Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
“Get down.”
The man kept his words short and concise.
Xue Baoyi looked at Jiang Zhi through the rear-view mirror. He had just been discharged from the hospital, so his complexion didn’t look particularly healthy. Sitting there limply, his face seemed a bit flushed. Perhaps he was going through a fever? That would explain why he appeared so weak. If that was the case, was he even fit to drive? Anyhow, Xue Baoyi ignored the timing and started reciting a line from the famous “*Playboy’s Erotica” written to sing praise about a girl’s beauty during the Warring States period.
Jiang Zhi’s coughs accompanied Xue Baoyi’s recital.
“I’m not getting down.”
Xue Baoyi finally gave a firm reply after flashing a look of sympathy at Jiang Zhi.
Just then, something came flying over from the back of the car.
His quick reflexes proved useful as he was able to grab hold of the “thing” that had come flying over. Looking down at his hand, it was Jiang Zhi’s phone.
“Huh, the screen’s busted?”
Jiang Zhi had, by then, made a comfy nest for himself in the backseat. His legs were curled up underneath a wool blanket and his arm propped up his head as a make-shift pillow.
“I smashed it…” Jiang Zhi said as he rubbed his eyes lazily, his voice was soft, almost powerless. “…right when you braked suddenly.”
He had committed an unforgivable sin, smashing up Master Jiang’s phone.
Xue Baoyi wiped the phone’s screen with his sleeves before turning on some music for the young master.
“Well, you’re in luck. The screen is still fine, it’s just the glass protector that’s smashed up. Give me a moment, I’ll go patch it up for you.”
Subsequently, Xue Baoyi exited the car to find a stall that sold such protectors.
Zhou Xufang raised her head.
“Are protectors for this model still available?” Xue Baoyi asked.
She eyed the phone in his hand briefly before replying. “Yes.”
Then, she retrieved three different types of protectors from within the wooden crate.
Xue Baoyi inspected these three protectors closely and said, “I want the one with the most bling.” After all, young master Xue was infatuated with all things ‘bling bling’.
Zhou Xufang then turned up the intensity of the lamp before proceeding to replace the screen protector on Jiang Zhi’s phone.
Meanwhile, Xue Baoyi’s eyes were focused on the young stall owner instead.
‘Hmm, not bad-looking at all. It’s hard to find a young woman as pretty as her hustling about nowadays.’
“Gimme that bright pink phone cover as well.”
Zhou Xufang’s hands moved quickly, finishing the job within minutes. Handing over the now patched-up phone as well as the eye-catching phone cover, she declared the total price for both items.
“Fifty yuan please.”
Xue Baoyi handed the cash over before returning to the car.
Prince Jiang was now catching some shut-eye. His breathing was a little sporadic and both of his cheeks were quite flushed. Though sound-asleep, there were tiny openings between his eyelids through which one could see his misty eyes. Xue Baoyi was almost, or perhaps, already long-intoxicated by how beautiful his male companion looked.
God d*mn, try as he might, he just couldn’t find the right words to describe such beauty
The iron-willed straight man, Xue Baoyi, looked away from the sleeping beauty as he muttered under his breath. “I gotta say, that stall owner girl looks pretty good although the vibe she gave off was definitely off-putting. What’s with the sunglasses at night?”
Sleeping beauty had now awakened from his slumber in the backseat.
Xue Baoyi turned back and waggled the phone in front of Jiang Zhi.
“I picked a new cover for you. This color really fits you, don’tcha think?”
There was even a big cute bunny on the back of the cover.
Jiang Zhi grabbed his phone and rubbed the screen twice. Then, he patiently removed his phone from the bright pink cover hand-picked by Xue Baoyi and tossed it back at his face.
“My eyes will never get used to this, give it to someone else.”
Xue Baoyi, who had gotten his gift thrown back into his face stared blankly into empty space.
“…”
‘Shit, this little prince is a spicy one, huh?’
The silence was interrupted by the ringing of the little prince’s phone.
“Hello.”
The little prince’s voice was as cold as ice.
“Director Jiang.”
The person on the other side of the line was a woman.
Jiang Zhi’s brows furrowed as he suppressed a cough. A few blue-green veins on his neck popped and his lips grew a few shades redder as he did so.
