Chapter 70
The one-bedroom apartment was shabby, but the bankrupt Ruan Chi was in no position to be picky. Zong Mo thought to himself, although they were in a relationship now, if Ruan Chi wanted to live in his house, he would definitely have to pay some price.
…The self-service on the bed didn’t count!
This kind of thing shouldn’t be in the category of a transaction. After all, they both enjoyed it. This was also an expression of feelings, a give and take, with no one owing anyone.
As for other household chores, cooking was first ruled out for kitchen safety and physical health. Next was washing dishes. Who knew if Ruan Chi would break three for every two he washed? It wasn’t worth the loss. They were still in debt.
Zong Mo looked for chores that he could give to Ruan Chi and asked, “Do you know how to use a washing machine?”
Ruan Chi said frankly, “No.”
So Zong Mo taught him how to use it, hand in hand. Ruan Chi’s ten fingers had never touched household chores, but that was because there was no need. His brain was very sharp. He learned how to do chores from scratch with just a little guidance.
Zong Mo looked at the back of the former overbearing CEO, who was doing chores without complaint, and couldn’t help but marvel.
The small apartment didn’t have much to tidy up. After they were done, the two of them sat on the sofa to rest.
Zong Mo pondered for a long time before he spoke, “What you said last time… about getting married, were you serious?”
Ruan Chi looked at him, “Mm, I was serious.”
“It’s too sudden. I can’t decide now,” Zong Mo said. “And we still have a lot of debts to pay. If our relationship is discovered by the paparazzi, our work might also be affected.”
“Let’s pay off the debts first?”
Ruan Chi was silent for a moment and let out an emotionless “mm.”
The next morning, Zong Mo was preparing to go out to buy groceries.
The reason he didn’t order takeout was, firstly, he wanted to choose them himself, and secondly, there were no spare bedding at home, so he needed to buy another set.
Ruan Chi didn’t mind at all.
Zong Mo thought for a moment. Ruan Chi didn’t have the habit of being a neat freak, which was a common problem with overbearing CEOs. He was a little fussy about being clean, though. But he had never been disgusted by him. Not long after he had transmigrated, he had even snatched a cake from his mouth.
It was the kind of thing that only a certain kind of animal would do!
Before leaving, Zong Mo asked casually, “I’m going out to buy some groceries and daily necessities. Do you need anything?”
“Mm, shall I go with you?”
But Zong Mo refused, “I’m just buying nearby. I’ll be back soon. It would be troublesome if we were photographed together, right? You can just rest at home.”
Ruan Chi let out a soft “mm” and said, “Okay, you go.”
Ruan Chi had been so easy-going these past few days. Zong Mo secretly marveled at the good side of bankruptcy, that it could even make such a person become so well-behaved and cute.
And it also made him more like an ambitious, responsible, and extremely reliable good husband!!
However, thinking of himself as a husband in his heart was one thing, but actually getting married was another.
Marriage was a matter of a lifetime.
He didn’t think Ruan Chi had come up with the idea on the spot. It was more likely that Ruan Chi felt they had been together long enough. Before, they had slept and eaten together. After getting married, they would also sleep and eat together.
But for him, this relationship had just begun.
Zong Mo walked out of the apartment building and suddenly felt a flash of white light behind him. He didn’t pay much attention and walked a few more steps, and then another flash.
He sensed something was wrong and quickly turned around, but there was no one behind him.
He rarely had the trouble of being followed and photographed by paparazzi, but he had been a public figure for almost a year. He immediately guessed that he had most likely been photographed just now.
This was a large residential complex with thousands of residents. People were coming and going. The security measures were far from those of Ruan Chi’s several residences. It was not strange for paparazzi to come to his door.
Zong Mo immediately changed his course and looked back for suspicious people.
Since he couldn’t find anyone on the path, he looked up and expanded his search area, finally catching a glimpse of a black, tube-like camera peeking out from the dense leaves.
Zong Mo: …
He stood under the tree and said with a straight face, “Come down.”
Paparazzo: …
“Come down, or I’ll go up. I can climb trees,” Zong Mo continued to say, looking up. “I’m not responsible if your camera falls. Do you know that taking secret photos is illegal?”
He was being very serious, appealing to reason and threatening at the same time.
Hmm, after being together for so long, occasionally pretending to be CEO Ruan should be quite convincing, right!
At the sound of his voice, the paparazzo nimbly climbed down the tree, and then… ran for his life.
