AM Chapter 35

35 The Weather is Getting Colder

Five minutes later, Chen Mo returned to the dining table with his tray, where Liang Jingren’s briefcase and water bottle were placed.

He stood quietly across from Liang Jingren for a while. Liang Jingren didn’t look up, probably too busy eating to bother.

Chen Mo thought for a moment, then carried his tray to the other side of the table.

Before Liang Jingren could react, Chen Mo put down his tray, pulled out a chair, and sat down. Now his elbow was almost touching Liang Jingren’s; a slight carelessness would cause them to bump.

—As if he was deliberately trying to interfere with Liang Jingren’s meal.

Liang Jingren’s expression was as if he had swallowed uncooked rice, his brow furrowed. “Can’t you sit across from me?” he said.

Chen Mo tucked in his elbow, turned to look at him, and smiled. “I want to be closer to you~”

The table was right next to a pillar, and Liang Jingren’s briefcase was placed against it, so Liang Jingren had no way to distance himself from Chen Mo except by moving his chair back.

Fortunately, Liang Jingren didn’t want to waste food and chose to finish what was in front of him first. He didn’t get up and leave immediately, and Chen Mo consciously moved his chair to the side to give him some room to lift his hand and scoop up the rice.

The exercise had burned a lot of energy, and Liang Jingren ate quickly and a lot, soon finishing his meal and wiping his mouth.

Chen Mo hadn’t gotten much food to begin with, but he was eating slowly, mainly because he kept turning his head to glance at the person next to him, watching what he was doing, worried that he would suddenly get up, grab his bag, and leave.

But Liang Jingren didn’t leave even after finishing his meal, just sat on the slightly pulled-back chair with a bored expression, looking at his phone.

Chen Mo thought he was probably waiting for him to report something, or maybe he had something he wanted to ask.

After finishing his meal, Chen Mo went to get two bowls of soup and returned to his seat.

Liang Jingren took the bowl and said, “Thank you.”

After Chen Mo sat down, he silently felt the warm bowl wall with both hands. He turned his head slightly, looked at the person who had tilted his head back and drunk most of the soup, his Adam’s apple constantly moving up and down, and asked, “Ren Bro, you actually have something you want to say to me, right?”

After a while, Liang Jingren put down the bowl, stared at him and asked, “Did you really go after Xu Yilin?”

Chen Mo opened his mouth, smiled shyly, and said, “Are you jealous?”

Liang Jingren stared at his face for a while, suddenly chuckled, then turned and faced the bowl with only scraps left on the table, and sighed.

“You’ve sighed a lot today. What are you thinking?” Chen Mo asked.

Liang Jingren glanced at him and said, “I’m thinking, I need to treat Xu Yilin to a meal.”

Chen Mo smiled. “That’s great, I also want to treat Xu Yilin to a meal. Why don’t we three go together! I’ll treat both of you at the same time!”

As soon as these words came out, Liang Jingren was stunned, but then he laughed. “Heh hahaha… What are we eating? A candlelight dinner?”

Chen Mo was stunned, then nodded as if it were a real thing. “Yeah, and it would be perfect with piano and violin accompaniment!”

“Hahahaha!” Liang Jingren seemed to have imagined the bizarre scene of a candlelight dinner for three and continued to laugh at that bizarre joke, even suggesting something he never drank: “Aren’t we having red wine?”

Chen Mo replied, “Yes, we’re having red wine, and at the end of the song, we’ll clink glasses and drink a three-way wedding toast!”

“Ha hum hum hum…” Liang Jingren seemed to be going crazy with laughter, but because he was in a public cafeteria, he tried to keep his voice down, propping himself up on the table with one hand, his shoulders constantly shaking.

Chen Mo looked at him laughing and couldn’t help but laugh too. “Ren Bro, you’re so weird haha…”

“It’s obviously you hahaha, saying such stupid things hahahaha!” Liang Jingren couldn’t help it, slapping Chen Mo’s shoulder as he laughed and cursed at him.

