Sure enough, Wu Suowei and Chi Cheng dawdled downstairs for quite a while before finally coming up. By the time they opened the door, the food was nearly ready, and the rich aroma wafted out of the kitchen.
“You two were outside having a quickie or something? Coming back this late?” Jiang Xiaoshuai teased on purpose.
Wu Suowei angrily grabbed Jiang Xiaoshuai by the collar and cursed under his breath, “You traitor who prioritizes lust over friendship!”
Jiang Xiaoshuai just chuckled a few times, showing no remorse whatsoever.
Chi Cheng leaned against the kitchen doorframe, watching Guo Chengyu bustling back and forth.
“Are you the one who usually cooks?” Chi Cheng asked.
Guo Chengyu said, “Do you think his hands look like they’ve ever touched a kitchen?”
Chi Cheng gave Guo a light kick on the butt. “Look at you! Can’t you train him to cook a little? What good is it spoiling him like that?”
Guo just smiled casually. “To capture a man’s heart, you have to capture his stomach first. Look how firmly I’ve got him tied down. Not like yours, who’s running around looking for food all day.”
Before Chi Cheng could reply, Wu Suowei darted in, hovering around Guo to deliberately divert Chi Cheng’s attention.
“Wow, what dish is this? Smells amazing!”
“It’s a type of wild greens,” Guo said, giving Wu Suowei a meaningful glance. “Specifically for people who like to sneak bites, tastes great.”
The kitchen smoke left Wu Suowei sweating buckets.
At the table, the four of them chatted and laughed as they ate. Oddly enough, the usually talkative Wu Suowei didn’t say much this time, aside from praising how good Guo’s cooking was, he kept quiet. Every now and then he’d glance at Chi Cheng, and only when he saw that Chi Cheng’s expression was perfectly normal did he relax and continue eating.
Partway through, Guo Chengyu deliberately brought up a TV show.
“Did you know they made The Smiling, Proud Wanderer into a drama?”
Jiang Xiaoshuai said, “Yeah, I even watched an episode. But the moment I heard Linghu Chong call out ‘Ying Ying,’ my skin crawled, and I changed the channel right away.”
He deliberately stressed the words “Ying Ying.”
Wu Suowei’s heart skipped a beat and he buried his head in his bowl.
Guo lightly tapped Wu Suowei’s wrist. “Hey, Linghu Chong…”
As soon as he said it, Jiang Xiaoshuai burst out laughing.
Guo feigned an apologetic tone. “Slip of the tongue, slip of the tongue. We were just talking about it, and it came out.”
Wu Suowei didn’t even know how he managed to swallow that mouthful of rice.
“Uh, you guys go ahead and eat, I’ll go check on Erbao.”
With that, he fled in a hurry. Chi Cheng merely gave him a faint glance and said nothing.
By the time they finished eating, it was already past midnight. Seeing Guo Chengyu and Jiang Xiaoshuai picking up their bags, Wu Suowei finally let out a sigh of relief, finally sending these two ancestors on their way.
“You brought all your clothes?” Guo asked Jiang.
Jiang said, “Yeah. Brought pajamas and clothes for tomorrow morning too.”
“Wait a sec…” Wu Suowei panicked. “You two are staying here tonight?”
Guo countered, “It’s already this late, you want to kick us out now?”
“There’s only one bedroom you can actually sleep in,” Wu argued. “The rest are full of stuff. If you want to stay here, you’d have to clean it up first, might as well go home where it’s more convenient.”
Jiang said, “We’ll just stay in the bedroom that’s ready. The rest you guys can clean up yourselves. As guests, it wouldn’t be right for us to touch your things, would it?”
Guo added, “I’m kind of fond of those big mirrors in your room anyway.”
Then he grabbed Jiang and headed for the bathroom.
Wu shoved at Chi Cheng. “Say something! They’re about to sleep in our bed, what if they leave something on our sheets?”
Chi Cheng drawled softly, “It’s fine. Just means our future kids can meet their cousins early.”
“…”
214: Epiphany (full chapter)
Not long after Guo Chengyu and Jiang Xiaoshuai entered the bedroom, Wu Suowei came over and knocked on the door.
“Open up, I need to grab something.”
Guo Chengyu’s voice came from inside. “We’re already under the covers. Get it tomorrow.”
“Just open up for a sec, it’s really urgent!”
But Guo Chengyu refused to open it, clearly doing it on purpose to make him anxious.
Chi Cheng usually couldn’t be bothered with trivial stuff like this, but when he saw Wu Suowei pounding so hard on the door that the back of his hand was turning red, he couldn’t just watch anymore. In his deep, commanding voice, he called inside, “Guozi, open the door for him.”
