Chapter 17: Willing to Put in Effort for Us? Knowing Naturally How to Follow…
In the enticing, deep-colored braising sauce that gleamed red and bright, soy-colored ingredients were stacked neatly and orderly.
After a long period of stewing and soaking, the duck parts, usually firm and hard to gnaw, had become incredibly tender and flavorful. With a gentle bite, the meat, skin, and tendons perfectly fell off the bone.
The mellow, slightly cool braising sauce, mixed with numbing spice and fresh umami, was infused within. Even with lips turning red and the tip of the nose lightly sweating from eating, one simply couldn’t bear to stop!
It was just…
Le Can took a moment from his busy schedule to drink some water, glancing at the two people beside him who had extremely high combat power.
On the left: Xie Jun, hair tied up messily, lipstick wiped off, eating with wild abandon. On the right: Yuan Cheng, attacking from both sides, perfectly stripping a duck wing clean in two bites.
Le Can: “…”
Sandwiched in the middle, and because his newly changed body couldn’t handle spice very well, he could only watch helplessly as the braised food Aunt Liang had specially prepared for him disappeared at a speed visible to the naked eye, turning into a pile of food waste in the trash bin.
The youth “living under someone else’s roof,” in a fit of rage… glared angrily at Xi Yun, who had facilitated this scene.
At night, facing the soul-seducing aroma of braised food that wore down one’s willpower and three people opposite him who could be called livestream mukbangers, the noble and refined male lead just methodically finished a bowl of small wontons in chicken soup.
Correct. There was no medium-rare steak with blood, thick and hard-to-appreciate cream of mushroom soup, or healthy but undeniably just-a-bowl-of-grass salad that came standard in CEO novels.
On this point, Le Can was one hundred percent on Xi Yun’s side.
He didn’t want to be in his home country but eat three meals a day like a miserable international student who had no choice. Opening and closing his eyes every day, wishing to be bitten by a spider, bat, scorpion, or whatever, and then evolve into a superman who could cross seven continents and five oceans overnight.
If he were truly that unfortunate, crossing continents and oceans might be a stretch, but Le Can felt he could still flip over a wall a billion times in the middle of the night!
Xi Yun glanced at Le Can like a dragonfly skimming the water’s surface.
His nominal fiancé’s lips were spicy hot, red and shiny. Under the light, they looked exactly like tender, plump, fresh red pomegranate seeds.
Can’t handle spice, yet when asking Aunt Liang to make braised food, he still insisted on the most flavorful numbing spice. Xi Yun also felt there was nothing wrong with his attitude of tacitly allowing Xie Jun and Yuan Cheng to freely snatch food.
Subsequently, under Xi Yun’s gaze, a bowl of small wontons at just the right temperature was delivered to Le Can.
Le Can looked up; Aunt Liang, wearing an apron, had eyes full of guilt.
After putting down the bowl, she uneasily rubbed the apron in front of her with her hands:
“Oh, look at what Auntie did. If I knew you couldn’t eat that spicy, I would have put less chili.”
“It’s the Master who is thoughtful. You still need to eat a bowl of small wontons at night to warm your stomach. There’s warm milk in the kitchen; remember to drink a glass before going to sleep at night…”
Chattering admonitions rang in his ears. Le Can gently pursed his lips and glanced at the affectionate Aunt Liang, then slowly shifted his gaze.
His clear, shallow gaze crossed the rising heat in the air, landing on Xi Yun, who had moved to the sofa. Unbeknownst to him when he had gone over, Xi Yun had opened a tablet and was handling matters.
Le Can had to silently retract his gaze and look back into the bowl at hand.
The chicken soup, with oil slicks skimmed off, was clear and bright. In the specially selected large soup bowl, one could see at a glance the white, soft wontons, shredded chicken, fine dried shrimp, scattered seaweed, and green chopped onions.
Full of content, and equally full of heart.
The annoyance, which wasn’t originally genuine, was now truly gone without a trace…
But after all, the person he faced was Xi Yun, the calm and rational No-CP male lead.
Although Le Can dared not be certain if this thoughtfulness was mixed with calculations of interest, he had always thought things through thoroughly.
