Cheng Yao never expected that the chance to stand beside Qian Heng as an equal would come so soon—though not quite in the way she’d imagined.
She’d only just gotten back to Junheng from the café when Qian Heng called her on the internal line, asking her to come to his office.
“So, I heard from Bao Rui you went to see the legal aid client just now. Anything I should know?”
“Boss.”
Qian Heng avoided her gaze, ignoring the helplessness in her tone entirely. “I just called the legal aid center and spoke directly to the person who handled your client’s intake. He told me that while the registration form made the case sound simple, in reality…”
“Boss.” Cheng Yao cut him off, looking at him earnestly. “You said you’d stay completely out of this case. A gentleman’s word is worth a thousand pieces of gold, isn’t it.”
“…”
To this, Qian Heng had the audacity to say, without so much as blinking, “Oh, I’ve been a bit tired from work lately, sleeping poorly, so my memory’s been affected too. Did I say something like that?”
My friend, you didn’t just say it—you said it not long ago at all! Do you think you’re a goldfish with a seven-second memory? What a convincing performance!
Still, Qian Heng tried to salvage the situation. “Even if I said something like that, as your boss, there’s nothing wrong with keeping an eye on how your caseload is progressing.” He glanced at her. “Are you running into any difficulties right now?”
“No!” Cheng Yao said crisply.
“Really, none?”
“Really, none!”
“Good, then.” Qian Heng said solemnly. “Not that I have any interest in a case with such a small claim amount anyway.”
He clearly wanted to know how her case was going. He clearly wanted to ask if she was struggling. Why did some people have to be this roundabout about everything?
“Oh, right. I have a family dinner tonight, I need to attend. Can’t be with you.”
Cheng Yao blinked, then belatedly realized Qian Heng was informing her of his schedule.
She nodded with a smile to show she understood, then tilted her head. “Anything else, boss?”
“No.” Qian Heng stared at her. “So is there anything else you need to say to me?”
“Me?” Cheng Yao pointed at herself. “Nothing from me either.”
“Then you can go.”
She hadn’t gotten far from his office before her phone buzzed with a WeChat message from him.
“I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”
Simple, ordinary-looking words, and yet Cheng Yao could read a wealth of unspoken complaint packed into them.
This tsundere man might as well have hung a banner across his forehead reading “I already told you I’m not sleeping well and you didn’t even ask why, you don’t care about me at all.”
Struck by a sudden mischievous impulse, Cheng Yao replied with an outrageously teasing line: “Want me to sleep with you tonight, then?”
After sending it, silence. No response came from Qian Heng’s end. A while later, she heard from Bao Rui that he’d gone out for a court hearing.
Naturally, she soon forgot about this little exchange. She had her own work to focus on. Li Mengting’s loan dispute case had already been ruled on—after Cheng Yao’s “hints” had prompted the opposing party to shore up their evidence chain, the first-instance ruling had, unsurprisingly, gone against Li Mengting, who was ordered to fulfill her repayment obligation. Meanwhile, the property division lawsuit Cheng Yao was representing Li Mengting in against Zhang Hao, regarding assets accumulated during their cohabitation, had also been filed.
Everything was proceeding smoothly, entirely under Cheng Yao’s control.
Then, at noon, her father called.
“Yao Yao.” Father Cheng said. “Free tonight?”
Since Qian Heng had plans, she happened to have the evening free. “Yeah, I am.”
“Your mom and I are coming to A City tonight. Have dinner with us.”
Cheng Yao took him at his word without a second thought. “Sure! It’s been so long since I’ve seen you two!”
Father Cheng, however, showed not the slightest interest in reciprocating this family warmth, launching straight ahead. “Dress nice, wear your most expensive outfit, and really bring out your beauty, your radiance, your charm! Show off the excellent genes of the Cheng family in full!” Ever the tightwad, he now offered generously, “If you don’t have anything suitable, no problem, I’ll transfer you a few tens of thousands of yuan, buy whatever you like! Whether I win tomorrow depends entirely on this!”
Cheng Yao was thoroughly confused. “Huh?”
What on earth was this about?
