Chapter 42#

Qiao Nanqi’s eyes were very red.

Upon hearing Zhao Rong’s last two sentences, a flash of bewilderment even crossed his eyes for a moment.

Those were words he had never imagined would come out of Zhao Rong’s mouth. He always thought Zhao Rong was still that gentle and obedient person; even if he was angry or unhappy, at most it would be a rejection like before.

But every time, he seemed to encounter a different Zhao Rong.

Not the Zhao Rong who would always look at him with a smile, but a Zhao Rong who would speak cold and hard words.

These words were more heart-wrenching than silent non-responsiveness, more than a direct rejection.

Every word and sentence was like a sharp blade.

Qiao Nanqi had nothing to say.

He slowly let go of his hand and took a step back, only then noticing that Zhao Rong’s lips were also stained with a bit of bright red, though there were no wounds.

Qiao Nanqi only then belatedly realized the faint smell of blood from earlier.

He raised his hand and lightly touched his lower lip with his fingertip. Looking at it, he realized his lower lip was split. He didn’t even know what kind of daze he had been in just now that he hadn’t noticed it.

There wasn’t much blood, just a slight smear on his fingertip, which happened to cover the wound previously pierced by glass shards. It decorated the wound, making it look as glaring as if it were new.

Seeing him finally step back, Zhao Rong straightened up and tidied his coat and scarf, which had lost their neatness in the chaos. He smoothed the hem of his coat, adjusted his scarf, and raised his hand to forcefully wipe away the red stained on his lips.

He was very composed.

In reality, he wasn’t that calm; he even felt an irrepressible anxiety regarding the tightly closed door and the situation of being unable to leave. But he didn’t want to lose ground in front of Qiao Nanqi, so he tried his best to restrain his expression, showing no sign of panic.

Despite the mess all over the floor, despite the door behind him being unopenable, he still straightened himself out methodically.

From beginning to end, the one who was well-dressed was Qiao Nanqi, but the one who was utterly defeated was still him.

Zhao Rong never looked at Qiao Nanqi.

In his irritation earlier, he had let the documents in his hand fall along with the marriage agreement he had no interest in. Now, a pile of papers was mixed together.

He crouched down, picking out the things he needed to take one by one from the clutter, never giving any other items a single glance from start to finish.

He had just gathered two into his arms when he heard Qiao Nanqi’s low voice coming from above him: “I don’t understand.”

Zhao Rong’s movement paused.

Qiao Nanqi said: “I know I like you, and you like me too. I’ll change the things I didn’t do well in the past. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. If you just come back, we can be better than before…”

“We won’t,” Zhao Rong said decisively. “It doesn’t work that way.”

He really didn’t want to argue about something that wouldn’t change, but he also knew that since things had come to this, he still had to make it clear.

He forced himself to calm down and suppress those complex emotions.

“You say you understand, but you don’t understand at all. We’ve already broken up, yet you still locked the door just because you wanted me to see the agreement, and you kissed me just because you wanted to. Up until this very moment, you still treat me as a possession that has temporarily left you, and have never treated me as a person who has already left and needs respect. You are exactly the same as before—the same way you are giving charity, granting favors, and being high and mighty, just with a few more things to give and being a bit more generous.”

“Whether it’s that bowl of porridge or the prenuptial agreement, what’s the difference from before? What I want is to break free from the past, but what you’ve always wanted is to return to the past. What you want is to have someone who willingly loves you as before. That person doesn’t necessarily have to be me, and it’s impossible for it to be me anymore.”

“Forget those habits, forget the feelings of the past. Let yourself go, and give me some peace, isn’t that good?”

Qiao Nanqi’s words grew heavier with each one: “I can’t let go. How can ’liking’ be something you just let go of when you say so?”

Zhao Rong’s movements slowed slightly, and he was silent for a moment.

“It can,” his words this time unexpectedly carried no fluctuation, as if he were just stating a fact. “Because I did it.”

These words carried a weight of ten thousand tons, striking Qiao Nanqi so hard that he was left powerless to retaliate, unable to speak at all.

