The air fell into silence, a prolonged silence.
Ji Mingshu was stunned. Like Cen Sen, she stared at the group chat conversation on the screen, even forgetting to snatch her phone back.
Fortunately, thirty seconds later, the phone automatically locked itself.
Cen Sen’s gaze slowly shifted from the phone screen to Ji Mingshu’s exquisite yet bewildered face. He examined it meticulously, inch by inch, as if trying to study up close what connection this radiant face could possibly have with an innocent female college student.
Ji Mingshu: Speechless :)
After a minute of silent confrontation, just as Ji Mingshu thought her beauty would be her downfall and she’d die of awkwardness right there in the luxury car, the hotel finally arrived.
The moment the car stopped, Ji Mingshu couldn’t even wait for the valet to open the door. She swiftly got out on her own.
Lowering her head, she hurriedly put on her sunglasses and strode quickly into the hotel, her hands trembling intermittently. She didn’t forget to open WeChat, clear the group chat messages, and obediently change the group name to “Three Little Fairies.”
God as her witness, she would never again follow online trends and give her group chat a random name, nor would she ever gossip about someone right in front of them again :)
God as her witness once more, Ji’s Shushu was a little golden canary who genuinely loved money.
Except for those two or three seconds when her dignity triumphed over materialism, and the thought flashed through her mind: “As long as I never embarrass myself in front of that dog man again, I’d be willing to leave with nothing.”
To avoid and alleviate the ultimate awkwardness of facing Cen Sen in silence, Ji Mingshu didn’t return to the room. Instead, she went straight to the revolving restaurant for a meal.
Estimating the time, she quickly slipped away to the spa center before Cen Sen arrived for his meal. After that, she booked a mini karaoke room at the hotel and held a two-hour solo concert inside.
She lingered until the time Cen Sen usually went to bed before sneaking back upstairs to the suite.
Only the floor lamp was on in the room, casting a dim light.
The bed in the bedroom was neatly made, with pillows and covers laid out flat and tidy.
Where was Cen Sen? Was he not asleep yet?
She changed into slippers at the door and quietly entered the study.
No one was in the study either.
She pushed open the door leading to the living room.
In the air of the living room, there seemed to be a faint scent of vodka. Following the smell, Ji Mingshu walked forward and saw several empty bottles on the coffee table.
Cen Sen was leaning back on the sofa, his head slightly tilted upward, eyes closed.
He reeked of alcohol, but in his quiet, resting state, he didn’t appear drunk.
Ji Mingshu approached and poked his cheek with a finger, whispering tentatively, “Are you asleep?”
No response.
She straightened up, feeling a slight sense of relief but also a hint of a sigh.
For people like them, who often had work-related social engagements, drinking had become something they were almost physiologically averse to. Unless necessary, they usually avoided it.
Like her eldest uncle and Second Uncle, they never touched alcohol during regular family dinners at home. Even during holiday gatherings, they only drank a little.
Drinking so much today… he must be feeling really upset, right?
After standing by the sofa for a while, Ji Mingshu’s kindness prevailed. She gently covered him with a blanket.
But just as she was about to quietly leave, Cen Sen suddenly grabbed her wrist and slowly opened his eyes."……"
Ji Mingshu was momentarily stunned. After gathering her thoughts, she hurriedly explained, "I was just covering you with the blanket, that's all. I didn't do anything else."
She then asked, "Do you... want to go back to bed to sleep?"
Cen Sen didn't answer. With a slight tug of his hand, he pulled her into his embrace.
He held Ji Mingshu close, burying his face in her soft hair, breathing deeply and shallowly as he closed his eyes again.
Ji Mingshu had no idea what he was up to. Held tightly in his arms, she had no room to struggle and could only keep whispering in his ear.
"Hey, let go of me."
"Stop pretending to be asleep, say something!"
"Are you even okay? If you can't handle alcohol, don't drink so much. If you're going to throw up, give me a heads-up first. Don't you dare throw up on me."
"...Have you held me long enough? My arms are going numb!"
"Stop making noise. Let me hold you a little longer."
Cen Sen spoke in a low voice, loosening his grip slightly.
Ji Mingshu, as if bewitched, obediently fell silent.
In the quiet of the night, the two were pressed close together, their breaths brushing against each other's ears, their heartbeats seeming almost within reach.
In the stillness of the deep night, memories of the past seemed to surface.
She remembered back in middle school, when their affiliated school combined both junior and senior high sections. She had spent four years in the same school as Cen Sen.
She wasn't the typical model student—she had been publicly criticized more than once for breaking school rules. But to be fair, her academic performance was still decent; otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to get into a prestigious university later on.
Back then, after every monthly or midterm exam, the school would post honor rolls ranking students by grade. After checking her own grade's rankings, she always liked to go look at Cen Sen's grade's rankings.
But Cen Sen's ranking was as steady as his friend Jiang Che's—the two of them always swapped between first and second place.
Once, when Cen Sen fell out of the top ten, she was overjoyed. After school, she went to the Cen family's house for dinner and took the opportunity to tattle to Cen Old Madam, implying that "Cen Sen's performance dropped so much this time, maybe he's addicted to the internet or secretly dating a girlfriend. Grandma, you have to teach him a lesson."
She tattled with great enthusiasm, and Cen Old Madam went along with it, smiling and saying she'd definitely give Cen Sen a hard time later.
