Chapter Thirty-Four
Ji Qinghe gave a faint, mocking smile, his expression carrying seven parts of noble restraint and three parts of cool arrogance. He showed neither sympathy for her plight nor pity for her poor judgment in people.
Only when she paused did he lift his gaze to look at her.
His eyes were clear, not the slightest bit intoxicated, the corners of his lips slightly curved as if with a hint of a smile. "You're not that kind of person."
This summary of his was rather irresponsible in its vagueness.
Shen Qianzhan pressed further, "What kind is 'that kind'?"
"You don't seem like someone who would stop moving forward just because you've hit a dead end." He stood up, took off his suit jacket, and casually tossed it onto the sofa. "Nor are you the kind of woman who, after one heartbreak, refuses to accept anyone else."
He lowered his head slightly, turning his face to look at her as he undid his cufflinks with one hand. "As for changing men like changing clothes—that's a topic we can explore in depth."
Ji Qinghe rolled up his sleeves, his eyes still bright and clear in the darkness, fixed unwaveringly on her. "Since Producer Shen thinks sleeping is acceptable, shall we change locations to talk?"
Shen Qianzhan had felt her heart racing and breath shortening from the moment he started undoing his buttons without warning. Now, hearing such a shameless invitation, she was utterly stunned.
What a dog of a man! Shameless!
She was furious.
But the fault lay in the fact that the words had come from her own mouth, leaving her unable to muster even half a reproach with any conviction. She could only watch helplessly as he tilted his chin slightly, loosened his tie, and walked over to stand before her in a few strides.
Ji Qinghe leaned down, his nose almost touching hers. "Shen Qianzhan."
"You've stumbled so many times with me, yet you still haven't learned your lesson?" He reached out to wrap an arm around her waist, trapping her in his embrace. With one hand guiding her, he pressed her against the floor-to-ceiling window, leaving her with no sense of security.
Shen Qianzhan's heart skipped a beat, her breath catching abruptly. "Ji Qinghe!"
"Here." His voice was low, his face slightly turned as his cool lower lip brushed against her earlobe. His words drifted like a ghost's whisper as he asked, "Is it so hard to say you don't like me or don't want to be together?"
His teeth lightly nibbled, like ants crawling over her skin. "Or are you just throwing out a painful past to test my reaction?"
Shen Qianzhan's ears were her most sensitive spot. The moment his breath drew near, her heart softened, tingling with a trembling numbness. "You think I made it up?"
"Not exactly." He released her earlobe, his gaze meeting hers. "I won't comment on those parts of your past I wasn't there for."
Based on Shen Qianzhan's understanding of Ji Qinghe, these words of his were likely spoken with restraint. But deep down, he was probably mocking her for her poor judgment and foolishness.
She pursed her lips, stubbornly defending herself. "With someone like you, who treats others' pasts as a joke, who would dare to give you their true heart?"
"You weren't planning to give it anyway." Ji Qinghe tightened his arm around her waist, lowering his voice. "If you don't want to go to the bed, here is fine too. It's not like we haven't done it before." As he finished speaking, he let out a low chuckle, his voice deep and lazy, as if just waking up, utterly relaxed.
Shen Qianzhan hadn't yet recovered from that earlier wave of weakness.
Her hands pressed against his chest, her palms originally slightly cool. With his teasing and provocation, even without any actual action, her blood was already racing, her body growing warm.
For someone like Shen Qianzhan, who carried certain labels and was particularly conscious of her image, she often prioritized style over comfort. In places without heating, her hands and feet would turn icy, as if she had just been pulled from a frozen river.
Year after year, season after season, she never seemed to warm up.Only last June in Xi'an, when he entered her, he asked with a teasing smile, "Why are you so hot, hmm?"
Where was she hot?
Everywhere was quite hot.
These memories, too embarrassing to speak of, suddenly made Shen Qianzhan's heart soften in an instant.
Perhaps some public accounts weren't entirely wrong—men and women who establish intimate relationships, in a sense, break through defensive barriers, connecting body and mind, entrusting and resonating with each other.
She sighed, finally dropping the pretense: "Mr. Ji, what exactly do you want?"
Shen Qianzhan wasn't making up stories. In her early years, when she hit rock bottom, she felt as if she were in a furnace of the human world, witnessing the fickleness of human nature. She was indeed deeply discouraged, shedding a thick layer of skin.
From then on, she remained clear-headed, measuring emotions with her mind, never with her heart.