“Who’s this?”
“It’s me,” said a woman’s voice.
Jiang Zhi was not a man of patience. He probed once more in a lazy, almost powerless tone.
“Who?”
This time, the woman finally revealed her identity.
“I am Yang Xu.”
Yang Xu…
The name sounded familiar to Xue Baoyi, but he struggled to actually recall who she was. He had been seeing more women lately so perhaps that was why.
Jiang Zhi wore a frown on his face as he searched through his memories.
“The one who was late on the set yesterday?”
It became apparent that this woman had too small of a presence in the eyes of the great director.
“I’m sorry Director Jiang, but yesterday, I–”
Jiang Zhi started coughing. Even his ears started reddening, indicating that he was still under the weather. His temper, especially during such situations, was extremely bad. Without waiting for the woman to finish her explanation, he started speaking.
“You’ve been transferred elsewhere. There’s no need to give further explanations.”
Jiang Zhi hung up immediately after that.
Xue Baoyi, who couldn’t help eavesdropping, heard most of what was said in the short call and quickly understood the context of it.
“That scene was already partially completed. You’re changing the people now?”
If his memory served him correctly, that flower bud played quite a number of scenes too.
The man in the backseat pushed against the sunroof as he replied, “Well, she broke the rules that I laid down.”
At the young age of eighteen, Jiang Zhi had directed his first film. Despite it being just a fun side-project, its tickets had sold out in the country’s theatres. To put it in Jiang Zhi’s words, since there was time to spare, a fun little game wouldn’t hurt, right? This “fun little game” was enough to earn him the title of an academy award-winning director overnight. Still, he maintained a low-profile, and the media was reluctant to publish too many articles about him. Those outside the film circles knew little about his involvement in the project, but for those who were “in the circle”, they knew just how fearsome of a director Jiang Zhi was. There were many rules which one must adhere to and no matter how popular of a celebrity you were or how much clout you had, you would be tossed out like garbage if you chose to do otherwise.
“No issues, you’re the boss.”
Xue Baoyi turned the steering wheel and sent the young master back home.
The rain had started pouring down. There were only two or three pedestrians around, and all of the vendors by the riverside had already packed up and left. The journey from Bayi Bridge to Yuquan Bay via tricycle took roughly forty minutes of travel time.
Zhou Xufang pulled a black raincoat over her body. The sweater underneath the polyurethane coat had mostly dried up already. Halfway through putting the coat on, she removed the already dripping wet raincoat to pull the hood of her sweater over her head before placing the coat back on. With the sunglasses still on her face, she walked into the grocery store just outside the residential area where she lived. She then picked up a can of cat food as well as a bottle of drinking water before heading over to the counter.
Wen Baiyang passed over a note.
“29.9 yuan.”
She forked over that amount and unconsciously tipped her hat again before walking out of the grocery store. As she neared the exit, she stopped in her tracks. Pasted on the glass wall outside was a hiring notice.
“Is this place still hiring?”
Bai Wenyang nodded before handing over another note which included a line of numbers.
“Need workers urgently. Pay by the hour. This is the boss’s number.”
“Thank you.”
Zhou Xufang thanked her as soon as the note was passed to her.
Wen Baiyang read her lips and replied with a gesture that roughly meant “no problem”.
Zhou Xufang walked back to the tricycle and pulled the raincoat over her head again. The great black hood covered most of her face and because she had her head lowered, she bumped into the shoulders of a passerby, knocking the can of cat food out of her hands.
She looked up.
It was the curly-haired old lady from Block 16.
The old lady and Xufang locked gazes for a second before the former looked away.
“I’m terribly sorry.”
She shook her head silently and bent over to pick up the can on the ground. The old lady also reached down to pick the fallen item up for her but accidentally made contact with the back of her hand for a fraction of a second. The old lady immediately retrieved her hand while murmuring something under her breath, not wasting any more time before squeezing into the grocery store with her other elderly companion.
The rain was pouring down relentlessly, making quite the racket as countless numbers of raindrops fell onto her raincoat. In the grocery store behind her, the curly-haired lady bought a large packet of salt while conversing in a hushed tone.