While navigating the hotel corridor in search of his room with Du Junyuan leaning on her arm, Hu Ke’er’s brain was still operating in a haze, dimly thinking: what on earth kind of assignment had she taken on?

The minor celebrity had fixed Hu Ke’er with an expression that said “are you out of your mind” — not just flustered, but carrying a distinct accusation that she had ruined something carefully cultivated: “Who are you?”

Hu Ke’er’s expression was even more earnest, and she made something up on the spot: “I’m — Director Du’s assistant, coming to check on him.”

The minor celebrity was somewhat skeptical and couldn’t help glancing over her briefly before turning instinctively to Du Junyuan: “Director Du, what do you think…”

The tone invited him to weigh in, and her voice had gone as soft as water.

It had an almost eerie similarity to Zhao Yingyao.

Hu Ke’er didn’t know if all men were drawn to that breathless, yielding type, but she genuinely wanted to roll her eyes. Her peripheral gaze had also just taken in the dwindling distance between the two of them — and then that remarkably present pair of eyes landed on her, and something tightened inexplicably in her chest. She instinctively turned her head to escape the look.

And then she heard him say, in a measured exhale: “I could use a hand.”

The breath in Hu Ke’er’s chest went still.

The minor celebrity looked at her, delighted and vindicated, ready to announce: “Then I’ll come with you—”

“Little assistant. Come here.”

Du Junyuan’s voice was low and rich, but carried, inexplicably, a sense of warmth just barely held in check — especially now that he’d been drinking, when the huskiness was especially pronounced.

Hu Ke’er’s fingertips dug involuntarily into her palm, but with the other party still watching, the performance had to be seen through. She steeled herself, called out an acknowledgment, and forced her feet to move with studied composure into the elevator beside him.

With the minor celebrity watching, visibly dissatisfied and looking ready to stamp her foot, Hu Ke’er swallowed and, going with the momentum, pressed closer to Du Junyuan’s side.

— The elevator doors slid shut in a stand-off of mutual staring.

The car began its slow ascent, and the air around them seemed to go completely, suddenly still. The person beside her said nothing, but the heavy fragrance of alcohol quickly permeated the space, drifting to her nose, making Hu Ke’er’s breath catch, almost without her permission.

She had completely failed to anticipate how small and enclosed this space would feel once the elevator closed.

The person beside her was breathing audibly, and even the warmth radiating from them was perceptible. The silence felt almost frightening to Hu Ke’er, and her heart wouldn’t stop pounding.

Like — what was this man doing?

Why wasn’t he saying a single word?

And more importantly — why had she followed him in the first place?!

It was pure goodwill, pure altruism, right? Just a case of being overly helpful by nature — nothing else to it.

Yes, yes, exactly. That was all.

Hu Ke’er swallowed involuntarily, her gaze drifting unfocused to nowhere in particular, but still couldn’t stop herself from peeking sideways. She was racking her brain trying to come up with something to say, her pulse still jumping unevenly, when she happened to glance up and noticed that Du Junyuan’s expression was slightly tight, and for a fraction of a second, his brow drew in almost imperceptibly.

Very subtle. But she caught it with surprising sharpness. She paused, then asked directly: “…Are you feeling unwell?”

Du Junyuan glanced at her, and after a moment his gaze dropped. He replied, with great evenness: “I’m fine.”

Hu Ke’er’s lashes shifted.

She had watched that beer-bellied man pour drink after drink into him at the banquet — Du Junyuan had been drinking mostly red wine, but had kept accepting the white baijiu too. Mixing spirits like that had to feel terrible. The thought made her frown unconsciously. She asked, with some indignation: “That man — why did he keep making you drink?”

Du Junyuan looked down at her.

Hu Ke’er’s face was tilted up, her eyes clear and dark, her confusion entirely unguarded.

Still young, he thought, and smiled faintly. His words were brief: “Board member sent by an investment firm. Trying to put me in my place.”

It was the strategic investment arm of the internet conglomerate that had once attempted a hostile takeover — never successful, but they had held on to their equity stake and maintained a seat on the board of directors ever since.

Knowing that Flashying had only grown stronger over the years, and that there was no longer anything they could do openly, they resorted to petty maneuvers like this behind the scenes.

Du Junyuan could perfectly well have refused to give the man any face. But his way of doing things had always been to lay groundwork carefully, biding time until he had every advantage he needed to push them off the board entirely — at which point he could settle whatever grievances he pleased. There was no reason to show his hand this early.

Hu Ke’er paused, not having expected a simple New Year’s gala to contain so many layers.

