Chapter 14 You have to be responsible for me!
Ren Limeng smiled politely, and across the dining table and the crowd, she greeted Shen Xingzhi in the corner with her eyes.
Dressed in extremely low-key black, Shen Xingzhi sat quietly in a corner. The breakfast shop's vibrant atmosphere seemed to add a touch of warmth to his surroundings. On the table in front of him were the same shredded potato cakes and beef and egg skins that Ren Limeng had ordered.
Ren Limeng originally wanted to find a place to dine farther away from Chen Xingzhi after saying hello, but after looking around, she couldn't find a second empty seat except the one opposite Chen Xingzhi.
While she was hesitating, the proprietress had already brought the prepared shredded potato cakes and warmly invited her to sit next to Shen Xingzhi.
“…What a coincidence.”
Chen Xingzhi raised his eyes and looked at Ren Limeng, who was smiling and trying to find something to say. He moved the plate towards his chest and said, "The restaurant is small. Ask your cameraman to put away the equipment. The recording will not officially start until ten o'clock. Stop filming when the daily material collection is almost done."
Ren Limeng suddenly realized that there were no staff members following Chen Xingzhi around. There was only a black handheld gimbal on the side of the dining table, which was not sure whether it was turned on or not, recording the celebrity's breakfast routine. After hearing Chen Xingzhi's words, Ren Limeng had not yet reacted, and the staff behind her had quietly retreated.
"Your words are so effective!"
Ren Limeng was stunned and turned her head, looking at her own back as she left the store, and couldn't help but sigh.
Shen Xingzhi chuckled and didn't explain much. The atmosphere suddenly became quiet, and the two of them were filled with the bustling chatter of the people in the breakfast shop.
Ren Limeng took out a pair of disposable chopsticks and opened them. She crossed the chopsticks with both hands and rubbed the wooden thorns on them neatly. She lowered her eyes to look at the golden and crispy potato cake in front of her. She picked it up gently and took a light bite. The heat was full of enjoyment for her taste buds, and the burnt aroma and softness were intertwined between her teeth.
After finishing her shredded potato cake, she secretly looked at Chen Xingzhi who was leisurely eating egg skins across from her for the Nth time, and finally spoke to break the silence in the corner.
"Brother Xingzhi, I didn't expect that we would run into each other while having breakfast. What a coincidence."
Ren Limeng forced herself to look sincere and friendly. Since she had already made up her mind to support Captain Shen Xingzhi's decision at the first stop, the delicate and stiff relationship between the two should naturally ease. This chance encounter was also a good opportunity.
However, she, who was always full of witty remarks, looked at Chen Xingzhi who was sitting quietly opposite her, and this friendly signal became awkward no matter how she sent it.
Back then, she won the first place in the news category of the National Anchor Competition at the age of 24. Faced with so many tricky impromptu examination questions, she was able to complete them fluently in three minutes with a calm face. Her eloquent appearance was in stark contrast to her current embarrassment.
Ren Limeng raised her head again and looked towards the inside of Shen Xingzhi, her complex expression captured in Shen Xingzhi's eyes.
"The equipment has been turned off, Ren Limeng, are you so concerned about the camera?"
"As a host, there is no one who doesn't care about the camera."
Ren Limeng's answer was somewhat irrelevant to the question, but the moment she knew there was no camera, her expression relaxed. She silently turned off the microphone on her waist, picked up the egg skin in the bowl with a chopstick, and opened her mouth twice as wide as before.
"I thought the agricultural host would be different. But you... I always thought you loved the stage, so why did you want to go to the agricultural channel?"
Chen Xingzhi looked at Ren Limeng, his eyes moved slightly, and his right hand couldn't help but pick up a ball of egg skin with chopsticks. The seemingly casual question brought a bit of familiarity beyond the guest, making Ren Limeng opposite him feel less nervous.
"It was a strange coincidence that I was assigned to the agricultural channel after joining Orange. I stayed there and felt okay with it, so I just stayed there for a few years."
During their conversation, they understood each other's past and temporarily put it behind them.
Although neither of them confirmed this in words, they had hosted dozens of evening parties of all sizes together in college, so there was always some tacit understanding between them.
"This time, the agricultural channel is going to be revamped. I'm almost 35 and about to hit my midlife crisis. I have to work hard for two years, so I decided to give it a try."
Chen Xingzhi raised an eyebrow, but before he could ask, Ren Limeng had already read the confusion in his expression and took the initiative to explain, with a hint of self-mockery and ridicule in her voice.
As a marginal department, the agricultural channel of the Orange platform not only has little influence, but also has a small staff and a lot of work to do. Compared with the elegant hosts in high heels in the studio, the hosts of the agricultural channel have to take care of more field work. They even often wear sneakers to walk through the fields and visit thousands of homes like reporters.
The broadcast program she got in return may only be a moment of stay for a small number of people. She has learned a lot of practical experience on the agricultural channel. She is grateful for herself in the past few years and for this accidental opportunity on the agricultural channel. But now, she wants to break out of the agricultural channel and step into a bigger lens, so that more viewers will remember her and pay attention to her program.
