peace.
The mattress was exceptionally soft; every movement Chu Minghe made translated into clear, perceptible motion.
“What are you doing?”
To be fair, Chu Minghe harbored no ulterior motives; whenever memories of Zhao Xingjian’s intense hatred for the original owner surfaced, a lingering paranoia whispered that he might get smothered with a pillow in his sleep, robbing him of all a sense of security.
Yet he couldn’t voice those fears aloud, terrified of invoking resentment.
Stammering slightly, he murmured, “Sister Hong said the last couple won’t arrive for a few days.”
?
“So?”
Frowning deeply, Zhao Xingjian struggled to comprehend what timeline updates had to do with sleeping at night.
Stammering again with a hint of jittery nervousness, Chu Minghe added, “Nothing, just… letting you know in case you weren’t aware.”
Speechless for a beat, Zhao Xingjian snapped his mouth shut, closed his eyes, and willed himself back to sleep.
Yet barely five minutes ticked past before the rustling started up again. A round of swishing and shifting stopped, only to resume five minutes later timed with clockwork precision.
Pushed past his absolute limit of patience, Zhao Xingjian fought down a monumental surge of temper to keep from ripping the quilt off the man.
“What are you doing?”
Feeling rather guilty himself, Chu Minghe found it genuinely impossible to drift off while lying shoulder-to-shoulder with Zhao Xingjian.
“I can’t fall asleep. I’d better take the sofa after all…”
Zhao Xingjian’s mental fortress cracked: “You couldn’t fall asleep with other people either? Are you sensitive to new places? Or are you just sensitive to specific rooms?!”
Rolling over to face him through the dark, Chu Minghe answered in genuine confusion: “Sharing a bed with someone else… isn’t that weird?”
“…”
Up on the second floor of the small villa, the bedside lamp clicked back on. Zhao Xingjian violently yanked the pink wool blanket out from underneath them, causing Chu Minghe to roll halfway across the mattress from the sudden loss of support.
“Stop staring! Close your eyes and go to sleep!”
Fortunately, the bedroom sofa was exceptionally spacious, allowing Zhao Xingjian to stretch out inside without feeling cramped.
Embarrassed, Chu Minghe glanced over at him, propping himself up on the edge of the bed to reach the switch and offering a conciliatory compromise: “Tomorrow night I’ll take the sofa; we can take turns.”
“…”
With a sharp toss of his body, Zhao Xingjian presented nothing to him save for a cold, unyielding back.
Expecting a peaceful night at last, he was jarred awake mid-sleep by a heavy thud echoing across the room, accompanied by the sound of a bulky object hitting the hardwood floor.
The instant he snapped back to full lucidity, reality clicked: the person who had been monopolizing the entire grand bed had just rolled right off onto the floor.
Yet, upon waking, Chu Minghe’s brain scrambled two conflicting thoughts simultaneously: the first was that Zhao Xingjian was attempting to assassinate him; the second was that he had somehow teleported back to his breakfast shop and was being ambushed by intruders.
Only when a rustling sound arose from the direction of the sofa did his racing heartbeat settle. Blinking away the fog of sleep, he scrambled back up onto the mattress, keeping dead silent as he pulled the quilt tightly around himself and feigned absolute innocence.
Meanwhile, arms crossed tightly over his chest, Zhao Xingjian glared up at the ceiling with wide-open eyes until the first light of dawn broke.
The official recording kickoff of Day 1 was about to begin, and he had just survived the first of seven agonizing nights.
He truly never anticipated that Chu Minghe could be quite this unrestrained and exhausting in his sleep.