Chapter 41
Lu Xiao patted his thigh. “Come here.”
Meng Xueyuan hesitated. His longing for Lu Xiao outweighed his aversion to the smell of smoke. He quickly walked over to him and clarified, “Actually, I don’t feel uncomfortable. It’s the same as usual, so I didn’t want to affect your work or make you come back again.”
Lu Xiao thought to himself that he really would have rushed back.
Lu Xiao wrapped an arm around Meng Xueyuan’s waist and pulled him onto his lap. After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “In the three months I was gone, did anyone take advantage of it to bully you? Or deceive you? Any kind at all?”
From an angle Meng Xueyuan couldn’t see, a chilling sharpness flashed through Lu Xiao’s eyes.
If Meng Xueyuan had been bullied, he would make that person wish they were dead. Lu Xiao would rather it be a fling Meng Xueyuan had willingly chosen—this flashy entertainment world made such encounters easy.
“Anything at all, I can decide for you. And I’ll always love you.”
Lu Xiao stared hard into Meng Xueyuan’s eyes, unwilling to miss even the tiniest trace of hidden grievance or endurance.
Meng Xueyuan’s eyes were as bright and open as the sky after snowfall. He’d only just come back and was already ready to stand up for him—truly worthy of Lu Xiao. He said happily, “No. Not at all.”
In fact, from their daily video calls, Lu Xiao hadn’t sensed anything wrong. He hadn’t felt his wife being bullied, nor had he felt Meng Xueyuan’s love for him change.
Except for the oranges.
“Wife, will you always love me?”
“I will.”
Lu Xiao said, “Good. Then it’s my turn to settle accounts. You ate twenty-nine oranges right in front of me—was it to cover up morning sickness?”
Meng Xueyuan admitted honestly, “Yes.”
Thinking of the report saying that Meng Xueyuan had a strong aversion to meat, Lu Xiao lifted him by the hips to gauge his weight—he really had gotten lighter. Then he remembered how every day he’d shown Meng Xueyuan the company cafeteria’s lavish meat dishes.
So his wife biting into oranges wasn’t because he was craving them—it was because Lu Xiao had disgusted him.
And yet he’d still been willing to video-call him every day, listen to him ramble about shark meat smelling like urine. His wife really loved him.
“Why didn’t you tell me? You could’ve just made up an excuse and banned my food from appearing on camera.”
Meng Xueyuan said, “I wanted to care about your daily meals.”
“How can you be this good?” Lu Xiao kissed the corner of his mouth. He was so good that Lu Xiao wanted to bully him a little. “How are you going to repay the debt of tricking me with twenty-nine oranges?”
Blushing, Meng Xueyuan asked in a low voice, “Like… eating boiled eggs?”
A wild thought struck Lu Xiao. “Wife, you’re so lewd. You didn’t secretly save my sperm, did you?!”
Having his once-harbored sneaky thought exposed, the model student bristled and retorted, “Absolutely not! I always fell asleep first. You’re the lewd one.”
How could the queen bee’s nuptial flight plan be associated with lewdness? Reproduction, maybe.
“All right, all right, I’m the lewd one. Don’t get worked up—getting worked up makes you nauseous,” Lu Xiao said.
“Then how exactly are you going to punish me?” Meng Xueyuan asked.
He was familiar with boiled eggs—he could handle that. No other strange punishments, please.
But how could Lu Xiao possibly make Meng Xueyuan, who was prone to morning sickness, eat his “boiled eggs”? That would be inhumane.
“You were eating navel oranges, so we’ll use navel oranges to repay it. Twenty-nine times.”
It took Meng Xueyuan a moment to catch the homophonic meaning of navel oranges. His cheeks instantly flushed. Since he was weaker than Lu Xiao, he’d never tried that.
He hooked an arm around Lu Xiao’s neck and buried his face into his shoulder, his voice muffled. “Then… can I repay one now?”
It wasn’t that he was lewd—it was just that he happened to be sitting on Lu Xiao’s thigh, and he didn’t like owing debts.
Lu Xiao gave his wife’s butt a pinch. “Don’t rush. Did you forget what the doctor said?”
The mechanism behind pseudopregnancy was sperm-stimulation. Medicine hadn’t fully clarified the principle yet, but it was certain that during pseudopregnancy, continued sperm stimulation carried a certain probability of prolonging the symptoms.
Meng Xueyuan was already feeling miserable. Lu Xiao didn’t want him to feel even worse. Once this round of symptoms fully passed and the pseudopregnancy mechanism shut down, he’d be just like a normal person again. It was similar to real pregnancy, where you also couldn’t do anything in the first three months.
