TF01 68

When Shi Yi moved house, he practically moved himself.

Ying Ming had gotten up early to clean the place, planning to go pick Shi Yi up, but the other man said there was no need. He would come over as soon as he woke up and grabbed his things. From a little after nine all the way until nearly eleven-thirty, Ying Ming had been busy the whole time. Just as he was starting to wonder if Shi Yi had decided to move to outer space, the doorbell finally rang.

The moment he opened the door, Young Master Shi was standing there with a grin that could outshine sun and moon.

“Your luggage’s in the car?”

Instinctively glancing behind him, Ying Ming stepped aside. “How much stuff do you have? Took you this long to get it packed?”

Wearing sunglasses, Shi Yi stepped inside and pulled them off, tucking them into his coat pocket. “I didn’t bring anything. Just woke up.”

“Nothing?” Ying Ming looked back at him. “Changed your mind again?”

“I thought about it and figured the only thing in my place worth keeping is me. Nothing else really matters.”

“Your clothes?”

“Most of them are at the office. Doesn’t make a difference.”

Ying Ming frowned slightly. “Do you think you’re checking into a hotel? Everything’s supposed to be laid out and ready for Young Master Shi?”

“It’s fine. I’ll buy whatever I need later.”

Shi Yi flopped down on the couch like it was no big deal. Smoke Ring happened to be wandering past and paused beside him, its perpetually expressionless face managing to show just a hint of disgust as it glared at him. Ying Ming shut the door without another word.

“Suit yourself.”

He always dressed pretty casually at home. His loose sweatpants always looked like the drawstring had come undone. Shi Yi scanned him up and down a couple of times. He had thought it before, but even for a man, Ying Ming’s waist really was too thin.

“Got anything to eat for lunch?”

He tilted his head, watching as Ying Ming poured him a glass of water.

Shi Yi had come over right after waking up. It was that awkward time when breakfast was too late and lunch was still too early. As a bored single man, he was even less likely to bother cooking something just for himself.

Ying Ming handed him the water. “Woke up and already thinking about food. I don’t remember you living like such a single-celled organism.”

Shi Yi grinned. “When have you ever seen someone treat domestic and foreign policy the same? This is called strategic planning.”

“Let me make it clear now. My cooking skills are limited. You won’t last three days on them. If you get sick of it, either order takeout or go eat out.” The place was his, the stuff was his, and now he had somehow dragged a high-maintenance lord into it. Ying Ming was starting to think he must have been out of his mind the day he agreed to let Shi Yi move in.

He ruffled his hair and headed for the kitchen. The moment he turned on the stove, Shi Yi, who had been trailing behind, wrapped his arms around Ying Ming’s waist from behind.

“I just really like watching you cook.”

He said it close to Ying Ming’s ear, making it tickle a little.

Ying Ming frowned. “And I really like watching you get smashed in the face with a pan. Maybe let me have that too?”

The hug was something out of a textbook romance, and it made Ying Ming uncomfortable. No man would be used to having someone slightly taller than them cling to their waist from behind like that. In truth, if his body weren’t already far too used to Shi Yi’s scent, he probably would’ve kicked him across the kitchen the moment he touched him.

Not that he was especially violent. It was just reflex.

Shi Yi rested his chin on his shoulder and gave a deliberately nauseating wiggle. Ying Ming’s facial muscles visibly twitched. Finally deciding to quit while he was ahead, Shi Yi let go and draped one arm over his shoulder instead.

“Is this how you used to treat your girlfriends too?”

This was the first time Shi Yi had ever asked Ying Ming about his past relationships. With half a pot of water coming to a boil, Ying Ming casually pulled out two packets of noodles, tore them open, and answered without even looking at him.

“My girlfriends used to be the ones who cooked for me.”

“What kind do you like, then?”

To be honest, the question was strange. Ying Ming finally couldn’t help glancing at Shi Yi. The man’s face gave nothing away. It was just plain curiosity, like gossip. After a brief pause, Ying Ming looked away and dropped the noodles into the pot.

“Gentler types. Quiet. Sensible. A little younger.”

Shi Yi raised an eyebrow.

So, completely the opposite of himself.

