WAM CH40

6:00 AM sharp.

“Ring, ring, ring, get up, get up.”

The sound of the phone alarm sounded a bit muffled, as if covered by something, completely unclear which corner it was hidden in.

It rang for about two or three minutes. Since Gu Yanzhou was a light sleeper, he slowly opened his eyes. The first thing that came into view was the sticking-up little ponytail on top of someone’s head. A black hair tie, with a section as short as a pinky finger sticking out.

Shao Si’s face was completely buried in his chest, his arms lightly wrapped around his waist—a very ambiguous position.

The blanket had even been kicked to the foot of the bed by Shao Si, looking very much like it was going to continue sliding down.

“…” Gu Yanzhou felt a faint headache coming on.

He hadn’t been drunk last night, yet he somehow had no idea how things had developed into this state.

Rallying his thoughts, he nudged the head of the person in his arms: “Is your phone ringing? Get up.”

Shao Si tilted his head away, furrowing his brows discontentedly in his sleep.

When Gu Yanzhou pushed him a second time, Shao Si grabbed his hand in one swift motion and mumbled blurrily: “…Quiet.”

Quite a temper on him.

Gu Yanzhou’s gaze landed on their intertwined hands—Shao Si’s fingers were long and slender, his frame slightly smaller than his own. When holding his hand, there was hardly any imposing force to it; he used almost no strength at all, feeling remarkably soft.

“Ring ring ring.”

“Time to get up, hurry up and get up, get up get up get up get up.”

The alarm continued to ring endlessly. Gu Yanzhou used his other hand to prop himself up into a half-sitting position, casually rummaging around the head of the bed.

Not under the pillow. Not on the nightstand either.

Listening carefully, he realized the sound was likely coming from somewhere on Shao Si’s person—possibly in a pocket, or perhaps pressed underneath his body.

Filming started at 7:00 AM today, so he couldn’t afford to waste more time with him. Without hesitation, Gu Yanzhou opted for forceful measures.

Shao Si was sleeping peacefully when he was suddenly kicked off the bed. In that split second, he was completely bewildered.

He covered half his face, curled up halfway on the floor.

Gu Yanzhou actually hadn’t used much force; knocking him down was purely an accident. He hadn’t expected that pushing him twice would cause Shao Si to roll right off.

So he got out of bed barefoot, walked over to Shao Si’s side, reached out a hand to gently pull away the hand covering his face, and bent over, asking: “Are you alright?”

Something was wrong.

Daddy Shao had opened his eyes, but his morning moodiness had also been completely ignited by this fall.

Li Guangzong had been his manager for many years. Once, when he truly had nothing to write for a quarterly report, he directly listed Shao Si’s top three minefields just to pad the word count. Among them, morning temper ranked first.

It was also the hardest one to coax him out of.

…

First thing in the morning, before his consciousness had fully returned, Shao Si got into a brawl with Gu Yanzhou.

However, he didn’t win.

It took Gu Yanzhou quite a bit of effort to subdue him.

Grasping Shao Si’s shoulders, he pinned him to the floor and reached out to lightly pat Shao Si’s face: “Haven’t woken up yet or what? What kind of madness are you throwing?”

Shao Si stared at the ceiling—and at the sparkling crystal chandelier hanging from it—as his awareness slowly seeped back.

Two minutes later, Shao Si pulled his phone out of his pocket, turned off the noisy alarm, and sat on the floor ruffling his hair, his mood rather complicated: “Sorry, I… was probably dazed from sleep.”

However, right after saying that, he picked up on an even more serious issue: “Wait, why am I in your room?”

Shao Si pointed at the messy bed, then at Gu Yanzhou, and finally at himself. Succinctly organizing his phrasing, he uttered an ambiguously phrased sentence: “Last night, did we… sleep together?”

“…” This question was quite interesting.

“If you mean sleeping in the literal sense of the word, then I can clearly tell you,” Gu Yanzhou said while leaning down to pick up one of Shao Si’s stud earrings left behind on the bedsheets, handing it back to him along with a definitive answer, “yes.”

Shao Si accepted the earring. It was a single black stud, delicate and small, with a thin silver rim set with an obsidian stone inside.

He looked up at Gu Yanzhou, discovering that the other man was looking at him too.

So after pondering back and forth, he could only respond with an “Oh.”

“Don’t drink in the future; your alcohol tolerance is too terrible.” Gu Yanzhou walked to the door, opened it, and made a ‘after you’ gesture. “Work starts at seven, it’s already 6:20. You have forty minutes to prepare, and your manager…”

Your manager is probably already looking for you.

Gu Yanzhou couldn’t finish this sentence, because when he opened the door, Li Guangzong’s wailing voice carried over clearly from outside: “Oh God, has anyone seen my Shao Si? Did he run away from the set?”

Li Guangzong was clutching the assistant director refusing to let go, while the assistant director waved his hand saying he didn’t know. So Li Guangzong walked over to knock on Shao Si’s room door again: “Dad, where are you? I know you’re not inside because I already went in looking for you just now… but I still wanted to tell you, I bought you your favorite seafood porridge.”

“What are you shouting for, like you’re wailing at a funeral.” Shao Si stepped out of Gu Yanzhou’s room without changing expression, walked back toward his own room, patted his pants pockets twice, but didn’t find his room card. Thus, under Li Guangzong’s horrified gaze, he turned back to Gu Yanzhou’s doorway and asked, “Did my room card get left on your bed too?”