For some reason, Chen Mo felt a little shy.

Chen Mo, who was truly shy, silently picked up the soup in front of him that had already cooled, brought the bowl to his mouth, and blew on it slightly, tilting it.

Just as he was about to drink the soup, an unexpected hand suddenly swung over from beside him—

“Ugh!”

Chen Mo’s nose and mouth were painfully hit by the rim of the bowl, and cold soup poured down, drenching his pants.

The bowl fell to the ground and rolled a couple of times. Blood began to flow down from his nose. Chen Mo raised his hand to press his nose in a panic. At the same time, he heard the person sitting next to him suddenly stop laughing and slap him, gnashing his teeth and cursing, “You bastard.”

Under the strong pressure, the nosebleed seemed to stop immediately, replaced by colorless and transparent tears.

Chen Mo choked and widened his eyes, trying to make his eyeballs dry as quickly as possible.

He slowly raised his face, and the eyelashes covered with crystal dew alsoQuiteup with it, but with his eyes wide open, he could only see a bit of the scenery in front of him—

Liang Jingren’s broad hand was blocking in front of him, blocking them all.

In an instant, Chen Mo’s heart tightened, and he straightened his back slightly, so that his line of sight crossed the “guilty hand” that had caused him to be so disheveled.

He saw a man sitting in the middle of a long seat at a hot noodles stand ten meters away, reading a newspaper in an awkward posture.

Chen Mo covered his nose and turned his eyes to his side, muffledly saying, “Ren Bro…”

Liang Jingren’s eyes, full of anger, were staring intently in that direction, at that newspaper that had been deliberately raised regardless of the occasion.

Liang Jingren, in a fit of rage, had obviously heard him speak, and responded by saying, “Damn it, a dead rat has gotten into the cafeteria. Don’t look.”

Many years ago, after Chen Daxiang’s funeral, when a group of reporters swarmed up, Liang Jingren’s hand had also blocked in front of him in this stiff posture with slightly spread fingers.

Chen Mo lowered his eyes to look at the palm in front of him, obediently lowered his head, and asked, “Is someone taking pictures?”

“Yeah.”

Suddenly, Chen Mo felt that his nose didn’t hurt anymore.

The thought that Liang Jingren’s raising his hand was not intentional to hurt him, but to protect himself, made his limbs and bones feel as relaxed and comfortable as if years of stagnant blood had finally been discharged.

After entering the underground garage, Chen Mo, as usual, escorted Liang Jingren all the way to his exclusive parking space, but Liang Jingren didn’t get into the car. Instead, he got in from the passenger door.

Later, he took out a bottle of water and a pill from the passenger seat and handed them to Chen Mo.

Chen Mo looked at the white pill in his palm, blinked, and looked at him innocently and purely.

Liang Jingren said, “Painkiller.”

Chen Mo raised his index finger and rubbed it under his nose, smiling softly. “It’s already okay.”

But when he lowered his finger, the shocking, turbid, rusty color on the side of his finger made him reveal a disgusted expression that didn’t look like he was okay.

Liang Jingren thought for a moment and put the medicine back.

He took out a handkerchief from the car again, then twisted open the mineral water bottle and soaked the handkerchief. Then he walked to Chen Mo, grabbed his chin, and used the clean, wet handkerchief to press and rub the nose that had been injured because of him.

Liang Jingren’s movements were not gentle, and Chen Mo repeatedly opened his mouth to remind him with “whooshing” sounds that he was in pain.

Fortunately, the process didn’t last long. After Liang Jingren wiped his face clean, he casually hung the contaminated handkerchief on the bloody fingers that he hadn’t retracted.

“If you can see it, wipe it yourself. After wiping it, just throw that thing away.” After saying that, Liang Jingren went around to the driver’s seat, opened the door, and got in the car.

Chen Mosluggishly rubbed the handkerchief until the dazzling headlights of the car in front of him suddenly lit up, washing away the face that had been so close and intently focused on him a few seconds ago.

