Pei Shaocheng was surprised by Wen Yuhan's words and instinctively let go of her hair.
Wen Yuhan lowered her head to untie her bathrobe: "I've already taken a shower, do you want to shower too? Or just leave it like this."
Seeing that Pei Shaocheng remained silent, he reached out and unbuckled Pei Shaocheng's belt, but his wrist was caught when he tried to pull up the zipper of Pei Shaocheng's trousers.
At the same time, a polite knock came from outside the door.
"Senior brother, are you there?"
It was Yi Li's voice.
Wen Yuhan's movements trembled slightly. She looked up at Pei Shaocheng and mouthed, "Could you let me hide for a bit?"
Pei Shaocheng scrutinized him, as if deep in thought.
Then, he gave a dark laugh, and amidst the continuous knocking, he reached out and touched the back of Wen Yuhan's head, pressing it against himself.
"Senior, Emily said you went back to your room. There's a scene I have some thoughts on, but I'm not sure if they're right, so I wanted to ask you for your advice..."
Pei Shaocheng squinted at Wen Yuhan, signaling him to begin. Wen Yuhan shook his head at him, his face pale, and the panic in his eyes allowed Pei Shaocheng to rediscover a long-lost vitality in his face.
Pei Shaocheng lifted the man up, raised his hand above his head and slammed it against the wall with a thud. Then, he bit down on Wen Yuhan's vulnerable Adam's apple.
"ah…"
Wen Yuhan gasped in surprise, then immediately bit her lip hard.
Yi Li, who was outside, vaguely heard noises coming from inside the room and, puzzled, knocked harder on the door.
"Senior Brother Pei? Is Senior Brother here?"
Wen Yuhan looked at Pei Shaocheng pleadingly, her body trembling uncontrollably.
Pei Shaocheng whispered in Wen Yuhan's ear, "You look really funny..."
Wen Yuhan used all her strength to break free from Pei Shaocheng's grasp and try to escape, but he grabbed her by the back of her collar and pulled her back, pinning her against the cabinet with her back to him.
Hearing the clear sound of a zipper behind him, Wen Yuhan's pupils trembled violently, and she bit her arm.
"Speak up..." Pei Shaocheng commanded in a deep voice.
Wen Yuhan's eyes began to mist over again, but she still didn't make a sound.
Pei Shaocheng pursed his lips, grabbed Wen Yuhan by the back of the neck, and made a rapid and heavy sound.
"Speak up!"
Seeing that Pei Shaocheng hadn't opened the door yet, Yi Li's beautiful eyes flickered, and she quietly clenched her fists at her sides.
Her voice remained gentle as she said, "Is it inconvenient for you to open the door, senior brother...? Then I'll come find you when you're free. Goodnight, senior brother..."
After speaking, Yi Li turned to leave.
He had only taken two steps when he heard Pei Shaocheng's deep voice from inside the room: "I'm here, please wait a moment."
Yi Li immediately stopped, lowered his head so his expression was unreadable, and said obediently and softly, "Okay! Then I'll wait for you at the door."
Inside the room, Pei Shaocheng stared into Wen Yuhan's even more terrified eyes and kissed away the bead of blood on his lips...
In an instant, countless butterflies that had landed on the ceiling unfurled their wings.
...
A note from the author:
One more chapter today!
Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!
Chapter 48
Everything fell silent amidst the dandelion seeds dancing in the air.
Afterwards, Pei Shaocheng's clothes remained perfectly smooth without a single wrinkle. He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and slowly exhaled. He glanced at Wen Yuhan, who was slumped to the ground.
Wen Yuhan tilted her head slightly to one side, watching a blue butterfly gradually become transparent and disappear. Then, supporting herself against the wall, she slowly stood up, her legs still trembling, and walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Pei Shaocheng flicked his cigarette ash, walked to the entryway, and opened the door. Seeing the door open, Yi Li immediately looked up at Pei Shaocheng and smiled, pointing to the room and asking in a low voice, "Should we go in or... find somewhere else to talk?"