Zong Mo quickly chased after him, caught the short, thin, and out-of-shape man, and said, “I can also run very fast!”
Paparazzo: …
Zong Mo grabbed the man’s arm and asked in a series of questions, “How did you find out I live here? When did you come? What did you take pictures of just now?”
The paparazzo confessed honestly, “I have a relative who lives in this complex. He told me. This is my first time here today. I just took a picture of you coming out of the apartment building…”
Zong Mo was slightly relieved. Good thing this paparazzo hadn’t been squatting nearby for a long time. He probably hadn’t photographed Ruan Chi. And he was just going out to buy groceries today. There was nothing that couldn’t be photographed, as long as the photos weren’t randomly posted and his address exposed.
According to his surfing experience, what the paparazzi wanted to know was of course not where a celebrity lived, but more explosive content. Staking out a place was just the first step of the follow-up work. They would usually censor private information like the address. This was basic professional ethics.
Zong Mo still demanded, “Delete the photos. Don’t come again.”
The paparazzo quickly agreed, deleted all the photos, and even showed him the clean camera.
He seemed easy to talk to, but of course, a creature like a paparazzo could not be trusted.
It was impossible for him not to come again. Zong Mo could only be more careful.
There was no such trouble when he was living in the villa…
The DSLR camera was intact. The paparazzo let out a long sigh of relief. Perhaps it was the first time he had encountered such a gentle “threat.” He even boldly pushed his luck, “Um, can I ask, where has Ruan Chi been lately? And… are you two for real?”
Zong Mo: …
He was not so kind as to answer all the paparazzo’s questions. He turned and left, buying things and going home with complicated feelings. He said to Ruan Chi, “CEO Ruan, I ran into a paparazzo when I went downstairs. I estimate they’ll be squatting for a while longer. Why don’t you just stay at home these few days and not go out?”
Ruan Chi: “Mm.”
Zong Mo: “There’s nothing to play with at home… will you be bored?”
Unfortunately, the current apartment did not have the villa’s courtyard or the various entertainment facilities in the basement. It was just a three-point line of the living room, bedroom, and bathroom.
Ruan Chi had no work to deal with now. He had nowhere to go even if he wanted to take a vacation.
Ruan Chi did not answer his question and just said, “Come here.”
Zong Mo went and sat down beside him.
Ruan Chi put his arm around his shoulder, pulled him, and let him lie on his lap.
Zong Mo blinked his eyes in confusion and looked at the lowered Ruan Chi.
?
What’s he doing?
“I’m not bored,” Ruan Chi said slowly. “As long as you don’t leave me.”
Zong Mo: …
His cheeks instantly burned. He quickly sat up and frantically found a topic, “You’re just bankrupt. You haven’t lost your ability to make money. Why don’t you use my computer and see if there are any other ways to make money?”
After speaking, Zong Mo took over the laptop he had bought with Ruan Chi’s card and handed it to him.
Then he sat to the side, trying to remember if there was anything in his computer that couldn’t be seen.
There were definitely no dirty materials. He was already too busy in real life. His body and eyes were enjoying themselves so much. How could he go online to find those hard-to-swallow, low-quality resources!?
But when the cold, ghostly light of the computer was cast on Ruan Chi’s face, it reminded him of Ruan Chi’s previous work machine state, and he was a little unhappy for a moment.
Ruan Chi casually scanned the computer twice, then looked over, a meaningful smile on his face, “The fiercest golden canary in history?”
Zong Mo: …
What?
When did Ruan Chi hear his thoughts?
No, he hadn’t thought of this title in his mind for a long time. He had thought of “the most promising golden canary in history” more often.
No.
He widened his eyes in panic, quickly closed the laptop, snatched it away, and held it tightly in his arms, “Ahhhhhh!!!”
“What are you so excited about?” Ruan Chi said calmly. “I just saw a very interesting document. I haven’t opened it yet.”
Zong Mo: …
GG.
He had no face to see people anymore.
Why, after writing millions of words of novels, had he still not been able to break the bad habit of putting documents on his desktop?
Even if he wouldn’t lose his hard work because of a computer format, he would still lose his old face because of being accidentally discovered by others!!
And, his overly excited reaction was no different from announcing the secret to the world.
He put down the computer, calmed down, and chose to confess from the beginning, “I used to be a web novel writer. Although being a celebrity makes more money, who knows when I’ll flip over… so I thought, I can’t give up the skill of writing. If I’m not a celebrity anymore, I can still support myself.”
Ruan Chi: “Hmm?”
