Baileys (5)
"I was wrong."
"..."
"I really know I was wrong."
"..."
Sorkov, unable to bear it any longer, put down the knife and apple he was holding. "Do you know you've never called me Andrei?"
Zhou Zeyu nodded obediently, "I know."
“I never expected,” he said sarcastically, slicing off the long apple peel with a sudden movement, “that the first time I’d hear you call my name would be under these circumstances.”
Zhou Zeyu looked up and said with some emotion, "I didn't expect this either..."
What I didn't expect was either that I hadn't expected to accidentally let something slip and get caught, or that my clever scheme had been discovered.
Sorkov took another deep breath, resisting the urge to stab himself with the knife in front of him. He tossed the poor, peeled, and badly damaged apple to her and said sarcastically, "Yeah, didn't you think about what would happen if you were discovered when you did this? I thought you were a brilliant strategist."
Zhou Zeyi was clearly startled by his strange tone. She looked at the apple in her hand and then at his face. "You didn't poison it, did you?"
Solkov closed his eyes, feeling his temples throbbing faster and faster. "I'll eat the poisoned half, okay?"
"Oh dear, the Snail Fairy has turned into Snow White again?"
However, after meeting his sinister gaze, Zhou Zeyu decided to remain silent, lowered his head, and obediently began to nibble on his apple.
Solkov sat on the chair by the bed, arms crossed, staring straight out the window, not wanting to give her any more attention.
When do you plan to let me go?
With her mouth full of apples, Zhou Zeyu chewed for a while before finally answering his question: "You were talking about Snow White just now, how did you jump to Rapunzel? I didn't lock you up here."
"Hey, hey, but I didn't tell you to leave."
Solkov swore that if she hadn't grabbed his sleeve again and pulled him back with all her might, he would never have stayed in that damned place for another second.
He even began to suspect that during the six months Zhou Zeyu had been missing, she might have been kidnapped and assimilated by some kind of superhuman race. Why was her strength now so great that even before Sorkov stormed out in a fit of rage, he had to seriously consider whether his mortal body could withstand a single blow from her?
"Sigh!" She gave him a sharp shove, pressing him back into his chair without a doubt, her face still bearing an innocence that was the complete opposite of her dictatorial behavior. She even let out a heavy sigh, but Solkov knew she was definitely faking it.
"Why won't you listen to my explanation!" she cried, clutching her left chest in anguish.
What do you mean by not wanting to hear her explanation? Sorkov sneered; he simply didn't believe she could come up with any reasonable explanation.
He crossed his arms and legs, looking at her expressionlessly, gesturing for her to speak.
Zhou Zeyu blinked: "I'm really going to do something very important this time, don't you know that?"
It's inexplicable. What does he know? He's been kept in the dark all this time, and he finally found out a little bit of the inside story, and he went to great lengths to get it. How come in her mouth he's the one who "also knows"?
"How come I didn't know I knew about this 'very important thing'?" He scoffed. "You must have told me in your dream."
Zhou Zeyu exclaimed, shook her head, and pointed to her messy desk. "Didn't you just see it? I don't need to explain anymore."
Sorkov's vision went black, and he almost fainted. He pursed his lips and took a deep breath. "Next time you put a secret in a visible place, remember to prepare both Chinese and English versions. Otherwise, how could you suddenly forget that I can't understand a single Chinese word?"
Seeing her obviously joking expression, he immediately realized that this was yet another new way of fooling him. He was furious and gritted his teeth as he said, "Are you going to explain or not? If you don't, I'm leaving."
However, judging from the current situation, he was just making meaningless threats. After all, his cuffs were still tightly controlled by someone. Unless Sorkov was prepared to die with the garment, he wouldn't be able to leave so easily.
This person is a complete scoundrel.
The scoundrel was completely unaware that his image had undergone a complete 180-degree transformation, and he was still chuckling sheepishly, "I'll tell you, I'll tell you everything, okay?"
She cleared her throat: "Actually, I went to London this time to meet a senior member of the team and ask him for a favor."
"Then what?"
"Heavenly secrets must not be revealed."
"Fine, if you won't tell me."
Zhou Zeyu pulled him back again, but this time with even more force, dragging him directly onto the bed and forcefully straightening his shoulders so that the two could look directly into each other's eyes.
"What are you doing?!"
Zhou Zeyu squinted at him mysteriously, revealing an expression that was clearly a smirk. Then he looked around (there was nothing there, and it was unclear what he was looking at), and then cupped his hands into a megaphone shape and brought them close to his ear.
