Whether she missed him was difficult to say, but embarrassment was certainly real.
On the way home, Ji Mingshu angrily stared out the window, ignoring Cen Sen.. Several times, he tried to initiate conversation, but she resisted responding, only silently arguing in her mind.
However, Cen Sen received a call from Jiang Che during the journey and didn’t avoid her, directly using Bluetooth speakerphone.
She perked up her ears to listen. Although neither of them mentioned Cen Yang, she still heard the familiar words “Borui” and “Haichuan.”
After Cen Sen finished the call, Ji Mingshu couldn’t help but speak first, “I read a financial newspaper on the plane. It said Jingcheng Capital intends to acquire Borui. Jingcheng Capital is your partnership with Jiang Che, right?”
“Mmm.”
Ji Mingshu asked again, “Then… have you planned this acquisition for a long time?”
They were approaching the ETC exit at the airport expressway toll station. Several cars were queuing, so Cen Sen slowed down, seeming to ponder, “Not that long. I only started planning after I returned to China last year.”
That’s not long?
“Then… was Cen Yang intercepting that billion-yuan investment also part of your plan?”
Actually, during the flight, Ji Mingshu had been thinking about this question. She had always heard people say that Cen Sen was skilled and exceptionally capable, but was that capability just about frantically cleaning up messes after being intercepted by someone who’d just returned to the country? Thinking carefully, it didn’t make sense.
Just as Ji Mingshu was mentally envisioning Cen Sen carrying the whole team and manipulating everyone in the palm of his hand, Cen Sen poured cold water on her imagination: “No, it wasn’t.”
“…”
Never mind then.
Cen Sen added methodically, “He’s not worth my planning.”
As he said this, he looked straight ahead, his expression detached. His side profile had smooth, clean lines. Though he was simply in a normal driving posture, he somehow gave off a sense of composed confidence.
Ji Mingshu turned to look at him and was unexpectedly captivated for a few seconds. Her fingers played with the flower petals as her heart raced.
After quite a while, she came back to her senses and casually looked out the window. Seeing from the car window that Cen Sen was concentrating on driving, she silently took out her phone and quickly typed a line of text, the corners of her mouth unconsciously turning upward.
Ji Mingshu: [Wuwuwu, when my Cen Sen gets all alpha, no other man stands a chance!]
Jiang Chun: [?]
Jiang Chun: [Randomly distributing dog food outside of designated times and places—red card warning issued once.]
Gu Kaiyang: [Ji Mingshu, you’ve changed.]
Gu Kaiyang: [You used to say he was annoyingly arrogant.]
Jiang Chun: [Because she’s now mutated into Mrs. Cen Mingshu!]
Ji Mingshu: […]
Ji Mingshu: [I brought gifts for both of you. Think carefully.]
[Jiang Chun recalled a message] x2
[Gu Kaiyang recalled a message] x2
How realistic 🙂
Ji Mingshu hadn’t noticed that during the few minutes she was chatting, Cen Sen had already turned to look at her three times.
Stopping at a traffic light, Cen Sen suddenly asked in a slow voice, “Are you chatting with Cen Yang?”
“?”
“What are you thinking about?”
Ji Mingshu’s mind was full of question marks. Without thinking, she forthrightly showed Cen Sen the chat dialogue.
Cen Sen did look, and before Ji Mingshu could react, he reached out and scrolled up.
[Wuwuwu, when my Cen Sen gets all alpha, no other man stands a chance!]
Seeing this sentence, Cen Sen raised his eyebrow slightly, then nodded subtly and continued driving.
…?
Ji Mingshu was momentarily stunned, somehow detecting an emotion that could be described as pleasure on his expressionless face.
Reunion after a short separation is like a new marriage.
That night, the lights at Mingshui Mansion stayed on all night.
Ji Mingshu experienced firsthand what it meant to be “alpha.” When she woke up the next morning, lying in bed, she felt particularly serene yet world-weary.
Previously, Cen Sen would clean up the trash after getting up, but since mentioning having a baby, the house had never again been stocked with those contraceptive items destined to become trash.
However, a baby didn’t seem to come so easily with one strike. Ji Mingshu’s periods had been very punctual these past couple of months.
Ji Mingshu had begun to harbor small doubts about her physique, but Cen Sen didn’t seem to be in a hurry at all.
This directly led Ji Mingshu to strongly suspect—he didn’t really want a baby; he just wanted to enjoy himself.
Her suspicion wasn’t without evidence. After stopping contraception, this dog of a man’s enthusiasm and endurance for physical activity increased by a whole level. Before, she was only occasionally tormented to death and back; now she was tormented to life and death every time.