Besides, Lu Xiao was afraid that he might bring anger into sex—even a little. Though he was controlling himself pretty well now, what if he turned perverted halfway through?
His wife was always so soft. With him, Lu Xiao couldn’t help but indulge, even letting his bed skills crash and burn.
Meng Xueyuan shouldn’t have to bear that. Lu Xiao couldn’t let his personal emotions intrude into their relationship.
In a low voice, Meng Xueyuan said, “I can handle it.” Their queen bees were said to have sperm-storage sacs somewhere in their bodies—he didn’t know exactly where, but it meant Lu Xiao’s pollen was always inside him. Letting a bit more in should be fine, right?
“Baby, I know you’re very good at enduring. Don’t tease me,” Lu Xiao said.
“I haven’t slept in a long time. I just want to hold you and sleep. I came back specially to spend Valentine’s Day with you—you don’t want to spend it all in bed, do you?”
Meng Xueyuan shook his head. “I don’t.”
He wanted to take photos with Lu Xiao as mementos. There’d be no chance for that if they stayed in bed.
“Let’s go to sleep.”
Lu Xiao picked Meng Xueyuan up and carried him to the bedroom. He went to shower first, to wash off the smell of smoke.
He’d really only smoked one cigarette; the rest had burned out between his fingers. He’d only been briefly “greened”—it wasn’t like he’d never kiss his wife again. What right did he have to smoke, when Meng Xueyuan disliked the smell?
Meng Xueyuan sat on the bed, waiting eagerly for Lu Xiao to come out. After fifteen minutes, the glass bathroom door opened and a handsome man stepped out.
He looked even better in person.
Meng Xueyuan felt a pang of regret for those night-watch fans who only got to admire Lu Xiao through screens and never had the chance to see him in real life. No matter how many pictures he posted on forums, he could never capture even a fraction of Lu Xiao’s heroic bearing—especially after a shower, when he looked downright aggressive, nothing like the ascetic image fans hyped up.
Regret aside, he wasn’t giving Lu Xiao back to them.
Watching Lu Xiao’s solid, muscular back, Meng Xueyuan frowned slightly. For some reason, he felt that Lu Xiao had something on his mind tonight.
Something felt off—had Lu Xiao grown up overnight?
Did work really temper people that much? Lu Xiao had already been excellent to begin with.
He’d been studying finance with Lin Xilan and Bai He. The deeper he went, the more he felt how incredible Lu Xiao was—crossing fields that had nothing to do with each other, yet quickly becoming a leading figure.
Ah!
Lin Xilan and Bai He were still staying next door in his own apartment!
If Lu Xiao found out he’d secretly let “outsiders” take care of him, he’d definitely get jealous.
Meng Xueyuan sneaked a look at the time—4:30 a.m. Bai He would get up at six to make breakfast.
He hurriedly messaged both of them: “Lu Xiao is back. Please leave quietly, don’t make a fuss. I’m begging you.”
He had to make Lu Xiao fall into deep sleep within an hour, or he’d hear the noise of the door opening next door.
Meng Xueyuan pushed Lu Xiao down onto the bed. They locked eyes. “I’m not sleepy anymore. I’ll lull you to sleep.”
Lu Xiao asked, “How?”
Meng Xueyuan said, “I… pat your back? Tell you a story? Sing?”
Lu Xiao said, “Just holding you is enough.”
“Am I too heavy on you?” Meng Xueyuan asked.
“There are still twenty-nine times. I won’t mind the weight,” Lu Xiao replied.
“I think I’m heavy,” Meng Xueyuan said.
He put an eye mask on Lu Xiao to block out the light. Then, while massaging Lu Xiao’s temples with one hand, he secretly played with his phone using the other, searching for solutions.
It couldn’t be that he was the only one in the world who got weak knees from this, right? The masses had to have wisdom.
He searched directly on a shopping app—and sure enough, found something called a “top-position assist stool.”
Order placed!
When Lu Xiao woke up again, it was close to noon. “Wife, I’m going back home for a bit. Do you want to come with me?”
“Next time. I’m a little sleepy,” Meng Xueyuan yawned. He’d woken up in the early hours and hadn’t gone back to sleep.
“All right. Take a nap,” Lu Xiao said.
As soon as Lu Xiao left, Meng Xueyuan pressed himself against the window and watched his car leave the complex. His beautiful eyes turned. He quickly went next door to his own apartment to tidy up, erasing any traces that others had stayed there.
