Xiao Cheng stared blankly at Jiang Chiyan without moving.
The tips of his ears were red enough to drip blood.
"All right, all right, I'll stop teasing you." Jiang Chiyan pulled away the arms Xiao Cheng had wrapped around him and took a business card from his pocket. "Here's the address. Come to work with me tomorrow."
Xiao Cheng nodded and carefully tucked the card into his shirt pocket. "Do you have a lot of cases?"
"Three or four court hearings a week. The rest of the time, I'm busy gathering evidence, meeting clients, and things like that."
Jiang Chiyan took two cans of cold beer from the fridge, drank half of one to cool himself down, and tossed the other to Xiao Cheng.
Xiao Cheng held it without opening it. "I don't drink."
"Such a good boy?" Jiang Chiyan's lips curved. "How is our award-winning actor Xiao so adorable?"
And he kept surprising him every day.
Surprises like... handcuffs and blindfolds.
But Jiang Chiyan hadn't expected this.
On Xiao Cheng's very first day at his law firm, he gave him an even bigger "surprise."
That surprise consisted of a copy of a civil complaint, a notice to respond, and a court summons.
Someone had sued Xiao Cheng!!
After reading the complaint, Jiang Chiyan laughed in anger. "If Su Jing hadn't been interning at your studio and stumbled across this, were you just not going to tell me?"
Xiao Cheng pressed his thin lips together. "The studio has a legal team."
"Don't trust your husband's legal expertise?" Jiang Chiyan asked quietly, tapping his fingers against his knee. "Tell me what happened."
"Well... when I was twenty, I wrote a webnovel."
"It didn't earn much while I was serializing it. A little over ten thousand yuan a month in royalties."
"Last month, I sold the IP rights for over three million."
"I didn't expect anyone to sue me. She even made a Comparison Chart."
A Comparison Chart was a table used in webnovel circles to compare similarities between an allegedly plagiarized work and the original.
Xiao Cheng was honestly speechless.
Over three million yuan. Was that really worth all this?
Seriously, what the hell...
Jiang Chiyan searched Baidu for the novel Xiao Cheng had mentioned and asked casually, "What genre?"
"...Boys' love," Xiao Cheng answered.
His voice was barely above a whisper.
This was why he had kept it from Jiang Chiyan.
He had written a story about former lovers getting back together after a breakup.
The story of an eighteen-year-old Xiao Cheng and a nineteen-year-old Jiang Chiyan.
His own experiences. Entirely original.
Jiang Chiyan handed Xiao Cheng a letter authorizing legal representation, leaving no room for argument. "Sign it."
Xiao Cheng shook his head. "There's no need to go to all that trouble."
The cases Jiang Chiyan handled were major ones involving hundreds of millions.
He charged legal fees by the minute.
There was no need for him to handle a minor case worth a few million.
Jiang Chiyan chuckled. "If you won't let me represent you as your lawyer, does that mean... you want me to represent you as a close family member?"
Spouses counted as close family members, too.
Xiao Cheng hurriedly snatched up the pen and signed the authorization.
"Send your chat logs, the Comparison Chart, the Counter-Comparison Chart, and any other evidence you have to my email."
For the entire morning.
Jiang Chiyan sat in his office reviewing all the evidence.
He was a senior partner at Shengyan Law Firm, so few people disturbed him.
During the lunch break, someone tagged him in Shengyan's partners' work chat.
Li Qian: "I heard you took a tiny case worth a few million? @Jiang Chiyan"
Jiang Chiyan: "?"
Jiang Chiyan: "Who told you?"
Liu Suan H2SO4: "Stop hiding it. The security guard downstairs just accepted a huge package of boys' love novels. Several hundred copies. He said you bought them. I asked your assistant, and now I know everything."
Liu Suan H2SO4: "Why did you buy so many? Gathering evidence?"
Jiang Chiyan: "Oh, they're for you. One copy each. Take your time reading."
Jiang Chiyan: "This novel is the story of me and my ex-boyfriend. Let me tell you about it..."
And by the time the lunch break ended.
Jiang Chiyan had single-handedly racked up 999+ messages in the chat.
Fortunately, the partners were all very close.
There was no need to worry about anything being leaked.
While Jiang Chiyan happily showed off his love life, Xiao Cheng, who was napping on the sofa in his office, sneezed through the entire lunch break.
That afternoon.
Jiang Chiyan made two cups of coffee and called Xiao Cheng over. "We need to prepare a Counter-Comparison Chart as evidence. Any thoughts?"
A Comparison Chart compared an allegedly plagiarizing work with the work it supposedly copied. A Counter-Comparison Chart was a table rebutting that comparison.
In copyright disputes like this, both charts were crucial pieces of evidence.
Xiao Cheng took a sip of coffee. "I have three points."
"First, the protagonist's food restrictions. Her Comparison Chart mentions the allergy to tangyuan. Although she published that before I did, I'd already mentioned it on Weibo..."
Xiao Cheng paused, glanced at Jiang Chiyan, then quickly lowered his head. "My... my ex-boyfriend was allergic to tangyuan. In the dead of winter, his lips swelled up like pig intestines, and his nose was as red as a strawberry."
"My Weibo post was a month earlier than hers."
Jiang Chiyan: "..." How rude.
He pressed the throbbing vein at his temple and said coolly, "Go on."
"Second, the bottom in my novel likes a deep-purple rose called Louis XIV." For some reason, Xiao Cheng felt a little embarrassed. "Ever since I debuted at seventeen, my fan club's custom badges have featured Louis XIV roses."
"So even though she mentioned Louis XIV in her book before I did, I knew about the flower before she did, and I'd laid the groundwork earlier, too."
Jiang Chiyan chuckled softly.
Louis XIV roses were also the flowers he had given Xiao Cheng on the night they became a couple.
The entire ocean-view hotel suite.
The bathroom, the dining room, the space before the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Louis XIV roses had filled every corner.
Those luxury roses, costing tens of thousands of yuan apiece, had also given away how wealthy he was.
"What else?" Jiang Chiyan asked Xiao Cheng.
Xiao Cheng's face burned, and he stumbled over his words. "In my book, those..."
"Those what?" Jiang Chiyan narrowed his eyes.
"Those explicit scenes and descriptions. She first published hers four years ago, two months before I did. That's why she accused me of plagiarism, but..."
Xiao Cheng patted his burning cheeks, struggling to focus.
"But I actually first posted mine on Zhihu six years ago, on the first day we got together."
Xiao Cheng wanted to die of embarrassment.
He really wanted to die of embarrassment.
His ex-boyfriend now knew he had written so many of those scenes on their very first day together.
Jiang Chiyan's lips curled into a smile. "So, Mr. Xiao, on our very first day together, you already..."
"Wanted my body?"
Xiao Cheng: "..."
With a perfectly straight face, Jiang Chiyan even asked him for his Zhihu account.
He searched, copied, and pasted.
Then he printed out the explicit scenes Xiao Cheng had written.
As he read, he shared his impressions with him.
"Mr. Xiao, who told you that you just shove it straight in?"
"Mr. Xiao, let's try this position sometime."
"Mr. Xiao..."
"Shut up!!" Xiao Cheng snapped.