Chapter 47: A Soft Heart

Sheng Mingzhi is a little slower than usual at certain times.

The darkness had completely nullified his not-so-useful eyesight and instead magnified the touch on his lips.

The atmosphere steamed up in a flash, burning his whole face.

My mind went blank, and all that was left was the sound of my heart beating loudly.

Lu Jiayan's lips are warm, intertwined with the man's scent.

Sheng Mingzhi's eyes are wide and he is frozen against the wall.

He thought he was going to hit the back of his head, but as he leaned back, he was cushioned by Lu Jiayan's hand.

He is a little shorter than Lu Jiayan, so when kissing, he has to be passive, lifting his chin slightly.

There was a soft bite on his lower lip and Sheng Mingzhi felt something hot and wet lick across his lips, prying them open and wrapping around his teeth.

He gasped softly, his body almost stiffening into a stone, his eyelashes twitching so violently that, for a moment, he didn't even know how to swing his arms and legs.

Actually, it wasn't the first time I kissed Lu Jiayan.

Sheng Mingzhi remembers his first kiss disappearing in a blur, the night Lu Jiayan was drugged. The night of the drug.

Not that there are any comments.

He just, well, felt sorry for himself.

In the past, however, their kisses have tasted of business-like foreplay, as if kissing was just one step in the process of getting laid.

How lustful you are in bed, how cold you are when you get out of bed.

It seems that if there is no need for married life, there is no need for kissing.

Doing something so intimate in a public place like this now.

It's a first.

Watch the film, then kiss.

This is too much like a normal couple ......

As if noticing Sheng Mingzhi's distraction, Lu Jiayan nibbled on his lips.

Then pulled away a little and just remained close.

The voice was low and pleasant, a little muffled, "Kissing and walking away?"

Although I know Lu Jiayan's voice is good.

But talking this close, Sheng Mingzhi feels a little titillated.

He's probably an absolute double standard dog.

When he heard other men say the bubble tone, he would have been disgusted, but when it came to Lu Jiayan, Sheng Mingzhi thought it sounded pretty good.

.

Breaths once again intertwined and heat rolled over.

Sheng Mingzhi pursed his lips, any small movement he made in such close proximity would be felt by Lu Jiayan.

Lu Jiayan's kiss is as strong as his person, with a gentle touch.

After only a moment's separation, the lips of Sheng Mingzhi were again pressed against each other as if they had been seduced.

With an indulgence of which one is not even aware.

-

By the end of the day, Sheng Mingzhi had forgotten when he left the cinema.

It took a few moments of consciousness, blown by the cold wind outside, for him to remember what had happened in the dark.

Then the ears suddenly flushed.

Especially when I remembered my bold tryst, it was a shame to find my head all over the floor.

He was possessed by a ghost just now, wasn't he, to say such thunderous things!

Luckily the cinema was literally blacked out.

Sheng Mingzhi recalls with hindsight the daring behaviour of the two in the cinema, which would have been caught on security cameras and posted on the internet in minutes.

But not that it means that he tried quite successfully.

Lu Jiayan will kiss him, does that mean that their marriage is not so plastic either.

The previously forgotten idea had just popped up and was secretly analysed for a few seconds before being dismissed by Sheng Mingzhi again.

The fact that he would kiss him didn't seem to mean anything.

After all, they were married and in a legal relationship, and whatever Lu Jiayan did to him seemed fine.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn't notice a man following behind him for a long time.

It wasn't until he was in the car with Lu Jiayan that his eyes were jolted by the flash and Sheng Mingzhi subconsciously blocked the camera with his hand.

Only a second too late, the man ran away after taking the photo.

This shot has taken all the charming thoughts out of Sheng Mingzhi's mind.

Three years into his career, Sheng Mingzhi has been in the entertainment industry for three years, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know what a doggie is.

Those who are celebrities are born to live on camera and are more likely to perceive the camera's presence than ordinary people.

Lu Jiayan, seeing that he had covered his face, inclined his head and asked, "What's wrong."

Sheng Mingzhi muttered, "Someone's been filming."

Having said that, he realised what was going on.

A change of face.

"Did you just dodge the camera!"

Lu Jiayan's expression remains unchanged and he doesn't even seem to notice the camera.

Sheng Mingzhi's heart went cold at the sight of him.

Probably because Sheng Mingzhi's expression didn't look right, Lu Jiayan asked, "What will happen if you get caught on camera?"

Sheng Mingzhi: "It's not good. Following the basic operation of Inner Entertainment, Little Wang will next be blackmailed and threatened with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy off the photos she just took."