Since the “boss” had spoken, the sly old fox thought for a moment, then sauntered to the door and let Wu Suowei in.
The moment Wu entered, he yanked Jiang Xiaoshuai, who was only wearing a pair of underwear, right out of the bed and dragged him toward the door. Sure enough, Guo intercepted them at the doorway.
“Where are you going?” Guo asked.
Wu said, “We brothers need to have a private talk. None of your business.”
“Put some clothes on first,” Guo ordered Jiang in a low voice.
But before Jiang could move, Wu already shoved him out the door with brute strength and snapped impatiently, “Clothes? What for? We’re all men here, nothing to hide!”
With that, he dragged Jiang toward another room.
Jiang’s pale figure, that sexy little waist and those straight, long legs, were all taken in by Chi Cheng’s eyes. His gaze lingered on Jiang for a moment before turning back to Guo.
“He really is pretty fair-skinned,” Chi said in a teasing tone.
Guo clenched his jaw, a sour taste rising to his lips.
“Control your man a little, will you? He’s way too casual! Just pulls him out of bed like that, in front of you no less, is he trying to rebel or something?”
Chi peeled a grape, then flicked it straight and clean into Guo’s open mouth.
“You think I can control him? And this is when you guys are here. When you’re not around, he struts around the room stark naked every day. I’ve told him more than once, he just forgets the next second.”
Guo sat down next to Chi.
“If he keeps exposing himself like that without holding anything back, won’t you eventually stop getting excited?”
Chi draped an arm over Guo’s shoulder, his broad hand scratching lightly at Guo’s face as he said, neither too hard nor too soft:
“That’s exactly what I like about him, that shamelessness.”
“Well, you just keep liking it then,” Guo snorted. “One day, you’re gonna trip over yourself because of it.”
……
After dragging Jiang Xiaoshuai into another room, Wu Suowei told him the whole story about Zhang Ying.
“Damn, that shameless old man actually came crawling back to you again?”
Wu Suowei nodded. “If I hadn’t run into him at the entrance of the Finance Bureau, I would’ve almost forgotten he even existed.”
Jiang Xiaoshuai clenched his fists. “Then you absolutely can’t let him off the hook. To this day I still remember how he made you go to the office in the middle of the night during a rainstorm just to watch him throw a drunken fit, what a total bastard!”
A ruthless glint flashed in Wu Suowei’s eyes.
“That bastard’s been skimming plenty these past few years. Zhang Ying is his mistress. If I don’t pretend to take the bait, he won’t dare bring that dirty money out. Back then he forced me into a dead end, now I’m going to make sure he loses everything he’s got.”
Jiang Xiaoshuai patted Wu Suowei’s shoulder. “I’m with you. He screwed you over for three years, you should screw him over for at least thirty.”
Wu Suowei threw his arms around Jiang, deeply moved.
“Shuaishuai, you really understand me best.”
The two of them were still being dramatic when the door was suddenly pushed open.
Guo Chengyu stood in the doorway with a cigarette dangling from his lips, his cold gaze sweeping over Jiang Xiaoshuai.
“Come on, back to the room to sleep with me!”
Jiang said impatiently, “Can’t you see the two of us are having a moment? This has nothing to do with you, go stand somewhere else!”
Before Guo could even respond, Jiang strode to the door and slammed it shut with a loud bang.
Wu Suowei stared in shock.
“Master, you’re such a man!”
Jiang let out a cold snort. “Trying to act tough with me? Who does he think he is?”
“Exactly!” Wu egged him on. “You can’t go soft on narrow-minded men like that.”
Hearing the sound of a door slamming, Chi Cheng came out of the bathroom and asked Guo Chengyu, “What’s going on?”
Guo smiled wryly. “They’re cuddling in there again.”
Chi Cheng actually looked pleased to hear that.
“Well isn’t that perfect? We can sleep in that room then.”
If you thought Wu Suowei and Jiang Xiaoshuai were shameless, Chi Cheng and Guo Chengyu were even more so. At least the first pair kept their underwear on, these two went at it completely naked, lying side by side like a pair of proud roosters.
“We haven’t slept together in 35 days,” Guo Chengyu said.
Chi Cheng curled his lips into a smile. “You remember that clearly?”
“Because Jiang Xiaoshuai and I have been fucking for exactly 35 days without stopping.”
“Fuck!” Chi Cheng sneered. “Trying to show off to me? Saying the number of days doesn’t mean shit, if you’ve got guts, say how many times.”