"Midlife crisis? You're still so young. Didn't we agree to always be eighteen?"
Shen Xingzhi seemed to remember something, the corners of his mouth curled up slightly, and his expression relaxed.
After Chen Xingzhi finished speaking, both of them were stunned for a moment, and there was a flash of obscurity in their eyes when they looked at each other. The same memory was like a reading machine that had been touched with a keyword.
"Senior, I'm already this old, it would be a bit shameless to say I'm eighteen years old!"
Ren Limeng lowered her head, looking at the beef chunks in the bowl in front of her, and smiled. The deliberately drawn-out tone of "senior" immediately closed the distance between the two of them that they had deliberately maintained for the past two days. It was as if the two of them were not in a breakfast shop during a break in recording, but had "randomly met" in the university cafeteria one morning.
"Senior Xingzhi! What a coincidence! Our school has twenty cafeterias, and we unexpectedly ended up in the same cafeteria at the same time, and... we even ordered the same beef noodles!"
Ren Limeng, who had just entered her junior year, carried a tray of food and quickly walked towards Shen Xingzhi, who had just sat down at the table opposite. After greeting him with a smile, she sat down directly opposite Shen Xingzhi, speaking enthusiastically while opening a pair of disposable chopsticks.
"Li Meng... This is the cafeteria closest to the concert hall."
Recently, they have been spending their free time in the concert hall, rehearsing for the school's centenary celebrations to be held next month. This morning was a group rehearsal.
"Yes, that's fate!"
Ren Limeng grinned to herself, and when she noticed Shen Xingzhi's raised eyebrow, she half-jokingly asked, "Senior Xingzhi, do you know that everyone on the confession wall is saying that we are a couple? They say that we worked together very well at the freshman party we hosted last week, and they suspect that we are secretly in a relationship!"
"Um?"
Shen Xingzhi raised his eyebrows and looked up, his gaze falling on Ren Limeng's right hand.
Ren Limeng looked at Chen Xingzhi's indifferent and cold appearance, and a flash of disappointment passed through her eyes. She clenched the chopsticks in her hand and continued with a smile, "Isn't it outrageous? My roommate also teased me, senior, being a partner with you really hinders my romantic luck!"
You have to be responsible for me!
Ren Limeng really wanted to say the last sentence openly, but even in the midst of chatting and laughing, she was still afraid that Shen Xingzhi would refuse, and worried that the harmonious and tacit atmosphere between them would be affected in the slightest.
The freshman party in her junior year was the third freshman party that Ren Limeng attended.
At the freshman party in her freshman year, she was in a period of confusion. After the college entrance examination, everyone in her family had thought of her future for her and thought it was natural for her to apply for the opera major to follow in her mother's footsteps. However, she insisted on changing her career and changed her major without saying a word. Before coming to school, she had an extremely fierce conflict with her parents.
Frankly speaking, Ren Limeng didn't know whether what she did was right or not. She only knew that it was wrong to continue to blindly follow her family's arrangements. She was not as obsessed with opera as her mother, nor was she prepared to make opera her lifelong career. So she fled and came to Communication University, but chose a major that was completely different from opera.
The freshman party began, and the host Chen Xingyi attracted all of Ren Limeng's attention from the moment he started. His clear and cold eyebrows relaxed, bringing a hint of warmth to welcome the new students. His calm and self-controlled hosting was not affected by the enthusiastic and uncontrolled atmosphere in the audience. Every word he said seemed to show his calmness and composure as if everything was under control.
In stark contrast to Ren Limeng's confused and chaotic state at the time, Ren Limeng unconsciously approached him. She developed an infinite interest in the host, or perhaps she was just interested in the host on the stage. In short, she found a new and firm direction for her confused university life.
Ren Limeng effortlessly found out a lot of information about Shen Xingzhi, who was already the focus of the school. She joined his school's hosting team club and took a minor in his major of broadcasting and hosting.
Perhaps because of her many years of experience on the opera stage, compared to other students, her graceful hosting on stage made her stand out. At the sophomore freshman party, Ren Limeng was already the school's third-ranked host, becoming the substitute for the senior students, and she could peek at Shen Xingzhi's hosting from a closer distance backstage.
She silently hoped that she could be better. Chen Xingzhi was already the school's leading host in his sophomore year, so she had to work harder to be able to stand by his side openly!
God helps those who work hard. In her sophomore year, Ren Limeng had become the school's top female host, and she and Shen Xingzhi were "partners" in many activities.
At the freshman party in their junior year, Ren Limeng and Shen Xingzhi were a veritable golden hosting duo. She finally ended the long-standing school tradition of "Shen Xingzhi is permanent, but the female hosts are always changing", and rightfully stood closest to Shen Xingzhi.
But greed is like that, she still wants to take a step closer...
"Li Meng, I remember last week at the freshman party, several of your junior classmates asked for your WeChat. What's going on? Do you want to have even more luck in love?"
There was a smile in Shen Xingzhi's familiar tone, and his cold and clear eyes reflected Ren Limeng's figure, adding a bit of the same relaxed smile, which made Ren Limeng couldn't help but smile.
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