Chapter 93: I Love You
The atmosphere between them was taut and exhausted, like a rubber band stretched to its absolute limit, ready to snap at any second.
In Pei Zhouye’s eyes, there was only Wen Yan. His ears rang, deaf to the world, and his vision blurred. The combination of excessive blood loss and a lingering illness he hadn’t allowed himself to recover from made his head spin.
Wen Yan felt nothing but exhaustion and pain.
He couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it hurt; it felt as though his entire body was radiating a dull ache. The two sharpest points of pain were in his chest and his throat. His heart felt heavy with the bitterness of his shattered emotions, and his throat was hot and swollen.
If only he had never met Pei Zhouye.
“No.”
The cold sentence descended from above.
Even though Wen Yan was used to Pei Zhouye’s refusal to cooperate, his eyes still widened slightly upon hearing this. He took a few steps back, attempting to shut the door, only to find he couldn’t move it an inch.
Pei Zhouye’s palm was firmly braced against the doorframe. Noticing Wen Yan’s gaze, his movements became even more blatant and cold.
With what seemed like a light application of strength, he used his body to block the closing gap, forcing the door open and intruding into the space.
Click.
The sound of the door closing echoed. It was a silent-close door, yet in this eerie stillness, the sound was strikingly clear.
Terrified, Wen Yan retreated several more steps. Pei Zhouye followed him, step by slow step.
It was only then that Wen Yan noticed the messy bandage around Pei Zhouye’s neck. Judging by the wrapping alone, one could guess how gruesome the wound beneath it was.
Wen Yan’s fingertips trembled almost imperceptibly before he quickly clenched them into fists. His Adam’s apple bobbed, but he remained silent.
In that brief moment of distraction, Pei Zhouye’s hand had already clamped onto Wen Yan’s jaw.
Wen Yan froze. He knew better than anyone what this gesture signaled.
Comfort, coercion—the prelude to the way Pei Zhouye always kissed him.
He struggled violently, but the forceful kiss crashed down on him with heavy pressure. The metallic tang of blood immediately spread between their lips and teeth.
Wen Yan bit down savagely, wishing he could tear a piece of the man’s lip away. His breath was completely stolen, and at the very moment he felt he might suffocate, he was suddenly released.
Wen Yan slumped, gasping for air, his lungs burning. He breathed deeply like a dying fish, devoid of any remaining strength.
“Get out!” He managed to muster a bit of energy to glare at Pei Zhouye with pure hatred.
Pei Zhouye looked down at him. His dark lashes cast shadows over his eyes, and his rugged features showed no trace of softness. He looked like an emotionless statue.
His expression didn’t change; the only sign of the struggle was his shirt, which Wen Yan had crumpled in his frantic grip.
Wen Yan felt utterly pathetic—disheveled, defeated, and miserable.
“Come back with me. I will protect you,” Pei Zhouye said coldly.
Wen Yan let out a sharp, mocking laugh.
“When you say things like that, don’t you find yourself hilarious?”
His dreams had been nearly extinguished because of Pei Zhouye. The Baoyan status he had worked so hard for, the peaceful life he craved, his family’s health and happiness… everything was now a pile of ruins.
He tried to force himself to remember Pei Zhouye’s good points, tried to separate these tragedies from the man himself…
But he couldn’t do it. All he could feel was a deep-seated hatred born from unbearable pain.
In the silence, Pei Zhouye spoke again, his eyes shot through with a manic crimson. “I will take care of everything for you. Yan Yan, come home with me.”
“Get engaged to me. Then, I will announce our engagement to the world.”
Wen Yan leaned against the wall behind him, bracing himself to stand upright.
“I don’t need it.”
Was he supposed to keep tangling himself with Pei Zhouye? The tighter the bond, the more agonizing the pain.
“Is Cheng Shangshi the only one allowed, then?” Pei Zhouye’s fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white, his tone turning vicious. “I will handle everything for you.”
“Wen Yan, be good.” The last part of the sentence seemed to soften significantly.
Wen Yan instinctively looked up and felt his heart skip a beat at the terrifying obsession swirling in Pei Zhouye’s eyes.
Driven by pure survival instinct, he turned to flee. However, he had barely taken half a step when a sudden weight tightened around his waist.
An arm, like a band of iron, locked around his waist and dragged him back. He was slammed against the wall with a dull thud.
Wen Yan closed his eyes in despair, unsure if he was about to face a brutal kiss or a suffocating embrace.
For a long time, nothing happened.
Just as Wen Yan was about to open his eyes, he felt heavy breaths puffing against his collarbone and neck. It felt as though warm tears were falling there.
