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HOYSE CHAPTER 75
Chapter 75 — This Time, I Got It Right
On the sofa.
Two men sat, one on the left and one on the right, the atmosphere serious.
Rong Jing held a so-called sugar-baby contract and read it word for word.
He was out of his depth with this sort of thing, so he figured his assistant Zhou You would be more worldly and handed him the important task.
The contract first defined Party A and Party B. Party A was Rong Jing, Party B was Gu Xi. The contents, on the surface, covered a lot.
Clause one required Party A to provide Party B with one or more properties, with stipulations on size, transit, and renovations. Clause two laid out a monthly stipend and other expenses. Those two were still within the bounds of “normal.” Starting with clause three, though, it went off the rails.
What on earth was this? Did any omega actually tolerate such domineering, nitpicky rules?
If I bring this to Gu Xi, do you think I will not get my face rearranged?
Clause three was about romance and began with a barrage of “must not.”
During the contract term there would be no dating, no accepting flirtation from the opposite sex, no gifts from the opposite sex, no physical contact with the opposite sex, no handshakes, no kissing or other intimate behavior. If any of the above occurred, it must be reported, and Party A would decide whether to forgive or not.
He must not chat casually with the opposite sex, and if the conversation exceeds“(handwritten)” in Chinese.
The author is indicating that
there's a blank space in the contract
(the underscore __) where someone was supposed to
fill in a number by hand, but it was left blank. __(handwritten)
If violated, Party A will sue and demand compensation. The subsequent clauses continued in this detailed, nit-picking vein. There were indeed a few items tilted toward Party B, such as a certain freedom with his own money during the term, but think for two seconds and it was obvious the entire thing was crafted for Party A’s benefit. Party B had no freedom. It was the classic alpha full-spectrum, no-blind-spot possessiveness in legalese.
And after piles of “must not,” it ended with one line: Party B may raise objections to the above, but final interpretation belongs to Party A. In other words, you can be dissatisfied, but it does not matter. Once you sign, you obey.
No. If I keep reading my fists are going to clench.
Rong Jing looked at the properly upright Zhou You.
Zhou You had never drafted one either and was feeling his way forward. Seeing Rong Jing’s brows twist into a rope, he got nervous.
These were “references” from other alphas’ contracts. Come on, you are a boss worth hundreds of millions. If you want to keep someone, it has to look grand.
Rong Jing said, “Where did you even get this?”
Zhou You said, “Online, plus my personal insight.”
You are a beta. What insight. Did you rummage random alpha control-freak posts off the internet?
“You think these terms are reasonable?” As a non-local, he genuinely could not understand.
Zhou You thought a while, then nodded. “You are right. If it is Gu Xi, it is still too few. We should add more. Like he cannot look at other alphas…” Their little young master had actually won Gu Xi. You needed more clauses to show status.
“…” Rong Jing choked. “What about Gu Xi?”
“Gu Xi is Gu Xi!” Zhou You was earnest. A single look from him could turn alphas weak in the knees. Of course he had to be quarantined from everyone else, otherwise what if he ran. Are you not worried?
This was the first time Rong Jing and Zhou You’s communication completely broke down. He decided to take over. He rewrote and polished the contract himself, slashing clause three to virtually nothing, then taking a scalpel to the rest until the document was unrecognizable. Other than leaving clause one alone, almost nothing resembled the original.
Especially the dating clause. The image of Gu Xi at the matching center rejecting every candidate was still vivid. Add in all the forced plotlines from the novel, and his heart ached even more.
Maybe this feeling was that special protectiveness readers have for a protagonist.
After an all-nighter, Rong Jing finally finished his overhaul. The new contract slid out of the printer, warm to the touch.
He flicked the edge of the stack and nodded, satisfied. Next step was finding the right time to show it to Gu Xi.
With this contract, at least he would have a proper excuse to care openly.
Gu Xi went back to Shengteng Entertainment to process his resignation.
Once back, he immediately noticed how the perpetually lifeless company had come alive.
Many familiar faces were gone. Plenty of new hires had come in. Some offices were being renovated. Gu Xi knew there was a new owner now. Even he, someone leaving in a few days, had been assigned a new agent, a woman famed in the industry for her results.
But he no longer cared. With his current standing, even without a company he could land work.