Lin Xilan and Bai He had actually already cleaned everything up. At first glance there was nothing amiss, but Meng Xueyuan checked again before feeling reassured.
Meanwhile, at the complex gate, the security guard saw Lu Xiao driving out and pressed the electric gate button, greeting him, “Long time no see, Mr. Lu.”
Lu Xiao casually asked, “Have any paparazzi found this place?”
The security at upscale complexes were very good at detecting paparazzi. “No, rest assured.”
Lu Xiao reminded him, “Also keep an eye out for sasaeng fans, especially when my wife is coming and going.”
If one of his fans turned extreme and harassed Meng Xueyuan, that would be bad.
“Absolutely not. We’re monitoring from all angles,” the guard said. “But the two bodyguards you hired for Mr. Meng…”
The guard paused, seemingly hesitating over whether to rat out fellow professionals. But Meng Xueyuan looked aloof yet was actually soft-hearted—a good person. Mr. Lu even mailed fruit back from the Middle East and shared it with them. They couldn’t let things slide just because Mr. Meng was kind. He’d be the bad guy.
“The two bodyguards… what about them?” Lu Xiao asked calmly. “Speak freely.”
“You must have told them to stick close and protect Mr. Meng. They do go in and out with him, but I often see them looking down at their phones, not even lifting their heads. Sometimes Mr. Meng has to stop and wait for them. If a sasaeng suddenly rushed up, how could these pretty boys possibly stop them?”
The guard pointed to his own tall, burly, dark-skinned subordinate. “If you’re hiring bodyguards, you need ones like this—reliable. Good looks are useless.”
“I understand. Thank you for telling me,” Lu Xiao said.
After blurting it out, the guard felt a bit guilty. After all, the two handsome guys around Meng Xueyuan looked well-educated and refined—probably more learned than his subordinate. Trying to make amends, he added, “Actually, aside from playing on their phones, they’re pretty good. They look like college students, have more in common with Mr. Meng, can chat with him and keep him company. When you weren’t around, Mr. Meng didn’t look very happy.”
“Mm. Thank you,” Lu Xiao said.
Lu Xiao stepped on the accelerator. After driving a short distance, he pulled over, closed his eyes.
He took out his phone and called Meng Xueyuan. “While I was away, did you hire two bodyguards? Did something happen?”
Meng Xueyuan was collecting the cups the mahjong players had used. Hearing this, his hand loosened and a cup rolled across the tabletop. “They weren’t bodyguards. They were mahjong buddies I mentioned before—people from my hometown. They had problems at work and had nowhere to stay, so they lived here for a while. They found new jobs yesterday and moved out.”
Lu Xiao heard the noise but kept his expression unchanged. “I thought you’d hired bodyguards who walk around playing on their phones. Even the guard complained to me. I was thinking of replacing them for you.”
“No, no,” Meng Xueyuan said. “They didn’t want to freeload, so they drove for me and cooked as rent. They were on their phones because their work handovers weren’t finished and their bosses kept contacting them.”
Lu Xiao felt a bit calmer. “My wife is so good at running a household—helped me save two employment expenses at once.”
“I didn’t save any. The driver was on paid leave,” Meng Xueyuan said.
Lu Xiao laughed. “You’re much kinder than your fellow townsmen’s bosses. Go to sleep. I’m driving.”
After hanging up, Lu Xiao called the security guard again to ask when he last saw the bodyguards.
“Around six this morning,” the guard replied.
Lu Xiao: “……”
His wife really had no experience with this sort of thing—he hadn’t even thought to grease the palms of the gate security.
It went without saying that those two mahjong buddies were idiots too. The male owner came back in the middle of the night, and they snuck away early in the morning, yet they hadn’t even bribed the guard to keep quiet.
Lu Xiao scoffed inwardly. Too stupid. If he were being a kept man for Meng Xueyuan, he’d never use the front door and would avoid all surveillance.
He didn’t have the habit of checking security footage to upset himself.
It seemed he’d slightly overestimated his own tolerance.
How had Chu Hao managed to get over the trauma of being cheated on so quickly?
As Lu Xiao pondered this, his hand had already dialed Chu Hao’s number.
“Hey! You’re the one who called me!” Chu Hao shouted.
“Yes,” Lu Xiao replied.
Hearing his tone, Chu Hao sensed he wasn’t too busy and couldn’t help pouring out his grievances. “I was just thinking of finding a buddy to vent to! I only found out today that my ex-wife’s cheating had hidden reasons!”
