Chapter 15: The Vicious Fake Young Master of a Wealthy Family – 15

With his hands full of things, Zhou Xu wanted to push him away but was afraid of damaging the cake. He could only stand there and get completely wrapped up in Su Wenyu’s embrace.

He hadn’t expected that Su Wenyu, who looked so slender and delicate, would collide with the force of a small cannonball. Zhou Xu felt his own heart nearly skip a beat, pounding hard in his chest.

When Su Wenyu lifted his face to speak, his warm breath ghosted across Zhou Xu’s chin, making him instinctively tilt his head back a little.

“Is it for me?” Su Wenyu, having received no answer, pressed the question again.

Zhou Xu averted his gaze from those sparkling, luminous eyes and ordered, “Let go first.”

Su Wenyu didn’t let go, instead putting on a wounded, pitiful pout.

Zhou Xu stared up at the sky and sighed helplessly.

He’d truly never met a guy so adept at acting cute. It was only thanks to his stunningly pretty face that it didn’t come off as annoying.

And yet Su Wenyu still claimed he wasn’t gay. What normal, heterosexual adult man would hug another man and whine like this?

He’d only bought him a tiny cake—nothing expensive at all—and here he was, this overjoyed.

“Yes, it’s for you. Let go,” Zhou Xu said, his voice laden with complex emotions.

Su Wenyu immediately released his grip and threw his hands up in a cheer, essentially doing a happy dance. \(^o^)/

Zhou Xu walked ahead with the cake and gave him a preemptive warning: “Even if it’s for you, you can’t eat too much.”

Su Wenyu had just spent the afternoon on an IV drip to fix his acute gastroenteritis. As his older brother, Zhou Xu felt it was his duty to monitor his food intake.

“I know, I know.” Su Wenyu jogged to keep up.

Truthfully, Su Wenyu didn’t care that much about how much he could eat. To him, as long as there was a birthday cake, the day held a special, unique meaning.

At the same time, Su Wenyu silently thanked 520 for waking him.

He had been fast asleep on the recliner by the French window, completely unaware that Zhou Xu had returned.

It was 520, having detected Zhou Xu’s data signature at close range, who had woken him with a mental alert.

Su Wenyu was absolutely certain: if 520 hadn’t woken him, and Zhou Xu had seen the lights in his room off, with his personality, Zhou Xu would never have knocked on his door to offer him cake. He would’ve missed his birthday entirely.

So Su Wenyu was truly, deeply grateful to 520. Silently, he projected several mental heart shapes towards it.

System 520 chuckled. [Since today’s a special day, I won’t issue any missions for you. Happy birthday.]

Su Wenyu happily thanked it and followed Zhou Xu inside, all the way to the dining room.

The ground floor lights were all flipped on, flooding the space with brightness, allowing Su Wenyu an even clearer view of the little cake.

A beautiful small cake decorated with piped flowers, with ‘Happy Birthday’ written on it.

Exactly the kind Su Wenyu had wanted!

Before Zhou Xu could even open the box, Su Wenyu had already seated himself obediently at the dining table, waiting like a model student.

“Do you want to do the whole proper birthday thing? Blow out candles, sing the birthday song?” Zhou Xu asked as he lifted the cake out of the box and set it in front of Su Wenyu.

Su Wenyu nodded eagerly, his eyes brimming with anticipation. “Will you sing it for me?”

Zhou Xu paused for a beat. He neither confirmed nor denied. Instead, he took the colorful candles out of the packet and began carefully inserting them into the cake’s surface, working around the ‘Happy Birthday’ lettering.

“How many?” Zhou Xu asked.

Su Wenyu thought for a moment. “Twenty.”

Zhou Xu: “?”

Jamming twenty tiny colorful candles into a small four-inch cake was a recipe for extreme overcrowding. He should have thought to grab some number-shaped candles instead.

But one look at the sheer hope shining in Su Wenyu’s eyes, and the word ‘no’ simply couldn’t leave Zhou Xu’s lips.

So what if he wanted twenty candles stuck in? It wasn’t like he was asking to eat twenty whole cakes. Let him.