"I'm doing something big."
Even if she hadn't said it, Sorkov had already figured it out. Although he couldn't read Chinese, he knew what all those documents and notes on the table represented. Given Zhou Zeyi's temperament, she was definitely plotting something big, and she was working hard towards it.
"What's up?"
Sorkov asked casually, not expecting Zhou Zeyi to tell him everything honestly, but to his surprise, she smiled slightly and then suddenly asked him a question in return.
"Sorkov, you've been bullied by your head coach for so long, haven't you ever thought about fighting back?"
Sorkov's gaze became slightly complicated as he turned his head to look into her eyes.
“What I’m doing now is rebelling,” she said calmly, “rebelling with many, many people.”
He paused for a moment, then immediately understood what she meant, and continued to ask, "What do you plan to do?"
However, all of the above was probably the most honest Zhou Zeyi could say. She shrugged, indicating that she could not reveal anything more.
“Director Xu wouldn’t let you do this, would he?” Sorkov suddenly spoke up, then, seeing the guilty look in her eyes, he abruptly stood up. “You’re keeping this from him?”
Zhou Zeyu cried out and pressed him down. "Don't get excited. Who said I was keeping it from him? I can't get involved in those people's affairs, but that doesn't mean I can't do other things."
"for example?"
Haha, he knew it.
He suddenly felt a sense of tension, but this feeling had nothing to do with Zhou Zeyu's silence. It was just that his restless inner self was acting up again, and it was jumping around in his mind. Then a line of bright red bold text suddenly appeared in front of him.
You're interfering too much; she'll hate you.
Sorkov blinked, and then the next second, the line of text vanished in a bizarrely mysterious way.
Then he suddenly fell silent. Of course, he kept quiet about Zhou Zeyi's somewhat teasing "I won't tell you," lowered his head, and frowned, trying to hide his obvious worry as much as possible.
Immediately afterwards, a pair of eyes suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and their owner was bending down, staring intently at his face.
"Don't be sad, Sorkov." He wondered if it was just his imagination, but there was even a hint of guilt, or perhaps shame, in those words.
Zhou Zeyu leaned down and carefully observed his changing expressions, like a teacher watching to see if a kindergarten child was secretly shedding tears.
This eerie sense of déjà vu sent a chill down Solkov's spine. He quickly looked up, ready to casually explain his brief moment of abnormality, but unexpectedly, the culprit suddenly spoke up slowly.
"Actually, the person I'm going to London to meet is the editor-in-chief of Sports Weekly. I have some dealings with him, and I'm going to ask him for some help, but... I don't know if he'll agree."
The unexpected truth made him raise an eyebrow. He hadn't expected that his unintentional action would actually fool this increasingly glib old fox. Perhaps she had lost her mind for those few seconds.
He sighed: "Then why aren't you leaving?"
Solkov looked at her expressionlessly. "Didn't you say you were going to see the editor-in-chief? That must be a very urgent matter. Why aren't you going?"
Zhou Zeyu answered immediately, his reaction time estimated to be less than half a second, as if he had been waiting for this question for a long time, and his response was so fluent that it was as if he had rehearsed it several times in his mind.
"It's because I missed you."
"to be honest."
"Oh." Her expression visibly deflated, like a punctured balloon. "Actually, it's because he's on a business trip recently, and I have to wait for him for a while."
Well done, he knew it would turn out this way.
He said that, given Zhou Zeyi's temperament, even if hormones controlled his brain, he probably wouldn't be able to do something as heroic as abandoning an important person to waste time in Belgrade, let alone stay here simply because he "missed him." Just as he expected, it was only because it didn't take up his work time.
Sorkov suddenly regretted listening to her explanation. If he had stormed out from the beginning, he might have been able to hypnotize himself and find some less offensive excuses for her. But now he probably couldn't, unless he became mentally ill, he couldn't do something as stupid as finding excuses for her to get away.
He's already made it perfectly clear, so how can he continue to deceive himself?
He didn't know how he managed to listen patiently. The only explanation was that he was already dead, so now there was only a corpse sitting in the chair, staring at Zhou Zeyu with a completely mournful look.
"Is there anything else you haven't said?"
Zhou Zeyu blinked and forced a smile that was undeniably friendly to the point of being insincere: "Yes, there are more."
Damn it, she still has it.
"What?" he asked weakly.