He ran into a junior he knew. The kid’s passion had always been singing, but because of the company’s positioning he had spent years churning through web dramas without making a splash. A few years back his agent forced him to “accompany” an investor. The blow to body and spirit had nearly driven him to suicide. Luckily Gu Xi had found him in time and pulled him back.
Gu Xi could always sense despair quickly. The kid had survived, but most of his spark had gone out.
Today he looked like a new person. Still the same face, completely different energy.
He greeted Gu Xi respectfully and gushed about how things were now. The new boss had not only sent Xu Shengteng and several law-breaking agents straight to detention, he had also hired a professional legal team for closed-door proceedings to fully protect the young artists’ reputations and safety.
Because many people stood up to testify, the evidence was solid. Coupled with the public pressure from the video Gu Xi posted, if things went smoothly, those people were looking at no less than five years.
It was deeply satisfying. The whole company had been jubilant for days.
Some artists who had planned to jump ship decided to stay because the new owner’s opening moves were so clean and decisive. Others chose to renew. For a group that had been under the boot for so long, that was a major and difficult decision.
Online, support for the closed sessions was overwhelming. The case had become a symbol of cleaning up the entertainment industry.
Recently Gu Xi only had bandwidth for the crew and for Rong Jing. He had heard these updates piecemeal from Mo. He skimmed the other artists’ Weibo posts. They were full of discreet thanks to the new boss. Fan clubs were almost unanimously praising his big moves, not to mention the rainbow-colored compliments the stars were laying on him in person.
What the new owner gave was not only a contract. If he put himself in their place, it was hope.
“Brother Gu, why not stay too? Shengteng really has changed. With your status, if you want to remain, the package would be very generous,” the junior said, still looking up to him, still hoping to see Gu Xi under the same roof.
Gu Xi smiled, said a few encouraging words, and did not mention the contract.
Faces were alight with happiness, and still, Gu Xi felt separated from them.
Not because of any complaint about the new boss, but because of himself.
He had signed here in his teens. Ten full years of dreaming every day of escape.
This company held his darkest, dirtiest, most degrading past. The shadows never lifted. He had already received a new contract. He had not even looked at it and had tossed the whole thing in the trash.
Whatever the reason, he would never come back. There was no point in reading it.
A new staffer handled him. The process took less than half an hour.
Not until he walked out the front doors did he feel like he was reborn, stepping toward the sun one step at a time.
That bright mood did not last long. A small but real problem came up.
Ever since the last hospital visit, he had remembered the doctor’s name. After eating Rong Jing clean that day, he had realized it had been exactly his heat window. Once he sobered up, the stakes felt a little serious.
This time he flatly refused to let Rong Jing tag along. He was not taking medicine. Absolutely not.
He checked the doctor’s schedule, disguised himself, and registered for a daytime consult.
“You are telling me that one week after last time, your third heat came again?” The doctor stared at him, stunned.
Gu Xi sank lower under the gaze. A typical omega goes into heat about once every six months.
And here he was, like a heat machine on a timer.
They ran more detailed tests on his pheromones. After reading the results, the doctor said, “The inflammation has cleared, but your pheromone activity is far above normal. That means your next heat will likely come within a week.”
“So four times in a month?” Am I even human anymore?
“As I said last time, you can find a highly matched alpha for temporary marking. Physical intimacy can substitute to a degree. If you do not vent, the symptoms will worsen and the consequences are unpredictable. To resolve it completely there is only one method, a lifelong mark.”
The doctor’s words echoed in his ears. Then he thought of Rong Jing, that proud, untouchable look of his. Forget lifelong marking, which was a distant horizon. A few days ago he had sworn he would never touch him again.
He also thought of the legend the doctor had ended with. In ancient times, the very top tier of omegas, once they fell for someone, went into heat once a week. If the alpha who first marked them did not soothe them for a long time, they would thirst themselves to death.
Thirst to death.
Was that what he thought it meant?
Gu Xi’s vision went black.
He swayed like a reed in the wind.
When Gu Xi declined to renew, Rong Jing heard at once.
He glanced at the message and sent a simple got it. As expected. If he were Gu Xi, he would do the same.
Then a WeChat arrived from Wu Hanqi. He might be staying in Shangjing for some time: Kid, when I am there, do you have time for a meal?
Rong Jing: Uncle Qi, what brings you to Shangjing?
Wu Hanqi: [cat-petting.jpg] Miss you.