Ji Qinghe couldn't prove his sincerity through actions, and she didn't want to misplace her feelings again. Moreover, with the obvious gaps and contradictions between them, why would she seek such unhappiness?
At thirty, every additional wrinkle meant spending more money on facelifts at fifty—what an unprofitable trade.
Ji Qinghe asked, "So you just don't believe I'm sincere?"
Shen Qianzhan smiled. "My family background is ordinary, with no father to rely on. I've always relied on myself since starting work, unlike Mr. Ji, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. At work, I've encountered bosses shifting blame and colleagues undermining me. I haven't been without kindness either, but the one time I let my heart go, I was stripped to the bone. That's when I realized that being a good person doesn't guarantee a smooth life. Even if I'm kind, I can still face baseless malice and a bunch of men who think they can act like my father."
She reached up to undo the buttons on his shirt. Her slender, unadorned hands seemed glazed under the dim light. She took her time, unhurried. "I actually feel quite wronged. How far is Xi'an from Beijing? It was just a one-night stand—why has it dragged on endlessly?"
After undoing three buttons, her fingers paused slightly. She wrapped her arms around his waist and gently embraced him, kissing his collarbone with her lips. "What does this make us?"
"An insincere relationship isn't necessary." Shen Qianzhan tugged his shirt out from his waistband and looked up at him, her gaze clear and far from lost. "Do you understand, Mr. Ji?"
She didn't hold many rigid beliefs. In this industry, fleeting affairs, on-set couples, and transactional relationships were commonplace.
Shen Qianzhan kept herself pure and unwilling to get involved, but to maintain balance, she always acted as if she were infatuated with men. When others labeled her as flirtatious, she didn't care.
Those who are too pure aren't suited to navigate the edges of the rules.
But if it really came to maintaining such a relationship, she wasn't willing.
"Mr. Ji, I was actually quite tempted by your proposal the other day." Shen Qianzhan's long hair was slightly disheveled, cascading behind her. With a lazy expression, she looked at him as if coquettishly. "I'm good at letting you have your fun, but I'm not good at handling emotional matters. So, accepting a relationship with no foundation is a bit difficult for me."
Her fingertip traced circles on his chest, her voice soft as if soaked in water. "If you want me to settle for being a caged canary, I'm even less willing. I don't want everything I've built with my own efforts after climbing out of the abyss to be destroyed by a man. I, Shen Qianzhan, am not the kind of person who looks up to men. I won't do things that don't benefit me."
Besides, Thousand Lights and Endless Year are now in a cooperative partnership.She would not hesitate to crush anyone who tried to disrupt such balance—even if it were herself.
Ever since reuniting with Ji Qinghe, they had been circling this topic.
Many words, spoken once or twice, still held patience; but by the third or fourth repetition, they became utterly tedious.
She withdrew her hand, lightly resting it on the back of Ji Qinghe’s neck. Her eyes blinked slightly, brimming with affection: “If Mr. Ji is truly sincere, why not show some respect? Treat me as your equal. I’m a kind-hearted person, willing to give and take. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be chasing you to the crematorium?”
Her smile wasn’t genuine, but that slightly smug, proud expression was damnably tempting.
Ji Qinghe’s gaze deepened as he asked, “Were you serious about what you said tonight?”
Shen Qianzhan nodded. “Dead serious.”
Ji Qinghe curled his lips into a light smile. “Remember how long it took to restore the Mufan Clock?”
Shen Qianzhan didn’t understand his meaning, a hint of confusion flickering in her eyes.
Ji Qinghe pinched her chin, tilting it upward. “Those who work with time are never short of patience.”
—
Emerging unscathed from the room, Shen Qianzhan first found a stairwell to calm her racing heart.
Facing Ji Qinghe with a clear mind was a true test of willpower and humanity. Did that damn man even know how irresistible he was? If he had let her go a moment later, she might not have been able to resist doing all sorts of things to him.
How laughable would all her high-sounding words from earlier have been then…
She didn’t want to get involved with Ji Qinghe for several reasons. First, she felt he wasn’t sincere in this relationship. Proposing to date seemed more like rationalizing a friends-with-benefits arrangement. Was she really so desperate for his body?
Second, due to the contractual relationship between Thousand Lights and Endless Year, film and television projects involved massive investments, with incalculable costs in manpower and resources. It was already a blessing if she and Ji Qinghe could coexist peacefully. What would it mean if they actually got entangled? If anything went wrong, it could easily ruin the project’s reputation overnight.
