A moment later, the doorbell rang, and Aunt Guan walked over on tiptoe to open the door.
As soon as An Rong stepped inside, what she heard was her own artist’s sniffling whimpers.
“Daddy, Daddy, wuwuwu…”
“You mustn’t die, wuwuwuwuwuwu…”
Chi Xiang’s dad… wasn’t that their boss, Wen Gaoge?
An Rong furrowed her brow and quickened her pace as she walked in.
In the living room, Chi Xiang was sitting crookedly on the carpet, with a large pile of paper tissues placed on the coffee table in front of him, which continued to grow with his sobbing.
Fu Hanzhang sat nearby supporting his head with one hand. Seeing An Rong enter, he said lazily, “You’re Chi Xiang’s manager, right? Can you get him to stop crying?”
“Teacher Fu, what happened to Chi Xiang to make him cry like this?” An Rong felt a bit panicked.
Fu Hanzhang’s eyes shifted slightly.
“Just playing a little joke.”
After listening to Fu Hanzhang’s explanation, An Rong pressed her lips together, feeling somewhat speechless inside. She looked at Chi Xiang. It seemed he had cried himself tired, Chi Xiang sat there in a daze, his entire face flushed red from crying for so long, losing that usual shrewd edge and looking pitiful to the extreme.
“Teacher Fu, Chi Xiang’s mental state isn’t very stable right now… so, it’s best not to stimulate him,” An Rong deliberated and said. “Have you told him about his current situation?”
“Not yet.”
An Rong lowered her eyes to think for a moment, looked at Chi Xiang, and asked, “Chi Xiang, do you remember me?”
Chi Xiang glanced at An Rong and shook his head.
Although he didn’t recognize her, for some reason, seeing An Rong gave him a sense of dread akin to seeing a headmaster… Chi Xiang quietly scooted a bit closer to Fu Hanzhang.
Although she had mental preparations before coming, seeing Chi Xiang acting completely like a timid little wife, An Rong felt she still hadn’t prepared enough.
Once Chi Xiang sobered up, this would probably be the darkest history he would want to delete the most…
Finishing her inner monologue with an unexpressioned face, An Rong said, “Chi Xiang, I am your manager, An Rong. You are not Xiang Chi, you are the actor Chi Xiang. Xiang Chi is the role you played. Because of a car concussion, you’ve mistaken yourself for Xiang Chi. You must have felt that something was a bit off too, think about it carefully.”
After hearing An Rong’s words, Chi Xiang tilted his head, as if pondering.
“Yes, think about it carefully,” An Rong encouraged him with her eyes.
“Um…” Chi Xiang leaned closer to Fu Hanzhang again, grabbed Fu Hanzhang’s trouser leg, and looked up. “Husband, who is she? What she’s saying is so strange…”
An Rong: “…”
An Rong: “Teacher Fu, the only person Chi Xiang trusts right now is you, so could I trouble you to explain it clearly to him? I’ve helped him postpone all his non-urgent work, but there’s still some that can’t be pushed and he has to attend. Look…”
Fu Hanzhang lowered his eyes and looked at Chi Xiang sitting beside his lap. Chi Xiang had a well-formed skull, with a small crown swirl on top of his head, and his hair was soft and fluffy, looking very nice to the touch.
“I know.”
Fu Hanzhang reached out and pulled Chi Xiang up.
“Chi Xiang, everything she said is true.” Fu Hanzhang used the remote control to switch the TV back to the scene where Yu Kunpeng sacrificed himself. “Chi Xiang, what does your dad do?”
“My dad runs a company. Aren’t you working at his company?”
In the film, Xiang Xingting didn’t want Xiang Chi to touch those dark things, always lying that he ran a real estate company. Until late in the film, under the intentional manipulation of the male protagonist Han Zhang, Xiang Chi faced head-on the scene of his father killing without blinking an eye. Reared to be pure and kind, he couldn’t get past the hurdle in his heart, and under Han Zhang’s deception, he told Han Zhang the most likely hiding place of Xiang Xingting, which indirectly led to Xiang Xingting’s death.