Rong Jing’s lively tone faltered. He could not tell if that was a joke or just something to say.
He suddenly remembered that in the novel, Wu Hanqi had lovers of every gender, alphas included.
No way. No way.
Rong Jing was at a meeting at Fun Video HQ, planning the app’s launch. It was important. He had taken a half day off from the set.
People spoke in turns. He went from focused to flagging.
Maybe it was the lost sleep from rewriting the contract.
He felt a sudden dizziness. The edges of the room rippled and warped, as if a filter had gone over the world.
He stood, ready to speak, and his body froze as if shackled by a spell.
His soul felt clamped, breath caught in his throat. Time stopped on his skin. Each breath was hard and painful, with no end in sight.
“Ah!”
Something had bound him in a bottomless abyss, then let him go.
He opened his eyes again to find himself in a familiar suite.
He stared, shaken. A second ago he had been in a meeting. Now he was here?
He grabbed his phone. It was the same day.
But one in the afternoon had jumped to seven in the evening. Six hours of nothing.
No, not nothing. It was like he had been trapped somewhere time did not move.
For six hours, something else had been in control of his body.
That thing behaved like him and talked like him. No one noticed anything wrong.
His memory contained what “he” had done. He had left the conference room and gone straight back to the hotel.
Everything neat, everything natural, as if it had been him. It even helped him act his scenes. That evening Gu Xi texted to say the episode of Celebrity for a Day they had filmed was airing and asked if he wanted to watch together. So “he” had gone to Gu Xi’s room. When Gu Xi opened the door, he had stared at “him” for a while before saying he would change and asking him to wait.
Gu Xi shut the door and did not come back out.
He had planned to put his own plan into motion tonight, to slowly tease Rong Jing in. But the moment the door opened, his joy thinned. An eerie aura hit him. The words he had meant to say died in his mouth.
Inside, Gu Xi paced back and forth.
His face went from solemn to a silent scream to scratching his head.
Who is outside?
It seemed like Rong Jing and also not.
Ahhhhh.
He clutched his head and crouched.
How could your first instinct upon seeing someone be that they were not that person.
Same body, same attitude, same voice.
He could not put it into words.
Gu Xi, your thoughts are bizarre.
From opening the door to inviting “Rong Jing” in had only been a handful of seconds.
Now he hid in the bedroom and rebuilt Rong Jing from memory. He did not even realize it, but he had already carved everything about the man named Rong Jing into his heart.
He ran the comparison: eyes a little duller than usual, eye movements lagging about 0.1 seconds when they tracked, something you would never notice without looking for it. Rong Jing’s brows, when he spoke to Gu Xi, would sometimes lift a fraction. Just now they had lain flat. He had a subtle micro-expression that always let Gu Xi peek at a sliver of what he really felt. And his mouth. When it was not a professional smile, Rong Jing’s lips rested straight. Just now, they had kept an odd smile…
No. Go look again.
Maybe those seconds were a trick of the mind. What kind of nonsense was this anyway.
Gu Xi gripped the handle, took a breath, and flung the door open.
Rong Jing was still in the living room, in the same posture. Seeing Gu Xi’s chilly face, he looked slightly startled.
At that instant of seeing Gu Xi, the feeling that the world had forgotten him, that he did not exist, receded. Rong Jing’s frozen body warmed by a notch.
“Gu Xi.”
Gu Xi kept his face blank and did not reply.
Do not talk, you stand-in.
He put on glasses. He was a little near-sighted, maybe two hundred degrees. He usually wore contacts. Today he deliberately wore frames, using them like a magnifying glass to examine the man in front of him.
Voice and cadence, fine.
The way his gaze moved, that gentle look whenever it fell on Gu Xi, fine.
That air of not loving anyone, not putting anyone in his eyes.
The curve of the lip.
The angle of the brows.
All fine.
Yes. This one was real.
The panicky feeling finally settled.
Gu Xi walked over and pinched Rong Jing’s cheeks hard. The feel was very good, very real.
You almost scared me to death.
Rong Jing, baffled, said, “You…”
That reaction was very him too, that push-you-away while not wanting to hurt you face.
Every bit of it was the emotions the real Rong Jing would have.
Gu Xi’s mouth tilted. He rose onto his toes.
Rong Jing had just opened his mouth when a feather-light kiss landed on his jaw.
And in a soft whisper, “This time, I got it right.”
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