Chapter 12: Transmigrated as a Cheapskate Phoenix Man (12)
Awkward. Beyond awkward.
The second those lines left his mouth, Cen Yu wanted nothing more than to curl his toes and dig a hole straight through the car floor. He felt that if he were either of the other two people in this car, he’d already be glued to his phone, broadcasting a live complaint session to his friends, cross-posting it to Weibo, Douban, and Little Red Book to bash his colleague for being an absolute bottom-tier loser.
And to make their posts go even more viral, Cen Yu decided to double down—
“Hmm? How come I hear a washing machine in the background?” he asked, intentionally looking for trouble.
“Did you skip washing them by hand? How many times do I have to tell you—clothes must be washed by hand!”
Yu Xinyu’s voice sounded somewhat aggrieved. “I didn’t, Hubby, you must have misheard.”
“I’m really hand-washing them for you, just listen.”
With that, the sound of clothes being scrubbed echoed through the speaker.
Cen Yu glanced at the two men in the front seats, but he couldn’t spot any visible reaction on their faces—as expected of mature working professionals, they sure knew how to play it cool.
Alright, that’s enough, time to end this farce. Cen Yu felt his acting today had truly pushed his own limits. Tossing out a final line—
“Fine, fine, I’m in my colleague’s car. Stop making excuses, I’m hanging up,” he promptly ended the call at lightning speed.
The moment he finished speaking, Lou Baichuan happened to drive the car right out of the underground garage. Sitting in the back, Cen Yu waited for the first person to speak up and pry.
Yet he never expected the two in the front to act as if they had suddenly suffered temporary deafness—no one pried, no one was curious, and no one looked down on him?!
…Good lord, working stiffs in big cities are so repressed. How can they not even care about a juicy piece of gossip like this?!
Cen Yu looked toward Lou Baichuan in the driver’s seat. The man’s hands rested on the steering wheel, and as his sleeve slipped back slightly, it revealed the wristwatch on his wrist—which would serve as an important plot device later on.
The way Cen Yu eventually discovered Lou Baichuan’s secret poaching of his partner was by finding this exact watch in his own home!
Seeing Lou Baichuan focusing intently on driving without showing any intention of voicing an opinion, Cen Yu couldn’t sit still… He shifted his gaze to Gao Lanyuan directly in front of him, his eyes filled with suspicion.
Isn’t this the senior you admired so much in college?
Can’t you even recognize the voice of the senior you idolized??
Perhaps because Cen Yu’s gaze from the back seat was far too intense, Gao Lanyuan in the front seat suddenly turned around—
“Brother Cen, want one?” He pulled out a strip of orange candy. “If you’re hungry, eat this to tide yourself over.”
“…” No, bro, you don’t have anything else you want to say?
That conversation just now was explosive, and you don’t have a single thought about it??
Cen Yu’s mind was racing, yet he had no way to say any of it out loud. He could only reach out and take the orange candy handed to him. “Thanks.”
“By the way, Brother Cen.” Gao Lanyuan turned his head to look at Cen Yu.
Half of his face happened to be hidden in the shadows cast by the light. He gave Cen Yu a small smile. “The person on the phone just now—was that your partner, Brother Cen?”
Heh, here it comes.
Cen Yu thought to himself, I knew this guy couldn’t hold it in forever. He glanced over toward Lou Baichuan on the other side, only to unexpectedly lock eyes with him in the rearview mirror. Although Lou Baichuan seemed to be casually glancing at the back seat, Cen Yu knew—
Stop acting tough, bro. You’re dying of curiosity, aren’t you!
“No.” Cen Yu let out a soft laugh. He unwrapped the candy paper, popped the candy into his mouth, and his tongue stud happened to clink against the hard orange candy. “Just my roommate.”
A classic scumbag statement. Cen Yu thought: after having a conversation like that, he could still claim the other person was just a roommate. If that wasn’t a total scumbag, what was?