After a moment, a hand extended from the doorway, a room card pinched between the fingertips.

“Thanks,” Shao Si took it and said. “I’ll treat you to a meal another day.”

Ten minutes later.

Shao Si finished tidying up briefly and sat down to drink his porridge.

Li Guangzong held it in for a long time before finally failing to contain himself: “You… and Best Actor Gu, what are you two up to? You were in his room last night? Did you two sleep together?”

“If I said I was rehearsing a glow-in-the-dark script with him, would you believe it?”

“Listen to you spouting nonsense. For real, hey—don’t just focus on drinking, raise your head and look into my eyes.”

Shao Si took a spoonful with his spoon and said, “Not looking.”

Li Guangzong: “I think we need to communicate.”

Shao Si: “I think today’s porridge tastes a bit salty.”

So infuriating!

It’s impossible to have a proper conversation!

Li Guangzong conceded defeat: “Fine, okay, actually I should have realized it earlier. That WeChat Moments post you made in the middle of the night yesterday… why didn’t I think of it.”

Shao Si’s action of drinking porridge paused: “…What Moments post?”

Li Guangzong opened WeChat and pulled up the post to show him: “Look for yourself, what the hell is this, in the pitch-dark night.”

It was a photo post, pitch black with terrible lighting, captioned with three words plus an exclamation mark:

—”I’m so handsome.”

Under the post, the very first comment was from Chi Zijun: Is this the legendary ‘so handsome I can’t sleep’?

The rest were all artists and directors he had collaborated with, with Li Guangzong’s comment squeezed in among them, roaring with righteous vigor: GO! TO! SLEEP! What time is it!

Actually, Shao Si didn’t have much of an impression of last night; he was prone to blacking out whenever he drank. Looking at the timestamp though, it should have been posted while Gu Yanzhou was taking a shower. And after posting it, he had even set an alarm for 6:00 AM for himself.

Thinking about it, his professional dedication was actually somewhat touching.

In the makeup room.

“Yesterday, the police made the hidden truth behind the ‘Yang Yinyin’ case public for the first time, as well as all the criminal syndicates big and small involved behind her,” Chen Yang said. “Thank goodness, the scandals between you and Shao Si took a massive hit from this news and died down quite a bit.”

“Mhm, it’s normal.” Gu Yanzhou flipped a page in his script. Although he had slept for less than three hours last night, he showed no signs of fatigue at all. “No matter how big the news, netizens’ enthusiasm has limits. It’s like a gust of wind; whether a breeze or a tornado, once it blows past, it passes.”

Chen Yang: “But you’ve been walking a bit too close to him recently. Let alone the media, even I’m starting to suspect…”

He stopped halfway through his words, ultimately not continuing.

He knew Gu Yanzhou’s personality better than anyone. On the surface he seemed very easygoing, but in truth, he had his own way of doing things regardless of the matter.

“Is it close?” Gu Yanzhou pinched his fingertips, speaking with pointed meaning, “I haven’t even dared to truly approach him yet.”

Before meeting Shao Si, feelings outside of himself were never a necessity.

So he wasn’t ready yet.

For several days in a row, filming went smoothly. As usual, whenever Shao Si found free time, he would stay by Ye Xuan’s side to build rapport.

No matter how guarded Ye Xuan was against outsiders, after this period of time, she had let down her defense and maintained quite a decent relationship with Shao Si.

“Weren’t you supposed to take leave today to attend the promotional event?” Ye Xuan had her script spread across her lap, a heating pad pressed against her stomach. “How come you didn’t go?”

“I was originally going to go,” Shao Si closed his script. “But due to weather reasons, the weather forecast predicts heavy rainstorms… so the time was changed and pushed back.”

“I see.”

Ye Xuan paused, then asked again: “Which day was it finally set for?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“The day after tomorrow happens to be a day off for the whole crew,” Ye Xuan said. “That really is a coincidence.”

“Yeah, what a coincidence.”

Shao Si had heard whispers about the day off.

However, at first he thought it was just a rumor, like when kids in school foolishly raised a commotion saying there wouldn’t be class tomorrow.

Especially for a career-driven person like Director Ou, how could he easily give everyone a day off?

Yet, these rumors were all true.

Before wrapping up work for the night, Director Ou announced a day off for the day after tomorrow, citing the reason that he “felt everyone had worked too hard.”

Li Guangzong dug up a lot of juicy gossip from other crew members: “I heard that every year around this time, as long as Director Ou has a production underway, he will absolutely halt work for one day.”

Halting work on a production for a day incurred losses beyond imagination.

“At first everyone thought it was a wedding anniversary or something, but later found out Director Ou was single… In short, there are heaps of theories, very messy.”

Shao Si didn’t pay close attention to the specific gossip Li Guangzong rambled on about. His mind was entirely consumed by the look in Ye Xuan’s eyes when she proactively questioned him earlier.

She seemed to be expecting him to give a certain answer.

Yet Shao Si hadn’t given her a satisfactory response.

Did she think he would know the reason for halting work the day after tomorrow? Or rather, did she want to know the reason behind the halt?

…

Thinking this, Shao Si casually flipped through the calendar and spotted a familiar date.

The day after tomorrow was…

The fourteenth day of the fourth lunar month.