62 5.8

The next morning, a splitting headache woke Chen Yu up to a grand view of luxury at its finest, but he didn't have the spare energy to admire it, his heart was immediately distressed at the fact that no one was near him. Damn it, he didn't remember anything after drinking and his lover had abandoned him, how was he supposed to locate his favorite man again? Or...was he mistaken? According to his lover's personality, he wouldn't have left him alone, had he followed some stranger here?

Sitting up, however, his face was covered with black lines. When the blankets he'd been under slid down, he saw that whereas he was stark naked, his pale skin was scarcely discernible between the various red marks and bruises from being bitten. So, the pervert had struck after all...

Having reaffirmed that he had in fact met his lover in this world, Chen Yu relaxed and didn't think about it anymore. The man must have some reason for deserting him, and anyway, he had his scripts to draw him out again. Heartened, Chen Yu didn't linger, he directly dressed in the suit he'd worn last night which was neatly hanging in the closet, then left.

The moment he stepped into the lobby, the front desk receptionist furtively made a call. The king of the entertainment circle, Sun Ri, had commanded her in the flesh to watch out for a petite, outstandingly beautiful youth in a black outfit and contact him as soon as he appeared. She had been examining every guest for the past hour, nervously believing that she wouldn't be able to recognize anyone by such a general description, but this boy exactly fit the image, she was very confident that she'd caught the right person.

Thus, she motioned subtly to the security guards, signaling that they should delay him as long as they could. Unfortunately, Chen Yu wasn't in the mood to play, he'd donned his wooden mask again and ignored their attempts to talk to him. And when they persisted in bothering him by reaching out to touch him, he struck their wrists lightly to make them numb for a while, then indifferently continued striding away.

Just as he slipped into a taxi, Sun Ri, who'd been tipped off, sprinted into the lobby from the café area. Despite his haste, he was too late. Upon hearing that the youth had already gotten away, he paced back and forth, but he was helpless to do anything, he could only demand, "How are you so useless, can't you even stop one person?"

Once he finally calmed down, Sun Ri shifted the brunt of his anger to the phone he'd been gripping, glaring at it as if he yearned to chew it up into bits. It was all this stupid thing's fault that he'd missed his doll.

After he'd cleaned Kai up last night, he'd carefully hung up the clothes he'd thrown on the ground, refusing to have a new outfit brought up in order to advertise his homemaking abilities. Just as he'd been happily imagining how surprised his doll would be, however, a chime had interrupted his fantasies.

It was Kai's phone, a certain 'One_Reel_Guo_Ziyue' had messaged him with a photo. Blood heating up already, Sun Ri had keyed in some guesses to unlock the screen, but none of his attempts had worked, he'd had to summon an IT expert.

It was unlucky that he had passed the phone over to be cracked that minute, but the incompetent man had taken so long that it was morning by the time he had results, he claimed that there had been unexpectedly strong defenses put in place. To this, Sun Ri just sneered, what did his innocent doll have to hide, and even if there was something, how could he have the ability to stump a so-called professional for so long? It was a pity for the specialist that, in reality, the system he'd struggled so much with was simply the most basic level of deterrence features Chen Yu was used to, which he had limited himself to so as to keep in line with the original owner's personality.

Remembering what had been found on the phone, however, Sun Ri gritted his teeth harder. It was even worse than he'd expected. Xiang Kai was really a fan of Guo Ziyue, he had posted numerous comments, they'd even shared a private conversation with photos! And that Guo Ziyue was very good ah, what 'life was so hard,' he had inherited more than enough money to freely play around without working, he relied on Sun Jia for his backing, he lacked nothing. So what was that photo supposed to do, mislead his doll into thinking he was drinking his sorrows away and entice the youth into running over to comfort him?

If that had happened...Sun Ri's face darkened at the thought of how the defenseless, vulnerable Xiang Kai would have naively agreed to do anything the brat wanted him to. He was disappointed as well, he hadn't conceived of his charge as the type of celebrity who would take advantage of his fans in this way. But every cloud has a silver lining, it was easy to see that Guo Ziyue hadn't realized that 'Longing_for_the_Moon' was the very same Xiang Kai that he habitually disparaged, so he also shouldn't connect his fan's praise to how Kai felt about him.