Thus, apart from the area occupied by the birthday message, every last gap between the piped flowers was crammed full with colorful birthday candles by Zhou Xu.

“Want the hat?” Zhou Xu also extracted the paper birthday hat from the box. He eyed the circumference of Su Wenyu’s head, adjusted the hat’s rear clasp, and offered it.

Su Wenyu quickly ducked his head forward. “Thanks, Brother!”

Zhou Xu’s hands hesitated for a split-second, but somehow, before he knew it, he had personally placed the birthday hat onto Su Wenyu’s head.

Candles inserted. Hat on.

Under the relentless, sparkly-eyed assault of Su Wenyu’s gaze, Zhou Xu resigned himself to his fate. He pulled up a birthday song on his phone, lit the colorful candles, and, with a thoroughly deadpan expression, began to sing: “Happy birthday to you…”

Su Wenyu clapped his hands and joined in loudly: “Happy birthday to me~~”

As the short song finished, half the candles had already burned down. Su Wenyu squeezed his eyes shut and made his grand wish with booming voice: “I WISH TO LIVE HEALTHILY TO ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD!”

Then, he blew out the candles.

Zhou Xu let out a soft, amused chuckle. He had the vague sense he’d never seen anyone whose birthday wish wasn’t about wealth, success, or good grades but was simply… to live to a hundred.

“Alright, time to cut the cake.” Zhou Xu removed the spent candle stubs from the cake, carefully scraping away any stray wax drips that had fallen onto the frosting. He cut a small slice, adorned with one piped flower, and placed it onto the plate in front of Su Wenyu.

“As agreed, you can’t eat too much,” Zhou Xu stipulated.

This time, Su Wenyu was the picture of obedience. With his small fork, he delicately nibbled at the cake, savoring the sensation of cream melting on his tongue.

The rest of the cake, Zhou Xu polished off in a few efficient bites.

“Brother… I’ll remember this cake tonight for the rest of my life.” Still nibbling his tiny portion, Su Wenyu’s eyes curved into crescent moons. “Thank you for celebrating my birthday with me.”

Zhou Xu privately felt this wasn’t quite worth a lifelong memory, but looking at Su Wenyu’s utterly earnest expression, he held back any comment.

He still didn’t understand why Su Wenyu insisted today was his birthday, but… whatever. Let him have it.

Zhou Xu didn’t pry into the reason. He just went along with the celebration.

—

Once the cake was finished, Zhou Xu got up to clear the table.

Su Wenyu didn’t hurry off to bed. He lingered near Zhou Xu’s side, watching him. “You know,” he mused, “when I was a kid, I always wished I had an older brother. When I was little, I even made a huge fuss, clinging to my mom and begging her to give me one.”

Unfortunately, his mother couldn’t grant that wish. Forget that they hadn’t wanted a second child—even if they had, any new sibling would have been a younger brother or sister. Never an older brother.

To the very young Su Wenyu, this had been a devastating blow. He’d cried for ages before being placated.

He never imagined that fate would send him to this little world and hand him an older brother for free.

Zhou Xu huffed a faint laugh, unsure if he entirely believed it. He just gave Su Wenyu’s head a light pat and urged, “Alright, go upstairs and sleep.”

Su Wenyu wasn’t sleepy yet, but seeing how exhausted Zhou Xu likely was after the long day, he obediently trotted upstairs.

After a quick wash-up, Su Wenyu lay in his clean pajamas on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He confided to 520, “I’m really happy I came to this world.”

System 520 beeped twice in response. Su Wenyu hugged his blanket and rolled back and forth on the mattress. Finding himself genuinely unable to sleep, he eventually kicked off his covers and scrambled out of bed, padding to his walk-in closet.

A while back, Su Wenyu had bought plenty of clothes—not just for himself, but also many items meant as compensation for Zhou Xu, since he’d ruined Zhou Xu’s outfit with red wine.

Su Wenyu felt tonight was the perfect opportunity. He dug out all the clothes he’d bought for Zhou Xu, stuffing them into four massive bags. Wobbling under their weight, he nudged his door open with his foot and staggered toward Zhou Xu’s room.

