Chapter 14
The next morning, a bus at 7 o'clock left the station, and two people walked into the office one after another.
Pei Huai stood at the front, wearing a shirt as an inner layer and a low-key hooded sweatshirt as an outer layer. He had a blank expression on his face when he arrived, and it was obvious at a glance that he was very upset.
The young man at the back, still stretching and yawning, was less relaxed. Xiang Mingqi was clearly not used to waking up early, blinking several times without opening his eyes.
There was immediate confusion at their side-by-side arrival.
"It's really rare that you two would come to work together?" Zhu Zhiyang took a cappuccino, glanced at them, and his hand froze. "Have you two gotten along better?"
Xiang Mingqi hadn't even finished stretching when he opened his mouth and immediately answered, "Of course. After a whole night of sweaty battles, my brother and I have become very close."
"……No."
Looking at the two people who each had their own opinions, Zhu Zhiyang curled up two fingers and turned the paper cup thoughtfully, as if thinking about something.
He looked at Xiang Mingqi's sincere eyes that were squeezed open desperately, and then looked at Pei Huai's brows that were tightly furrowed with endurance, and was quite interested in this dispute.
"Last night?" He said in a deep voice, deliberately probing the core of the question.
"Yeah, last night." Xiang Mingqi raised his chin and twisted his shoulders slightly, fifteen degrees to the left and right. He couldn't tell if he was showing off or genuinely trying to gain sympathy. "He was really rough with me yesterday. Not only did he clamp my head between his legs and feed me grapes, he also stuffed all sorts of weird things in my mouth—and he even stepped on me and made me kneel before him and act like a puppy. I woke up this morning and my knees were bruised."
Fortunately, they were the only three people in the room when this was said.
The amount of information was too much to digest. Zhu Zhiyang was stunned, forgetting he had a cup of coffee waiting to be tasted, and turned his gaze to the other party.
At that moment, he just wanted to hear Pei Huai deny this absurd description. The latter raised an eyebrow and asked him, "Do you believe it?"
"I don't believe you. Of course I only believe what you say." Zhu Zhiyang greeted him with a tactful smile and raised his glass. "So, you did play some extreme games last night. But they were different from what the newcomer described?"
Xiang Mingqi became particularly excited when he said this. He stepped forward, eagerly opening his arms and gesturing, "That's right, the game we played last night wasn't just extreme, it was also extremely taboo. Do you want to hear it?"
"——Xiang Mingqi." A loud shout.
"Here!" He stomped his feet violently as if he had the aftereffects of military training, with his hands pressed against his trouser seams, standing in a standard posture.
Pei Huai raised his hand, not even bothering to look at him.
"Get out."
"Okay, if you need anything else, feel free to call me, Brother Pei Huai." He winked a few times, blew a kiss to his senior, and rushed out the door. "I'm going to play Candy Crush outside, so don't leave me out for too long."
The room immediately fell silent. Zhu Zhiyang seemed helpless at the newcomer's tantrums, shaking his head with a chuckle. "It seems he really wants to establish a good relationship with you. But his methods are a bit childish. You probably won't like them."
"Um."
"There you go again, interjection. Sounds like he's giving you a lot of trouble." He tried to pass the coffee over, leaning over and smiling. "I've never seen you want to distance yourself from someone so much. Clearly, our new guy has a lot of energy."
Pei Huai raised his hand to block it, then turned sideways and returned to his workstation.
New commissions didn't arrive until the afternoon. By then, Pei Huai had been writing a report for nearly three hours, his eyes swollen and sore. Fortunately, he had no commissions assigned to him today.
After finishing the report, he stretched his stiff upper limbs, pulled out his chair and tried to get up to make coffee. At that moment, someone pressed his shoulders from behind.
"Brother, what are you going to do?" There was another embrace, and the smell of strawberry cake. Pei Huai found the hand on his shoulder and slapped it away.
"Oh, you hit me!" Xiang Mingqi jumped back, covering his palm and yelling behind him. Seeing that no one paid attention to him, he smiled and followed, "Why don't you lie down for a while and I'll give you a massage."
"No." Pei Huai opened a bag of black coffee powder, added water, and stirred it with a spoon.
"Why not?" He shifted to the left, then slid to the right on the chair's wheels, trying to get his senior's attention. "You've been staring at the computer and typing for ages. You deserve a free massage at a time like this. Don't worry, I learned this from a dating video. It's totally professional."
Pei Huai glanced at him: "You have nothing to do?"
"No," he said, and then he made himself a cup of coffee with two packets of creamer and two packets of sugar. "Because I'm the new guy, no one gives me work or talks to me. In this company, you're the only one who's close to me."
Pei Huai didn't believe his nonsense and tasted the coffee: "Don't bother me."
After the words fell, Xiang Mingqi could only make a zipper-sewing gesture. Although he didn't say it, his actions were still particularly criminal. This kid followed Pei Huai all the way to his workstation, squatted beside him, looked up at him, and then bravely grabbed the armrest of the swivel chair and tried to sneak a peek at his work log.