His fists were tightly clenched. The wounds on his fingertips, which had begun to heal, sent sharp stabs of pain because of the excessive force. Even though he was breathing, he felt a sense of suffocation enveloping him.

He couldn’t catch his breath.

Zhao Rong simply continued picking up the documents on the floor.

After a moment, the man standing in front of him also slowly crouched down.

The last time he bent down, it was for the agreement on the floor, but this time, he didn’t say a word. Just like Zhao Rong, he picked through the white papers scattered across the floor for the documents Zhao Rong needed.

He still remembered his fingertips weren’t very clean. Before picking up the documents, he wrapped his fingers in a tissue and then began sorting them silently. His movements were very slow, far less efficient than Zhao Rong’s, and his fingers seemed to tremble slightly from his excessive loss of control.

It was as if he were restraining something.

Zhao Rong glanced at him.

Qiao Nanqi had his head lowered, his expression unreadable.

Zhao Rong blinked, withdrew his gaze, and didn’t speak either.

When only the scattered agreement remained on the floor, Qiao Nanqi handed the stack he had organized to Zhao Rong. Zhao Rong took it silently, slowly stood up, walked to the sofa, and picked up his phone.

From beginning to end, the room was silent. Neither of them spoke, and a heavy atmosphere floated in the air.

On the long table, the bowl of opened porridge had slowly lost its heat and was now cold.

Zhao Rong walked to the door, his tone slightly cold: “What’s the code?”

Hearing his question, Qiao Nanqi’s Adam’s apple moved slightly. As if not wanting Zhao Rong to hear, he reported four digits in an extremely low voice.

Subsequently, a crisp sound of the electronic lock opening rang out, and the door hinges creaked.

The sound of footsteps grew distant.

Only Qiao Nanqi was left in the room, along with the white papers scattered all over the floor.

After those footsteps gradually disappeared, he, who had been standing straight just now, seemed to have his strength suddenly drained away and slowly sat down against the wall.

Maybe… Zhao Rong was right.

But he wouldn’t let go.

When Zhao Rong walked out the door, his pace was neither fast nor slow, as if he had truly just finished his business here and was leaving as usual.

Once he had walked a certain distance, he hurriedly supported himself against the wall and sat down on the steps nearby.

This wasn’t a work area, so few people were seen during working hours. No one was visible above or below the steps. He sat there quietly by himself, his breathing clearly audible.

After sitting down, he felt the miniature alarm in his pocket that he had been carrying with him all these years.

—Fortunately, this thing hasn’t had a use yet.

And fortunately, this time, he was the one who managed to retreat unscathed.

He took several deep breaths before slowly relaxing. He took out his phone and called Liu Shun.

The person on the other end was clearly idling about, answering the call after just a moment: “Third Young Master! How is it, how is it? Is Big Qiao going to suppress his ex-boyfriend? Or did he find out you’ve moved on to Lu Xingping? Are you calling me because you need help running away?”

Zhao Rong: “…”

“I’m a bit bored,” he said. “Want to play billiards? I’ll book the place.”

Xiao Wu had been staying downstairs.

Actually, after he brought Zhao Rong here just now, Qiao Nanqi had told him to go back to work. But thinking about his boss having him bring someone to such a place, and remembering that Qiao Nanqi had specifically arranged for someone to change the door lock yesterday, he was faintly worried about Zhao Rong.

However, he was ultimately just someone who worked for Qiao Nanqi and couldn’t say much. After thinking it over, he couldn’t decide whether to leave or stay.

Coincidentally, there was a matter regarding Chen Ze and those people that was also somewhat related to Zhao Rong. He needed to report this to Qiao Nanqi, so with a reason in hand, Xiao Wu waited downstairs with a pounding heart.

Unexpectedly, after not waiting long, Zhao Rong actually came down.

He looked no different from when he arrived, except that the documents in his arms were a bit messier than those he had prepared.

Instead, Qiao Nanqi was nowhere to be seen.

He watched Zhao Rong leave and went upstairs quite perplexed, finding the door open.

Xiao Wu stepped forward, intending to go in, but suddenly seeing the scene inside, he slammed on the brakes.