Ordinary campus life was simple. There wasn’t much scheming involved — the sharpest version of it was the occasional undercurrent in student council politics, and even that was fairly small-scale. She had never been up close to the real thing, the kind where actual stakes were on the line.

It also hadn’t occurred to her that someone at his level would still have to deal with something this tiresome.

“Oh.” Hu Ke’er’s fingertips curled a little, and she asked tentatively: “What about your assistant?”

She knew he must have one. How was there no one to intercept the drinks for him?

Du Junyuan gave a quiet laugh and answered with patient composure: “That would look like I’m not taking it seriously.”

The elevator chimed and opened on his floor. Du Junyuan stepped out first. His pace was noticeably slower than usual, but steady. Hu Ke’er watched him for a moment from behind, then took a step and caught up.

“Junyuan… older brother…”

“Mm.”

“Um — let me walk you then?”

He paused, and said gently: “It’s fine. Not quite at that point.”

Hu Ke’er couldn’t help turning to look at him.

The man’s eyes were dark and quiet, his brow still faintly drawn, his handsome features picked out by the overhead light, his long lashes casting a thin shadow. He was clearly unwell, and was restraining it quietly.

Hu Ke’er studied his expression. Something shifted in her chest without her quite understanding why, and she held her ground. She made up her mind, and before she could second-guess herself, stepped forward and took his arm: “It’s just a few steps. Let me walk you to the room.”

Du Junyuan’s pace faltered briefly.

He said nothing, and made no move to pull away — which felt like consent.

“Sorry. I really am a little drunk.”

Hu Ke’er’s lashes trembled. His voice carried an audible thread of roughness. “Thank you for the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble.” Hu Ke’er’s fingertips curled involuntarily, repeating silently to herself that she was simply a person with a lot of goodwill and a helpful nature.

Even through a layer of fabric, his arm was much warmer than she had imagined — the first touch had caught her off guard, like a small burn. Her mind went slightly panicked, and her mouth moved without thinking: “Just bear with me — I don’t exactly have a lot of experience walking elderly people around…”

Du Junyuan’s dark eyes cut sideways toward her with an unreadable look. Hu Ke’er immediately snapped her mouth shut.

It was a high-end star-rated hotel, the corridor carpeted in deep wine red, framed contemporary oil paintings hung at intervals along the walls. There was not another soul in sight, and the quiet was complete. Hu Ke’er kept her eyes on the floor and walked slowly to match his pace. She became acutely aware of warm breath falling from one side, and her lashes quivered without her meaning them to.

She thought to ask: “Which — which room?”

Du Junyuan gave her a room number. Hu Ke’er looked up and went through them one by one. They were arranged in alternating odd and even numbers, which made it difficult to navigate, and they walked quite a long way before she finally spotted his room at the far end of the corridor.

The two of them stopped in front of the door. Hu Ke’er abruptly released his arm, hyper-aware of a woody sandalwood scent that refused to fade, her heart beating faster than usual. Out of reflex, she looked down to search herself for a room card — and spent a good few seconds before realizing she had no room card whatsoever.

The man looked down, his expression subtly unreadable.

An awkward silence fell. Hu Ke’er stared at her feet, saying the first thing that came to mind: “Could you open it yourself…”

She seemed only now to fully register what the situation looked like. Du Junyuan paused again, then finally withdrew a key card from his card case.

He pushed open the door.

It was his presidential suite. The space was not small, but the living room held only a single unopened compact suitcase — which gave the whole place a curiously austere feeling.

The air conditioning hummed steadily. Du Junyuan crossed to the sofa in the living room and lowered himself into it, leaning back.

Behind her, the door swung automatically shut with a very clear sound. Hu Ke’er startled: “Are you — are you going to sleep?”

“No,” Du Junyuan took off his glasses, closed his eyes briefly, and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I have to go back downstairs for the midnight address. I’ve asked my assistant to call me.”

He still had to go back down.

Hu Ke’er had almost forgotten there was a countdown happening. She stood there for a moment, slightly adrift.

She was just about to say something when he suddenly looked up at her: “Hu Ke’er.”

“Hm?”

“Thank you for coming up with me. They’ve arranged some good performances for the second half — you can still catch them if you head back now.” He must have noticed the way her eyes had lit up at the celebrities earlier. He paused: “If you’re tired and not in the mood, just go back to your room and rest. It’s getting late, and it’s not great for a girl to be out on her own.”

Hu Ke’er stared at him for a long moment.

As he was beginning to say something else, she suddenly turned and made a beeline for the semi-open kitchen area. “I’m going to make you something to sober up.”