Given Chi Xiang’s current state, his memory should be stuck at the stage where Han Zhang had just proposed to Xiang Chi.
Fu Hanzhang pointed at the TV. “Then why would your dad appear in a TV show?”
Chi Xiang’s brow slightly furrowed. He stared at the TV for a while, then slapped his hands together in a sudden flash of realization, “Dad has a side hustle after all!”
Fu Hanzhang: “…”
An Rong: “…”
Chi Xiang said worriedly, “Could something have happened to the company, forcing even Dad to take on a part-time job to make money? Um… or could it be that Dad actually harbors an acting dream too?”
An Rong couldn’t help but open the corporate records app (Tianyan Cha). “That’s not your dad, and there’s no such company. If you don’t believe me, look it up.”
Chi Xiang took the phone half-doubtfully and typed in Xingting Real Estate, and the result showed it did not exist.
“How could this be… Did Dad cancel the registration of the company and chase his dream in the entertainment circle? Geez, why didn’t he even tell me…”
An Rong retreated in defeat.
Fu Hanzhang lowered his head slightly, his knuckles pressed against his lips without speaking.
Chi Xiang looked up at him and asked quizzically, “Husband, what are you laughing at?”
Fu Hanzhang moved his hand away. “I wasn’t laughing, and I’m not your husband either.”
He pulled up his own Baidu encyclopedia page and handed it to Chi Xiang. “I am not Han Zhang.”
Chi Xiang pressed his lips together in mild displeasure, gripping the phone and flipping back and forth through it. The photo clearly showed his husband, so why wasn’t the name Han Zhang instead of Fu Hanzhang? It didn’t sound nearly as nice as Han Zhang…
The Baidu encyclopedia page detailed Fu Hanzhang’s experiences, including the numerous film and television works he had acted in. Looking at that long string of names, Chi Xiang inexplicably felt a sense of familiarity.
Lowering his head to ponder for a long time, Chi Xiang suddenly raised his head and put forward a new hypothesis: “Could it be, Husband, we time-traveled!”
An Rong & Fu Hanzhang: “…………”
“Yeah, that explains it! Husband, we time-traveled, so Dad’s company disappeared, and instead of doing real estate, you and him transitioned into becoming actors! I knew it, Husband, you’re so handsome, being a salesman would be wasting your talent…” Chi Xiang felt his train of thought open up and began expounding on his idea fluently.
An Rong: “…How about we let him rest a bit more and see if he can remember on his own?”
Fu Hanzhang: “Mhm.”
An Rong left, leaving behind Chi Xiang’s phone and Chi Xiang’s work schedule for the upcoming period.
Fu Hanzhang flipped through the documents and unsuprisingly saw many familiar brand names.
Chi Xiang returned to China last year, initially only making cameo appearances in a few online dramas playing unimportant roles. He gained some minor popularity due to his outstanding physical appearance, but truly ascended to top traffic status after starring in a suspense web series mixed with supernatural elements.
In it, he played the childhood sweetheart of the dual-personality male lead. His styling was great, his chemistry with the male lead was strong, and after the drama aired, their CP exploded in popularity, leaving him flooded with collaboration offers.
Fu Hanzhang had seen Xiao Fang replay clips of Chi Xiang from the show many times. His acting skills weren’t perfect, but they benefited from the fact that the role itself didn’t require massive expressions, preventing any exposure of his acting weaknesses.
Putting down the documents, Fu Hanzhang glanced down at Chi Xiang by his feet.
Chi Xiang was still immersed in his time-travel theory beyond extrication, tinkering with his phone to search up info on Yu Kunpeng, and even enthusiastically proposing whether they should find an opportunity to go see Xiang Xingting to acknowledge him as family and see if Xiang Xingting had time-traveled just like them.
“Husband, I saw them saying Dad will be at, huh? Who is this?”
A WeChat video call request suddenly popped up on the screen, with the remark name “Little Duck”. Chi Xiang felt this name sounded a bit familiar and tapped to accept.
A person with a head of yellow hair and a swollen, distorted face appeared on the screen. Seeing Chi Xiang on this end of the video, the person widened eyes swollen into two slits and wailed mournfully, “Wife, you finally answered my call!”