On the long table inside the room sat the porridge Qiao Nanqi had specifically gone to buy. It was placed on the table completely intact, clearly untouched, and was now completely cold.

The floor was covered with white papers printed with black text, and there were very messy footprints on the white papers. Some of the papers even had their corners curled from being scuffed by some movement, sufficient to show what kind of tugging had just occurred here.

And Qiao Nanqi was sitting by the wall, leaning against it with his head lowered, thinking about who-knows-what. He didn’t show any reaction upon hearing Xiao Wu’s footsteps.

As Qiao Nanqi’s personal assistant, Xiao Wu knew very well how much of a clean freak Qiao Nanqi usually was.

This scene of him sitting on the floor, on any other day in the past, he would have thought he was dreaming.

But now that he saw it, he surprisingly didn’t find it that unexpected—especially considering that Zhao Rong had been here just now.

For some time now, whenever Qiao Nanqi acted abnormally, it was inevitably related to Zhao Rong.

The owner of this name had clearly been revolving around Qiao Nanqi’s eyes all along and had maintained a peaceful relationship with him for over a year.

During that time, Xiao Wu had handled matters related to Zhao Rong for Qiao Nanqi several times. But Zhao Rong was leaving recently, and even his shares were to be transferred back to Qiao Nanqi, yet their Mr. Qiao was despondent, his mood worsening day by day.

Especially in the past few days, as long as there was a meeting, not a single one didn’t end with a low-pressure atmosphere.

Xiao Wu hadn’t been sure before, but it wasn’t until he drafted that new marriage agreement for Qiao Nanqi yesterday that he fully understood: all of Qiao Nanqi’s abnormality stemmed from Zhao Rong.

Their boss had truly fallen for him this time.

The conditions of that agreement were truly too generous.

For someone like Qiao Nanqi, he would usually have everything calculated clearly before marriage and would never let a marriage partner gain any benefits. And if it were just keeping a lover—Xia Yuantu often did such things, and Xiao Wu had seen it too—giving a bit more benefits would be considered generous and considerate.

But that agreement was different. The benefits in that agreement, besides the Chen family that Qiao Nanqi had just snatched from Chen Ze’s hands, actually included half of the Qiao family itself. This was essentially equivalent to returning everything of the Chen family to Zhao Rong, who was nominally the third young master of the Chen family, and sharing half of what Qiao Nanqi himself owned with the other party. Besides these, there were many, many other benefits, as if he were afraid the person reading the agreement wouldn’t be satisfied.

After handling this agreement, Xiao Wu felt that it was impossible for Zhao Rong not to be moved this time.

But looking at this situation…

Zhao Rong likely hadn’t even looked at the contents of the agreement.

“…Sir?” Xiao Wu called out tentatively.

Qiao Nanqi seemed to move, but didn’t answer him.

Xiao Wu couldn’t decide whether to leave or enter. He hesitated at the door for a long time until Qiao Nanqi’s extremely hoarse voice finally came from inside: “…Is he gone?”

This voice was as raspy as if it had been crushed, faintly carrying an impossible hope.

He didn’t mention who the question was about, but who else could it be?

For a moment, Xiao Wu couldn’t even bring himself to say “He’s long gone.”

Qiao Nanqi didn’t seem to truly want to hear the answer either.

He didn’t wait for Xiao Wu’s reply, nor did he continue sitting. Instead, he stood up and slowly bent down, picking up the papers on the floor that were already in a state of disarray, one by one.

Xiao Wu wanted to go up and help. Just as he took a step, Qiao Nanqi said: “I’ll do it myself.”

Xiao Wu immediately didn’t dare to move.

Qiao Nanqi bent over, picking them up one by one.

When he had picked them all up and placed them in a neat stack on the table, and his expression looked a bit better than before, only then did Xiao Wu dare to speak: “Sir, over on the side of Chen Senior and Chen Junior… a new situation has arisen.”

Qiao Nanqi’s movement paused.

Seeing that he was interested, Xiao Wu continued: “It’s related to Mr. Zhao.”