But when she later went to gloat in front of Cen Sen, she found out that he had fallen out of the top ten because he had missed one exam to represent the school at a youth environmental forum. Her triumphant mood was instantly extinguished.
Looking back now, it seemed like during her school days, she couldn't stand seeing Cen Sen do well.
Later, when he started dating that white lotus Li Wenyin, she felt inexplicably annoyed.
It took her a long time to realize that it was actually a good thing. Troublemakers like them should be tied together, packed up, and thrown into a crematorium to turn into microorganisms and contribute to this beautiful world.
Back then, she never imagined that one day she would marry her former "enemy" and now be holding him so intimately.
Thinking of this, Ji Mingshu's ears flushed red without her realizing it.
As if on cue, Cen Sen kissed her ear the next second.
His breath, warm and damp with the scent of alcohol, brushed against her skin, and his voice was low, like a drunken murmur.
"Let me ask you, if I had nothing left, would you abandon me?"
"...?"This sudden bout of affectation jolted Ji Mingshu out of her reverie, sending a shiver straight to the crown of her head.
This was so unlike Cen Sen’s usual style. Even if he were drunk to the point of being a puddle of mud, he should have been muttering capitalist dictator ramblings like, “There’s a high probability A-shares will surge at tomorrow’s opening,” or “Let the person in charge figure out the funding gap for the XX project themselves.”
Ji Mingshu broke out in goosebumps, but then it occurred to her that perhaps Cen Sen was only an unyielding iron wall in front of her. In front of certain women, he might actually be wealthy, affectionate, and tenderly devoted. Maybe in this half-drunk, half-sober state, he had mistaken her for someone else and suddenly slipped into the awkward, melodramatic style of a domineering CEO?
She felt a bit sour inside, but to avoid hearing more words that made her want to dismember him while he was drunk, she emphasized, “Are you asking me? I’m Ji Mingshu, Ji Mingshu!”
“Mm, Ji Mingshu, I’m asking you.”
“…”
So he really was asking her.
Ji Mingshu’s heart skipped an unworthy beat, inexplicably softening by three parts, while her face began to flush with heat.
She forced herself to stay rigid, stubbornly retorting, “You… what kind of dream are you having? With nothing to your name, you still want me to suffer with you? Just look at that mouth of yours. If it weren’t for your money, who would marry you?”
Seeing that Cen Sen didn’t react, she continued muttering softly, building up her own momentum. “I’ll have you know, it’s only because I’m kind-hearted. Any other woman would never put up with this nonsense. You really deserve to be single for life, you know. You should treat me better.” Buy me an aircraft carrier.
Cen Sen chuckled softly. Whether he was too drunk to take it in or something else, he didn’t argue back, only held her tighter.
Everyone in this world compromises for the sake of reality.
When he was young, his parents had said a thousand times in private that they would never compromise, but in the end, they sent him away because they needed the Cen family’s money to treat An Ning’s illness.
The Cen family had initially been adamant about keeping Cen Yang, but in the end, because the blood flowing in his veins was the true Cen lineage, his return held greater significance than Cen Yang staying, so they ultimately chose to send Cen Yang away.
As for the Ji family, it went without saying. He had long known that the Ji family privately harbored marriage alliance intentions. It was only because he intervened that the Ji family, believing the Cen family’s influence was greater and more advantageous, secretly severed ties with their originally intended marriage candidate and married Ji Mingshu to him.
What family affection, what unavoidable circumstances—in the end, it all came down to weighing one thing as lighter and another as heavier, making a choice. Yet they always had to find some high-sounding excuses to absolve themselves, never admitting it.
Before, he had only thought Ji Mingshu was shallow, but the more time he spent with her, the more he felt she lived more clearly and perceptively than he did.
What could be said, she always said outright.
What couldn’t be said—like whether the Ji family truly doted on her as much as they claimed—she understood better than anyone, yet she never voiced it aloud.
Thinking carefully, perhaps living without ever having family affection would make one more carefree. To have had it and then lost it, no matter how many years passed, the regret and resentment never fully faded.
If Ji Mingshu would abandon him the moment he had nothing, then all he needed was to remain forever wealthy to keep a familiar golden canary by his side for companionship. Thinking of it this way, it wasn’t so bad. At least she was vivid and real, and she belonged to him.
At two in the morning, the city was silent.
Cen Sen’s grip slowly loosened as he gradually drifted into sleep.Ji Mingshu carefully extricated herself from his embrace and laid him flat on the sofa.
After doing all this, she felt a bit tired.
She sat down along the edge of the sofa and gazed at Cen Sen’s sleeping face, her fingers tracing the contours of his brows and eyes, gently following their lines.
His complexion was cool and fair, with sharp brows, bright eyes, a straight nose, and thin lips—the kind of face you wouldn’t forget after just one glance.
In his student days, he had the clear, clean look of a young man; as he grew older, he took on the quiet, aloof demeanor of an adult man. It seemed like you could never tire of looking at him. Well… as long as he didn’t speak.
Ji Mingshu rested her chin in her hand, recalling the question he had just asked. For the first time, she realized that he, too, seemed to yearn for a warmth he was unwilling to voice.
A strange thought suddenly popped into her mind.
If Cen Sen ever went bankrupt, as long as he behaved obediently, with a face like his, she might, perhaps, possibly… still be willing to sell her bags to support him, right?
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