Unfortunately, the two dating novices quickly found themselves stuck on the question of what exactly to do on their first date—

Ye Zhen thought it over: “How about a movie?”

Jiang Xiaoyi shook her head repeatedly: “No need, your home theater at the villa is better than any theater.”

“Then how about shopping? I’ll buy you something?”

“No need for that either. It’s not like I’m after your money.”

“How about dinner?”

Jiang Xiaoyi shook her head again: “I’m not that hungry, and honestly, your cooking is better than most restaurants anyway.”

……

The two of them racked their brains but couldn’t come up with anything particularly interesting to do. As they wandered, though, Jiang Xiaoyi and Ye Zhen found themselves unconsciously walking back toward the same shopping district they’d once wandered through in the parallel timeline—back then, Jiang Xiaoyi had tried to help Ye Zhen discover his own hobbies and interests here.

Now, revisiting this familiar place, Jiang Xiaoyi suddenly felt a playful urge—

“Ye Zhen, why don’t we go to that pottery studio from before? Today’s our first day together—how about we each make a small pottery piece for each other, as a keepsake?”

Saying this, Jiang Xiaoyi couldn’t resist shooting Ye Zhen a teasing look: “Just don’t steal some kid’s work this time.”

“……” Recalling the old incident, Ye Zhen looked visibly embarrassed, but the man’s composure held strong regardless. “I didn’t steal it, I was just borrowing it for a moment.”

“……”

Ye Zhen cleared his throat: “I’ll give it everything I’ve got this time. Last time was my first try, I lacked experience, but afterward I specifically had a male-virtue tutor walk me through the key techniques for pottery-making. This time, combining my aesthetic sensibility with the technique I’ve learned, I think I can genuinely produce a masterpiece.”

You said the exact same thing last time…

Still, better not to call him out on it—especially since Ye Zhen’s confidence right now clearly carried a hint of fishing for praise. The man fixed Jiang Xiaoyi with a bright, gleaming stare: “This time it’s a gift for you, so naturally I’ll put my heart and soul into making it the best it can be.”

……

Grand words aside, when it came to actually executing…

Ten minutes later, Ye Zhen stood in the pottery studio’s apron, both hands utterly at a loss, covered in clay, staring at the shapeless lump of clay spinning on the wheel in front of him, his face a picture of despair—

“I followed everything the tutor told me exactly. How did this happen?”

“Because just talking about it doesn’t actually do anything.” Jiang Xiaoyi glanced at the clay blob in front of Ye Zhen, holding back a laugh, then walked around behind him, deciding to give this somewhat hopeless boyfriend some hands-on, one-on-one guidance.

Every time Jiang Xiaoyi made pottery, she threw herself into it completely—she’d once devotedly coached a junior member in her college’s pottery club, and even back in the parallel timeline, she hadn’t been shy about giving Ye Zhen pointers either. But now, for some reason, maybe because their relationship had changed, even though they were now officially, legitimately a couple, Jiang Xiaoyi found she couldn’t focus with quite the same clear head.

It felt like no matter how she tried to just give instructions, it somehow came across as using teaching as an excuse to take liberties…

Jiang Xiaoyi, blushing, held Ye Zhen’s hands and guided him on pressure and posture, but for some reason—maybe once the ice had been broken and the relationship confirmed, people just became more brazen—this time when Ye Zhen looked at Jiang Xiaoyi, it was with an utterly unrestrained gaze. Jiang Xiaoyi was already leaning in close to him anyway, and that scorching stare of his practically made her want to flee, and worse still…

“At this point, your movement should be like this…”

Jiang Xiaoyi, relying on sheer willpower, managed to keep her explanation composed and calm—but this guy…

He actually went ahead and kissed Jiang Xiaoyi, just like that!

This nearly made Jiang Xiaoyi fling the clay right out of her hands. Her face flushed red, and she shot Ye Zhen a glare, lowering her voice in warning: “Ye Zhen, don’t do things unsuitable for children in public!”

Ye Zhen glanced around the pottery studio, and without a trace of guilt, said in a low laugh: “There aren’t any children here right now.”

As it happened, at that particular moment, there wasn’t a single child in the pottery studio—everyone else was either a solo pottery enthusiast, or, like Jiang Xiaoyi and Ye Zhen, a small couple on a date.

Jiang Xiaoyi’s face was burning, but she lowered her voice and pressed on: “Even so, that doesn’t mean you can just do that—right now I’m your teacher, and I’m seriously trying to teach you! What you just did is completely out of line!”

But the “problem student” being scolded, Ye Zhen, showed not the slightest hint of remorse—the man, seizing a moment when no one was watching, even swiftly planted another quick peck on the side of Jiang Xiaoyi’s face.