This was the sole opportunity he had, Sun Ri needed to snatch the youth away and hide him far from anyone else right away. Narrowing his eyes, Sun Ri brooded. Guo Ziyue, Shui Re Dian, his doll was truly too cute, attracting bees and butterflies everywhere...

He frowned and tapped his fingers irritably against his thigh. This wouldn't do, his doll didn't trust him enough yet to let him follow him everywhere, what if someone took advantage of the youth while he wasn't watching? Therefore, for Xiang Kai's safety, Sun Ri ordered the IT specialist to format tracking and recording functions on the phone, which could be streamed directly to his monitors. In addition, he instructed the two guards he'd assigned to constantly oversee Xiang Kai's apartment to quickly install cameras inside and around the flat before the boy arrived from the hotel, so that he could ensure that nothing occurred digitally either.

This incident had admittedly inspired him to better protect his doll, but Sun Ri's resentment toward the phone didn't subside. After all, it was irrefutably the meeting with the technician that had prevented Sun Ri from personally sending his doll home, the information about Guo Ziyue's implied proposition that had made him further waste time disguising his anger lest he frightened Kai, in short, the phone that was the root of all his problems this morning! Nevertheless, he couldn't vent on Kai's personal property, he reluctantly stowed it away. Perhaps it could at least provide some excuse for them to meet.

Some distance away from his optimistic lover, Chen Yu's head ached so much when he returned home that he didn't even notice that intruders had visited his apartment. Still, he bore with the pain and decided to give identifying his lover one more shot, he hacked into the hotel surveillance records from last night. But for some reason, the relevant clips had been permanently deleted, even he couldn't recover the data without potentially revealing himself.

Actually, Chen Yu's failure was understandable. Not only was the monitoring around the royal suite sparse by design, in order to maintain the guests' privacy, but also, Sun Ri had personally visited the hotel's security team and forced them to destroy anything that could be leaked to the media. While it didn't matter for him, since he'd announced his homosexuality upon his debut, his doll was still a baby, he would probably get angry if his career was affected. Thus, Chen Yu also couldn't find any trace of his lover, the best he could do was to assume that he must be someone around him.

Well, he shrugged, clearly this was his lover's work. That the man was capable of coercing the elite hotel management to compromise its code of conduct suggested that he was well off as usual, so Chen Yu didn't need to worry about him, he'd take his time to develop his productions—perhaps if Sun Ri knew how he'd lifted a stone only to drop it on his own feet, he would have instantly dashed over to confess to Xiang Kai...

Without paying any more attention to last night's events, Chen Yu then took care of business.

First of all, he contacted a famous producer from Fanxing Entertainment Group with one of his scripts. Initially, Chen Yu hadn't intended to work with the company because he hadn't trusted that they would genuinely cooperate with Xiang Kai, but the barrage of proposals hadn't died down over the past month. A few days of being frantically propositioned in this way had been enough to prompt Chen Yu to research what had changed, and apparently, Sun Ri's public support had been the key trigger. Although he was mildly curious about the man's shift, he wasn't interested enough in him to delve further. What really mattered was that Fanxing was honestly desperate to comply with his every wish. If that was the case, Chen Yu wouldn't refuse, since using a big company would make it easier to achieve his goals anyway.

Finished with that, Chen Yu pondered what exactly the protagonist's plan in pressuring Xiang Kai to drink had been. It didn't seem like there had been much of an effect, there were no scandals published, no angry messages...Reminded of this, Chen Yu patted himself down for his phone, which, as the introverted Xiang Kai, he rarely used. Discovering that his pockets were empty except for his wallet, he quickly stood up and searched everywhere, but nothing popped out, it seemed he'd lost it somewhere. Or...Chen Yu sighed in resignation. Probably his lover had taken it for some ridiculous reason.

Unaware of how unprecedentedly lenient he was becoming toward the man, Chen Yu didn't fuss over the lost phone. Instead, he simply installed a chatting app on his laptop, then messaged Shui Re Dian to ask if he'd caused any trouble when he was drunk.

At last, having checked that the actor was currently offline, Chen Yu yielded to his hangover and carelessly stripped to burrow into his blankets.