"Let's go somewhere else."
Yi Li nodded, glancing at the room through Pei Shaocheng's side out of the corner of his eye. His gaze fell on the familiar white shirt on the carpet, and his eyes darkened almost imperceptibly.
"Is it... Senior Wen?" The question came out before reason could even register.
Pei Shaocheng didn't answer directly, but casually closed the door and said, "The Western restaurant on the second floor is still open. Have you eaten?"
"No." Yi Li shook his head, then asked Pei Shaocheng, "Aren't you going to invite Senior Wen along?"
"No need," Pei Shaocheng said calmly.
No sooner had he finished speaking than his phone rang. Pei Shaocheng glanced at the caller ID, a dark glint in his eyes, but he answered the call anyway and headed for the elevator before Yi Li could.
"What is it?" Pei Shaocheng asked.
The voice on the other end of the phone was equally unfriendly: "I've been calling Xiaohan but no one answers. Is he with you?"
Upon hearing this, Pei Shaocheng gave a cold snort.
His attitude confirmed Lu Yanheng's guess, and his tone became even more forceful.
Lu Yanheng: "Did he beg you to choose between Lu Yanchen and me?"
“No, he just wanted to see me,” Pei Shaocheng said.
Lu Yanheng sneered: "Whether it's true or not, you know it in your heart, Pei Shaocheng. Don't you think what you're doing is very tasteless?"
"Is Mr. Lu being hypocritical after getting a good deal?" Pei Shaocheng raised an eyebrow. "Don't forget, you were the third party from beginning to end."
“Pei Shaocheng!” Lu Yanheng said sternly, “If you dare to do anything to Xiao Han, I will never let you off the hook… Let him answer the phone, I need to confirm his safety.”
Pei Shaocheng chuckled softly, "He probably doesn't have the energy to answer your call right now. His voice is hoarse from calling, and he's resting next to me."
"Bullshit!" Lu Yanheng couldn't help but swear.
“I think President Lu should focus more on work matters. After all, we’re all in this together from now on, and I don’t want to have made the wrong choice.” Pei Shaocheng paused and then smiled. “Also, the second young master of the Lu family is probably still angry, since he got the information that you told the media about the false news that Hua Can and I were going to cooperate with him.”
Lu Yanheng on the other end of the phone took a deep breath: "My family's affairs are none of your concern."
Pei Shaocheng said calmly, "As for the matters between my lover and me, you need not worry about them."
After saying that, he immediately hung up the call.
...
In the Western restaurant on the second floor of the hotel, Yi Li used a delicate knife and fork to cut the steak on his plate and chewed it in small bites.
Pei Shaocheng silently sipped his brandy, gazing at the night view through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"We should be moving back to Yancheng next week," Yi Li said with a smile and a soft voice. "Actually, I quite like the South. The weather is humid and not too dry, but the winters are too cold, and down jackets are useless."
“I remember your hometown is Suzhou,” Pei Shaocheng said.
Yi Li nodded: "I lived there until high school, and then my parents brought me to Yancheng."
At this point, Yi Li poured himself a glass of wine and drank it down in one gulp.
He wasn't a big drinker to begin with, and drinking too fast quickly caused a light blush to spread across his face. His eyes looked like they were filled with water, shimmering with a clear, luminous light.
“My father used to be a small textile vendor in Suzhou. He worked his way up from nothing in Yancheng and gradually saved up some money… My mother was cheated and had to leave the stage at the height of her career, leaving her destitute. It was my father who gave her money at a critical moment to help her through the crisis, and that's how she finally married him,” Yi Li said slowly. “But actually, my mother always looked down on my father, feeling that he didn't understand her and was uneducated… During that time, she met a director and was originally planning to divorce my father, but then she found out she was pregnant. The director couldn't accept it and told my mother that she either had to abort the child or break up with him… My mother didn't want to abort me, so the relationship ended. But because of this, my father later found out, and their relationship became very tense.”