Hundreds of thousands of dollars is a matter of sprinkling water for Sheng Mingzhi.

He was also nervous because he was photographed with Lu Jiayan.

And I wonder if they were both standing close to each other just now.

Can any intimacy be seen in the photos.

Sheng Mingzhi doesn't care about his own blackmail, but if he and Lu Jiayan were to go public like that - it might affect each other.

Although the little flower peacock is naturally good at causing trouble for others, somehow he can't take it for granted when it's Lu Jiayan.

Probably, Lu Jiayan doesn't seem to like showbiz very much.

Who knows, Lu Jiayan didn't take the offense that Sheng Mingzhi had in mind when he heard it.

Instead, he said thoughtfully, "Will it be made public when it's caught on camera?"

Sheng Mingzhi paused for a moment to explain, "It's not necessarily going to be made public either."

Worried that Lu Jiayan still had doubts in his mind and didn't like being exposed to public cameras, he sought to make up for it: "Don't worry, even if Little Wang doesn't pay for the photo break, I'll pay for it myself."

After saying this, Sheng Mingzhi began to squirm inexplicably.

Although he knew Lu Jiayan didn't like to be open about his personal affairs, he found himself a little offended when he really got to the point.

Is it so humiliating to go public with him?

It was already 10.30pm when the film was finished.

It just so happens that Sheng Mingzhi is also a little tired, plus the thought that popped into his head just now has upset him, so he sulks and closes his eyes to rest.

He simply did not speak.

There was a moment of silence in the carriage.

After a long time, Sheng Mingzhi was already fast asleep.

Only then, in a daze, did I hear a certain man laughing.

"At ease?"

"Then how can I rest assured."

It was as if it was spoken to him.

Again, it's like saying it to yourself.

The voice is soft and close to talking to itself.

"It's not good to be open."

"It saves someone from always thinking about it."

-

In the blink of an eye, it was New Year's Eve.

The more the New Year is celebrated, the busier the entertainment industry becomes.

The end of the year brings a flurry of annual conferences and shows for the biggest luxury brands.

On top of that, there was one red carpet after another for various celebrity magazines.

Sheng Mingzhi, as an 18th-tier artist, was not invited, but as a VIC user of a luxury brand, the young master of the YunJing Sheng family, the brand was bombarded with invitations.

After the last time he and Lu Jiayan came out of the cinema, Sheng Mingzhi felt uncomfortable and didn't want to see each other for a while, so he packed his schedule with a lot of things.

Either on the plane or on the way to the plane.

With Shen Ling, the two of them eat, drink and fly around the world.

Friends update photos as often as they want.

A group of plastic rich kids in

Of course, Lu Jiayan has not been completely out of touch with him during this time.

Although Sheng Jia is busy at the end of the year, he still finds time to give Sheng Mingzhi a call.

But Sheng Mingzhi is always extremely perfunctory and hangs up without saying a word.

When I send him a message in WeChat, the other person just sends back an emoji to be cute.

You say he's distant, but he answers every single one.

You say he's not distant, but he manages not to come home once every fortnight.

Lu Jiayan would not have been able to detect the obvious to such an extent.

He just doesn't know how Sheng Mingzhi has suddenly fallen out of love with him.

Lu Jiayan looks at the chat with Sheng Mingzhi.

It finally stopped at the top of the emoji he sent to himself.

The perfunctory clarity.

It's clear that only the previous minute he posted a dynamic in his circle of friends.

The replies to Shen Ling are all twenty-five words long.

It was a long time before he shook his head, unconvinced by his attitude.

The door to the President's office was opened and Yao Shen pushed his way in.

"Mr. Lu."

He took the tablet and gave a report of his afternoon's journey.

Yao Shen looked at the situation before speaking cautiously, "Mr. Lu, the news from the sanatorium says that Mr. Lu is not in a good condition, do you think you should arrange a time to go there in the evening?"

When he finished, the air in the president's office froze for a few moments.

As Lu Jiayan's assistant, Yao Shen doesn't know his boss best, but he does know the basics.

He knows better than anyone how Lu Jiayan got to where he is now, including Sheng Jia's infighting over the past few years.

And, of course, more aware of how fragile the father-son bond is in this gentry.

He was prepared for Lu Jiayan not to go, but to his surprise, Lu Jiayan accepted the trip calmly and uncharacteristically.

In the evening, Yao Shen drove, without a word, to the YunJing private sanatorium.

About Lu Jiayan's father, Lu Xuekai, whose life Yao Shen has read about on Baidu's Wikipedia page, is a remarkable entrepreneur.