Bad students always come with plenty of extra tricks—Ye Zhen, this particular pottery-class delinquent, had no shortage of them either. While Jiang Xiaoyi was holding his hand to guide him for the lesson, he abandoned the clay altogether and instead turned the tables, grabbing her hand and gently scratching her palm, as if the same man who’d earlier been so insistent about not being able to work with gloves on suddenly had no such concerns at all.

Jiang Xiaoyi, aside from glaring at him with feigned outrage, seemed to have run out of ways to deal with Ye Zhen.

Was this really the behavior of a man raised on proper virtue?! Could a man trained in proper virtue really be this brazenly flirtatious?!

Fortunately, just as this “lesson” was becoming impossible to continue, a male voice broke the standoff between Jiang Xiaoyi and Ye Zhen—

“Ye Zhen? What a coincidence?”

Jiang Xiaoyi looked up, following the voice, and discovered the newcomer was Jiang Lin, standing beside a girl with long, chestnut-colored hair, the two of them intimately holding hands—clearly a couple as well.

Seeing Ye Zhen, Jiang Lin looked surprised too. He looked Ye Zhen over for a moment, then shifted his gaze to Jiang Xiaoyi, and then to the two of them sitting in their current suggestive posture, hands clasped together with obviously plenty of little touches going on—his expression turned amused—

“Ye Zhen, isn’t this your friend?”

Jiang Lin grinned mischievously: “Is this how you hang out with friends? You two seem really, really close! Must be super good friends!”

Having said this, he didn’t forget to turn to his own date: “Vicky, see, I told you—even though we’re just friends, we can totally hold hands too, other people do it all the time. After all, any close relationship starts out as friends first.”

“Let me introduce you—this is Ye Zhen, my friend. And the one holding hands with him is also Ye Zhen’s friend—same as us, we’re all just friends.”

Vicky was a print model Jiang Lin had recently gotten to know—tall, long-legged, with a killer figure and an angelic face, though clearly showing some signs of minor cosmetic work. Jiang Lin didn’t mind, though—as far as he was concerned, as long as his career stayed rock-solid, girlfriends could be as interchangeable as products off an assembly line.

This little model had pretty much everything going for her—the only downside was that the girl had rather large ambitions; they’d known each other for barely two weeks, and she’d already started subtly, and not so subtly, pressuring Jiang Lin to acknowledge her as his official girlfriend.

How could that possibly be allowed?

This man felt he could get away with plenty of things, but establishing an official relationship was the one thing he absolutely wouldn’t budge on.

Jiang Lin considered himself a man of principle—he never two-timed anyone, he insisted.

After all, so long as the relationship was never officially confirmed, it didn’t count as being a couple—it was just a friendship! At most, a somewhat closer friendship!

You could only have one girlfriend, but you could have countless friends! How could that possibly count as cheating!

Jiang Lin knew perfectly well he was a scoundrel, but he felt he was, at least, an honest, self-aware scoundrel, operating by his own clear set of rules.

But he hadn’t expected that Ye Zhen was apparently cut from the same scoundrel cloth as him.

Friends, huh?

Last time, Jiang Lin had already picked up on it—the entire time, Ye Zhen’s gaze had barely left that female companion of his. And now here they were again, in this suggestively cozy pottery-making pose—there was no way anyone with eyes couldn’t tell something was going on between these two!

He’d originally been planning to compliment Ye Zhen’s “friend” on her good sense, hoping Vicky might learn a thing or two from her example, but then he heard Ye Zhen cut him off with a serious expression—

“Not friends.”

Oh?

Jiang Lin’s interest was piqued—this Ye Zhen really was something else, turned out to be even more of a scoundrel than himself. Not long ago he’d at least still called her a friend, and now she wasn’t even that anymore? And to think this girl was actually putting up with it? He wondered if she had any equally open-minded girlfriends she could introduce him to!

But before Jiang Lin could even shoot Vicky a meaningful look to get her attention, he heard Ye Zhen continue—

“She’s my girlfriend.”???

Jiang Lin had no idea how the plot had veered so far off from the script he’d imagined in his head.

He looked at Ye Zhen in astonishment: “Weren’t you denying it was even a relationship not long ago? How did she suddenly rise to the top spot now?”

This companion of Ye Zhen’s hadn’t said a word—Jiang Lin had assumed she was easygoing, but it turned out she was actually a “professional hitwoman.” In just a few short days, she’d gone straight from nothing to official girlfriend! This girl was clearly no pushover!

But unfortunately, Ye Zhen’s answer once again shattered Jiang Lin’s entire worldview—

“I was still pursuing her before, so of course she was just a friend then.” Ye Zhen’s voice even carried a faint hint of smugness. “Now that I’ve won her over, of course she’s my girlfriend.”

Jiang Lin was stunned: “So it wasn’t her who worked her way up—it was you?”

Ye Zhen pressed his lips together, looking somewhat displeased: “What, is that illegal?”