Chi Xiang: “?!”
Fu Hanzhang paused, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“Wuwuwu Wife, you scared me to death. You wouldn’t answer my call, and when I saw you got into a car accident I was worried sick. I flew to A City overnight and rushed to the hospital only for the doctor to tell me you were already gone, and when I asked what was going on they wouldn’t tell me wuwuwu.” Little Duck howled loudly. “I was so scared, what will I do if you die, wife? You can’t leave me all alone… ugh!”
The wailing came to an abrupt halt. Chi Xiang hung up the phone, threw it away as if he’d seen a ghost, and frantically turned his head to look at Fu Hanzhang. “Husband, please listen to my explanation!”
“I-I don’t know him, I’m not his wife, I am your wife, no, I’m your wife, you are my husband…” Chi Xiang rambled incoherently. “I didn’t cheat! I only have you in my heart, Husband, you have to believe me, I’ll delete him right now!”
Yet Fu Hanzhang only sat there with crossed legs, taking it leisurely. “It’s fine, you don’t need to explain to me.”
“I’m not your husband anyway.”
Chi Xiang’s eyes instantly turned red, and he choked out, “No, no, we’re getting married, I really don’t know this person! He looks so ugly, he can’t possibly be my husband! Husband, please believe me…”
Just as he was speaking, the phone rang again. Chi Xiang glared at the phone like facing a formidable enemy, terrified that it was that squinting duck calling him again.
Fu Hanzhang stood up, picked up the phone from the floor, glanced at the caller tag, and connected the video.
Little Duck appeared on the screen once more. He had calmed down a bit now. “Wife, why did you hang up my ph, uh-ah, who are you? My god! You couldn’t possibly be Fu-Fu-Fu…”
“Fu Hanzhang.”
The person in the video vanished for a few seconds. When they reappeared, their expression was serene, poised, and elegant, and their swollen eyes tried hard to widen. “Hello, Emperor Fu, might I ask why Chi Xiang’s phone is in your hands?”
“Chi Xiang suffered a head injury and his memory is currently disordered. His father entrusted me to look after him for a while.”
“Uh, oh, I see. Could I speak with him for a few words?”
Fu Hanzhang handed the phone to Chi Xiang. Chi Xiang backed away several steps, shaking his head frantically to show his innocence. “I won’t, I won’t.”
“Chi Xiang doesn’t want to take calls right now.” Fu Hanzhang paused and asked, “I just heard you call Chi Xiang ‘wife’. Are you two romantic partners?”
Little Duck hurriedly denied it. “No, no, I was just joking. The two of us are in a purely platonic friendship.”
“Mhm, I see.”
“Well, so is Chi Xiang not remembering me right now? Can I go see him?”
Fu Hanzhang’s gaze landed on Chi Xiang. “It’s not very convenient right now.”
“Ah, alright then. Sorry to trouble Teacher Fu.”
Ending the call, Fu Hanzhang placed the phone on the coffee table.
Chi Xiang picked at his fingers and sidled over. “Husband, you heard it, right? I didn’t cheat.”
“Mhm.”
Seeing Fu Hanzhang unmoved, Chi Xiang felt a bit sad.
Clearly, Husband had time-traveled just like him, but he didn’t seem to care about their past affection at all, acting completely indifferent even to his suspected infidelity.
Chi Xiang walked upstairs crestfallen.
Aunt Guan came over to clean up the trash on the coffee table and probed, “Sir, did this finally…”
Fu Hanzhang raised his eyes to look at Aunt Guan and said, “No.”
Aunt Guan breathed a sigh of relief. “I was worried that if your mother found out…”
Seeing Fu Hanzhang’s gaze grow slightly cold, Aunt Guan said no more and instead asked, “How long will Mr. Chi be staying?”
Fu Hanzhang lowered his eyes and said calmly, “At most a month.”
A month was the deadline he and Wen Gaoge had agreed upon, by then, regardless of whether Chi Xiang had recovered or not, he would politely show Chi Xiang out.