Hu Ke’er wasn’t sure what the fridge would have, but she knew honey and lemon both helped with alcohol. She set a kettle to boil, then checked the fridge — sure enough, neither was there, but there was canned apple juice and milk.

She pulled out her phone and searched quickly, and found that milk could ease stomach discomfort, and fruit juice had some sobering properties, though vinegar was more effective. So she picked up the bedside telephone in the bedroom and called the front desk, explained what she needed.

It was a well-rated hotel, so of course they had everything — in under ten minutes, the items arrived.

She found two glasses. One for the warm milk, and one for pouring the juice to mix with vinegar. When she came out to open the door, she found the man had already fallen asleep in the living room.

She’d sensed a kind of suppressed exhaustion from him all along, but hadn’t expected it to catch up with him this quickly.

Du Junyuan was still in the same half-reclining position in the armchair, eyes closed, resting. His tie had been pulled loose and discarded to one side, and the top two buttons of his black shirt were undone, the collar sitting open and easy.

It was also the first time she had seen him like this. Hu Ke’er had heard his entrepreneurial story before, but at the time the words hadn’t carried much personal weight. Now, for the first time, she felt it — regardless of where a person stood, nothing about any of it was easy.

Even with Flashying having grown to its current scale, standing at the top of the new media industry, there was still enormous pressure. The higher you climbed, the greater the responsibility — and the reality wasn’t the effortlessly commanding image outsiders imagined.

Something settled in Hu Ke’er’s chest that she couldn’t quite name — like the apple cider vinegar on the table in front of her, bubbling up in sweet and sour and slightly astringent little bursts. She lingered for a moment, eyes drifting involuntarily to his hands.

The knuckles were long and defined, faint veins traced across the back of his hand, and his fingers were clean — no rings of any kind.

Hu Ke’er’s heart gave a sudden, uncontrolled beat. Her gaze rose, and landed on his face.

His nose bridge was sharp and high, his features handsome and refined, long lashes resting in a quiet downward sweep. A floor lamp along the wall cast light across half of his profile — impressively clear and composed.

Hu Ke’er couldn’t govern her own heartbeat, and muttered helplessly to herself —

He was almost thirty years old. How did he still look this young? Barely any different from when she’d first seen him in freshman year.

She looked at him without blinking for a long moment. The room around them was very quiet, broken only by the slow, low rhythm of Du Junyuan’s breathing.

Hu Ke’er stared until she went a little blank. Then, with no particular warning, a thought of truly spectacular audacity surfaced in her mind.

She hadn’t quite processed it clearly yet — it was all instinct. Her eyes shimmered, gaze dropping, almost involuntarily, just a little lower.

Du Junyuan’s lips were on the thinner side — a faint, pale color — and the line from his jaw down to his throat was also rather elegant.

Possibly because she’d had a little wine herself at the gala, Hu Ke’er had one fuzzy, dizzy moment. Then clarity snapped back, and she lurched to her feet.

No no no!

What was she thinking?!

Absolutely not!

Retreat — RETREAT!!

At that exact moment, the man’s fingers stirred slightly. As if he’d sensed something, he began to surface from sleep.

Hu Ke’er had no time to move. She stood frozen directly in front of him. Du Junyuan opened his eyes, lifted his head, and looked straight at her.

“Mm?” His pupils were very dark. He was looking at her from very close up, his voice still rough with sleep. “You’re still here?”

The racing in Hu Ke’er’s chest was almost too much to contain. She let out a dry cough, her eyes scanning frantically in every direction, and then finally seized on the drinks on the side table like a lifeline, thrusting one toward him: “I mixed you a glass of apple cider vinegar… they say it helps sober you up.”

Du Junyuan looked at her for a moment, then shifted to sit up a little more: “Thank you.”

He said nothing more, just took it and drank.

Hu Ke’er hadn’t even tasted what she’d made, and right now didn’t have the presence of mind to ask. The tips of her ears were red to the point of burning, hidden under her hair. She turned and fled back toward the kitchen area: “The milk got a bit cold, let me heat it up!”

She stood in front of the microwave, at odds with herself, for ten minutes. No sounds of particular consequence came from the other room.

Hu Ke’er took several slow, deep breaths, rubbed her ears, and finally managed to calm herself down somewhat.

When she came back out with the warm milk, Du Junyuan was bent over his phone, scrolling through it with lowered eyes.

He looked considerably more alert than before. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he was methodically working through unread work messages — his expression cool and focused.