His own priorities had always started with looks. After that, a woman had to be smart, tactful, able to read a room. Being presentable in public was far more important than whether she could cook. But it was obvious that Ying Ming preferred someone domestic.

“Sounds more like marriage material.”

“I’ve never separated the two.”

Ying Ming’s profile looked elegant no matter the angle. Shi Yi found himself staring again, spacing out as steam began to fog up his glasses. He wiped them instinctively with his hand.

“Can’t believe someone in the entertainment industry could be this out of touch with reality.”

After saying that, he realized something about the comment didn’t sit right. He tried to figure out whether someone like Ying Ming was too practical or not practical enough, but couldn’t come to a conclusion. Meanwhile, Ying Ming tilted his head with a dismissive snort and set the chopsticks he had been using to stir the noodles off to the side.

“The type you like? Just so happens to be the kind I like the least.”

It wasn’t that there were no good women in the industry, just that none of them were a good fit for him.

Ying Ming had dated actresses before. One of them had still been a newcomer at the time. Compared to Shi Yi’s purely sensory preferences, Ying Ming’s standards were simpler and more direct. As long as she was good-looking and pleasant to the eye, that was enough. Someone like Liu Li, for example—he could appreciate her from a distance, but getting along with someone like that in real life was impossible.

All the back-and-forth on set was already exhausting. Off set, if things were still a power struggle, wasn’t that just a headache?

To be honest, Ying Ming had always thought that the person he would eventually end up with had to be someone who could bring him peace. Someone relaxing, someone soothing to be around. His gaze lifted slightly and landed on the man beside him. He couldn’t help but mock himself a little.

By that standard, Shi Yi was a disastrously poor match.

Shi Yi could probably tell Ying Ming’s mind was spinning with something, but there was no way to read it from his face. He scratched his chin, suspicious, but went along with the conversation anyway.

“How do you even know what kind of person I like?”

“Representative figure: Liu Li. Corroborating evidence: the long list of female leads in your scandal history.”

Instant noodles didn’t take long to cook. Shi Yi didn’t like them too soft, and once Ying Ming figured they were ready, he turned off the stove and went to grab some bowls. He didn’t notice the pointed little smile that crept onto Shi Yi’s face after that comment.

It wasn’t until the two of them were seated at the dining table that Shi Yi chuckled.

“Got any vinegar?”

“Vinegar?”

Who puts vinegar in instant noodles?

Ying Ming frowned at the bizarre request, but just as he was about to get up, he caught something off in Shi Yi’s expression. The look in his eyes hinted at a misinterpretation. Ying Ming frowned deeper.

“Did you just imagine something weird again?”

Did that line of his earlier sound like jealousy?

Shi Yi kept smiling in that infuriating way.

“You went out of your way to look up my old gossip and scandals?”

Strictly speaking, Shi Yi had never been the type to court attention in the industry. Sure, there were always people with too much time on their hands who tried to dig up dirt, but because of his family background, most media outlets didn’t dare run stories on him unless it was during a particularly explosive moment. The things with Liu Li and Zhao Zicong, for example, had only happened under special circumstances.

Ying Ming’s first instinct was to deny it, to say he had never gone looking up anything about Shi Yi. But just as the words reached the tip of his tongue, he realized he couldn’t actually remember how he came to know all those details. It felt like fragments from this person or that, offhand mentions pieced together over time. Still, in a circle where gossip came and went faster than the daily paper, it was strange that anything about Shi Yi had left such a deep impression.

He ended up saying nothing at all.

Shi Yi watched him eat in silence, not even attempting a response, and the smile on his lips only grew wider. His mood had taken a turn for the better. He shoveled a few careless mouthfuls of noodles into his mouth, then tapped the edge of Ying Ming’s bowl with his chopsticks.

Ying Ming looked up, a hint of impatience in his face.

“The type I like? It’s the kind that seems unreliable and ridiculous at first glance, but if you look deeper there’s some fake intellectual crap going on. There’s always a trace of philosophy if you squint hard enough. On the surface, it’s all random nonsense. Eight out of ten things they say make you want to scream. The other two make you want to kill them.”

At first, Ying Ming had been holding it in. But by the time Shi Yi got to the last line, he couldn’t help laughing. He leaned back a little in his chair.

“Oh? And people like that actually exist?”