Hearing the short honk urging him to move away, Chen Mo quickly went forward and knocked on the driver’s side window, asking, “Can I still come and have dinner with you?”

Liang Jingren rolled down the car window, looked at him, and said, “Not recently.”

“How long is ‘recently’?” Chen Mo was a little anxious, so anxious that he wrung the dirty handkerchief in his hand.

Liang Jingren pondered for a moment, lowered his eyes and said, “I don’t know.”

Then, the one-way reflective car window rose again. Chen Mo quietly watched the silver car with its turn signal on disappear from view.

The next morning, a magazine was slammed onto Liang Jingren’s boss’s desk.

The person who slammed the magazine pushed up his glasses, made a “tsk” sound, and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window behind him.

“What are you ‘tsking’ about? Anyone who didn’t know would think you were my agent or something. I’m your boss, okay?” Liang Jingren leaned sideways on the rebounding back of his office chair, propping his head with his bent arm, and lazily reached out to the desk with his other hand to reach the magazine with his name as the eye-catching headline on the cover.

“The Return of the Daxing Group’s Rightful Heir?! —The Choice of ‘Stepmother’ Widow Liang Jingren” was truly a long and smelly title.

But it was better than last time. Liang Jingren scanned the magazine cover and sneered silently.

He remembered that the last time was “Father and Son Reunited? Returning Adopted Son Offers Flowers to Please! Conspiracy or Overt Scheme?” Shen Qing had taken a picture of this title and sent it to him when he had just received a bouquet of red roses from Chen Mo in the underground garage.

The words “father and son” in the title were particularly glaring, and that night Liang Jingren was so upset that he stumbled while walking and almost inherited his brother’s crutches.

Seeing that Liang Jingren didn’t seem to have any reaction, Shen Qing angrily slapped the back of his hand and walked to his side, shouting, “This is the second time, Chairman Liang! You should give an explanation!”

Liang Jingren raised his head. “Explain what?”

“I’m not asking you to explain to me, don’t look at me!” Shen Qing widened his eyes, very displeased. “The old guys on the board of directors are starting to stir! Haven’t you noticed?”

Liang Jingren chuckled and casually threw the magazine on the table. “They can stir however they like, they can’t shake my foundation anyway.”

Shen Qing hugged his arms and pursed his lips. After thinking carefully, that was indeed the case. “But it’s not good to be talked about behind your back all the time. Your condition has been very bad recently. You can’t say you haven’t been affected at all, can you?”

“Then…” Liang Jingren opened his mouth, touching his chin, thinking about something. “It’s impossible to reason with them…”

“Is it necessary to explain? Explain what? They have no intelligence and don’t use their brains. Why not just encourage them to find Chen Mo, the crown prince, and surrender.”

“As for gossiping, let them do it. It’s not like we haven’t experienced it before. Anyway, someone will always look at people with colored glasses.”

As he said that, Liang Jingren sat up straight, stretching his arms as if he were yawning.

He dragged the swivel chair closer to the desk, took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the desk.

“You’ve only been back for less than five minutes, and you’re already starting to smoke?” Shen Qing frowned.

“Mind your own business.” After lighting the cigarette, he kicked the tip of his leather shoe against the wooden desk, and the swivel chair slid the person backwards towards the floor-to-ceiling glass window reflecting the city’s high-rise buildings in the background.

Liang Jingren leaned his head against the back of the chair near the glass, looked at the elevated bridge with its heavy traffic in the distance, and began to smoke, crossing his legs.

Shen Qing shrugged his nose and fanned the secondhand smoke in front of him with his palm.

Suddenly, Liang Jingren, who was looking at the scenery, inexplicably let out a laugh.

Shen Qing held his breath in confusion and leaned over to ask, “What’s wrong?”

Liang Jingren clamped the cigarette, narrowed his eyes, and exhaled a long, empty breath, with a smile on his lips. “The weather is getting colder. Let New Era Entertainment go bankrupt.”

Shen Qing: ……

“…What’s wrong with you?”