He stunned for a moment, his body becoming unnaturally rigid. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
The tall, broad-shouldered man was now bowed before him, his head lowered. Wen Yan couldn’t see his face; he could only see Pei Zhouye’s ears and the back of his neck, which were flushed red from the intensity of his weeping.
Tears continued to fall on him. The dark hair before his eyes trembled slightly, and that powerful body was shaking.
Wen Yan thought he heard a faint, stifled sob that failed to be suppressed.
Wen Yan ended up getting into Pei Zhouye’s car.
Firstly, Pei Zhouye gave him no other choice; he couldn’t run. Secondly, given Pei Zhouye’s current state of madness, things would likely only get worse if he didn’t comply.
He leaned back against the seat, his gaze fixed on the window, watching the scenery blur past. He was searching for a rationalization to hide the moment he had allowed himself to be swayed by an unknown emotion.
“Promise me, you won’t expose anything about us again,” his voice was cold and hoarse.
Sitting beside him, Pei Zhouye’s hands paused over his laptop. He gave a muffled “Mm.”
Their deal: Wen Yan agreed to return, and Pei Zhouye agreed not to let the online rumors escalate further. Naturally, there was no more mention of a public announcement.
They returned to the three-story Jinting villa.
Looking at it from the car, Wen Yan felt it resembled a cage, and he was the prisoner who had failed his escape. He could only follow Pei Zhouye’s lead for now.
Wen Yan thought to himself: once Pei Zhouye’s mania subsided, he would carefully prepare his documents for a study abroad exchange and find a way to leave the country. Once the plane touched down, Pei Zhouye wouldn’t be able to force him back. The heir to the Pei family couldn’t stay abroad indefinitely.
Everything had to go smoothly.
The interior decor of the villa had changed significantly.
Pei Zhouye looked at the empty spaces and watched Wen Yan’s expression. He had removed everything he had once installed to trap Wen Yan. Even the room where Wen Yan had been confined now looked different; it was filled with books and documents, and the cool color palette had been replaced with warm tones.
However, Pei Zhouye suspected Wen Yan would likely never notice. Wen Yan wouldn’t go there.
“I’m sorry,” Pei Zhouye said seriously.
He didn’t specify what he was apologizing for, but both of them knew.
Wen Yan didn’t respond.
Pei Zhouye then whispered the next words very softly.
“I love you.”
A month of peaceful days passed.
Wen Yan was preparing his materials and procedures. He didn’t trust anyone around him except Professor Ming. He bought a burner phone to keep in touch with Cheng Shangshi.
Cheng Shangshi was currently in Country D. He could likely guess Wen Yan’s situation and asked if he needed help.
This time, he received an affirmative answer. He said he would find a way and do his best.
The online fervor had died down considerably.
Manager Wang called him to discuss the internet situation, talking at length. The initial “god-making” hype had been organic traffic, but the subsequent shifts in public opinion—the spikes and suppressions of heat—were clearly directed by a hidden power.
“Sigh, this kind of thing is common in the entertainment industry, but the scale of it… using it against a civilian is rare,” he said, sighing again. He thought of something and continued, “Who would target a civilian? There’s no profit in it. Shangshi, I’ll tell you some exclusive gossip: I heard the Pei family is behind this whole wave.”
Today marked the third anniversary of Cheng Shangshi signing with the agency. In the past, they would have a small gathering—partly to celebrate his “God of Wealth” and partly to celebrate their friendship. Now that Cheng Shangshi had terminated his contract and paid a massive penalty to the company, Manager Wang was quite idle and prone to sentimentality.
He had drunk a fair amount of alcohol before calling Cheng Shangshi.
“The paparazzi have caught them. Wen Yan is back with that one again. Everyone knows now that they probably have feelings for each other, otherwise this wouldn’t be happening. It’s just that no one can publish this material right now.”
Who “that one” referred to went without saying.
Even though Cheng Shangshi knew this, he still frowned. “He isn’t there voluntarily.”
Manager Wang tsked. “Does that matter?”
“The theory is that this whole elaborate scheme was just to ‘discipline’ the canary, to make the bird more obedient. And look, it worked, didn’t it?” Manager Wang relayed the gossip to Cheng Shangshi as if it were established fact.
“Stop drinking,” Cheng Shangshi’s frown deepened. Looking at the drunk middle-aged man on the screen, he chose to say no more. “Get some rest.”
After hanging up, Manager Wang’s words lingered in his mind, and his composure wavered. From the moment he heard Wen Yan being called a “canary,” he couldn’t stand it and simply ended the call.
He didn’t know the full details of Pei Zhouye and Wen Yan’s history. But he felt that Pei Zhouye didn’t treat Wen Yan well enough, so he had a poor opinion of him, hoping only for a smooth breakup.
Even if he disliked Pei Zhouye, his intuition and logic told him that Pei Zhouye wasn’t the type of person to pull such a scheme.