Shi Yi nodded with a grin. “Yeah. At first, I didn’t believe it either.”

If life were something he could plan in advance, Shi Yi wasn’t sure he would have made the same choices.

But because everything had hit him out of nowhere, he could only look at where he was now and feel, strangely, like it had all been meant to be.

Ying Ming had been an accident in his life, and perhaps he was the same for Ying Ming. But this bond, born of coincidence and brought together by chance, was something neither of them had missed. They had both seriously considered whether to let it go. By now, Shi Yi no longer thought about what might happen next.

He leaned over and gave Ying Ming a quick kiss. But the table between them was too wide, and they both had to almost fully stand up just to barely reach each other. The position felt awkward, so Shi Yi simply walked around the table and dragged him over to the sofa instead.

They hadn’t even finished a single bowl of noodles. After kissing for a while, neither felt like moving again. They stayed slouched together on the sofa, dazed and expressionless.

“I used to think all those men who spent their days glued to their lovers were wasting their lives. No value in it, no progress, just clinging for dear life like idiots.”

Shi Yi was playing with Ying Ming’s hair. He was lying closer to the inside, so his voice came out low and muffled, his chest pressed firmly against Ying Ming’s back.

The man in front arched his brow. “And now you’ve sunk to their level?”

“Yeah.” Shi Yi gave a small laugh. “Feels like I’ve become exactly the kind of dumbass I always looked down on. Just want to lie here and do nothing.”

He liked holding Ying Ming, no matter what the position was.

There was something oddly grounding about being surrounded by this man’s presence. Some place deep in his chest that had never really felt hollow before suddenly became dense and weighty, like it had been filled in. Like none of it mattered anymore.

If he had to put it into words, it felt like leveling up.

Shi Yi looped one arm loosely around Ying Ming’s neck and leaned in toward the back of it, idly licking and biting without any real pressure.

The man pinned on the sofa shifted slightly, clearly uncomfortable, but in the end, he didn’t push him away. He stared at the patch of sunlight falling through the skylight onto the coffee table in the warehouse, where it scattered into a soft, hazy blur of reflected light.

Two grown men holding each other like this did feel a bit awkward.

Ying Ming’s brows were drawn faintly together, but he didn’t really feel like moving. The small motions at the back of his neck kept going, never escalating, never stopping.

There was nothing sexual about it. Not even a trace.

It was just instinct, a need to be close. The urge to cling to one another, like everything in the world reaching toward water. It was layered into instinct, inseparable from thought, a reflex buried too deep for awareness to untangle.

A long while passed before Ying Ming slowly thought of something.

“Shi Yi, should we tell Kou Jing and the others?”

The man behind him didn’t respond. It wasn’t until Ying Ming was about to ask again that he finally replied, sounding indifferent.

“Up to you. Doesn’t matter to me.”

“I don’t really care either.”

Ying Ming frowned slightly.

That day, the two of them had bailed halfway through, and the next morning Kou Jing and Wang Yiqi had both called in one after the other to ask what the hell had happened.

Kou Jing was fine. It was Wang Yiqi who had said things as nasty as they could possibly get.

Shi Yi had been lying next to him at the time. When he heard the string of creative insults coming out of the speaker, he nearly tossed the phone straight out the window.

The problem was, neither of them had a leg to stand on. Most of what Wang Yiqi had said wasn’t even wrong.

Thinking back on it, Ying Ming raised his eyebrows slightly and shut his eyes with a lazy motion.

“Then let’s not bring it up. When someone finds out, they’ll find out.”

“Yeah.”

Shi Yi responded like it barely mattered.

Still, if he could get away with it, he really wouldn’t mind shaking that group up a little.

He tightened his arm slightly, only letting go once Ying Ming let out a soft grunt.

“What do you think Kou Jing and Wang Yiqi would say if they found out the two of us were sleeping together?”

Ying Ming didn’t even bother to open his eyes.

“Nothing good, that’s for sure.” The kind of couple that got everyone’s blessings clearly didn’t include something as strange as him and Shi Yi. Ying Ming found himself thinking back to when Wang Yiqi had warned him to keep his distance. It hadn’t meant much at the time, but now that it had all come true, the feeling it left behind was hard to describe, and far from pleasant.

Especially when that someone was Wang Yiqi.