Pei Huai pried open his fingers one by one, slid the scroll wheel upwards, and went through the report from beginning to end.
After a few minutes of typing away on the keyboard and mouse, Xiang Mingqi's calves finally gave way and began to tremble. "My legs are so sore. Can I sit down?"
The former ignored him. He did not think that this matter should be approved by him.
—And so, the accident happened. Xiang Mingqi, acquiescing, leaned in, lifting his legs to squeeze onto the chair. What was he going to do? Pei Huai's fingers froze. Before he could even think of the answer to his question, the younger generation, using their physical advantage, squeezed the space that belonged to Pei Huai precariously on the chair.
"You..." He never thought that this person's thinking process would be like this.
Xiang Mingqi thrust his chin forward, put his hand around his senior's waist, and pressed it into the front of the seat cushion - the position just brushed the inside of Pei Huai's thigh, not only separating them, but also tricking him into squeezing his hips.
"Brother, you're such a nice guy." He wiped the sweat from his forehead gratefully. "When I was in school, I hated squats the most. I just couldn't train those leg muscles. Every time I took a test, I just flew over..."
"stand up."
"Huh?"
"Get up." This wasn't an order, more like a threat. Xiang Mingqi's scalp went numb when he felt something hard poking his side. Before he could even open his mouth, the sound of his senior's teeth creaking frightened him, and his hands trembled. In a panic, he simply jumped off his chair and ran away.
"Wa ...
Pei Huai didn't want to play chase with him. He turned his chair around, put the cap back on his pen, and continued working on his unfinished task. It was almost lunchtime when he finished checking the last typo. He left his workstation punctually, and as he pushed the door open, he bumped into Xiang Mingqi, who had been waiting for him.
His chest was very solid, his muscles taut as a long bow, and the strong sense of outline was somewhat inconsistent with his appearance.
"Ah, be careful!" The younger generation hurriedly hugged his shoulders to prevent him from falling. Pei Huai nodded in thanks, pushed his arm away, and walked around him, heading towards the elevator.
Xiang Mingqi hummed a little tune without much tact and hurried over: "Handsome Brother Pei Huai, what are we having for lunch today?"
Pei Huai didn't want to talk to him.
"You ignored me again, uh." He took out his cell phone, grabbed the corner of his senior's clothes from behind and muttered softly, "Then walk slower, I want to see if there are any new restaurants nearby. Besides the curry last time... By the way, do you like Italian food?"
"dislike."
"How about Vietnamese food? Or Thai? You have to have a preference, right?"
“I don’t like any of them.”
"Really? I don't believe it. You must not even have listened to my question."
"Yes." Pei Huai didn't even look at him, and his pace didn't slow down or speed up.
No matter how much Xiang Mingqi wanted to talk behind his back, he didn't want to listen anyway.
He was heading to a fast food restaurant where the lunch menu consisted of a hamburger and beef roll combo. He had no other motive in choosing this place, simply to finish his lunch as quickly as possible so he could rest.
Just as he turned quietly into a small road.
"You, it's you." He heard a male voice from a blind spot. He turned his head and saw a haggard figure stumbling towards him from the shadows. His figure was thin and his face was distorted, but his features looked familiar.
Pei Huai immediately remembered that he was the target of the previous recovery, the last time he and Ruan Yunhao cooperated.
The former director looked utterly dejected, his clothes tattered, his hair tangled, and dark bruises under his eyes. His legs were shaking like sieves, and he seemed on the verge of collapse.
Pei Huai stopped and looked at him intently, as if he was looking at a walking corpse.
"It's all you, it's all because of you. My company is completely gone. Court summonses keep coming to my house. Even my wife and daughter left me! All this is because of you." He spoke incoherently, his pupils constricted. After a frantic roar, he took another step and rushed straight towards Pei Huai, a dagger glaring in front of his abdomen. "If it weren't for you, if it weren't for you—"
"elder brother--!"
Xiang Mingqi's face suddenly changed. He took a few steps forward, trying to pull him behind him.
But the situation was different from what he had expected. Pei Huai pushed away the younger generation who was overestimating his own abilities, thrust his hips forward, and used his elbows to push forward.
He hooked the opponent's wrist with his left arm from below, followed by three knee strikes. While twisting his arm, he swiftly took out the dagger with his left hand and broke the man's elbow with a "click".
Pei Huai slammed one of his boots down on his chest, forcing the man to lie on the ground whimpering.
He had no expression on his face.
"It's lunch break now. It's time to rest - you shouldn't disturb me." The sole of the boot crushed down cruelly in revenge.
In the corner that his peripheral vision failed to reach, Xiang Mingqi was still staggering from the push. His center of gravity was unstable and he hit his butt on a half brick.
The two men screamed at the same time.
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