Hu Ke’er hesitated over whether to say something. Then the man looked up as if sensing her.

Their eyes met briefly across the air. Du Junyuan spoke first: “They’re doing the raffle downstairs. Did you want to go?”

Hu Ke’er paused, then made herself sound casual: “It’s fine. I’d probably miss it anyway.”

“Mm.”

There was still more than half an hour before midnight. He said, with quiet ease: “I’m heading down in about twenty minutes. Would you like to come with me, or go back to your room first?”

Hu Ke’er’s lashes flickered: “I’ll come with you.”

Du Junyuan: “You’re not tired?”

Her voice came out slightly unsteady: “I’m… fine.”

Du Junyuan looked down without comment, and reached over for the remote control from the side table. “If you’re bored, you can watch some TV.”

Hu Ke’er was actually completely awake — she was a night owl by nature, regularly lying in bed scrolling Flashying until one or two in the morning. This hour was still early by her standards.

Her ears were still warm, but with her hair down, no one could tell. She braced herself and sat down on the sofa nearby.

It was a smart TV with an on-demand selection of films and dramas. Du Junyuan seemed to still be answering messages and managing work matters, so he had no particular preference. Hu Ke’er chose something at random — Little Women, released in 2019.

The screen was a little small, and the floor rug was wonderfully soft. She ended up pulling a cushion off the sofa and settling cross-legged in front of the coffee table, chin resting on her knees, staring at the screen without blinking.

The film’s tone was exactly her kind of thing — the story of an ordinary American family in the nineteenth century, following four sisters and the warm, chaotic love between them. The opening scene launched straight into a ball, and the four sisters’ wildly different personalities immediately set off a series of delightfully absurd mishaps.

There were several glasses on the coffee table, the drinks she’d mixed still sitting in them in varying amounts. Hu Ke’er reached for one without looking and took a sip — and nearly spat it straight back out.

She stared in disbelief at the glass she now held, labeled internally as “apple cider vinegar.” It was so, so, SO sour it was barely survivable.

Her gaze drifted involuntarily to the side. She couldn’t quite see him from this angle, only barely catching a sliver of him still in his seat — and she couldn’t stop herself from thinking: how on earth did he drink the whole thing without his expression changing?!

Still reeling from her own concoction, Hu Ke’er sat there in a daze for quite a while. She hadn’t fully recovered when the man beside her spoke in that low, steady voice: “It’s about time to go.”

Hu Ke’er: “Oh — right.”

She scrambled up in a bit of a haze.

Having sat in the same position for a while, her legs were somewhat numb. Hu Ke’er lost her footing, stumbled over the plush rug, and lurched forward.

She hadn’t quite caught her breath when she spotted the soft cushion still lying on the floor ahead of her. She was wearing heels — the moment her foot came down on it, her balance was gone and she tipped sideways.

Everything moved in slow motion. Hu Ke’er stared in dismay as she fell directly toward Du Junyuan.

In the space of a heartbeat, there was no time to grab onto anything to slow herself down. She landed squarely in his arms with a muffled thud — and in the process, very incidentally — pressed her lips firmly against the side of his cheek.

A fresh, blindingly obvious lipstick mark. And a deeply mortifying smacking sound.

An explosion went off in her brain. Hu Ke’er lay against his shoulder, convinced her skull was about to give way entirely.

The man beside her seemed to draw a sharp breath — searing warmth rushing over her: “Hu Ke’er—”

Hu Ke’er was wearing a white belted knee-length dress, one knee pressed between his legs, her heart slamming in her chest. The more she tried to pull herself together, the more she couldn’t, her calves inexplicably limp, one foot reaching for the floor and finding nothing.

Both her hands braced against the solid plane of his chest in a panic. Under his dark, fathomless stare, she had nowhere to hide.

She trembled, struggling to speak: “I — I, I…”

Du Junyuan’s lips parted slightly. The voice that reached her ear was lower than any speaker she’d ever heard, and it made something deep in her vibrate: “— Yes?”

Hu Ke’er’s voice was barely audible: “I think your Qi and blood are running a bit high.”

She closed her eyes. With profound shame and considerable courage, she completed the sentence:

“So I thought I’d… help you with a bit of cupping therapy.”

HAHAHAHAHA!

Ke Bao: Just end me now!!! (has departed this world peacefully)

~~I always knew that lipstick mark was going to move from the rim of a cup to its rightful destination eventually. Hehe.

Time is limited lately, but I’ll have ten thousand characters up before next Wednesday — either three chapters or two. Probably around 8PM. If I don’t post that day, don’t wait~