“Yes, I made it.” Zou Beiqi specifically pointed to the steaming dish. “Want to taste a bite? I just tried it, and the flavor is all right.”
“How can you eat something with such heavy seasoning?” Heng Shi frowned.
“I only tasted a little bit.”
“Don’t eat it next time.” Though his words were harsh, Heng Shi’s hand had already taken the chopsticks from Zou Beiqi, picking up a small piece to put into his mouth. Zou Beiqi instinctively asked for his opinion, while the other man evaluated it with an unchangeable expression, “Not bad.”
Delicious is delicious, and unpalatable is unpalatable. Yet he just had to say something ambiguous like “not bad.”
However, seeing that Heng Shi didn’t throw it up on the spot, it probably wasn’t too terrible. “If you like it, I can make it for you again next time.”
“Inhale less cooking smoke. Just let the nanny handle the cooking.”
“What I cook is different from what the nanny makes.”
“Oh? Is what you cook so special?”
Zou Beiqi paused. He hadn’t tasted the nanny’s braised eggplant, so naturally, he couldn’t explain what was so special about his own cooking. He certainly couldn’t say this was a meal made with love from Mr. Heng, not with the distance and estrangement between the two of them, which exceeded that of ordinary acquaintances.
“…It’s nothing, it’s probably about the same.” Consciously, Zou Beiqi sat down at the dining table. “Let’s eat.”
Heng Shi took a seat opposite him. “Why did you suddenly make this?”
“Because the eggplant was on sale.”
“Oh.”
Heng Shi’s face soured, looking as if someone had stepped on his tail.
Zou Beiqi genuinely couldn’t read him; he clearly hadn’t said anything inappropriate.
Normally, when Zou Beiqi ate at home alone, the nanny wouldn’t prepare too many dishes. Presumably, Heng Shi had given advance notice that he would be coming home for dinner, which was why the table was now laden with food. Zou Beiqi filled his stomach to the brim, and while most of the dishes on the table had leftovers, the plate of braised eggplant had been licked completely clean.
Since he hadn’t eaten a single bite of it himself, Heng Shi must have finished every last piece.
It seemed he really, truly loved this dish.
Zou Beiqi hadn’t given the cooking much thought until that afternoon while Heng Shi was working from home. Catching sight of the nanny hurriedly rushing upstairs with a medicine kit in the corridor, he couldn’t help but stop her to ask, only to find out that Heng Shi was suffering from a stomachache.
Following behind the nanny, he watched her rummage through the medicine kit for stomach medication. On a sudden impulse, he stepped forward, took the medicine from her hands, and said, “I’ll do it.”
“How could that be? Sir is someone carrying a child, Mr. Heng. I should be the one to take care of Mr. Heng.”
“Being pregnant doesn’t mean I can’t do anything. It’s just feeding medicine, let me handle it.”
Hearing this, the nanny had no grounds to object, and she quickly headed downstairs carrying the medicine box. Just as Zou Beiqi was about to look for the dosage instructions on the medicine box, Heng Shi spoke up first: “Three times a day, two tablets each time.”
Zou Beiqi quickly popped out two tablets and handed them to Heng Shi’s mouth, holding a glass of warm water he had fetched from the bedside in his other hand. Instead of opening his mouth, Heng Shi reached out, took the medicine into his own mouth, and took a large gulp of the water.
Zou Beiqi’s gaze lingered on Heng Shi’s slightly pale face. “Even when you’re this sick, you still haven’t learned to accept kindness from others.”
“Are you unhappy?”
“Sort of.”
“Then if you feed me medicine next time, I’ll take it.”
It seemed Heng Shi had taken to heart what was said that night. Seized with an urge to test the waters, Zou Beiqi reached out and pulled a tissue from the bedside table to wipe away the tiny speck of water at the corner of Heng Shi’s mouth. True to form, the other man didn’t dodge. “How did your stomach suddenly start acting up?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you eat something wrong?”
“It’s all the usual food,” Heng Shi paused, “except for your plate of braised eggplant.”
Zou Beiqi: “He surely couldn’t be blamed for that? He hadn’t added anything weird to it.”
“Maybe eating heavy flavors all of a sudden made my stomach uncomfortable.”
“Then I won’t make it next time.”
“Just use less seasoning next time.”
Lying in bed, pale-faced yet stubbornly insisting on maintaining a connection to the braised eggplant, anyone who didn’t know better would think he had been put under a spell by an eggplant.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Zou Beiqi leaned closer and asked.
“No need, I’ll be fine after a little rest. You’re carrying a child and need rest too, go back.”
“I’ll rest here.” Heng Shi’s stomach trouble was tied to him to some extent, and Zou Beiqi felt too embarrassed to just walk away. With that, he moved his spot from the bedside to the chair he had just pulled over.
“You…” Heng Shi met Zou Beiqi’s gaze for a long moment before letting out an imperceptible sigh. “Fine, suit yourself.”
Zou Beiqi watched with his own eyes as Heng Shi leaned against the headboard and closed his eyes. At that moment, the phone in his pocket vibrated. Glancing at it subconsciously, he saw it was a transfer from Sheng Wanzhong. To pay back the compensation advance Zou Beiqi had covered, the other man deposited money at a fixed time every month.
No sooner had he finished the transfer than Sheng Wanzhong tirelessly began sharing gossip again. Zou Beiqi simply couldn’t fathom why this person always had so much energy to type out shares and updates for him.
Sheng Wanzhong: [God, that conglomerate CEO I mentioned to you before seems to have some hidden illness. He passed away a few days ago. The news is still being kept under wraps, but I managed to find out anyway, hehe]
[His wife had no feelings for him; it was just a family arranged marriage. Now look at her, husband is dead. Not only does she not have to face someone she has no feelings for, but she also gets to inherit a fortune worth hundreds of billions]
[How can there be such a wonderful thing as your husband dying? Am I right, Beiqi?]