Yi Li poured himself another glass of wine, a gentle smile still playing on his lips:
"So their attitude towards me became very subtle. On the one hand, my mother felt that I had caused her to lose her true love, and on the other hand, she regarded me as her only hope in the world. So her attitude towards me was always unstable, sometimes very attentive, and sometimes quite disgusted. As for my father... he later had a lover outside and didn't come home often. But in the eyes of outsiders, our family was a so-called upper-class family. My parents were both people who cared about their image and didn't want to ruin it. So they put all their hopes on me. From a young age, they enrolled me in all kinds of courses: English, French, horseback riding, opera, piano, violin... They wanted to mold me into a perfect persona and required me to be liked by everyone... But I was actually in a lot of pain, and even thought about suicide at one point."
Pei Shaocheng's eyes darkened as he listened quietly to Yi Li's story.
Yi Li: "Applying to drama school was also my mother's idea. When I first entered the school, I really didn't like it at all. Every day I was tossed about in despair and darkness, but I still had to put on a happy face in front of everyone... Until one day, I saw you on stage... You shouted loudly under the spotlight, 'My feet are already deeply mired in blood. If I don't wade forward, then the road back will be just as tedious.'"
Macbeth.
“Yes.” Yi Li smiled. “I was deeply attracted to that senior. After returning home, I stayed up all night to read the script of Macbeth, word by word. ‘I have never seen such a gloomy yet bright day.’ That’s so accurate; that’s exactly how I felt at the time. Because of that senior, I felt a passion for something for the first time, and I desperately wanted to catch up with him… In my junior year, I heard that he was having a performance, and I spent the biggest expense of my college life to buy a seat in the very center of the first row from a classmate. When I looked at you across the stage, I felt like the whole world stood still. That play was written by Wen, and I still remember that the character you played was called Andrew…”
"Hmm." Pei Shaocheng responded lightly. He remembered that not long after that performance, Wen Yuhan was embroiled in a huge plagiarism controversy.
“I had heard about Pei’s relationship with Wen, and I even resented him for a time. It was because of Wen that Pei gave up performance opportunities and was not at school every day, working part-time everywhere… But it was precisely because of this that I was even more fascinated by Pei.”
Pei Shaocheng had a feeling that if this topic continued to go deeper, it might cause problems, so he interrupted in a low voice, "Weren't we supposed to be talking about the script?"
Yi Li looked up and gazed deeply at Pei Shaocheng: "Senior brother, the reason I'm telling you so much today is that I want you to understand me better..." He took a deep breath and said sincerely, "I also want you to understand that there has always been someone chasing the light behind you, silently following you, waiting for you to turn around and look at him."
Pei Shaocheng frowned.
Yi Li: "And perhaps Senior Wen has also found his own light. Because eyes don't lie... Senior brother understands that too, right?"
Pei Shaocheng suddenly stood up.
He grabbed his coat and left the Western restaurant without saying a word.
Watching Pei Shaocheng's retreating figure, Yi Li spoke softly but clearly:
"He looked at that man with the same light in his eyes as I look at you."
...
Pei Shaocheng opened the door, but the room was still completely dark, and it was unclear whether the person lying on the bed was asleep or awake.
Pei Shaocheng took off his clothes and pressed the other person down into the clean, soft bedding without saying a word.
He snatched the cigarette from his hand and stubbed it out haphazardly in the ashtray beside him.
Throughout the entire process, the other party remained indifferent, neither resisting nor refusing, nor showing any emotion, allowing Pei Shaocheng to fiercely bite his throat, collarbone, and lips, venting his anger wantonly.
In the chaotic and oppressive silence, Pei Shaocheng inevitably met those blank and empty eyes, with Yi Li's last words echoing in his ears.
There was a light in his eyes when he looked at Lu Yanheng...
Pei Shaocheng gave a low shout and reached out to cover Wen Yuhan's eyes.
Red petals gradually bloomed on the bedside table...
Wen Yuhan fainted amidst this ups and downs.
This time, however, he didn't utter a single cry of pain.