Borrowing a phrase from the internet: “As long as you are willing to put in effort for Zhen (Us/Me), it’s fine.”
A bowl of warm, fragrant small wontons went down, and his burning mouth and stomach seemed to be sublimated. Even if this thought was calculated, it was spent in a way that smoothed out people’s hearts.
Finally, after downing the milk and washing up, he collapsed drowsily onto the head of the bed. Le Can half-squinted at the tightly closed bathroom door, his sluggish thoughts pondering how to speak to Xi Yun later.
As someone who had learned from a fall and lived again, he didn’t have such high and mighty sentiments as “repaying a drop of kindness with a gushing spring.”
And as a lucky person who inexplicably transmigrated into a book and had a partially useless God’s perspective, he didn’t have the audacity to think he could see through, control, or save the protagonist in the book.
Le Can could only manage to be true to himself—repaying kindness with kindness, and revenge with revenge. Reducing karmic entanglements and living a free and easy life!
Of course, it would be best to have a billion bit of money.
After all, living a beast-of-burden life with no future and no fortune once is enough.
Just as Le Can was indulging in his great enterprise of making money, becoming more awake and excited the more he thought about it, those peach-blossom eyes—still bright under the bedside night light—suddenly met the figure sitting down beside him.
!!!
Thinking too deeply; when did this person come out?!
The person dressed straight and proper in pure black pajamas still had damp moisture from the bath on the tips of his hair. The hair that was neat and obedient during the day now drooped fluffily over his covered brows and eyes, so soft he simply didn’t look like Xi Yun.
Le Can’s widened eyes slowly relaxed.
He tried to retrieve the image of Xi Yun from last night in his brain.
Was he also like this back then?
The first night of identity change brought more confusion and uncertainty. With tense nerves, he ignored many details; speaking of which, Le Can wasn’t sure himself.
The only thing fresh in his memory was…
The youth’s gaze involuntarily shifted to the light-permeable white silk strip, which was out of place with the dark bedding and pajamas.
Did he overuse his ability during the day today?
Le Can realized somewhat.
No wonder since they met in the afternoon, the other party had been in a state of half-closed eyelids.
He felt inexplicably regretful.
After all, those strange, magnificent eyes—which on the internet would be called a natural-born cosplay saint body—seemed to have never been fully shown to him again, except for the first time.
Bullying Xi Yun because he couldn’t use his eyes now, Le Can, who had been sitting upright, reverted to a limp state.
He glanced at the person split in half by light and shadow, silently stuffing himself further under the covers.
The back of his head pressed against the pillow, which had excellent elasticity yet remained soft. With only a head left outside, the person squinted like a cat, stretching his body and sighing silently.
Capitalists are certainly hateful, but if the capitalist is oneself, then… well done!
Movement came from the other half of the bed across the quilt. Le Can turned his head to look. The quilt covered the chest, arms pressed on top of the quilt—a very standard domineering CEO sleeping posture.
Looking up along the strong, powerful arms with smooth lines, even with most of it obscured, revealing only the brow bone and chin, one could still see the handsome beauty combining top-tier skin and bone structure.
Such superior facial contours condensed the overflowing favoritism of the Creator (original author). It was just this XP (kink) of having to have a white silk strip amidst the all-black… it was indeed delicious, but it always felt like it wasn’t Xi Yun’s own aesthetic…
Xi Yun: “Is there something you want to say?”
The voice, specially lowered because of the night, made Le Can’s ears burn.
Secretly spitting at his voice-con (voice fetish) attribute in his heart, the youth adjusted his sleeping posture slightly, reaching a hand out from the covers to rub his red-hot ear.
As a normal male whose sexual orientation was male, he finally felt for the first time what people in the circle wailed about:
#Shock! Met my ideal type, but he’s a straight man of steel, what to do?#
Le Can didn’t intend to conquer the person before him. With the same attitude as Xie Jun, he wouldn’t make a losing deal.
He just sighed that for some people, even if they just stood there without saying a word, their existence was enough to make people yearn for them. So brilliant, worthy of being the center of the world…
As a sound person capable of appreciation, Le Can naturally couldn’t be exempt from vulgarity.
After all, Confucius said: “Food and sex are human nature.” Following desires and pursuing desires are inherent needs and instincts of human beings.
