So now, the situation was that there was no need to worry about medical expenses, but he had to work hard to make a living.
Yan Xun didn’t feel troubled by this; instead, the terms “pocket money” and “turning in wages” gave him a stronger sense of belonging to the family he had no memory of.
The only problem was…
“I quit my job two months ago, and I still haven’t found a new one.”
Yan Xun had previously checked his tax records. For the first six months after graduation, there were no records, so he guessed that he might not have found a suitable job during that time. But in the second half of the year, there was a record from a tech company called Zhouheng, which had been paying his social insurance.
The tax records continued up until two months before the car accident. Since there was no record of severance pay for the termination of a labor contract, he assumed he had resigned voluntarily.
“It’s okay.”
President Chu was very understanding of “Yan Xun’s” situation and said…
“You can be a kept man.”
Yan Xun: “…I’ll find a job as soon as possible!”
Then, the other party sent a meme of a cat wearing a flower crown.
Xueshan: “Good luck~”
Yan Xun had originally typed only a “Hmm,” but after seeing Chu Tingyun’s cat meme and the squiggly line, he felt that replying with just one word seemed a bit cold. So, he added another one.
Thus, what Chu Tingyun saw as the new message was…
Little Husband: “Hmm hmm~”
“…”
Tsk, kind of cute.
Sitting in his office, President Chu held back for a few seconds, but in the end, he couldn’t help but chuckle softly.
Just then, a female voice came from the doorway…
“Who are you chatting with, Chu Tingyun? You’re smiling so suggestively. Don’t tell me you’ve found a new lover right after your divorce.”
“…”
President Chu turned around expressionlessly: “Su Yao, what did you just say?”
“Just kidding.” After all, Yan Xun was never kind or gentle; after just one or two sentences, he would have President Chu hopping mad.
Vice President Su Yao pushed the door open and came in.
She was quite a unique woman, with honey-colored skin and short, pixie-style hair, wearing a men’s suit, looking somewhat out of place.
As soon as Su Yao came in, she plopped herself onto the couch in Chu Tingyun’s office, sitting with her legs spread apart without any concern for decorum.
“I thought you’d be depressed for a while after your divorce.”
Chu Tingyun raised an eyebrow: “Divorce?”
“Come on…”
Su Yao snorted lightly through her nose.
“Don’t pretend. Yan Xun was dead set on divorcing you, sending the divorce papers to the company eight times. Besides, he even deleted me.”
At this point, Su Yao felt a bit heartbroken.
“If it wasn’t to completely cut ties with you, how could Yan Xun, with his good temper, delete me without saying a word? My contact list is already full of ugly men, and now the youngest, sweetest, and most pleasant one is gone too. Sigh!”
As she complained, she crouched down to rummage through the drawer under the coffee table for snacks.
Chu Tingyun looked at her with disdain.
“If you want to eat, go buy it yourself. Don’t come here raiding my place like a bandit every time.”
Su Yao’s whole body stiffened. She turned around in disbelief:
“You… you actually used the most vicious words in the world to insult me!”
Chu Tingyun: “…”
Su Yao continued digging: “Anyway, you don’t like snacks. Now that Yan Xun’s left you and is flying free and happy, he definitely won’t come back for them, so I’ll graciously help you finish them.”
Chu Tingyun crossed his arms and let out a cold laugh: “Who said he left me?”
“Stop pretending. Last month on the 14th, you skipped the board meeting and two partner meetings, taking the entire day off. Wasn’t it to meet Yan Xun and handle the divorce paperwork?”
Su Yao had coincidentally seen Chu Tingyun getting into the car in the parking lot that day, even hearing him tell the driver to head to the civil affairs bureau. So she spoke with confidence.
Chu Tingyun smirked, “You seem to know quite a lot. I did meet with him that day.”
Su Yao’s face immediately displayed an “I knew it” expression, but in the next second, she heard Chu Tingyun say,
“But we didn’t meet to get divorced.”
Su Yao sneered, “Not divorced? Then why would Yan Xun meet with you?”
“Hmm…”
Chu Tingyun thought for a moment and said,
“To go on a date.”
Su Yao: “…”
She remained silent for a few seconds, then suddenly stood up with a “whoosh” and raised her hand to touch Chu Tingyun’s face.
He quickly stepped back to avoid it.
President Chu was very vigilant: “What are you doing?”
Su Yao looked at him with pity: “Checking if you’re so heartbroken from the divorce that your brain’s overheated and got fried.”
Chu Tingyun: “…”
He let out a cold laugh and opened a recording on his phone. The next second, Yan Xun’s voice came out from it.
“Chu Tingyun, can we not get divorced yet?”
“Chu Tingyun, can we not get divorced yet?”
“Chu Tingyun, can we not get divorced yet?”
…
That short sentence looped several times before Su Yao finally processed what she was hearing. She stared at Chu Tingyun in disbelief.
“You didn’t seriously edit a voice clip to comfort yourself, did you?”
“…”
President Chu closed his eyes briefly and pointed toward the door: “You can leave now.”
Su Yao suspiciously stared at him.
Could they really not have divorced?
A few seconds later, she cleared her throat: “Alright, I actually came for business.”
Su Yao sat back on the couch, her expression turning serious: “The Chen family used some tactics to temporarily suppress the situation and even borrowed money from a trust company. The financial crisis has eased for now, and the bank seems to be softening a little.”
