trust
"Yes, of course you can," Luo Suizhou said, raising an eyebrow. "But Deng Yi just fell asleep, so don't go and provoke him."
Yu Xi asked in surprise, "He came to the company so early?"
"Sleep?" Yu Xi asked again.
Luo Suizhou grunted in agreement, left the big star who frequented the company, went into the editing room, and locked the door.
Yu Xi felt somewhat dazed, as if she had returned to the past.
Not long after Deng Yi became a sensation, he announced that he would no longer act and instead founded his current film and television company. When he wasn't filming, he would stay at the company every day and treat it like his home.
Back then, out of some inexplicable feelings, Yu Xi pleaded with Deng Yi for many days before he finally agreed to let her join the company.
Over the years, the company's reputation has soared, and as one of the company's first signed artists and shareholders, she has earned a considerable amount of money.
But she earned far less than Deng Yi.
Deng Yi now has everything, both what he should have and what he shouldn't have.
These past two days, when Yu Xi went for a morning run, she kept thinking back to what Zhou Ji'an said that day. Those inexplicable emotions gradually became more organized, and she could see them clearly no matter how she looked at them.
After several nightmares, Deng Yi finally woke up. The things that came into view were both strange and familiar. He slowly propped himself up and leaned against the back of the sofa for a while to process what he had just experienced.
"I ordered takeout, let's eat together," Yu Xi said to Deng Yi, who had just come out of the office, carrying the takeout.
Deng Yi tilted his head and glanced at the editing room.
Yu Xi said, "Luo Suizhou went out to eat."
Deng Yi entered the editing room, grabbed his phone, tidied his hair, and when he returned to the living room, Yu Xi had already opened the takeout box. He paused and said, "Take your time eating, I'm going home."
"I've returned that notebook you always carry with you to its rightful owner." Yu Xi wiped the soup off the table with a tissue, her tone as if she were saying the soup was bland, the vegetables were too salty, and the rice was too hard.
Seeing Deng Yi looking at her expressionlessly, she smiled and said, "I've struggled in your shadow for so many years. Before I leave, I'll add a little more shadow to your life so that I can feel a little more at peace."
Yu Xi and Deng Yi have many similarities in their paths to fame. However, after becoming famous through her first movie, she did not, like Deng Yi, smoothly navigate various variety shows and shoot all sorts of commercials, accumulating the resources to support her dreams in a very short time.
The person who once reminded Deng Yi not to forget his original dream has actually forgotten that dream for so many years, and has even mistaken his jealousy of Deng Yi for love.
However, perhaps she did once admire him, but that youthful admiration had long been worn down by Deng Yi's consistent indifference, turning into sharp jealousy.
She should have realized that her feelings for Deng Yi contained jealousy every time she saw him receive an award.
If her feelings for him were purely romantic, she wouldn't secretly wish she were the one to win every time he received an award.
She should have realized that her feelings for Deng Yi were not only impure, but might not even exist, when she accidentally saw the contents of Zhou Ji'an's notebook and immediately concluded that Deng Yi was actually a plagiarist.
At that gathering, she almost impulsively asked Deng Yi why he couldn't choose her for a fake marriage, but she didn't get an answer then.
Now she knew the answer: because she was not Zhou Ji'an, she did not have Zhou Ji'an's seemingly shallow but actually insightful ideas, and she could not be used by Deng Yi.
Yu Xi comforted herself, thinking that perhaps she had been misled by the online fanfiction and videos of her and Deng Yi as a couple, which made her realize the truth only now.
People often mistake jealousy of the opposite sex for liking, and liking of the same sex for jealousy.
Yu Xi no longer remembered the origin of this sentence, but she remembered that she had seen it long before Zhou Ji'an pointed out its true nature.
"Did you give it to her on the day of Li Cheng's housewarming party?" Deng Yi asked.
"What? She didn't tell you about this?" Yu Xi sensed a hint of panic in his voice and immediately relaxed. "It seems she no longer trusts you like she used to."
Deng Yi knew this better than anyone else, but when someone pointed it out so directly, he felt a chill run down his spine and couldn't recover for a long time.
Yu Xi added another poisoned arrow, "Then what's the point of your experiment?"
On her way home, Deng Yi recalled the man's unusual behavior over the past two days. She not only no longer trusted him as before, but she was also constantly on guard against him.
She also believed that he married her only as an experiment.
She has indeed completely forgotten her promise.
Is it over yet?
The winter sun was still scorching, casting a pale, bleached light on everything on the ground.
The receiver carried the hustle and bustle of her world, making his world seem like a stagnant pool.
Zhou Ji'an had cake smeared all over his face by Lu Jiani and Wang Zhihui. Afraid of getting it on his phone, he held it a little further away. Since he couldn't turn on speakerphone, he couldn't hear the voices on the other end of the line very clearly.
She finally managed to escape from the wild crowd, hid in the bathroom, washed her face twice, and immediately put her phone close to her ear.
It was too quiet on the other end of the phone.
"Are you still there? Can you hear me?" Zhou Ji'an's voice was louder than usual.
"I can hear you." Deng Yi's voice was neither loud nor soft. "I can hear that you are very happy, much happier than when you are with me."
Knowing the other person couldn't see him, Zhou Ji'an still scratched his head awkwardly and offered a useless explanation, "We were playing Li Zhihui's survival game, not the kind of game that's fun to play. It's just that when they tried to stop me from answering the phone, they made a fuss and were a little loud."