“Counting times isn’t accurate either, might as well just compare duration.”
The two of them exchanged a glance and both broke into lewd smiles.
“Jiang Xiaoshuai’s pretty tight, isn’t he?” Chi Cheng asked.
Guo Chengyu replied in a low, languid voice, “The tightest in all of Beijing.”
Chi Cheng grabbed Guo Chengyu’s shaft and teased, “Served you real good, huh?”
Guo Chengyu turned his head and shot Chi Cheng a wicked smile.
“Not just good, it was damn good.”
Chi Cheng let out a sinister laugh. “His skin really is so fair and smooth. Last time he slipped into my bed and rubbed against me a couple of times, it made me itch all over. If my dick hadn’t been pressed up against Dabao’s ass, I swear I would’ve stuffed him back under the covers.”
Guo Chengyu didn’t hear anything else, he only heard the five words ‘slipped into my bed’.
“He slipped into your bed?” Guo’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Chi replied, “And he was naked when he did it.”
Guo had always thought that their Jiang Xiaoshuai was the most proper, the most reserved, the most mindful of boundaries. Turns out all that was just for him.
Guo’s eyes sharpened, and he was about to sit up when Chi’s elbow pressed him back down.
“Don’t make me look down on you,” Chi said.
Guo froze for a moment but eventually lay back down.
After a while, something else seemed to cross Guo’s mind, and he jabbed his knee against Chi’s impressive package.
“So tell me, you know about the Zhang Ying situation, right?”
“No shit,” Chi said blandly. “Zhang Baogui got to Dabao through me. You think I don’t know the little beads he’s been counting on his abacus?”
“You sound pretty relaxed about it!”
Chi shot him a sweeping, domineering glare. “After all the crap he’s been through, I have to let him vent that anger.”
Guo let out a cold laugh. “You’re pretty magnanimous, huh. Meanwhile I can’t stand seeing Jiang Xiaoshuai being affectionate with anyone else.”
Chi’s brows knit slightly. “Affectionate? Wasn’t it all just for show?”
“Well, he’s one hell of an actor then. Because I sure didn’t see any hint that he was just swallowing his pride and biding his time. Those little hands holding on, that cry of ‘Ying Ying’ — at that moment, I really thought you were Dongfang Bubai, and the only way out for you was to castrate yourself.”
Chi had always thought that their Dabao was the most timid, the most genuine, the least capable of hiding things. Turns out those three traits were just an act and all for him.
The grand master’s face suddenly turned cold, and he started to get up, but Guo’s elbow pressed him back down.
“Don’t make me look down on you,” Guo shot back, twisting the knife.
Chi gritted his teeth but still lay back down.
Wu Suowei and Jiang Xiaoshuai were still chatting warmly in the other room.
“You mustn’t let Guozi go tattling to Chi Cheng. This thing of mine is just about to succeed — I can’t afford even the slightest screw-up!”
“Don’t worry.” Jiang Xiaoshuai patted Wu Suowei’s shoulder. “If you’d said earlier that you were hooking up with the secretary because of this, I wouldn’t have let Guozi come in and sabotage things. We just didn’t realize how serious it was, thought you were just messing around.”
Wu Suowei asked cautiously, “Guozi isn’t the type to run his mouth, right?”
“Come on, my man? You think he’s the type to blab?”
Wu Suowei scratched his head awkwardly. “The way you say it… why does it make me feel unsure?”
Jiang Xiaoshuai smacked the bed frame. “Damn, what’s that supposed to mean? You don’t trust your master? Didn’t you see me just now, kicking that door shut? Did he even dare make a peep? If I don’t let him talk to Chi Cheng, he wouldn’t even dare fart.”
Hearing that, Wu Suowei laughed. “True, that kick of yours just now was badass, slammed the door with a bang. Just imagine how dark Guozi’s face must’ve been, standing out there.”
“Hahaha…” Jiang Xiaoshuai laughed wildly. “Well, that I wouldn’t know.”
“What do you think they’re doing now? Just sitting there, staring at each other and stewing in anger?” Wu Suowei grinned mischievously.
Jiang Xiaoshuai grinned too, but after grinning for a while, his jaw started to ache.
Wu Suowei also suddenly realized something, his facial muscles twitching as he looked at Jiang.
“Uh… Master, why do I feel like that kick of yours just made things worse?”
Jiang scratched his forehead, looking conflicted. “Why do I feel the same? Leaving those two out there… doesn’t seem like we really got the better end of this.”
“Exactly, plus, they snagged the nice room. And the nice bed.”