In the early years of the 1990s, he decided to leave politics and join the business world, relying on Lu family's wealthy family background to build up a glorious business fortune.

Lu Xuekai's life has been a turbulent one, and his relationship history has been quite eventful.

Apart from his married wife, Lu Jiayan's own mother, Su Man, there are several other women who can be named.

Lu Jiayan's elder brother, Lu Xiao, was one of the women who gave birth to the child.

Yao Shen glanced in the rear-view mirror at Lu Jiayan, who seemed to have little expression.

Having only followed Lu Jiayan for many years, he could instantly sense that the boss was in an unattractive mood.

To be precise, Lu Jiayan is silent every time he comes to the sanatorium.

An hour later, the Maybach was parked in the underground garage of the sanatorium.

Lu Jiayan walks along the familiar corridor, goes upstairs and pushes open the room.

Expectedly, Lu Xiao has been waiting in the ward for a long time.

Even though they had fought to the death a few years ago, Lu Xiao still gave Lu Jiayan a soft, false smile: "It's been a long time."

Lu Jiayan's immediate elders have urged him not to be too hard on Lu Xiao, as he is his own blood brother and will have to help himself in the future.

Helping out?

He pulled the corner of his mouth mockingly.

Lu Xiao is joined by a charming middle-aged woman.

Well-kept and looking in her early forties, she is Lu Xiao's mother.

She was originally sitting next to Lu Xuekai's bed and when she saw him coming, she also greeted him, her tone a little awkward: " Jiayan ."

Lu Jiayan looks at her with downcast eyes and little expression.

The woman, however, shuddered at the sight and looked away sheepishly.

Lu Xuekai is lying in a hospital bed, on a ventilator, looking very fragile.

Even when someone came, his eyelashes fluttered only slightly and he did not open his eyes.

Lu Xiao is accompanied by his mother, who looks like a family of three with Lu Xuekai.

The son of his married wife looked as out of place as an outsider.

Ironic as hell.

Lu Jiayan himself came over and the nursing home's medical staff almost gathered around him to report on the changes in Lu Xuekai's health over the year.

He listened with one eye and one ear, not even noticing when the doctor left.

There comes a time in the year when Lu Jiayan has to do his duty as a child and come and see Lu Xuekai.

Disgust yourself by the way.

Like it or not, Lu Xuekai was always his real father.

When he comes, he is always silent, with no expression on his face, looking at Lu Xuekai as if he were a stranger.

YunJing In the evening, the weather started to be bad.

It was clearly the middle of winter, but a muffled thunderclap rang out.

Lu Xiao leans over and whispers to comfort his tearful mother.

Somehow, Lu Jiayan suddenly thought of an old incident from more than twenty years ago.

The start of summer was also marked by a rainstorm that accompanied Su Man's birthday.

He took time off work to come back early from school in order to surprise his parents.

Lu Jiayan was six years old and just big enough to hide in his parents' bedroom wardrobe.

He waited with anticipation for Lu Xuekai and Su Man to return home, but to his surprise, he was waiting for Lu Xuekai and Lu Xiao's mother.

The sordid and underhanded world of adulthood was just spread out before his eyes without warning.

Lu Jiayan still remembers the nausea that rolled in his stomach from the inside out and turned into a desire to gag.

The father in his mind, always gentle and tall, was now falling apart.

The air in the wardrobe feels like something has been plundered, and Lu Jiayan gasps in disgust at the two men in front of him.

That is, until Su Man returns and the family has a terrific fight.

The memory of that day begins to fade from here.

He had a high fever and almost passed out in the wardrobe.

When they woke up, Lu Xuekai and Su Man were already preparing divorce papers.

But even before the divorce, Su Man's body was losing weight, as if he had been devastated by a major shock.

The depths of memory are black and white.

It is the resignation and hatred in Su Man's eyes that are too thick to melt, the last traces of his mother's love and resentment for him when she was still alive that remain in his hands.

That sick feeling rolled over him the moment he saw Lu Xiao and his mother.

Lu Jiayan stood there for ten minutes, as long as he could tolerate, before turning away without hesitation.

-

When the plane touched down at YunJing International Airport, Sheng Mingzhi was still not satisfied and hesitated for a moment before saying to Shen Ling, "Why don't I stay at your place tonight?"

Shen Ling had a meltdown: "Baby, is it the big villa at One XiShan that doesn't appeal to you anymore, why don't you go home and wander around? As much as I would love to welcome you to my home, if you don't go back, your dear husband Lu Jiayan will kill me!"