Father Cheng grew increasingly excited. “You remember that eccentric classmate of mine, right?”
“Yeah, I remember. What about him?”
“Last time your dad went head to head with him arguing at the reunion, neither of us came out on top, both evenly matched, no clear winner. Unacceptable! Between him and me, it has to be one or the other—it’s a matter of life and death! Since we can’t settle it directly ourselves, there’s only one contest left.” Father Cheng raised his voice. “And that is—competing over our children!”
“…”
Cheng Yao was well aware that in this day and age, parents started comparing their kids from kindergarten onward—you take your kid to piano lessons today, I’ll take mine to violin lessons tomorrow; you take your kid to Southeast Asia this year, I’ll take mine to Northern Europe next year…
She just hadn’t expected middle-aged men to have such a terrifying competitive streak over the next generation.
Father Cheng delivered his closing statement over the phone: “Anyway, whether you feel like coming tonight or not, you’re coming. Also, wear heels at least ten centimeters high! The kind that dazzles the room the second you walk in, completely overwhelms the competition! I heard that eccentric classmate’s son is a hundred and eighty-seven centimeters tall! I know you’re a girl, but we can’t lose too badly on presence either!”
“…”
After hanging up, Cheng Yao was left utterly speechless. She never imagined she’d one day become a pawn in her own father’s power struggle.
But complaints aside, Cheng Yao understood how deeply her father cared about winning against this particular old classmate, and she wasn’t about to slack off for tonight’s gathering. The moment she got off work, she rushed home to get properly dressed up. After much deliberation, she picked out a red dress she’d worn once before to her old firm’s annual party, paired it with a black coat and ten-centimeter stilettos, and applied light makeup.
Normally at work she wore professional suits, and even on weekends she usually opted for loose, casual clothes—she rarely had occasion to wear this red dress. Putting it on now, she realized just how figure-revealing it was, its curves fully on display. No wonder her former colleagues had teased that it was a “straight-man slayer” at the annual party.
Still, this was just her father’s rival dinner. Dressed like this, she risked stealing the show inappropriately, and she considered changing. But with her father calling repeatedly to hurry her along, and considering the evening rush-hour traffic, she gritted her teeth and just headed out in her heels as she was.
The dinner was at an extremely luxurious three-Michelin-star restaurant, serving French cuisine, with her father treating and a private room booked. By the time Cheng Yao arrived, her father was already seated inside, primed for battle. Only then did she realize that her own dress was nothing exaggerated at all compared to her father—he was the truly outrageous one. Anyone unfamiliar with the situation might have mistaken this for a matchmaking mixer for wealthy middle-aged divorcees.
Father Cheng had carefully styled his hair in the current fashionable cut, wore a crisp suit, and on closer inspection had even had his eyebrows shaped. If Cheng Yao hadn’t known this classmate of his was male, she might have thought he was here to meet an old flame.
Cheng Yao exchanged a few words with her father before getting a call from Lin Fengjuan. She stepped out of the room to take it, briefly discussing some evidentiary details with her. Just as she hung up and was about to head back in, she suddenly heard Qian Heng’s voice.
“Cheng Yao.”
She turned and saw Qian Heng standing behind her, brow slightly furrowed.
“Oh? What a coincidence?” Cheng Yao said, not suspecting anything. “Is your dinner here tonight too?”
“Mm.”
She stepped closer, but Qian Heng instinctively stepped back. His expression seemed conflicted, as though he wanted to stare at her yet was forcing himself to look away.
Despite his composed expression, what came out of his mouth was full of accusation. “I’m gone for just one night and you show up dressed like this to meet someone else at a restaurant?” he said, his mood visibly darkening. “Seems like I really can’t afford to look away for even a night.”
“No, no!” Cheng Yao waved her hands frantically. “It’s not what you think! I’m here with my dad!”
“Right, and apart from your father, there’s another man too, isn’t there.”