She hesitated for a few seconds, then continued:
“After all, your family and the Chen family have had generations of ties, and you’ve collaborated on many projects over the past decade. If we pull the plug on everything now, terminate all cooperation and withdraw all funds, if they really go under, it’s like cutting off one of our own limbs, maybe even worse. Besides, your father’s attitude is also a bit…”
“Should we… let it go?”
As the vice president of the company, Su Yao didn’t agree with actions that would cause such significant losses to the company.
But once again, Chu Tingyun rejected her suggestion.
“There’s no need to discuss this further.”
“Alright, you’re the boss. What you say goes.”
Su Yao sighed.
“I just worry that your stepmother… oh, and the entire Chen family will hate you to death.”
“Whatever.”
Of course, Chu Tingyun didn’t care about such things.
“Hey!”
Speaking of which, Su Yao suddenly remembered,
“Even if you and Yan Xun haven’t divorced, you’re not going to take him to Jingshu’s wedding in a few days, right?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Chu Tingyun leisurely sipped his coffee,
“As my spouse, he should of course attend with me. Besides… they were so close before. Since Jingshu is getting married, Yan Xun should naturally go to offer his congratulations.”
“Hiss…”
Knowing full well that Yan Xun and Jiang Jingshu were once mutually in love, yet Chu Tingyun not only barged in to steal him but now insisted on taking Yan Xun to the wedding of the woman he couldn’t have.
Su Yao couldn’t help but rub her arms. She looked Chu Tingyun up and down, shook her head, and sighed:
“Chu Tingyun, you’re truly a devil.”
The man shot her a sideways glance and casually tossed the documents from his desk over to her.
“You can handle these. I have other things to do.”
“Damn! Making me work overtime again?!!”
Su Yao shot up from her seat, ready to escape, but Chu Tingyun, being taller with longer legs, got out of the office faster than her.
“I’ve left you the snacks. I expect a report tomorrow morning.”
“Ugh… Chu Tingyun, Yan Xun will one day kick you out with a 365-degree Thomas spin kick!!!”
Chu Tingyun paused in his steps, thinking that even if that were the case, he’d stop at nothing to drag him back.
Buzz buzz…
His phone vibrated.
The secretary had sent a message: “President Chu, the plane ticket back to the capital has been booked.”
—
On the other side, Yan Xun had no idea that someone was desperately wishing he would kick Chu Tingyun out. At that moment, he had just finished cleaning his rental apartment.
Having been away for over a month, the place had gathered quite a bit of dust.
Yan Xun had rented an old apartment, with a layout very similar to his home in South City. The only difference was that this was a small two-bedroom unit, but for one person, it felt very spacious.
One room served as his bedroom, and the other was his study.
Even the living room belonged entirely to him.
It was much larger than the small room he had back at home.
Yan Xun meticulously cleaned every corner of the house. Although he had thought he lived alone, he unexpectedly found several surprising things during his cleaning.
For example, a framed photo of him and Chu Tingyun, taken on their university campus. It was carefully placed on the bedside table.
There were also several pictures of cats stuck on the living room wall.
Under the sofa, there were cat toys and chew sticks.
On the bookshelf in the study were some business-related books, with Chu Tingyun’s handwriting still on them. In the old kitchen, there was an especially elegant and refined coffee machine.
The house was filled with traces of them, marks of a happy, harmonious home.
As Yan Xun discovered these things one after another, he had a brief moment where he felt like a child picking up beautiful shells on the beach.
It was as if some indescribable emotion had transformed into the softest silk in the world, silently wrapping around his chest.
But soon, that emotion came to an abrupt halt when Yan Xun found three large boxes of something that looked like chewing gum in the top drawer of the bedside table.
One of the big boxes had already been opened. Yan Xun picked up a small box from inside and saw the words “extra-large, ultra-thin” written on it.
The moment he realized what it was…
Bang!
The drawer was slammed shut, and Yan Xun stared at it, as if there was some terrifying monster sealed inside.
He crouched on the ground for a full minute before finally calming down, his “innocent” mind regaining composure.
It’s nothing. They’ve been married for three years. It’s perfectly normal for things like that to appear in the house…
Completely normal…
But why buy so much?
The entire drawer was packed full. Could it all be used up?
Realizing his thoughts were going too far, Yan Xun immediately stopped thinking and got up to grab some clean clothes from the wardrobe.
After an hour of thorough cleaning, he had worked up a sweat and needed a shower to cool down and calm himself.
Whoosh…
Steam gradually filled the bathroom as the water cascaded down.
Then, the sound of water paused.
The shampoo had lathered into thick, white foam, large clusters of it.
That’s when Yan Xun’s phone rang. Someone was trying to make a voice call. Without rinsing off the foam on his head, he groped around to answer it.
“Hello?”
“…”
There was no sound from the other side.
“Hello?”
Yan Xun called out again, but before he could finish speaking, he heard a “beep” as the call was hung up.
“?”
The next second, his phone rang again.
Yan Xun didn’t look at the phone; his eyes were covered with foam. Thinking the caller had accidentally hung up and was calling back, he answered without much thought.
But in the next second, the screen lit up, revealing a video call…
—Chu Tingyun was calling.