“Brother! Open up!” His hands too full to knock, Su Wenyu resorted to gently kicking the door, his voice raised in a shout.

Zhou Xu, fresh out of the shower with only a towel wrapped around his waist, heard the noise and instinctively glanced down at his state of undress. Opening the door like that was clearly out of the question. He decisively chose to pull on some clothes first. Shuffling over in his slippers, he opened the door with a frown. “What is it n—”

His sentence was cut short as Su Wenyu practically threw the contents of his arms into his chest.

“Clothes. For you.” Having successfully offloaded all four heavy bags into Zhou Xu’s unsuspecting arms, Su Wenyu exhaled in relief. Those few steps had nearly killed him.

Zhou Xu glanced at the garments spilling out of the bag, then at Su Wenyu’s fingers, reddened from the strain of carrying them. He sighed, exasperated. “My closet is stuffed with clothes.”

Before Zhou Xu had even returned home, Shi Pei and Su Duanhong had already bought enough clothes to fill every season of the year, tailored to his height and weight. All kinds of styles hung in the vast walk-in closet, more than he could ever wear.

Zhou Xu simply felt his old clothes were still wearable. Plus, since he’d been spending all his time helping at the dessert shop, there was no need to wear those expensive pieces. So he hadn’t touched the new wardrobe yet.

Terrified Zhou Xu would try to make him take the clothes back, Su Wenyu quickly added, “But those are different! These are from me. And they’re all your size! If you refuse them, I can’t return them, and I can’t wear such huge clothes anyway.”

Zhou Xu assessed Su Wenyu’s frame, trying to imagine his own clothes hanging off him. They would indeed be ridiculously oversized… practically nightgowns.

“Okay, fine. Clothes received. Now, go to bed—” Zhou Xu started, ready to shoo him away. But Su Wenyu was faster.

Waving enthusiastically, Su Wenyu called out, “Remember to wear them tomorrow, okay~” and dashed back to his room in a flash, slamming the door shut before Zhou Xu could react.

Zhou Xu stared at the closed door. Helpless, he could only carry all the clothes into his room.

He’d planned to go straight to sleep after his shower, but the sight of those four bags of haphazardly folded clothes triggered his obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Resigning himself to the task, he sighed and started pulling them out, one by one, to refold them properly.

Alongside T-shirts and dress shirts were various athletic trousers and casual pants.

And then, at the very bottom of the last bag, Zhou Xu pulled out two unopened boxes of underwear.

At first, he assumed Su Wenyu had misplaced them. Then he glanced at the size on the box.

“……….”

Nope. No mistake. They were definitely for him.

When the hell had Su Wenyu gotten such a clear idea of his underwear size?!

Was it that day he’d accidentally barged in on him in the bathroom?!

Had he seriously looked that closely?!

Clutching the perfectly-sized underwear, Zhou Xu’s face cycled through shades of green and red.

It clicked. The whole “clothes” gift was a front! These two boxes of underwear were his real objective!

It was all to prove that Su Wenyu knew his… his measurements… inside and out!

Wait—no. There had to be a deeper layer.

Could it be… to ensure that every single time Zhou Xu put on underwear, he’d be reminded of Su Wenyu?!?!

Feeling as though he’d stumbled upon a shocking, perverse truth, Zhou Xu, overcome with a mix of shame and fury, stuffed the offending boxes into the deepest, darkest corner of his closet’s lowest drawer!

He knew it. Su Wenyu’s designs on him were utterly relentless.

All that hugging and nuzzling tonight, deliberately breathing on his chin… He’d thought it was genuine happiness over the cake. But it was all just a crafty gay man’s ploy to get close!

He never should have softened his heart!!

Zhou Xu swore a vow: even if he ran out of underwear and had to go commando, he would never touch these two boxes!!

Additionally, tomorrow, he had to deliver a stern warning to Su Wenyu. Enough with these cheap tricks.

He was straight!!

STRAIGHT AS AN ARROW!!!