“Well, yes, but it’s my dad’s old classmate, and his son. No one else.” Cheng Yao felt oddly like she’d been caught cheating red-handed, and hurried to explain. “Don’t get worked up, this absolutely isn’t some secret matchmaking dinner arranged by my dad and his classmate, because my dad and this classmate are actually rivals. My dad can’t stand him—says the guy’s incredibly eccentric, and if hitting people weren’t illegal, he’d have punched him ages ago! Tonight he made me dress up like this just to compete with him over our kids!”
Qian Heng’s expression eased slightly, though his tone remained lofty and aloof. “Me, worked up? Why would I, Qian Heng, need to get worked up? I was just asking casually.”
“Right, right, you’re just asking casually.” Cheng Yao added, playing along, “And knowing how extreme this classmate of my dad’s is, his son must be some kind of extraordinary specimen too, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in five thousand years of history. Even if I somehow lost my mind and fell for his son, my dad would never allow me to marry into a family like that anyway!” She blinked, adding shamelessly, “Besides, with you as the standard, every other man looks like garbage to me! I’m not blind!”
She checked the time. “Ah, it’s getting late, I should go eat. I’ll message you later.”
“Cheng Yao.”
Just as she turned to leave, Qian Heng called her back, tilting his chin up with perfect composure. “As a reward for your good taste, I’ll let you kiss me goodbye before you go.”
“…”
“Forget it, you’re too slow to react. I’ll just do it myself.”
Before Cheng Yao could respond, Qian Heng leaned in and kissed her.
The kiss over, he glanced at his watch without so much as a flicker of expression. “I should head in too.”
The two of them walked side by side, and, as it turned out, their private rooms happened to be in the same direction. Cheng Yao followed close behind him, her face still burning, her heart still pounding from the unexpected kiss.
Except—except her heart was about to beat even harder.
Especially the moment she watched Qian Heng walk into a private room she recognized all too well…
Wait… wait a second!
A powerful sense of foreboding struck her.
Her father’s eccentric classmate—was he surnamed Qian, wasn’t he?
…
At almost that exact moment, her father’s furious voice rang out from inside the room: “Aren’t you that penniless little gigolo who conned my daughter into moving bricks in Dongguan and then cheated on her?!”
Followed immediately by an equally furious voice from Qian Heng’s father: “Don’t you dare slander my son! My son, Qian Zhan’s son, needs to move bricks in Dongguan? My son’s annual income exceeds a hundred million, does he need anyone supporting him? Besides, my son has a girlfriend—a lovely, well-put-together young lady who chased after him for ages before he reluctantly agreed!”
“Doesn’t your son have some kind of exhibitionist complex or something?! Coming to deceive my daughter for money and affection—didn’t the news say some high-income earners under too much pressure need special outlets to relieve stress?”
…
Cheng Yao braced herself and walked in. Qian Heng looked equally stunned by this surreal turn of events, standing frozen with his lips pressed together.
Cheng Yao cleared her throat. “Dad…”
Her arrival emboldened her father. “Yao Yao, perfect timing, take a good look—isn’t this the heartless bastard who two-timed you behind your back?!”
Qian Heng’s father was about to argue his case when he caught sight of Cheng Yao and froze. “You? Aren’t you the little Cheng who pined after my son for so long before finally winning him over???”
“…”
For a moment, Cheng Yao considered making a run for it—or stepping outside to ask directions to the nearest crematorium.
Fortunately, Qian Heng stepped up and took charge of the situation. He looked at Cheng Yao’s father. “Uncle, let me properly introduce myself. I’m Qian Heng, partner at Junheng Law Firm, Cheng Yao’s boss, and also Cheng Yao’s boyfriend. There’s clearly been some misunderstanding earlier, but Cheng Yao and I are very much in love.” He walked over and took her hand. “I hope we can have both families’ blessing.”
“…”
Both fathers wore complicated, inscrutable expressions, staring at Cheng Yao and Qian Heng, lost in thought.
Qian Heng’s father recovered first, saying with obvious implication, “This is fate between the children, how could I possibly interfere? Besides, though the father’s eyesight may not be great, the child’s own eyes are sharp and clear—she saw right away that our Qian family carries superior genes. Though just a young girl, taking the initiative to pursue love shows real courage. I admire that!”