Lu Xiao’s expression shifted. “What hidden reasons?” Getting caught in the act still had hidden reasons? Then wouldn’t his own pseudopregnancy have even more hidden reasons?!
Hearing the concern in his buddy’s voice, Chu Hao rattled on. “Turns out she never wanted to marry me in the first place. She had a poor-boy boyfriend! But she didn’t dare oppose her dad. After marrying me, she deliberately brought her lover home, just waiting for me to catch them so I’d be the one to ask for a divorce. Once she’d been married once, her dad wouldn’t force her into another alliance marriage.”
“If she didn’t want to marry, she should’ve said so! She wanted the ‘second marriage’ status—I didn’t! Do I look like a sucker? No—I don’t look like one, I am the sucker she picked. And I even helped her cover it up for appearances’ sake!”
“If I’d known earlier, I definitely wouldn’t have—”
“Wouldn’t have divorced?” Lu Xiao asked.
“Of course I would’ve divorced! I just can’t swallow this anger. I’m going to expose her cheating!”
Lu Xiao commented coolly, “You don’t love her, so you don’t care about her reputation.”
He loved Meng Xueyuan. He would never say a word.
“Feelings can grow over time. We hadn’t known each other that long—what feelings could there be? Besides, if you love someone deeply, does that mean you have to endure everything?” Chu Hao said.
Completely off-topic, Lu Xiao said, “Once it’s out in the open, it’s over.”
Luckily, he was a dignified cuckold-to-be, not someone who’d walked in on it like Chu Hao.
Chu Hao said, “Anyway, I’m furious! No, I’ve made an appointment with a TCM doctor. I need to drink some herbal medicine to regulate myself—being angry isn’t good for men.”
Huh?
Lu Xiao hurriedly said, “Where are you? I’ll take you there.”
Chu Hao was flattered. “You should go on a date with Meng Xueyuan. I can handle it myself. It’s just a green hat—no need to die over it.”
“Shut up,” Lu Xiao said gently. “How can I let you go to the doctor alone?”
He also needed some herbal medicine to regulate himself.
“I’m at the Huayue Mall entrance,” Chu Hao said, deeply moved. Wearing a green hat didn’t get Lu Xiao’s attention, but being schemed against crossed his buddy’s bottom line!
This brother was solid.
Lu Xiao drove Chu Hao to a venerable TCM clinic he’d carefully researched.
Chu Hao explained his symptoms. The old doctor took his pulse and prescribed a decoction to relieve depression. Lu Xiao, wearing sunglasses and a mask, stood by with arms crossed, aloof.
Chu Hao cradled the medicine like a treasure. “This time I’ll definitely get out of the shadow.”
“Mm. Take a taxi home yourself. I’m going back to see my dad—it’s not on the way,” Lu Xiao said.
Chu Hao: “……” He should be grateful, but why did it feel like being used and discarded?
Once Chu Hao left in a taxi, Lu Xiao immediately said to the old doctor, “Same symptoms. Make it strong.”
Old Doctor: “……”
As soon as Lu Xiao finished speaking, he suddenly came face-to-face with Chu Hao, who’d doubled back.
“Uh… sorry, bro, but I… left my phone.”
“Go get it.”
Chu Hao retrieved his phone with an expression like he’d uncovered a shocking secret. Wait—Lu Xiao… had the same symptoms as him?!
How could he possibly leave now? He shamelessly squeezed back into Lu Xiao’s car to wait for him.
Lu Xiao got in with a dark face, carrying an identical bag of medicine.
“Bro, you—” Chu Hao began.
“Let me be,” Lu Xiao said.
Chu Hao said awkwardly, “That can’t be right. Isn’t there some misunderstanding? Your relationship is so good.” Even he knew that two green hats carried different weights. He was just enraged—Lu Xiao’s heart was about to shatter.
Lu Xiao remained silent. He truly didn’t want to speak ill of Meng Xueyuan.
Chu Hao fiddled with the car console and played Pang Long’s Brother, Give Me a Hug.
“Brother, you’ve lost weight, you look worn out… Brother, you’ve changed, you’ve grown silent…”
Lu Xiao’s temples throbbed. “Turn it off.”
Seeing Lu Xiao still silent, Chu Hao—knowing bottling things up caused internal injury—replaced words with song and played Gao Jin’s My Good Brother.
“My good brother, tell me the bitterness in your heart. Life has its ups and downs, but you still have to live strong…”
Lu Xiao: “……”
