I've liked him for a long time

Nan Zhou glanced at him, his gaze still the same as before, like someone looking down on a subordinate.

"You wrote it?"

The lead singer froze for a moment, then raised his voice. "This is our band's song! Who are you, an outsider, to mess with it?"

"I wrote it." Yue Yang, the bassist sitting on the sofa, stood up, walked over to Nan Zhou, and offered his hand. "Yue Yang. What should I call you, man?"

"Nan Zhou." Nan Zhou took his hand, and they bumped shoulders naturally.

"Looking forward to working with you." Yue Yang took down the tablet. "Can our band play the version you just played later?"

"Yue Yang!" The lead singer opened his mouth to say more, but the drummer and guitarist held him back.

"Besides the guitar part, I think the bass and keyboard..." Nan Zhou hummed the tune softly as he picked up a pen and made changes to the score.

Yue Yang ignored the lead singer completely and discussed it with Nan Zhou in earnest, picking up his bass to play along as they talked.

[Did that fake-ass Nan Zhou sleep with Pei Feng? What kind of producer's pet script is this?!]

[Some people need to stop being ridiculous. Do you know who's talking to Nan Zhou right now? Yue Yang!]

[I'm so done. Some of you fandom sewer rats are blaming the production team for your own ignorance. If you don't know Yue Yang, please look him up on Baidu before coming back, okay?]

[I'm dying laughing. With Yue Yang's standing in rock, would he need to play along with this act? That's genuine mutual respect, okay!]

[With skills like these, isn't Nan Zhou better than Lu Zhou? Why did he only sing back when he was in the group?]

[The trolls that fake bitch paid for need to stop obsessing over our Brother Zhou. Stand on your own!]

As a dozen or so seconds of rousing music played, the lights in the live house shifted rapidly before focusing on the stage again.

At center stage, the members of the Breaking Dawn Band stood beneath the spotlights with Nan Zhou.

Compared to the others' outfits, Nan Zhou's waiter uniform drew most of the attention.

He stood on the left side of the stage holding a guitar, his eyes lowered toward the floor, his thoughts unknown. Only after the lead singer finished his opening remarks, when Nan Zhou plucked the strings and the intro to "Breaking Dawn" rang out, did he raise his eyes to the crowd below.

His gaze was still indifferent, yet his eyes held a faint arrogance that looked down on all others.

The drumbeat dropped, the bass sounded, and the lead singer began to sing.

The atmosphere throughout the live house surged again. Many people sang along below the stage, and when the lead singer reached the climax, he even planted one foot on the speaker at the front of the stage.

In the latter half of the song, the lead singer, bass, keyboard, and drums all stopped. A beautiful guitar solo rang out, like a ray of light shining into the darkness, piercing through the crowd below the stage, like dawn breaking across the sky.

Huo Xingye watched Nan Zhou standing beneath the spotlight, the corners of his mouth lifting. His calm, ink-black eyes brimmed with pride, mingled with a heat that seemed like desire.

When the performance ended, quite a few people shouted for an encore.

After Nan Zhou left the stage, many people quickly crowded forward, trying to strike up a conversation and get to know him.

Fortunately, the production team and the bar had made arrangements beforehand and kept the crowd outside.

Past midnight, Huo Xingye and Nan Zhou finished their first day's work at the bar, changed back into their regular clothes, and came out through the back door.

When they pushed open the door, the cold midnight wind made even Nan Zhou suck in a breath.

He told Huo Xingye what had happened in the lounge as he pulled the electric scooter key from his pocket.

"The duck delivery guy added me on WeChat..."

"You added him on WeChat?"

Huo Xingye had just handed Nan Zhou the insulated bag containing the roast duck when his movements paused at those words.

"He came right to me, and I'm short on money. How could I resist? But if he doesn't pay up, I'll share his WeChat contact in eighty or a hundred gay group chats and spread rumors that he's a slutty bottom who'll put out for anyone who asks."

"..."

[HAHAHAHA I'm losing it hahahaha]

[The duck delivery guy! I'm dying! Greasy guy has officially lost his real name.]

[Wait, you're seriously treating him like a duck delivery guy? He's a senior executive at Shengle, okay!]

[A slutty bottom? You mean a slutty O, hahaha. Nan Zhou, you're a little genius.]

[Duck guy: ...So one of you messes with my body and the other messes with my heart? Is that how you two operate?!]

Before Nan Zhou could straddle the front seat, Huo Xingye gripped the scooter's handlebar with one hand and nudged him behind himself with the other. "I'll drive."

Nan Zhou was a little surprised, but he didn't object.

He never cared about little things.

Once he was settled on the back seat, he heard Huo Xingye ask, "Are you cold?"

Before Nan Zhou could answer, Huo Xingye added, "Hold on tight to me if you are."

The scooter drove off into the night. The cold wind lashed against them like bone-piercing blades of ice, and it felt considerably colder than it had on their way there.

Even sitting on the back seat, sheltered by Huo Xingye's tall frame in front of him, Nan Zhou could still feel the chill creeping in.

It was even colder than when he'd been driving.

"Block him once he gives you the money." Huo Xingye's low, pleasant voice came from up ahead.

"Absolutely." Nan Zhou wrapped his arms tightly around Huo Xingye's narrow waist and shouted as he gazed at the crescent moon hanging on the horizon, "What Duckhead and I have is a purely financial transaction."

A few seconds after he spoke, their laughter rang out in the quiet night.

[Brother Ye switched because he didn't want Nan Zhou taking the cold wind, right? Another pure-love warrior down.]

[Isn't this sweeter than the idol dramas airing right now? How can you not ship them?]

[They're so perfect together, sob sob sob.]

[I'm dying. Does duck guy know you're plotting against him behind his back like this?!!!]

[Duck guy: I told you, I'm not duck guy, and I'm definitely not Duckhead!!!]

When they reached the apartment, Huo Xingye told Nan Zhou to shower first while he went outside to take a call.

It was a private call, so it wasn't appropriate for the camera operator to film. Huo Xingye switched off his microphone.

As soon as the call connected, his close friend Xie Yan's teasing voice came through. "If I hadn't seen the trending topics, I'd never have known you were such a simp, Huo Xingye."

"Aren't you going to tell your buddy what's going on? Other people might not know, but how could I not? You really like him, don't you!"

Huo Xingye smiled. "Yeah."

"What's his deal? How come I heard he likes someone, and it's someone from his own group? Hey, you're not getting played, are you? When did you meet? Is he a Beta or an Omega? Are you really going to find your mom a Beta daughter-in-law?"

Faced with Xie Yan's barrage of questions, Huo Xingye gazed at the stars in the night sky, his deep eyes filled with an affection he never usually showed.

"I've liked him for a long time."

The other end of the call went quiet for a moment before Xie Yan's voice came again, sounding thoroughly surprised. "Don't tell me he's the one you mentioned before, the one who let..."

"It's him."

"Fuck! So it was him. No wonder you wanted to go on this dating show." Xie Yan changed his tune completely. "Hey, want your buddy to help with the trending topics? Looks to me like someone's paying to get negative topics about him trending."