"What did you think, bro?"
"I thought you were underage. My mistake."
Xia Shule touched his face. "Wow, thanks for the compliment, bro. I think I still look like a high schooler too~"
"Hehe~" Yin Xian couldn't help letting out a doting chuckle. This kid really was likable.
Yan Zhiyi held the fruit tea, now cooled to room temperature, in front of Xia Shule without any intention of letting go.
Xia Shule kept his gaze straight ahead and drank it sip by sip from Yan Zhiyi's hand. Once he finished feeding him that cup, Yan Zhiyi started blowing on a second.
Yin Xian was dumbfounded. When he came in earlier, he had seen Yan Zhiyi blowing on the tea. Yan Zhiyi hadn't even spoken to him, and he'd assumed he was cooling it for himself. But apparently... it had been for that little guy?
Yin Xian turned to the side with wide eyes and found another pair of equally wide eyes. Their glass-marble eyes met, as though they were looking in a mirror.
The two promptly began whispering in unspoken agreement, chattering into each other's ears.
"This doesn't look like what Song Jing'an told us. Something's wrong here. Seriously wrong!" Lai Jiangtian shook his head in alarm like a rattle drum.
Yin Xian agreed wholeheartedly. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Once Song Jing'an gets here, he'll realize how serious this is. I thought he was going to drink it himself, but he was cooling it for someone else. And not just cooling it-he was feeding it straight into his mouth."
"Have you ever seen this side of Yan? Forget us-even those two who grew up with him from the time they were running around naked might never have seen it. This isn't serious. It's bizarre."
Lai Jiangtian was indignant. He'd only just said Yan Zhiyi would be the last to find a partner. What a jinx he was. "Yan's fallen in love and turned into a nanny. Which would you believe: dinosaurs coming back to life, or Yan finding true love?"
Yin Xian said, "I'd like to believe dinosaurs came back to life, but the scene right in front of me isn't giving me that option."
"Are you two together?"
Yan Zhiyi's cool, rich voice startled the two whisperers badly.
They were still wondering what he meant by "together" when they met each other's eyes at extremely close range. They were almost kissing.
Mainly, they'd been afraid Yan Zhiyi would overhear them, so the quieter they got, the closer they leaned, inching nearer and nearer.
Both reflexively shoved the other away, their faces full of disgust.
"Ahem..." Yin Xian cleared his throat with a perfectly straight face, then launched into his psychiatrist's interview. "Yan, when did you two meet?"
"At the old man's birthday banquet."
"Then... then... then... well... that..."
Yan Zhiyi brought the cup in his hand to Xia Shule's lips again. "If you don't know what to ask, you don't have to ask anything."
Yin Xian really couldn't think of anything to ask just then.
Xia Shule drank the fresh cup of tea. Yan Zhiyi set it down and poured another cup of water, but didn't blow on it. Instead, he rubbed Xia Shule's ear and said,
"No more. You won't have room for dinner."
Looking thoroughly satisfied, Xia Shule said, "Okay~"
That was only because Xia Shule had had enough. Otherwise, he would definitely have made a fuss about being cut off.
Lai Jiangtian patted Yin Xian and leaned over to talk again. This time, he'd learned his lesson and didn't face him directly, putting his mouth beside Yin Xian's ear instead.
"Then what do you think Yuzhi should do?"
Yin Xian pulled his ear away, unable to believe what he'd heard. "How did I never know you were such a bleeding heart?"
"What are you talking about? How does that make me a bleeding heart?"
Yin Xian hooked an arm around Lai Jiangtian's shoulders and said in all seriousness, "Even if we bend over backward to entertain the idea, Yan still doesn't like Yuzhi. Never has. First, Wen Yuzhi said himself that he didn't like him anymore. Whatever he came back for this time, he's already said those words. Second, there's clearly a world of difference between how Yan treated him ten years ago and how he treats this boy now. So there's no point worrying about Wen Yuzhi. He can't stir up any trouble."
"That's true. You're a psychiatrist. Was Yuzhi telling the truth back then?"
Yin Xian withdrew his arm. "I don't know. I can't read him. But I'm leaning toward no. I have my doubts."
Lai Jiangtian lowered his head in thought. Yin Xian assumed he was thinking about Wen Yuzhi, only for the guy to suddenly blurt out a moment later,
"When are those two getting here? I'm hungry. They're taking forever."
Yin Xian said, "..."
Meanwhile, the young couple was being lovey-dovey-at least in Lai Jiangtian's eyes.
"Are you hungry? Shall we stop waiting for them and have the food served?"
Xia Shule picked up his phone and found that the juicy gossip had dried up. He instantly wilted. "I'm not hungry. We can wait a little longer."
Before he'd even finished speaking, the door opened and two people walked in together. One handsome man was followed by another handsome man, and the second handsome man seemed to have quite a good build.
Wait?!
Xia Shule sat up straight, his large eyes fixed unblinkingly on Song Jing'an at the back. He felt as though he'd stumbled upon some enormous secret, blundering into the affairs of royalty.
This man looked so, so much like Song Dimu. Without looking closely, he was practically a rugged version of Song Dimu!
Their eyes and brows looked as though they'd been carved from the same mold.
The plot hadn't said anything about a mystery surrounding Song Dimu's origins. Then again, the plot had stopped being reliable ages ago.
By ordinary logic, the odds of this were slim. But this was a fictional world, and ordinary logic didn't apply.
Lu Mingwen, who entered first, rested a yearning gaze on Xia Shule. It had been so long since he'd seen him.
Xia Shule had his attention on the man behind him the whole time and didn't spare Lu Mingwen so much as a glance. Unable to hold back any longer, Xia Shule spoke to Song Jing'an first.
"You're... Jing'an, right?"
When Song Jing'an saw the beautiful boy, his first reaction was that Lai Jiangtian had been right. He really was good-looking.
"Hello." Song Jing'an stood ramrod straight and spoke in a stiff, cold tone. You really could tell at a glance that he was a police officer.
Xia Shule scratched his cheek. His smile made him look harmless, so he smiled as he asked, "Jing'an, do you have any siblings?"
Song Jing'an didn't understand why he was being asked this. Neither did anyone else present.
Yan Zhiyi blocked Xia Shule's view. "Why are you suddenly asking that?"
Xia Shule pushed Yan Zhiyi's face aside. "Hold on a second."
Yin Xian and Lai Jiangtian were once again wearing matching expressions of shock!
Song Jing'an answered, "I have a younger brother. He lives with our parents in another city."
In truth, Song Jing'an wasn't close to his younger brother. As a child, he'd been close to his parents, but after his brother was born, he'd come to Jingjiang.
Little Song Jing'an had been sent to his grandparents' home in Jingjiang.
His parents and younger brother had stayed in the Fog Sea, and they rarely saw one another. After he got into the police academy, he became even busier. Whenever the brothers met, they were like strangers.
A younger brother? Xia Shule frowned. Please don't let this be one of those real-heir, fake-heir plots.
"Then, there's no one else in your family? Or did you have another younger brother who went missing when you were little?" Xia Shule probed.
He didn't want to believe this was a real-heir, fake-heir situation, but he found it even harder to believe that Song Jing'an and Song Dimu weren't related.
No one present had ever seen Song Dimu, so naturally, they had no idea what Xia Shule was trying to ask. They were simply bewildered.