Third… temptation was one thing, liking was another—two entirely different matters.
Was the forest not green or fragrant enough that she had to hang herself from Ji Qinghe’s tree?
Her trembling hand reached for a cigarette, but she remembered the occasion as soon as it touched her pocket. Forget cigarettes—she hadn’t even brought her purse when she slipped out earlier. She wondered how much of her lipstick had smudged when she kissed Ji Qinghe’s collarbone just now…
Ugh.
She couldn’t help but close her eyes.
Shen Qianzhan, stop thinking about it!
—
By the time Shen Qianzhan returned to the annual gala, the proceedings were nearly over.
Su Lanyi was delivering a closing speech, bringing Thousand Lights’ annual gala to a perfect end.
Returning to her seat, she asked Su Zan, “Did anyone come looking for me?”
Su Zan had had bad luck tonight, not even winning a consolation prize. He looked utterly dejected, none of his usual sharpness in sight. “My sister came looking for you earlier. She was about to send Qiao Xin to check the restroom, but when she saw Mr. Ji’s seat was also empty, she called Qiao Xin back.”
Shen Qianzhan: “…Oh.” She thought for a moment, trying to salvage the situation. “It wasn’t just Mr. Ji who was missing.”
Su Zan glanced at her, mercilessly exposing her. “Sis Qianzhan, your ears… are quite noticeable.”
Shen Qianzhan: “???”
This sentence left Shen Qianzhan restless and distracted for the rest of the gala. As soon as it ended, she fled in a panic, guilt weighing heavily on her.
—
The end of the annual gala felt like the conclusion of a year-end ritual. Shen Qianzhan immersed herself in the joy of counting her year-end bonus, while Qiao Xin counted down the days until the Spring Festival holiday.The contract commissioning Jiang Juanshan for scriptwriting was finally signed and filed one week before the Spring Festival holiday.
According to the agreement with Ji Qinghe, scriptwriting required his presence for joint meetings and discussions. Due to the annual meeting incident, Shen Qianzhan felt inexplicably guilty. Thinking that he must be too busy to even be seen clearly recently, she decided it wasn’t the right time to meet. Temporarily suppressing her career drive, she comfortably spent a few days as a couch potato.
Regarding the matter of Xiang Qianqian’s contract termination, the anticipated wave of sympathy-seeking public opinion, originally expected to erupt recently, never appeared. The situation remained so calm that the public relations department of Thousand Lights spent their days in anxious unease, praying daily that the other party’s team would act decently and not force them back to the office to work overtime during the New Year holiday.
Su Zan was the idlest person in Shen Qianzhan’s department, spending his days loafing around, teasing cats and dogs.
Bored out of his mind one day, he brought a projector he had “borrowed” from Su Lanyi and a bag of sunflower seeds to Shen Qianzhan’s office for a visit. The two of them huddled together, spending half an hour just picking a movie. By the time they started watching, an hour had already passed.
The office was unusually free of work, and the atmosphere was so harmonious that only the rhythmic sound of cracking sunflower seeds could be heard.
As he cracked seeds, Su Zan asked, “Sis Qianzhan, are you going back to your hometown for the New Year this year?”
“Probably,” Shen Qianzhan glanced at him. “What, want to come home with me?”
Shen Qianzhan wasn’t particularly attached to her family. Every holiday, she was either working overtime or stuck on a film set. Hearing her mention her parents was as rare as checking which direction the sun rose from that morning.
Su Zan had always assumed Shen Qianzhan’s family situation was complicated—either her parents didn’t get along or the family relationships were broken. Out of consideration, he never asked or pried, giving her the space and dignity she deserved.
Later, when he mustered the courage to ask after a few drinks, Shen Qianzhan casually replied, “Go back to be a target for marriage pressure?” He instantly felt he had missed his calling as a screenwriter…
This year, with no projects during the New Year, he suddenly thought of it and asked offhandedly.
“Why would I go with you?” Su Zan grabbed another handful of sunflower seeds, grinning mischievously. “Not afraid of being pressured about marriage this year?”
Shen Qianzhan elegantly peeled the shells, arranging the kernels neatly. “If I don’t go back, those two ancestors at home will storm Beijing to see which male fox spirit has bewitched me.”
Author’s Note: I know the answer to this! Mr. Ji!
Finally managed to update at six o’clock. Come on, dropping a hundred red envelopes in the front row to celebrate~
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