Lin Seran’s posters were being removed from streets and alleys, and his face no longer appeared on giant advertising screens.
When a production team that had already cast him as the male lead announced their actors, it was someone else’s name, not the one from the rumors.
Initially, people thought this was an isolated incident. But someone looked into it and posted on social media: [Does anyone else notice that a certain popular second-tier actor has suddenly vanished?] Many people agreed, and the topic quickly hit the trending searches.
[Didn’t he have amazing resources before? Why have all his activities stopped?]
[I didn’t even dare to say anything bad about him before; my comments would be deleted by the system. Believe it?]
[I know who it is. A total diva, surnamed Lin.]
[Does anyone know about him bullying his peers so badly they ended up in the hospital?]
…
This was ironically Lin Seran’s highest-discussed and only trending topic recently, and it was almost entirely negative.
Lin Seran’s expression worsened as he scrolled through the comments. He slammed a throw pillow onto the floor.
Hatred, embarrassment, resentment.
He had been shelved—or more accurately, blacklisted.
His roles were recast, his events canceled, and even his manager avoided him, going so far as to hang up on him. The PR team that used to control the narrative was now idle, allowing these mocking comments to flood the trending search!
His third call to his manager was hung up on. Lin Seran switched to a different number.
This time, it was picked up instantly.
“Ge, why are you hanging up on me?”
The manager’s face darkened the moment he realized it was Lin Seran. He wanted to hang up, but he knew Lin Seran’s temper. If he did, Lin Seran would pay people to spam his phone until it exploded.
He was annoyed. “Lin Seran, why didn’t you tell me earlier about the relationship between President Pei and Wen Yan?”
He was full of regret. He had been so stupid to believe Lin Seran’s lies! He was no longer foolish enough to think Lin Seran didn’t know about their connection. Being used by a fool was the greatest humiliation of his career, and the one mistake he paid the highest price for.
“It’s just one Wen Yan!” Lin Seran muttered indignantly, but before he could finish, he froze.
The call had been disconnected.
Lin Seran stood up abruptly and kicked the coffee table, his chest heaving. Even if he went to complain to Pei’s father, it wouldn’t help. Master Pei didn’t care for the entertainment industry and wouldn’t bother to intervene. Even if he did help, he couldn’t find a better team than the one Pei Zhouye had initially provided for him.
He had to find Pei Zhouye! He would make everyone who was currently snubbing him kneel and apologize.
The internet was full of negative comments about him. Many celebrities lived in Lin Seran’s complex, and when he occasionally ran into them, their expressions were incredibly mocking.
“You still dare to come out? Aren’t you afraid of getting acid thrown at you?”
Lin Seran stiffened. For once, he didn’t lash out. He turned around and walked back in silence.
Pei Zhouye took Wen Yan almost everywhere he went. Wen Yan had accompanied him to several of his regular residences and knew the passcodes.
Recently, Pei Zhouye had to go on a business trip. He couldn’t bear to let Wen Yan, who had finally started to regain a bit of weight, endure the exhaustion of travel, so he let him stay in A University.
“Do you know where you can go and where you can’t?” Pei Zhouye asked the bodyguards assigned to Wen Yan before leaving.
Wen Yan’s lips curved down slightly. It was obvious who those words were really meant for.
The bodyguard replied, “Understood, President Pei.”
Seeing Wen Yan’s slight reaction, Pei Zhouye’s mood improved. There were too many things to handle lately. No one is made of iron; even Pei Zhouye would feel exhausted from constant overtime. However, being able to keep Wen Yan by his side—even if he just watched him—made his mood much better.
He felt that Wen Yan’s mood and state had improved lately, especially recently. It was as if he had something to look forward to again.
“You’re still not leaving?” Wen Yan couldn’t help but look up and ask when he saw Pei Zhouye hadn’t moved.
“You’re that eager for me to go?” Pei Zhouye countered, his dark eyes crinkling with a hint of a smile.
Wen Yan didn’t answer, but the answer was written all over his face. Pei Zhouye could almost imagine Wen Yan’s tone saying, “What else?”
He wasn’t angry; he just smiled again.
“Eat well, sleep well.”
Translator’s Note:
Cultural/Term Notes:
- Ge (哥): Literally “Older Brother.” In the entertainment industry, it’s a respectful term for a manager or a senior.
- Chasing Wife Crematorium (追妻火葬場): A popular web novel trope where the lead treats their partner poorly, the partner leaves, and the lead has to go through hell (the “crematorium”) to win them back.
- A University (A大): A common way to refer to top-tier universities in Chinese fiction without naming a specific real-world institution.
Pei Zhouye is definitely a “Madman,” isn’t he? I hope you’re enjoying the drama as much as I am translating it!
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