Unfortunately, Le Can knew naturally how to follow the desires of his heart. If he thought of something, then he would do it—
“What is it?”
The youth’s voice, silently dyed by sleepiness, carried a husky smile.
“Let me think…”
The kindness shown by Aunt Liang and others, and certain uncharacteristic behaviors and actions of Xi Yun—Le Can wasn’t a fool. Psychological tactics; he didn’t expect someone would use them on him.
Le Can accepted it calmly, and likewise, he didn’t hesitate to use the greatest malice to guess:
——The motives beneath the surface of this “honey.”
“Let’s talk about the information you want to know, that I can give you.”
Le Can propped up his upper body, looking with smiling eyes at the beautiful arm beside him tensing up in an instant.
He reached out his hand; a slender, jade-like index finger landed on the shoulder of the man before him, climbing slowly up along the line of the shoulder and neck.
Just as the soft pad of his finger was about to touch the cheek, the person who had remained unresponsive abruptly extended a hand, accurately grabbing the youth’s exquisite, thin wrist bone.
As if having anticipated the other’s reaction in advance, Le Can lowered his body even faster.
His warm body pressed down unreservedly across the quilt, and his other hand reached out from the side, catching the other off guard!
Nimble avoiding Xi Yun’s arm block, that hand grabbed the tail of the white silk strip, and then…
Pulled gently.
A pair of silver-gray pupils, which he had regretted not seeing again not long ago, quietly met the cunning peach-blossom pupils.
In the light, the color of the light iris turned into a surface nearly like silver metal.
And within that inorganic silver, two pairs of large and small pupils, dark and nearly lightless, simultaneously reflected the young face with a growing smile.
In the silent stare-down, the man in the lower position averted his eyes first.
Le Can rotated his wrist, winding the soft white silk around his five fingers, and narrowed his eyes slightly.
No, something seems wrong…
But the only Xi Yun who could help him find what was wrong had returned to his original state of being calm as an ancient well after closing his eyes.
The hand grasping the white silk strip hung low. The silk ribbon falling from the gaps between his fingers piled up on the brow of the man beneath him, then slid down the bridge of his nose to his cheek…
“Yuan Cheng, don’t you want to know?”
The deliberate teasing bred an itch, yet the object of the teasing didn’t even furrow a brow.
“What you want to say, you will naturally say.”
Receiving a reply that was more like receiving nothing, Le Can raised the tail of his eye lightly, reached out, and smashed the ball of white silk onto that peerless face.
“It’s no fun if things are said too clearly, Xi Yun.”
Unknown if it was the act of smashing his face or the directness in Le Can’s words that startled him, the thick, long eyelashes on those tightly closed eyes trembled, but ultimately didn’t open as Le Can wished.
He said: “To facilitate a transaction, the conditions of both parties must always be laid out clearly.”
The Xi Yun that Le Can was familiar with returned.
He laughed lightly, completely tearing off his disguise as well. “Fine.”
Although a bowl of small wontons was touching, the truth was that the emotion didn’t outweigh his wariness of Xi Yun. Pushing aside all affairs to rush to the Le family also contained the worry that he might capsize the boat in the gutter, right…?
“Since CEO Xi is straightforward, I won’t beat around the bush either.”
“But I can only tell you that someone will harm Yuan Cheng, causing his personality to change drastically and resulting in the loss of one eye and one arm.”
When the man closed his eyes and looked sideways, the youth rolled from his body back to his own half of the bed.
With a hook of the smooth arm where the sleeve had been pushed up, he returned to the appearance of a few minutes ago, with only a head exposed outside the quilt.
Le Can opened his mouth and yawned leisurely: “I don’t know that person’s gender, I don’t know how many characters are in their name, and I don’t know why they would harm Yuan Cheng.”
“But in their name, there is a character pronounced ‘yu’…”
Author’s Note:
Surface cheerful: As long as you are willing to put in effort for Zhen (Us/Me), it’s fine.
Behind the back: One who is unaccountably solicitous is hiding evil intentions!
PS: Don’t worry, Le Little Can will absolutely not be the one to catch feelings first. [Lop-eared Rabbit Head]
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