Early in the morning, seeing Cen Sen come out of the bathroom wearing a neat white shirt and suit, his tie meticulously done, with the tie clip she had given him attached to the side—the very picture of refined elegance—she lay in bed and couldn’t help but weakly curse, “Beast in gentleman’s clothing!”
Hearing this, Cen Sen turned back, walked to the bedside to tuck her in, smoothed her disheveled long hair, kissed her on the lips, and calmly admitted, “Mmm, now I’m in gentleman’s clothing.”
—And a beast at night.
Ji Mingshu couldn’t resist kicking him.
“Don’t move. I just applied medicine for you.”
Cen Sen caught her ankle, acting as naturally as if they were having a casual household conversation.
Ji Mingshu was so angry she couldn’t speak for quite a while.
Fortunately, Cen Sen knew when to stop. “I’m going to the office. You rest well at home today.”
After standing up, he seemed to remember something and leaned down again, whispering two words in Ji Mingshu’s ear.
He certainly knew how to focus on what mattered. Upon hearing those words, Ji Mingshu’s accumulated anger dissipated instantly. Though still somewhat sulky, she took the initiative to wrap her arms around his neck and kissed him.
Although Cen Sen had instructed her to rest well at home, Ji Mingshu couldn’t relax when she thought about all the unfinished design work on her hands.
Moreover, during dinner last night, she had a good discussion with Cen Sen about that documentary program. After careful consideration, she had still given the producer an affirmative answer.
The program was eventually named “Old Street Impressions” and would be broadcast as a documentary with narration. The designers would only appear to introduce their renovation projects, with limited screen time.
This was fundamentally different from “Design Home.” “Design Home” was more about recording than designing, while this program was more about designing than recording.
In late June and early July, the main building of Junyi Collection, a designer brand hotel under the Junyi Group, was completed, and the decoration work officially began.
At this stage, designers didn’t need to be hands-on. If time allowed, they could occasionally visit the site to offer guidance; if time didn’t allow, remote supervision wasn’t a problem either.
Ji Mingshu’s time didn’t really allow for it, as she had already thrown herself wholeheartedly into the challenge of the new “Old Street Impressions” project.
Initially, when the producer told Ji Mingshu they wanted to recreate Shanghai’s charm, she thought the renovation location would require a business trip to Shanghai. She didn’t expect it to be at Shanghai Street in the capital.
Shanghai Street was hidden in plain sight with an excellent geographical location, but due to various historical reasons, neither complete relocation nor proper architectural preservation had been achieved.
The old public housing they were going to renovate was one of the few already relocated buildings on Shanghai Street—a three-story Western-style building whose dilapidated exterior couldn’t hide the Republican-era charm.
This renovation involved both interior and exterior work. The exterior focused on restoration, and since it involved wall structure and other professional issues, the production team had invited renowned architects from the industry.
The interior renovation was completed by Ji Mingshu and several other interior designers, plus the architects’ cooperation.
Initially, the production team estimated that the renovation would take two months, but they greatly underestimated its difficulty.
Moreover, the production team was somewhat impulsive. Originally, they had agreed to renovate an uninhabited old building for exhibition purposes, but the producer and scriptwriter suddenly said, “It’s not warm enough, not humane enough.”
So they made a snap decision and reached an agreement with relevant departments to also include the neighboring building full of elderly and disabled residents.
When Ji Mingshu first heard this news, her mind was racing with a herd of camels, and she was ready to drop everything and let whoever wanted to do it take over. But the producer reasoned with her and appealed to her emotions, and somehow she ended up agreeing.
Due to the last-minute increase in tasks, everyone spent the entire summer on this project, only managing to complete about two-thirds.
By the time the project was officially completed in late autumn, Ji Mingshu felt like she had been thoroughly renovated.
The uninhabited building was easier to renovate, but the inhabited one was truly headache-inducing. Every day, she felt like she could hear ten thousand chickens, ducks, and geese chattering, as if she had returned to a small farm in her dreams.
Residents were unwilling to remove their illegally built structures and fought fiercely over half a square meter of public space—these were all from a world completely different from Ji Mingshu’s usual life.
She had only heard before that poverty limits imagination, but now she discovered that wealth also limits imagination.
She had to admit that this temporarily added renovation plan had hit her weak spot squarely. She really wasn’t very good at putting herself in others’ shoes to make designs that were close to life.
But no matter how difficult, everything eventually came to a satisfactory conclusion. By the end of filming, Ji Mingshu seemed to have gained many insights she hadn’t had before.
The renovation delay caused several follow-up problems, such as the TV station’s broadcast schedule being inflexible.
With no choice, post-production had to work at a frantic pace. A week after the renovation was completed, the promotional video was already online.
Ji Mingshu quietly reposted the official promotional video, thinking it was just a formality. However, after suddenly resurfacing after nearly half a year of silence, her popularity data remained very impressive.