“…”
Just as Cheng Yao expected her own father to strongly object, he cleared his throat instead, his face suddenly taking on a calculating smile. “I have one correction to make—my daughter absolutely did not pursue your son. If anything, it was your son who worked very hard to win her over, even renting that cheap little apartment on purpose just to engineer a chance to live near my daughter, get close through convenient proximity, let feelings develop over time.”
Father Cheng laid out his analysis with great confidence. “I bet even my daughter getting hired at Junheng was your son’s doing behind the scenes—clearly he was into her from the start. Only, well, like father like son, he’s clever enough to make it seem like she fell for him first when really it was him wanting her all along… Of course, I understand where your son’s coming from. My daughter takes after me, after all, quite the charmer—hard for a man to resist, so he had to try every trick in the book. Completely understandable…”
“No way, it was your daughter who pursued him!”
“It was your son who pursued her!”
…
Neither father would budge, and eventually the argument devolved into a drinking contest.
But as the drinks flowed, things took an even stranger turn.
Father Cheng, hiccuping, declared, “Qian Zhan, so proud of yourself, aren’t you? What did you do to me back then as classmates? And now look—still the same, haha! Someday your son’s going to have to call me Dad, you know that? Did you ever think you’d end up here?”
…
Cheng Yao couldn’t watch anymore. “Dad, you’re drunk.”
But Father Cheng insisted, “I’m not drunk.” Ignoring Qian Heng’s father’s expression entirely, he practically put his hands on his hips and cackled. “Haha, something this satisfying, I could keep drinking for another five hundred years!”
Qian Heng’s father protested, displeased. “Don’t get too happy too fast. What goes around comes around! Don’t forget how you used to beg me to let you copy my homework.”
“And you had the nerve to say no?! I treated you to so many meals, cooked them myself! And you wouldn’t even let me copy your homework?”
“I’m a man of principle, I could never condone or enable plagiarism. Though I never let you copy, I hinted at the solution methods so much I might as well have told you the answer outright. And you still couldn’t figure it out. That’s on you for being slow—can’t blame me for that.” Qian Heng’s father, clearly also drunk, was getting more and more ridiculous. “But now your daughter’s with my son, so at least the next generation’s intelligence is in our family’s hands. You should thank me for that, really—it’s your redemption!”
…
In the end, both fathers, unwilling to let Qian Heng and Cheng Yao interrupt their trip down memory lane, hastily shooed the two of them out of the room.
What kind of bitter enemies was this, exactly? Clearly two people who’d secretly cared about each other since their youth, who’d treated one another as rivals out of youthful pride, all while quietly respecting each other deep down.
Qian Heng took Cheng Yao’s hand and went ahead to settle the bill.
Cheng Yao tugged at his sleeve. “No need, my dad’s treating tonight.”
Qian Heng gave her a cool look. “Hasn’t your dad basically already claimed me as his son? For that alone, should I really let him pay?”
“…”
“There’s a heavy metal live show tonight, a small niche band, performing underground in a bar.” As the two of them left the restaurant, Qian Heng suddenly spoke up, as if it were nothing, though he seemed a bit uneasy. “You mentioned once that you liked heavy metal.”
Cheng Yao’s eyes lit up. “Which band?”
“Red Fish.”
“Oh! I actually really like them. Should we go?” She looked at him expectantly.
“Mm.”
Though traffic was heavy, it did nothing to dampen Cheng Yao’s excitement. She sat in the car chattering away nonstop.
The bar turned out to be extremely hard to find, its underground performance space literally underground, like Alice’s rabbit hole. Qian Heng exchanged a simple nod with the bar’s manager, clearly an old acquaintance, and was quickly led to an open area where a cellar-like entrance opened up, revealing a staircase leading down.
Cheng Yao found it hard to believe just how comfortable Qian Heng seemed with all of this, moving through it like it was second nature. She followed him down the stairs and found an entirely new world waiting below.
Stage-like laser lights, a boiling atmosphere, heavy metal rock music, a crowd letting loose completely—decadent, yet pulsing with a strange vitality.
The show had already begun.
The dance floor was crowded with wild, uninhibited figures.