The person on the other end of the phone gave a curt "hmm," as if they hadn't heard her at all.
Someone knocked on the door and urged, "Jian, hurry up, or you'll be punished."
Zhou Ji'an hurriedly said, "We plan to go cycling this afternoon. I'll just ride my bike home. You don't need to pick me up."
Another voice came from outside the door, "Be careful, or we'll make you do a dare."
Zhou Ji'an broke out in a cold sweat when she heard the words "dare or dare." The people outside had complex minds, and the dares they came up with could be as tricky as they could be. She couldn't afford to mess with them.
"I'm hanging up." Zhou Ji'an acted quickly; she knew that if she had been any slower, she would have really been killed.
Deng Yi's final cry of "Ji'an" was abruptly cut off, failing to reach the distant past.
Yu Xi, who was the first to see the exposé of Deng Yi's father Deng Wencheng's scandal, notified the public relations department and immediately called Deng Yi.
"Your luck has run out."
Deng Yi's car was still parked outside Lu Jiani's residential area. He turned his gaze away from the car, opened his phone, checked the trending topics, and glanced at them indifferently. "A call came in, I hung up."
“Yes, it’s true,” Deng Yi replied. “I will respond using the company’s account, you don’t need to worry about it.”
While taking a break to play on her phone, Zhao Xingran exclaimed, "It seems she leaked it to a marketing account."
Zhao Xingran's words seemed cryptic, but Zhou Ji'an immediately caught on and leaned over to look, just in time to see Deng Yi's response.
Deng Yi issued a brief response using the company's account: Deng Wencheng is not my father. Please focus on his illegal and criminal activities.
Although Zhou Ji'an knew that Deng Yi already had a way to deal with it, his heart still pounded wildly when he saw the word "hot" following the trending topic.
She sat down next to him and used her phone to check the relevant news.
Deng Yi's statement has reignited the online discussion about his biological father.
To the surprise of Zhou Ji'an, Lu Jiani, and Zhao Xingran, the exposé did not mention Zhou Ji'an or Zhao Xingran. In fact, apart from Deng Yi and Deng Wencheng, no other specific names appeared in the exposé; it merely listed Deng Wencheng's illegal and criminal acts.
"Could it be that it wasn't Qin Xirang who leaked the information?" Zhao Xingran asked.
Zhou Ji'an also felt that it wasn't Qin Xirang who leaked the information, mainly because Qin Xirang couldn't possibly have possessed so much evidence.
“Whether it is true or not, Deng Wencheng’s scandal has been exposed, and she can’t make a fuss about it anymore,” Lu Jianni said.
Zhou Ji'an's eyes darted around, and he quickly said, "I'm not going cycling with you guys."
The door slammed shut, and Xu Zhiyan watched the person disappear like the wind, saying with dissatisfaction, "She does this again."
Lu Jianni kicked him, disgusted by his self-delusion. "You know perfectly well that she has never been interested in you, so why are you blaming her for not getting a response?"
Zhou Ji'an ran to the road, checked the time it would take to get home by shared bike, and decided to take a taxi home.
She was opening a ride-hailing app when the sound of a car suddenly slowing down reached her ears.
“I thought you were at the company.” Zhou Ji’an opened the car door and got in.
"Aren't we going cycling?" Deng Yi saw that she had fastened her seatbelt and then restarted the car.
Zhou Ji'an was speechless for a moment.
He seemed completely unaffected by the trending topic, making it impossible for her to even express her concern for him.
Finally, Deng Yi started the conversation, "What birthday gift did you give Lu Jianni?"
He probably wanted to ask her again if she had prepared his birthday present.
Zhou Ji'an turned to look at his cold profile and replied, "Lu Jianni doesn't accept birthday gifts."
Deng Yi also turned to look at her, his eyes full of disbelief.
“She said she didn’t need anything and told us not to send her anything.” Zhou Ji’an subtly hinted at his own intentions in his words.
A little thought that can be seen through at a glance...
“I lack everything, you have to provide it to me,” Deng Yiqing clearly stated his position.
"I didn't say I wouldn't give you a gift." Zhou Ji'an said dejectedly, but then tried to be stubborn, "I've already thought of what to give you."
Deng Yi smiled and said, "That's good."
His words seemed to be spoken to himself, words of comfort to himself.
In fact, Zhou Ji'an had already prepared a birthday gift for Deng Yi, but after Yu Xi gave her the notebook and she saw the divorce agreement in the drawer, the gift she had prepared lost its meaning.
Therefore, she needs to prepare a new gift that meets Deng Yi's expectations within a week.
Since he wasn't giving her a chance to show concern for him, Zhou Ji'an figured she might as well use the time she spent on the bus to go online and look at posts related to birthday gifts.
Her finger pointed around, and all she saw were things that Deng Yi couldn't use.
She added the word "husband" to her search terms and kept scrolling down until she found a post with a rather suggestive picture.
But Deng Yi made it clear that he didn't want that kind of gift.
Zhou Ji'an was so engrossed in solving the problem that he caught Deng Yi's voice, but he had no idea what he was saying.
She swallowed hard, quickly turned off her phone, and asked, "What did you say?"
After the car pulled into the garage and parked, Deng Yi repeated his question, "Want to go on a trip to an island with me?"
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