He originally expected Gao Lanyuan to criticize him at least a little, but instead saw the guy nod—
“Well, that’s definitely crossing the line then.”
“Why ask so much if he’s just a roommate?” Gao Lanyuan’s blatant favoritism was practically leaning all the way into the ocean. “Are you renting a place with someone, Brother Cen? Coincidentally, I have an apartment near the company. It’s a bit tight on budget for me to rent it alone, so why don’t you move in and split it with me? The rent would be even cheaper.”
Cen Yu crunched down on the orange candy in his mouth. “No.”
“What a pity,” Gao Lanyuan said. “If you lived with me, Brother Cen, the two of us could go see my friend’s band perform live.”
“What live band performance?” Lou Baichuan, who had been silent all this time, suddenly asked.
Seemingly not expecting Lou Baichuan to chime in, Gao Lanyuan glanced at him. “Just a rock band my friend is in. Not famous, you wouldn’t know them.”
“Do both of you like rock music?” Lou Baichuan asked.
“I’m neutral,” Cen Yu said, resting his head against the window as he looked at the man driving. “Little Gao likes it.”
“Yeah, I like it.”
As soon as his words fell, Lou Baichuan didn’t follow up, and the atmosphere inside the car instantly cooled down—fortunately, the location for their team dinner was already right before their eyes.
After Lou Baichuan parked the car, he watched Gao Lanyuan chatting and laughing with Cen Yu.
Like a peacock showing off its feathers, he thought to himself.
He looked at Cen Yu. The man had a tall, slender build, and although he always carried a faint air of listlessness and detachment, his good looks made him genuinely captivating when he wasn’t speaking.
—Key word: when he wasn’t speaking.
Lou Baichuan let out a quiet sneer in his heart. He had heard every word of the conversation in the car crystal clear, and his opinion of the man’s character sank even lower.
He couldn’t fathom what Gao Lanyuan was thinking, taking a shine to a guy like this—even if he was indeed pretty.
He intentionally heavy-stepped his pace, and the two chatting nearby happened to notice his approach—
“Let me go up together,” Lou Baichuan said.
Cen Yu looked at Lou Baichuan on his left, then at Gao Lanyuan on his right, unable to fathom how he had ended up as the filling in a sandwich.
Still, whether he took a step back or walked out by himself felt a bit odd… Thinking up to this point, Cen Yu stopped dwelling on it and simply walked into the restaurant alongside these two door gods.
The department had neither too many nor too few people—around twenty or so.
They had reserved a large private room. They originally planned to eat something else, but the vote ultimately went to hotpot.
The moment Cen Yu stepped inside, he caught the rich aroma of hotpot. He wanted to find a seat far away from both Lou Baichuan and Gao Lanyuan, only to discover that there were only three empty seats left in the entire room.
After sitting down, he glanced at Gao Lanyuan on his left, then at Lou Baichuan who took the seat to his right.
He thought to himself: You guys even switch formations on me, huh?
“No way! You guys are late, so drink a few cups first!” A colleague made a fuss the moment the three sat down, though it was clearly in jest; they weren’t in a traditional industry, so they didn’t have much of a drinking culture.
Just as Lou Baichuan was about to say he was driving and couldn’t drink, he saw Cen Yu suddenly stand up, holding a glass—
“It was my fault for delaying everyone,” Cen Yu claimed with fake sincerity. A god-sent opportunity! Don’t nobody fight me for it!
“I’ll drink on their behalf.” With that, he grabbed the glass in front of him and downed three whole glasses of beer in rapid gulps.
Before his colleagues could even cheer and call him “badass,” Cen Yu collapsed face-first onto the table in the very next second—
“…?”
“???”
At that moment, everyone froze.
Gao Lanyuan couldn’t react either. He looked at Cen Yu, who lay slumped on the table with flushed cheeks, and voiced the doubt lingering in everyone’s hearts—
“…Is he already drunk?”