Screams, the clash of metal, drumbeats—all mixing together, hammering at everyone’s eardrums.
Cheng Yao quickly lost herself in the atmosphere.
For over twenty years, she’d lived a disciplined, orderly life, following in her sister’s footsteps, going through the motions—but only now did she realize that somewhere in her blood ran a rebellious streak.
She wasn’t Cheng Xi. She and Cheng Xi were different. She was simply herself.
As the music reached its climax, the atmosphere blazing white-hot, Cheng Yao stared straight at Qian Heng and did something bold.
She grabbed his tie, and, ignoring his slightly furrowed brow and startled eyes, rose on her toes and kissed him fiercely, almost aggressively.
When she finally let him go, Cheng Yao felt a flush of embarrassment, though thankfully she could blame it on the excitement of the underground show. She turned her head aside, pretending to watch the stage. “The reason I got into heavy metal in the first place was wanting to step out of my sister’s shadow. Because she’s so accomplished, everyone always compares us, and she’s the gentle, well-behaved, sensible type, so I felt like I was supposed to naturally be that way too. I used to think we were the same—she liked soft piano music, so I should too. Until I heard heavy metal rock…”
“I used to think I’d like guys like Xue Ming…”
Before she could finish, Qian Heng cut her off dangerously, his expression darkening. “Xue Ming?”
She turned back to look him in the eye. “Until I met you.”
The word “you” had barely left her lips before it vanished into Qian Heng’s kiss.
This time, Qian Heng pressed her against the wall, kissing her without restraint amid the roar of heavy metal music.
This kiss was unlike any of his previous ones.
Fierce, thick with masculine intensity, like a taking, like a claiming, like an invasion.
Every cell in his body seemed to declare ownership and control. He caught her lower lip between his teeth, biting gently, drawing back, carrying desire, carrying provocation. Cheng Yao found herself unable to meet his gaze directly, and instinctively raised her hand to cover his eyes. But before her hand reached him, it was caught, still hovering beside his face. He released her lips and instead pressed a soft kiss to her fingertips.
“Bringing up another man’s name in front of me?” Qian Heng said with a smile. “Seems like that’s my fault. Letting your mind wander like that.”
Cheng Yao felt a jolt of electricity where his lips had touched her fingers—it surged through her body, made her spine tingle, left her frozen in a way that felt foreign and unsettling. She pulled her hand back, telling herself, if she couldn’t cover his eyes, she’d just cover her own.
But the moment her hand covered her own eyes, Qian Heng caught it again, pinning it firmly against the wall, forcing her to look at him directly.
“Blushing already, just from that?”
Cheng Yao’s face flushed red, her eyes darting away.
Qian Heng, however, showed no mercy. Emboldened by the noise and shifting crowd around them at the live show, he pressed in closer. “Aren’t you the rebellious girl who’s different from Cheng Xi? Does the rebellious type blush this easily?”
Cheng Yao felt like she wanted to leap up and flee on the spot. She realized only now how gentle Qian Heng normally was with her—he never fully unleashed his presence, which was why she’d always felt, deep down, that she could hold her own against him.
In reality, the moment he let his own intensity loose without restraint, she could do nothing but retreat in complete defeat.
Unaware of any of this, Qian Heng leaned in close to her ear, his voice roughened with something unfamiliar. “And also—who was it that said tonight she’d sleep with me?”
Cheng Yao felt like she might explode on the spot.
At that moment, he leaned in and kissed her again, his tongue pressing forcefully past her lips, tracing the shape of her mouth, chasing her tongue.
Only when she was on the verge of losing her breath entirely did he finally release her.
“Rebellious girl or good, obedient student—either way, you’re you.” Qian Heng smiled. “And I like you.”
Just that one sentence, and all the loneliness, grievance, and unspeakable, tangled emotions Cheng Yao had carried since her teenage years, from constantly being compared to Cheng Xi, seemed to lift entirely, released all at once.
For so long, she had quietly hoped that someone would come along and tell her she was special, that she was one of a kind, that simply being herself was enough.
She had never imagined that Qian Heng would turn out to be that person.