Chapter 10

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At 5:10, Chen Gong gave the location manager a call.

The person in charge picked up with a bleary voice, which suddenly changed into panic: “Oh, I overslept! I’ll pick you up right away! ——actually would that be too late…? Can you call your own ride? You can claim it from us! Sorry, so so sorry!”

Chen Gong listened to this wild ride of an emotional outburst and replied calmly: “Sure.”

Adjusting his collar in the mirror, Chen Gong opened the ride-hailing app on his phone as he prepared to wake Zheng Yi.

Zheng Yi turned over. He rubbed against the duvet balled up under his legs, smiling slightly from some sweet dream he was having as he murmured: “Li’l sheep…”

Chen Gong recognised the nickname. He wasn’t surprised.

He knew about Zheng Yi and Yang Yi.

Their affair wasn’t exactly lowkey in Halo. In fact, it was even discussed under the premise of their “no workplace romance” policy.

As an aside: Halo’s many rules sounded quite scary, but they weren’t strict. The ban on office romances came from the broken marriage of the original visual department director Ms Liu and the marketing department’s assistant director Mr Lü.

Back then, Lao Wang had overindulged at their small wedding reception and grabbed the emcee’s microphone to semi-coherently express his well-wishes: “Xiao Liu—— has been with Halo for four years, our treasured daughter! And Lao Lü —— has been with Halo for six years, our eldest son! Today—— yes, today, on this bright, sunny (the wedding was at night), and beautiful day, our daughter! Is marrying our son! This is a family affair for all of Halo!”

This “incestuous” marriage between son and daughter later became Halo’s most infamous tale…

Anyway, back to Yang Yi.

Chen Gong didn’t know anything about him. He only knew what the girls in the department said: he was handsome (this Chen Gong could see for himself), seemed wealthy (apparently all his perfumed bags were famous luxury brands), and studied abroad as a child before coming back for university, sealing his family’s wealthy reputation.

So Chen Gong’s judgment was: Yang Yi was a lot like Zheng Yi, a natural-born phoenix, not a wild drake like himself who had to climb up the branches to become one.

Real phoenixes had an air that wild ones could not understand. It allowed them to recognise one another and flock together intimately.

Aside from meeting for work reasons, Chen Gong never really hung out with them. Oh well, Chen Gong told himself, you can get along with people and still never click with them.

From their first meeting, Yang Yi and Zheng Yi were glued at the hip– they’d be at one’s brother’s restaurant one day and the other’s friend’s club the next. The two couldn’t be parted. Rumour had it that they were even cohabiting…

Destroying some young ladies’ fantasies, fulfilling some others.

Of course, this was of no interest to Chen Gong. He wasn’t the least bit curious about what the two got up to together.

That was until Chen Gong accidentally ran into Yang Yi on the phone in the stairwell.

His laugh was mocking, his tone frivolous—completely different from his image in the office.

He said: “ I wouldn’t really go for a pretty-boy idiot like him — I’ll just get a secret “intimate video” to live off of later on.”

Chen Gong hated Zheng Yi.

But seeing Zheng Yi flushed from the beauty of his erotic dream, silly at the thought of his “Li’l Sheep”… Chen Gong pitied him too.

–

By the time he dragged Zheng Yi into the car, it was almost 5:30a.m.

The two fought, as usual.

It started with Zheng Yi feverishly venting at Chen Gong: “Hey, motherfucker, you’re dressed up all fancy in your suit and tie and didn’t even give me time to brush my teeth? Are you trying to sabotage me when we go on location today?”

Frankly, Chen Gong hadn’t given it much thought. He just felt that Zheng Yi had slept too little and might not be able to hold out today. How was he to know that he would earn Zheng Yi’s wrath instead?

Thinking of how he’d squandered his good intentions on this ingrate, Chen Gong frowned and coldly looked away. “Stop calling me ‘motherfucker’.”

They held their tempers and got into their ride. Chen Gong put his headphones on and looked out the window, listening to music; Zheng Yi fell back asleep the instant he got in.

Ten minutes into the ride, they went through a tunnel. The car window turned into a mirror, reflecting Zheng Yi in his sound sleep. His head rocked back and forth; from time to time he would wake a little, but only for a few seconds before his head dipped again; so the cycle went.

Watching Zheng Yi’s silly appearance, Chen Gong really felt like laughing. But thinking about their bickering this morning quelled his laughter.

“Motherfucker, you’re dressed up all fancy in your suit and tie!”

“Meanwhile I’m a total mess! I look like a bald chicken!”

“Total mess”? Surely Zheng Yi was deliberately picking a baseless fight. Just looking at the reflection in the window, Chen Gong felt that Zheng Yi was clearly very handsome. Even though his hair was slightly messy, all this did was diminish the usual sense of distance that his sophistication gave him, making him look like a tender young high schooler.

Chen Gong couldn’t help but keep looking. Zheng Yi was still rocking back and forth. He thought it was funny enough to record; the usually posh Mr Zheng dozing off would probably get quite a few laughs from the department group chat.

But they weren’t friends, so it wasn’t his place to crack this joke.

When the car left the tunnel, the mirroring effect vanished. The city rushing past the window was quiet and unpeopled in the early morning.

Without his entertainment, Chen Gong’s spirits dropped a little.

He folded his arms and closed his eyes, casually waiting for sleep.

Not long after, just as sleepiness began to muddle his senses, Chen Gong felt a sudden weight on his shoulder.