She drops her tears pompously, "I'm still young, I haven't had enough men, I don't want to die yet."

Sheng Mingzhi: "......"

When Shen Ling's words reached this point, Sheng Mingzhi was too embarrassed to go and stay there.

Of course, he did not dare to explain the matter directly to Shen Ling.

How?

Could it be that I've been hiding out for two weeks because I'm a bit embarrassed to face Lu Jiayan now because I accidentally kissed him?

Doesn't he want to save face.

Heh.

A stretched head is a stab in the back.

Sheng Mingzhi resigned himself to getting on the bus home, and with the mindset that as long as I wasn't embarrassed, Lu Jiayan would be the one embarrassed, he dawdled back to One XiShan.

And, tomorrow is New Year's Eve.

It didn't seem right for him not to go home again.

Sheng Mingzhi stood in the doorway, took a deep breath and quietly opened the door.

Then the fox sneakily poked his head in and looked left and right to take a look around.

No one seems to be at home?

He was inexplicably relieved.

It's just not completely reassuring.

In the air, there is just a faint hint of alcohol.

Sheng Mingzhi paused for a moment, feeling vaguely strange.

The living room was deserted and the smell of alcohol seemed to be coming from the first floor.

In an instant, he frowned.

He and Lu Jiayan were the only two living people at XiShan One, and he hadn't been drinking, so you can imagine who was drinking.

And, the smell is all strong, you can smell it in the living room.

How much has the dog man had to drink?

You don't have to drink that much even if it's a social occasion.

He remembered that he also had stomach problems.

Sheng Mingzhi searched room by room and finally found Lu Jiayan on the balcony of the garden on the first floor.

There was a bottle of Louis XIII on the table, already at the bottom.

Lu Jiayan sits lazily on a balcony sofa from a niche Italian brand that Sheng Mingzhi was introduced to when he went to play.

Then he threw it out onto the first floor garden balcony to eat the dust.

I didn't realise that it wasn't because the sofa wasn't nice.

The main thing is that it depends on what kind of person is lying on it.

Lu Jiayan just sat down and made the sofa feel like a live financial summit.

Expensive and compelling.

Perhaps the noise of his pushing on the door was so loud that Lu Jiayan noticed it as soon as Sheng Mingzhi arrived.

The man turned his head, and Sheng Mingzhi's footsteps gave a subtle pause, even when he was spotted, without any imagined embarrassment.

Sheng Mingzhi had originally intended to pre-empt him by taking the moral high ground and saying that he shouldn't drink.

Lu Jiayan waved at him as soon as his eyes fell on the man.

His posture is languid, as if he were an uneducated rich boy, but his air is detached and reserved.

Those peach blossom eyes, when drunk, presented a few moments of ecstasy, brimming with a smile.

" Mingzhi, come here."

Sheng Mingzhi: ......

Am I a puppy, waving and passing?

Despite what he thought, his body was honest and he dutifully walked over.

He sat down on Lu Jiayan's side and before he could react, Lu Jiayan reached around his waist and took him directly into her arms.

Sheng Mingzhi exclaimed, annoyed, "What are you mad about?"

The next moment, Lu Jiayan buries his head in his shoulder.

No words were spoken, an unexpected silence.

Sheng Mingzhi finally realised, with the benefit of hindsight, that Lu Jiayan was strange tonight.

The mood seems to be, well, not very good.

...... It's not like Sheng Jia went bankrupt.

Who knew that Lu Jiayan would hear this and stifle a laugh?

In his ears, it shook his chest to tingle.

It took Sheng Mingzhi a moment to react to the fact that he had gotten so caught up in his thoughts that he had given away his suspicions of his bankruptcy.

He was embarrassed for a second, but then justified.

Forget it, don't be a generalist with drunks.

His voice, however, subconsciously lightened considerably and he muttered, " Brother Jiayan, why are you drinking so much?"

The subtext is clear: don't you know you have a stomach problem? I will never give you a "widow" after I die.

Sheng Mingzhi caught Lu Jiayan making a mistake on the rare occasions he did, and was immediately energised, his little fox tail beaming with glee.

Lu Jiayan is usually the one who teaches him, and when he is able to do so for once, he immediately turns over a new leaf and has already concocted a whole list of mean words to teach him.

But before the words could be spoken, the next moment, all the words fell apart.

Lu Jiayan buried himself in his shoulder and sighed with restraint.

It's like all the pride in the world has been shattered, fragile to the point of trembling.

" Mingzhi, I'm so sorry."