Zou Beiqi: Receiving this kind of message while his own loveless husband lay sick in bed felt rather subtle.
After much deliberation without knowing how to reply, he casually chimed in with: [Yeah, sounds pretty great.]
Just as Zou Beiqi finished typing, he looked up and ran right into Heng Shi’s gaze. The other man had sat up straight at some point, his eyes drifting downward to land on the still-illuminated phone screen.
“Oh, you guys chat about topics like this.”
Zou Beiqi hurriedly turned his phone face down on the nightstand, making that topic about dead husbands vanish from Heng Shi’s sight. “Sheng Wanzhong was just following the news and talking nonsense.”
“Was he talking nonsense last night too?”
“Right.”
“But I’m serious.”
“Hm?”
“I meant it when I said you don’t stand a chance at finding a new husband.” Heng Shi’s gaze swept across Zou Beiqi’s face. “At least until the child is born, stay by my side.”
“After the child is born, I can come and go as I please. You said that yourself, I remember.”
Heng Shi abruptly fell silent for a long moment.
“Not rushing to consider it, that was also what you said.” Heng Shi let out a scoff. “Yet you’re chatting with your friend with such fiery enthusiasm. Are you getting impatient to leave? What, scouting out someone else already?”
Fiery enthusiasm? He and Sheng Wanzhong had only exchanged a few lines, and anyone else was completely out of the question. Had Heng Shi lost his mind from the fever? Speechless, Zou Beiqi replied, “Heng Shi, we’re just nominal husbands. I haven’t been with anyone else, I haven’t cheated, and I can take good care of the child. You never said anything about managing the rest of my life.”
“Liking someone and being together are two different things.”
“Does who I like matter to you at all?”
Heng Shi abruptly paused, and the air stagnated for a long, heavy moment. “Indeed, it doesn’t matter. Qiqi, let me emphasize this again: be a good boy and listen to me.” He bit down heavily on the nickname.
“Rest assured, whatever I’ve promised, I will do.”
The atmosphere in the room turned inexplicably tense; Zou Beiqi never expected he would end up arguing with Heng Shi over Sheng Wanzhong’s comment about a dead husband. Unwilling to linger any longer, he topped up Heng Shi’s glass of water, dropped a remark telling him to let the nanny take care of him, and left the room.
Zou Beiqi spent almost the entire evening in the backyard tending to his plants. When he finally stopped what he was doing and fished out his phone, he discovered a message from Heng Shi: [Don’t be upset.]
[I promise you, I won’t pry too much into your affairs.]
He was worried again that his bad mood might affect the baby.
Zou Beiqi: [Coaxing someone takes sincerity.]
Heng Shi: [What do you want?]
Zou Beiqi: [Put some thought into it yourself, otherwise you won’t coax me successfully.]
Heng Shi didn’t reply anymore. Not paying it much mind, Zou Beiqi shoved his phone back into his pocket, returned to his room, and fell straight to sleep.
He woke up very early the next day. The moment he checked his phone, there was a message from Heng Shi waiting for him: [Waiting for you in the backyard.]
After tidying up his appearance, Zou Beiqi stepped into the backyard and saw Heng Shi sitting on a bench with a pot of vibrant, delicate red roses placed right beside him.
Seeming to sense his arrival, Heng Shi picked up the potted red roses and walked over to Zou Beiqi. “Can this coax you into a good mood?”
Zou Beiqi froze in place. This was the first time in his life he had ever received roses. Just as he reached out to take them, Heng Shi showed no intention of letting go. “The pot is heavy, I’ll place it on the flower rack for you.”
The red roses were placed in a prominent spot on the flower rack. Unable to help himself, Zou Beiqi lingered on them for a few extra seconds before Heng Shi spoke up beside him: “Do you like it?”
“I like it.” That was the truth; nobody dislikes roses, Zou Beiqi thought.
“Not mad anymore?”
“Mm.” Although for a fleeting second Zou Beiqi wondered if he was just too easy to coax, he figured Heng Shi hadn’t committed an unforgivable sin either. Oh well.
“I asked the flower shop clerk who it was for when she asked. I said, ‘For my husband, he likes planting flowers and plants.'” Heng Shi’s gaze landed on Zou Beiqi, who was outlined by the morning light, casting a tiny sweep of shadow beneath his eyelashes. His naturally fair skin looked all the more enchanting under that warm glow. “She helped me pick this one. It suits you.”
“Yeah!” The roses were like scorching fire, and Zou Beiqi inexplicably felt as though his heart had been set ablaze.
After staring at the red roses for a long while, Zou Beiqi thought it was still necessary to clear up last night’s misunderstanding. But before he could even open his mouth, his phone rang abruptly.
It was a message from Sheng Wanzhong again. Talk about picking the worst possible timing.
Sheng Wanzhong: [Picture]
[My family just adopted a golden retriever puppy, it’s so cute, look, look!]
Zou Beiqi tapped on the image to zoom in. The little golden retriever was playing with a toy ball, looking exceptionally lively and adorable.
Zou Beiqi: [Very cute.]
Sheng Wanzhong: [Want to come over to my place and see it? Bring your camera to take pictures, it’s super photogenic! I took so many.]
A barrage of golden retriever photos bombarded the chat window, melting Zou Beiqi’s heart just a bit until he couldn’t resist and agreed to the other person’s invitation to visit.
“What did you see? That look on your face.”
Hearing that, Zou Beiqi immediately reined in his expression. “Nothing, Sheng Wanzhong invited me over to his house to take pictures.”
“Is that so?” Heng Shi’s tone instantly dropped by a degree. “I’ll go with you.”