"Actually, I've been hesitant about whether to tell you, but given the current situation, it seems that being honest and accepting the truth might be better than finding out on your own."
"explain."
My flight is tomorrow at noon.
Sorkov was completely speechless. He looked at Zhou Zeyu, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed, then at the pitch-black sky outside the window, and finally glanced at the watch on his wrist. After doing all this, he felt as if he had used up all the strength he had in his life, and he couldn't even speak anymore.
Zhou Zeyi seemed startled by his reaction. "Um... are you alright? Look on the bright side, it's midnight now, we still have twelve hours."
Is the world insane, or is she insane, or is it Solkov who's gone mad? This isn't a good thing at all; it's clearly news of death.
He didn't want to answer anymore. He chuckled twice and then fell into an extremely strange silence, staring at Zhou Zeyu's eyes with a sinister look.
Recalling the events of the past few days, Solkov felt that his already aching head was now truly going to break. He could even hear a slight electric current coming from the back of his head. Was he about to short-circuit?
Well, a short circuit isn't so bad either. At least I won't have to watch helplessly as she boards the plane and slowly disappears into the vast sky six hours later.
Didn't she even have a second to think that this would cause him pain?
"So, what are you planning to do? Spend these twelve hours revealing the cruel truths you haven't told me yet?"
"How could that be?" she blurted out, then blinked, realizing that what she said might have been a bit too cruel. So she took a deep breath and subconsciously tried to salvage the situation, "I mean, can't we talk about something more cheerful?"
Haha, she knows these "cruel facts" are unpleasant things too.
Sorkov had completely given up on finding out what the truth was. He wasn't so contemptuous of his life as he wanted to live as long as possible, at least not to collapse straight in this dilapidated hotel after hearing everything. But if Zhou Zeyu was allowed to continue talking, that possibility was rising sharply.
"What do you want to do? If there's nothing else, I'm leaving."
The word "go" seemed to be tied to something, and Zhou Zeyu began to resist reflexively as soon as she heard it. Then, she looked at him with a very subtle expression, so precise that it showed every micro-expression, and said, "No, there are only twelve hours left. Don't you want to stay with me?"
Sorkov finally couldn't hold back any longer. He sighed heavily and looked back at her with a pitiful expression of utter helplessness. "My God, do you expect me to spend these twelve hours with you calmly after knowing all this? Aren't you going to give me any time to process this?"
Zhou Zeyi paused for a moment, then asked, "How long do you intend to accept this?"
"ten years."
“That won’t do,” she rubbed her hands together, as if racking her brains for a solution, and said hesitantly, “Can’t you try to compress ten years into half an hour?”
...
What kind of scoundrel could say such a thing so calmly?
What do you think?
In fact, he regretted it the moment he asked the question, because during his time with Zhou Zeyi, she always seemed a little absent-minded in front of him, so much so that Sorkov would often forget something.
That is, after so many years of being tempered by a cruel environment, Zhou Zeyu is a tough character who is extremely good at playing word games and has an incredibly thick skin.
Sure enough, she pretended to think deeply for a moment, then said quite confidently, "I think you can try it. That way, we'll have eleven and a half hours left. I think that's barely acceptable. What do you think?"
Damn it, we've brought this problem back again.
"I find it very difficult."
“Give it a try,” she said softly. “Ten years is too long. I’ll find it hard to wait.”
Sorkov looked at her in silence, and after a while, he helplessly surrendered, "You've always known how to deal with me."
“Don’t use the word ‘deal with,’” she even had the leisure to correct him, “it should be ‘targeted.’”
Is it any better? It just sounds worse.
He silently shook his head, expressing his disapproval of the revision, and glanced at Zhou Zeyi, who was staring intently at him. "So what exactly are you planning to do?"
However, he soon regretted the fierce tone he had tried so hard to create, because strangely this time, Zhou Zeyu did not continue with that joking attitude. On the contrary, she smiled, and even looked slightly downcast, and then gently took his hand.
Their fingers are intertwined.
Sorkov was certain that his breathing had stopped, because he could no longer feel his own existence. The whole world seemed to consist only of Zhou Zeyu, who was getting closer and closer to him. Her breath fell on his cheek, and then she slowly spoke.
“I didn’t think that much about it. The reason I didn’t tell you before was because I knew that once you found out, you wouldn’t be able to get through the rest of the time in peace.”
She paused for a moment, then said, "And I did this just so I could spend more time with you."
Stay a little longer, even if it's just for a short while.
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