Chen Gong opened his bleary eyes to the crown of Zheng Yi’s head, and beneath that his eyelashes, the bridge of his nose, his slightly open lips, his neck slightly hidden in the collar of his shirt… there was still a hint of his cologne lingering overnight, mixing with the unique scent of Zheng Yi’s own breath, drifting into Chen Gong’s nostrils.

His soft hair tickled at Chen Gong’s neck, waking the barely sleeping Chen Gong, along with his habitual distaste. Chen Gong reached over, prepared to move Zheng Yi’s head away.

But just as he extended his hand, he paused. Perhaps it was better to be generous and lend his shoulder for a while. Being tossed back and forth, how could Zheng Yi have a proper nap? And if he was cranky from lack of sleep, wouldn’t Chen Gong have to suffer the consequences?

Chen Gong pulled his hand back to his side and looked out the window again.

Having watched this scene through the rearview mirror, the driver chuckled. “You’re really good friends, aren’t you!”

It was just a stranger’s friendly, well-meaning words. There was no need for an explanation; it would only make him feel awkward. Chen Gong simply nodded.

“Mhm.”

Having spent the whole night karaoke-ing with her brother and his friends, the sound of email notifications finally forced her out of bed at 2:24p.m.

Qiu Mang drowsily felt across the bed for her charging phone.

It was a break, but since she was the HR director, two work emails still came in unrelentingly. One contained resumes filtered by the department’s specialists, and the other was a contract from Zheng Yi.

The priority was on the second. After half an hour spent reading the contract Zheng Yi sent, Qiu Mang called him. “Impressive! How did you tyrants force them to sign?”

Zheng Yi preened across the phone line. “What do you mean ‘force’? They were perfectly happy to sign.”

“Alright, well done! Very impressive!” Qiu Mang praised unceasingly. “I’ll forward it to Legal for review–if everything’s fine, we’re good to go. Are you guys on the way back to the hotel? What about my xuezhang?”

“Yeah, we left once we were done with the contract. I’m in the car on the way back, but your xuezhang said he had something else to do. Make a note of it! He’s handling personal affairs on company time!”

Qiu Mang laughed. “Snitching again?”

Zheng Yi chuckled.

“You haven’t been fighting again, have you?” Qiu Mang worried.

“We’re okay, we didn’t argue much…” Zheng Yi responded.

“Didn’t argue much” — based on Qiu Mang’s understanding of the two idiots, it probably meant “it didn’t come to blows”. Qiu Mang pursed her lips and asked: “Did you apologise like you were meant to?”

“I couldn’t –it was too awkward.”

“I seem to remember someone saying yesterday that they were afraid Chen Gong would kill them in revenge… why are you suddenly against apologising now?”

“Well, he wasn’t going to kill me, so I didn’t think of it–” Zheng Yi leaned against the front passenger seat, wrinkling his left brow, and began to explain his thought process to Qiu Mang. “I lost my ID when I landed, so I couldn’t register to stay at the hotel. Then he actually ended up letting me into his room to sleep! So… if I bowed and said my sorries, wouldn’t it look even more insincere, as if I had to be bribed into being nice to him? An apology between two men needs to be on equal standing, equal footing, now that’s a real man’s apology!”

Qiu Mang didn’t understand Zheng Yi at all. “That’s not being manly, that’s being a dick!”

Zheng Yi was speechless. After a while, he said, “Well, whatever. I’m not good at explaining it… there’s a custom to this…”

“You’re not sworn brothers or a married couple, what custom could there be?!” Qiu Mang rolled her eyes. “And two to a bed… You didn’t hit Chen Gong in your sleep, did you? I remember when you shared a bed with my brother back in high school, you kicked him off the bed in the middle of the night!”

Zheng Yi laughed for a long time before he spoke again. “I don’t know whether I hit him, but I take no legal responsibility for anything I may have done in my sleep. But I have a funny story for you: you know how I was squatting in Chen Gong’s room yesterday? I think I was too anxious about the possibility of a vice raid taking me for an illegal sex worker and bringing me in for questioning… I was drifting off to sleep and heard someone yell ‘Spot check!’, it gave me such a fright that I flew off the bed straight into the shower to find Chen Gong, frightening him too!”

Qiu Mang’s “hahaha”s came down the phone line.

“And then, you know what? The two of us stayed in the shower listening for ages, then ran to the door and listened there, then at last Chen Gong asked me, ‘what did you hear?’ and I said that I heard someone yelling ‘Kontrolle!’… only after I said that did I think, why would someone speak German in Chengdu? I must have been dreaming! And Chen Gong’s face was stiff with rage! How silly –he was having a nice shower before I went in and yelled until he waited around with me, buck naked!”

Qiu Mang hollered like an opera singer trilling an ornamentation.

Zheng Yi laughed along, and so did the driver, laughing and laughing until Zheng Yi suddenly slapped himself on the forehead and swore: “Oh fuck me!”

On the phone, Qiu Mang asked: “What’s wrong?”

Zheng Yi vented: “I’m such an idiot! Why didn’t I check if he had that heart-shaped birthmark on the left side of his chest…”

There was a long pause.

Zheng Yi heard Qiu Mang reply: “Have you lost your mind?!”

–

The author has something to say:

——Little Theatre

Zheng Yi: So you were peeking at me in the car the whole time?

Chen Gong: You were on my left, your reflection was on my right — where would you have me look? Between my legs?

–

–

Credits:

Author – Liang Azha (Weibo|Twitter)

Raws – Nandemonaiya

Translation – Nandemonaiya

Proofreading – Nandemonaiya, Terukutie, Zhiming

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