"How can you be so..."
Ungrateful.
Xie Qingchi tilted his head and lowered his gaze, but the word on the tip of his tongue simply refused to come out.
After a long while, he sighed silently.
"Forget it. Why am I arguing with you?"
He comforted himself with a measure of resignation, then turned and vented his frustration on the production crew, who were still droning on.
"All this talk for a harmless little game. Cut the crap and get started."
He lifted his eyelids impatiently, trying his hardest to make his posture look natural. As he turned, Xie Qingchi grabbed Shen Shuangjian's wrist.
Caught off guard by his sudden movement, Shen Shuangjian gave an involuntary little cry. His long hair only briefly swept into an arc before he stumbled into Xie Qingchi's arms.
Xie Qingchi could not suppress the upward curl of his lips. He dipped his head, keeping both his expression and his posture impatient, as though he really were urging them to get this boring game started.
To that end, Xie Qingchi even opened his hand of his own accord, closing it around Shen Shuangjian's arm with just enough pressure to steady him before leading him onward.
"Xie Qingchi?"
Shen Shuangjian seemed deeply resistant to his overstepping. He pressed his lips together and looked up, wanting to push him away but forced to prioritize keeping his footing, caught in a dilemma.
"What do you want with this young master?"
Xie Qingchi had no idea that his usual routine did not work at all.
No matter how nonchalant he pretended to be, how naturally he carried himself, or even how he sent friendly signals that only made his intentions more obvious.
With Shen Shuangjian, it would only backfire.
"Please let go of me."
Shen Shuangjian's fine brows drew tightly together, displeasure already plain on his face. Yet the camera was filming their backs and could not capture this true side of things.
"I'm holding on to you so you can keep up."
Xie Qingchi readily took the resistance on Shen Shuangjian's face for dissatisfaction. His explanation sounded rather harsh, but he did loosen his hold.
Shen Shuangjian, however, had not expected him to let go so suddenly.
He had already been struggling against Xie Qingchi's grip, and when Xie Qingchi abruptly released him, the momentum instead sent Shen Shuangjian tipping to one side.
"Stop squirming. Careful you don't fall."
Xie Qingchi reacted swiftly. The instant Shen Shuangjian swayed, he reached out a long arm and hauled him back, regardless of whether he could steady himself.
This time, his hand landed in just the right place to wrap around Shen Shuangjian's waist. Xie Qingchi's brows shifted slightly, and he unconsciously tightened his arm.
Shen Shuangjian's waist really was slender. If he turned his hand sideways, Xie Qingchi could not help thinking, rather exaggeratedly, perhaps that single hand could cover this stretch of narrow waist.
"Don't-"
Pressed into it, Shen Shuangjian could not help voicing a word of refusal, but perhaps he knew he could not break free of Xie Qingchi, or perhaps nearly falling just now had taught him to behave.
In any case, this time Shen Shuangjian did not struggle very noticeably. He merely leaned back to evade him, leaving as much space between them as he could.
Shen Shuangjian turned his head slightly, lowering his eyes to avoid Xie Qingchi's burning gaze. Even his pale lips were pressed together, yet he remained reservedly silent.
The breached boundaries and the overly close distance all seemed far too absurd because the person involved was Shen Shuangjian.
Even someone as proud by nature as Xie Qingchi could not help secretly feeling an inexplicable sense of restraint, even inferiority, when faced with someone like Shen Shuangjian.
Shen Shuangjian's innate air of distance came, first, from his peerless beauty, unmatched in the world, and second, from his temperament.
To put it in the simplest terms:
In the life of a great beauty, perhaps true pursuers never existed at all,
because everyone would naturally keep their distance, watch, secretly delight and fantasize. Everyone feared approaching; everyone feared being found annoying.
And so everyone could not help wondering, If people better than me don't dare, what makes me think I can? What gives me the right?
Thus, the person who possessed this beauty lost the ability to discern beauty.
In the end, Xie Qingchi obediently let go, making sure Shen Shuangjian could stand steadily where he was.
"What do you mean, 'don't'? I was just worried you'd fall."
Xie Qingchi's eyes drifted a little sluggishly toward the side where Shen Shuangjian was not standing. He raised a hand to rub his ear, and wherever his fingertips passed, the rim of his ear was red.
He thought his demeanor was perfectly normal and casual, and that he had handled even the so-called details with complete openness.
In fact, the livestream chat had already exploded the moment he took Shen Shuangjian's wrist.
[?]
[???]
[Let go! Let go right now!!!]
[Who said you could touch my wife! Get lost!!!]
[Huh? Just casually holding hands like that?]
[Wait, he just casually put his hand on him like that?]
[And just casually wrapped an arm around his waist too?]
[Pretty normal, right? With someone as fresh and lovely as Shen Shuangjian standing in front of you, doing nothing would be less realistic, wouldn't it?]
[When your fave hooks up with his rival...]
[Quitting the show, going off on Weibo-Your Majesty, this consort has said "innocent" hundreds of times already.]
[He quit the show, then inexplicably crawled back, deleted his Weibo posts, snapped at netizens, and now he's grabbing and hugging him. Tell me, where's the innocence?]
[Hahahahaha, another famous Xie Qingchi quote.]
[Xie Qingchi: Mind your own business. I fucking love being a simp. What's it to you?]
[You people, seriously. This humble girl is laughing beyond her abilities.]
[Am I the only one who thought that little sound wifey made was so sensual and lewd?]
[His little waist is so slim. When Xie Qingchi tightened his hold, I actually saw wifey tremble. Please, can one of you understand me?]
[I get it, I get it. Usually he's a cool, distant, dignified, conservative wife. He doesn't bully the weak, but he fears the strong. The moment someone makes an aggressive move, he refuses with resistance all over his face, but his fiercest resistance is really just turning his head away so he won't look at them, then giving a completely useless little "don't."]
[Fuck, I'm fucking wet.]
[If you can write this stuff, write more.]
[Wifey, I'm your long-lost puppy. I'm your Big Yellow, wifey.]
[I'm so fucking scared that bastard Xie Qingchi will do something to my wife.]
[...This is ridiculous.]
[Wasn't Shen Shuangjian the one with improper designs on Xie Qingchi at the start...?]
[Exactly. It was such a huge scandal back then. Have you forgotten so quickly?]
[It's Xie Qingchi's good fortune that my wife fancies him. Who is he to look down on Shen Shuangjian? Talk about turning the world upside down.]
[Would you want that good fortune if someone gave it to you?]
[I would.]
[...]
[Are you people insane?]