Not illegal, not illegal at all, it was just… rather shocking…

Jiang Lin couldn’t help sizing Ye Zhen up again. In all honesty, whether in terms of looks or wealth, Ye Zhen genuinely had him beat by a notch. And Jiang Lin himself already had more than his fair share of admirers throwing themselves at him constantly—he found it hard to believe Ye Zhen hadn’t encountered the same. Yet here he was, passing up all those readily available potential girlfriends, actively pursuing someone instead?

Ye Zhen and Jiang Lin exchanged brief introductions of their respective dates, made some small talk, and then each went back to their own activities.

But for some reason, Jiang Lin kept feeling like Ye Zhen’s date’s gaze toward him carried something subtle, almost wary. Ye Zhen seemed to say something to her, and when she turned around and met Jiang Lin’s probing gaze, she gave him a look that seemed—slightly disdainful?

He’d never even met her before—when could he possibly have offended her?

Jiang Lin figured he must have imagined it, but on top of that, seeing how attentively Ye Zhen doted on his “newly won girlfriend,” he couldn’t help feeling curious—even as Vicky kept clinging to him, wanting to do pottery together, Jiang Lin found himself distracted, repeatedly glancing over at Ye Zhen and his girlfriend.

Within five minutes, Ye Zhen kissed his girlfriend’s cheek—she looked a bit bashful, but didn’t say anything, only pinched Ye Zhen’s hand with her clay-covered fingers in retaliation. Yet this germaphobe of a man didn’t get upset at all—instead, he broke into a delighted grin.

Not long after, when Jiang Lin looked over again, he saw that Ye Zhen had switched to embracing his girlfriend from behind, this man who clearly knew nothing about pottery confidently offering her all sorts of pointers with great conviction…

By the time Jiang Lin glanced over once more after a while, he found that Ye Zhen and his girlfriend had already gotten up to go wash their hands—and even for something as simple as washing their hands, the two of them were holding hands the entire way there. Jiang Lin even noticed that a few times, Ye Zhen’s girlfriend seemed to try, somewhat bashfully, to shake off his hand, only for Ye Zhen to laughingly pull it back each time. The two of them ended up looking like a pair of playful grade schoolers, swinging their joined hands all the way to the studio’s washing area…

This kind of relationship seemed almost embarrassingly childish, didn’t it?!

Jiang Lin couldn’t help glancing at Vicky sitting across from him. She looked up, her carefully made-up face instantly breaking into a customer-service-worthy five-star smile: “Yes, darling? What is it?”

This was ordinarily exactly the type Jiang Lin found most appealing—sexy yet demure—but for some reason, in this moment, he suddenly found it rather dull.

Especially five minutes later, when he spotted a paparazzo disguised as a passerby loitering outside the pottery studio, that sense of dullness only intensified.

He knew perfectly well this must have been arranged by Vicky herself—after all, as a newly debuted small-time model, she didn’t have nearly enough buzz or drawing power to warrant this kind of paparazzi tailing on her own. It was obviously Vicky who’d set this up ahead of time, hoping to hitch a ride on Jiang Lin’s fame, get photographed together, and trend as his rumored girlfriend.

In Jiang Lin’s view, love was nothing more than a fair exchange—he’d never once doubted this principle of his before, yet today, for some reason, he suddenly felt exhausted by it all.

Ye Zhen and his girlfriend, with their almost childlike, playing-house kind of romance—why did watching it make him feel, of all things, envious?

The way she looked at Ye Zhen, that unconscious way her eyes kept following him, clearly wasn’t driven by any external factor at all—it was purely genuine emotion, entirely unguarded.

Even though there was nothing overtly intimate happening between them, Jiang Lin found that every single gesture Ye Zhen made radiated a sense of genuine, heartfelt ease and happiness—it was an emotion powered by something remarkably pure.

And for the first time, Jiang Lin found himself yearning for that.

Jiang Lin suddenly felt his own life was rather meaningless. He no longer wanted to keep seeing Vicky like this, and he didn’t want to see any more Vivians, Marys, or Amys either.

For the first time in his life, Jiang Lin decided to change how he was living.

If even a man as terrible-tempered as Ye Zhen could win someone over like that, and Jiang Lin himself was even smoother-tongued than him—surely, once he changed, he too could find someone who’d genuinely love him for who he was?

Failing that, he could always pretend to be poor, and rely purely on his own personal charm—surely he wouldn’t fail to find pure, genuine love that way?

Having thought this through, Jiang Lin resolved to delete every single messy, ambiguous contact cluttering up his phone. From today on, he’d become a “poor man,” and win pure, genuine love through nothing but his own charisma!

After all, there was no way he was going to lose to Ye Zhen at anything!

He’d better pick up the pace—he was determined to send Ye Zhen a wedding invitation before Ye Zhen could ever send him one first!