“This is a novel I wrote a while ago,” Zong Mo covered his face, full of regret. “That was just a subtitle!! I haven’t thought of the official name of the novel yet…”
He tried hard to explain, but Ruan Chi only picked out the key points and repeated, “The fiercest golden canary in history?”
Zong Mo said weakly, “Novels, they are based on reality but are higher than reality. It’s not real…”
Ruan Chi: “Let me see?”
Zong Mo said with difficulty, “It’s not finished yet. I’ll show it to you in the future?”
Ruan Chi still smiled, “Hmm? I wasn’t talking about reading the novel?”
Zong Mo: ?
Facts have proven that a world of two people, even without any entertainment facilities, would not be that boring.
On the other side, a certain paparazzo returned to his dilapidated, on-the-verge-of-bankruptcy studio and showed off his achievements for the day.
“I’ve confirmed today that Zong Mo lives in that complex, but I didn’t see Ruan Chi. The photos… have been deleted, but I saw him buy a lot of things and go home. He should be living there long-term.”
For a grassroots, amateur paparazzi team like theirs, it was already extremely difficult to target a traffic star. Although they hadn’t gained much yet, the one thing a paparazzo did not lack was patience.
The boss was reasonably satisfied and nodded, “It’s a bit strange. We’ve never been able to dig up where Zong Mo lives before. This information came too easily… Zong Mo hasn’t worked for a while and has moved to this kind of place. Did he have a falling out with his sponsor?”
“Does he really have someone behind him?”
“Of course. Are you stupid?”
“Then his sponsor can really tolerate it, letting him sell bromance with others like this?”
“Ruan Chi also hasn’t appeared for a while,” the boss pondered for a moment and instructed, “Go and check the entrepreneurs and celebrities with the surname Ruan in City A and give me a list. I’ll go and ask around. Maybe we can make a big profit this time.”
As the second young master of the Ruan family, and now the second master of the Ruan family, Ruan Ming did not have the rash personality of his older brother, Ruan Qin.
His mind was naturally also quite outstanding, but this had not earned him much of his father’s affection. On the contrary, his father’s demands on him were even stricter.
He knew that his father was grooming him as an heir. But when his third brother’s only son gradually grew up, everything became very different.
“Where has that stinky kid Ruan Chi been lately? He’s really started to be a hands-off, second-generation heir,” Ruan Qin sat leisurely in the soft chair in his office, chattering non-stop. “Second brother, this is a good opportunity for us.”
“It’s useless,” Ruan Ming said faintly. “By the way, didn’t you say he went to be a celebrity? Is he busy filming now?”
“I don’t think so. He hasn’t appeared online for a while either.”
Ruan Ming opened Weibo and casually searched for Ruan Chi. The first thing that caught his eye was not some film or television work, but all sorts of CP food.
The more Ruan Ming looked, the deeper his brows furrowed. He muttered, “What is this mess… he’s even selling bromance? But the current entertainment industry eats this up. Did he enter the entertainment industry to hype up the company? But he hasn’t revealed his identity either…”
Because of Ruan Ming’s words, Ruan Qin also went on Weibo to take a look. He was suddenly stunned and muttered, “This cross-dressing actor looks a bit familiar.”
Ruan Ming looked over, his gaze deep and imposing.
Ruan Qin found the actor’s name, followed the name to find his Weibo, and finally saw a lot of normal male attire photos. He frowned and thought carefully.
“I always feel like I’ve seen this kid somewhere,” Ruan Qin shook his head and tried hard to remember. “Ah, once when I went to the hospital to see our dad, the caregiver in the hospital room looked a bit like him, but I didn’t pay much attention…”
Ruan Ming, on the other hand, went directly to the CP fan Super Topic to look for evidence. Memories might have discrepancies and deviations, but the interaction and gazes recorded on camera would never lie.
Although he felt that Ruan Chi’s act of bringing an outsider to see his father was quite unbelievable, just looking at these photos and videos made his usually calm and stern expression suddenly tremble. He then said in disbelief, “Ruan Chi, he… does he like men?”
Ruan Qin was extremely surprised, then shook his head regretfully, “Even if he likes men and has no heir, he’s still so young. The company and the shares won’t fall to us.”
Ruan Ming glanced at his good-for-nothing brother, a hint of excitement suppressed in his deep voice, “I’ve finally found his leverage.”
Author’s Note:
Mo Mo: Socially dead, wuwuwu
CEO Ruan: So cute I’m dying, save me