The main reason was that her reappearance was perfectly timed. Recently, a well-known rich lady blogger who occasionally recorded vlogs showing off bags, watches, and wardrobes had been exposed. The plot had twisted again and again, causing a huge commotion on Weibo and various forums for three days.
It started when this rich lady blogger was unboxing a Hermès bag and a Chanel bag serving as a background prop was questioned by a little fan who thought the pattern was wrong. As a result, the little fan was ganged up on by other die-hard fans.
Feeling indignant, the little fan persisted in finding various evidence that the Chanel bag was suspicious and submitted it to relevant blogs.
The news that the rich lady blogger carried fake bags spread, and she shifted the blame, saying the Chanel bag was a gift from a friend, and even implied on her alt account that the gift-giver was a certain “plastic sister” who had already left social media.
The sister had a fiery temper and was drawn out of retirement. After clarifying that she hadn’t given any fake goods, she used her main account to expose the rich lady for faking her educational background and being kept by a wealthy businessman, directly triggering a three-day-long drama filled with fans defending their idol and onlookers digging up dirt.
Ji Mingshu neither knew nor cared about such matters that had nothing to do with her, but gossip consumers could easily lump them together!
[Among those with fake rich lady personas online, I only recognize the CEO’s wife.]
[Fake rich ladies show off bags, watches, and wardrobes every day. A real rich lady is doing public welfare renovations.]
[Please don’t hype up every third-rate escort as a socialite anymore, okay? The CEO’s wife hasn’t even been hyped yet. Please quietly be silent.]
Other bloggers who didn’t get along with the exposed rich lady blogger also came out with revelations:
[Not in the same league. Like comparing the moon and dirt.]
[The CEO’s wife has more than 700 Hermès bags. How could she possibly make an unboxing video for just one Kelly?]
[Have you heard of Bochu Tianhua? The penthouse owner’s surname is Ji. Look it up.]
Ji Mingshu unexpectedly gained a wave of attention and received nearly a thousand “blood letters” from people wanting to see her more than 700 Hermès bags. She was a bit confused and only vaguely understood the whole story after Jiang Chun explained it to her.
Gu Kaiyang, working in magazine media, was good at catching trends. “You could make a vlog, casually filming around. Isn’t that documentary you recorded about to air? You could promote it at the same time.”
Ji Mingshu didn’t know how Gu Kaiyang could come up with such a monumentally bad idea as making a vlog to openly show off wealth. Just thinking about it made her feel like she was suffocating from embarrassment.
However, not everything Gu Kaiyang said was without merit, such as promoting the documentary.
She didn’t want to become immensely popular or reach the pinnacle of her life, but after spending a full four to five months filming, it would inevitably be disappointing if no one watched or paid attention to their hard work.
So after resting for two days, she asked Zhou Jiaheng to find a whole team—to help her record a video.
…
“I’ve always been quite poor at home design. I only found out that the plan had changed when filming began, adding the residential building renovation design.”
“At first, I was quite disappointed because many times I don’t understand the true needs of the residents. I even always thought that since I wasn’t good at it, I didn’t need to understand this part.”
“But during this renovation, I encountered many things that moved me. For example, one household had a mistress with limited mobility, and another had an elderly person with Alzheimer’s. Interior design at such times must completely serve the homeowners’ daily lives. It’s not only artistic design that constitutes interior design; a life with warmth is also a kind of interior design.”
…
This video was only three minutes and forty seconds long, but it was divided into three sections.
One part was Ji Mingshu’s design insights on protective renovation, another part was some reflections on the residential building renovation, and the third part was solid promotion for the documentary.
She was good at making full use of resources, even mentioning at the end that the Junyi Collection, which would trial operation at the end of the year, also featured her design work.
Afraid that no one would watch, Ji Mingshu followed Gu Kaiyang’s suggestion and set up a repost giveaway.
She wasn’t very familiar with giveaway trends and feared that offering too little would seem stingy. After some thought, she posted: [Repost to win: one person will receive a Hermès Birkin, ten people will have their shopping carts cleared, and one hundred people will receive thousand-yuan red packets.]
When Gu Kaiyang saw the post she had quietly published, he immediately sent her a row of question marks: [Sister, isn’t this a bit too extravagant?]
Ji Mingshu: […Is it?]
Even more extravagant things were to come. The Junyi official account immediately reposted, adding another prize: one person would receive lifetime free stays at any Junyi hotel.
The comments exploded instantly.
[This is practically giving away a house.]
[Junyi Shuiyunjian private hot spring suite is 8,999 per night. Is that your house’s price range?]
[Is the official account some reincarnated bootlicker? Is the CEO himself using it?]