Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Gu Xiaojing carried the extra fruit over and knocked on the door next door.

He Wei opened it, his eyes half-lidded, looking as if he couldn’t be bothered with anyone.

“What is it?”

He looked a little dispirited, and there was a smell of smoke drifting from inside the room.

Gu Xiaojing put on a polished, businesslike smile and held out the fruit.

“Nan Nan said you bought too much for us. We don’t have much money, so she asked me to return some of it. As for the fruit we’re keeping, tell me how much it was and I’ll pay you.”

He Wei didn’t take it. “Tell her to come herself.”

Gu Xiaojing’s smile gradually faded. “She’s very busy and doesn’t have time. It’s just a small matter. As her boyfriend, I can handle it.”

He Wei said nothing. He only repeated, “Tell her to come herself.”

Without waiting for Gu Xiaojing to say anything else, he shut the door in his face with a dark expression.

After closing the door, he opened the window to air out the room.

The soundproofing here was terrible.

So he had heard everything.

Although Gu Xiaojing said he had returned the fruit and paid the money, I knew from the barrage comments that he had done neither.

He had thrown the fruit into the trash.

Sure enough, in the latest entry of his diary, I saw his resentment toward He Wei. He had even started thinking about moving out.

While he wasn’t home, I knocked on the door next door. Since He Wei had bought so much fruit, it really wouldn’t be right not to pay him something.

When He Wei opened the door, I said, “Hi. How much was the fruit? I’ll pay you.”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he opened the door wider. “Come in.”

Something this minor didn’t really require inviting me inside, but I went in anyway.

His room wasn’t very big either, but it was the best in the shared apartment, and the rent was the highest.

It had air-conditioning, a balcony, and a private bathroom.

The moment I stepped inside, the stifling heat of summer was shut out behind me. It had been a long time since I had felt this kind of coolness.

He Wei told me to sit on his bed.

The instant I sat down, a scent belonging to another man wrapped around me, dense and inescapable.

I was wearing an ordinary camisole and shorts, sitting on the edge of the bed.

He Wei closed the door. When he turned around and saw me like that, his footsteps paused.

I looked up at him. When his gaze met mine, I smiled at him.

The ponytail I had tied up was fastened with the hair tie he had returned to me a few days ago.

He Wei casually named a price. The moment I heard it, I knew yesterday’s bag of fruit had cost far more than that, but I pretended not to notice and paid him without hesitation.

“By the way, Brother He, are you driving tomorrow?”

I had heard another neighbor in the shared apartment call him that before, so I took the liberty of doing the same.

“What did you call me?” he asked abruptly, not answering my question at all.

A little confused, I called him again. “Brother He? Am I not allowed to call you that? I heard someone else call you that.”

“You can.”

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly as he secretly enjoyed it. “Do you need me to bring you anything?”

He seemed to have already cast himself into some role, sinking so deeply into it he couldn’t pull himself out.

He had completely forgotten the fact that I had a boyfriend.

I asked him to buy me a few sets of clothes from the clothing market over there.

Online shopping had only just begun to rise. My original expectations matched what the barrage comments said about the future: in the next few years, the biggest opportunities would be in e-commerce and the internet.

Before my mother passed away, she used to make clothes. She had excellent taste, and after years of being influenced by her, I had always been interested in the clothing industry.

He Wei agreed without hesitation. “What size?”

His tone was perfectly serious when he asked, but his mind was full of the image of me opening the door that day in Gu Xiaojing’s clothes.

After chatting with him for a few more minutes, I got up and prepared to leave. If I stayed any later, Gu Xiaojing would be back.

Before I left, He Wei called out to me.

“Take that bag of fruit with you.”

I froze for a second. “I didn’t ask you to buy it.”

He Wei said with easy familiarity, “Yeah. I bought it myself.”

I was just about to refuse.

But in the next second, he cut me off with one sentence.

“If you don’t take it, I’ll leave it at your door later.”

Later.

When later?

When Gu Xiaojing came back?

I looked up at him. He stared at me without blinking, and even after I caught him in the act, he showed no intention of backing down.

He was completely different from the person who used to dodge my gaze whenever our eyes so much as brushed past each other.

It was as if he was telling me that the day I opened my door and asked him to do me that favor, I’d let the wolf into the house.

And now that he’d bitten down, he would never let go.

But he had forgotten that I was the one who opened the door, and I was the one who asked.

So the decision of whether or not to take it home should also be mine.

“No. You’ve already helped me enough. I can’t accept more of your things for no reason.”

He Wei’s eyes instantly darkened. The corners of his mouth flattened, like the calm before a storm.

I took a step forward and said, “You won’t really leave it at my door, will you? I don’t like people who make decisions for me.”

“If Brother He really does that, then next time I’ll have to ask someone else for help.”

He Wei lowered his eyes. He watched me approach him step by step, while every word out of my mouth pushed him farther away.

His heart sank little by little too.

He understood that in this silent contest, with the other man absent, he had lost to that useless bastard. My heart had leaned toward the other man without hesitation-even though, before deciding to poach someone else’s girlfriend, he had already prepared himself for this.

But when I truly issued that warning without the slightest concealment, openly spelling out the fact that I was using him, his heart still stung.

People really were greedy. Clearly, at first, he hadn’t had any thoughts at all. He had only been creating vague, almost imperceptible chances to get close to me. An occasional meeting, an accidental touch, had been enough to make his entire body burn with restless heat and send his imagination running wild for days.

But when the olive branch that would let him climb higher was truly extended toward him, he became more and more greedy.

He wanted everything.

He wanted to get close to me. He wanted to invite me into his room. He wanted to secretly stake his claim. He wanted to make the spot beside me his own…

His desire only grew. It never lessened.

In the brief silence, both of us knew exactly what answer we were waiting for.

He Wei stared into my eyes and answered, “Okay.”

In the end, he still took the step down that I had offered him.

I smiled and thanked him.

Before leaving, I picked a peach from the bag and took it with me, holding it up to show him.

The gloom in his eyes vanished, and some warmth returned to his expression.

The comments started shrieking again:

[Is this a skill I can learn? The supporting male lead senses the olive branch the supporting female lead tossed him, so he starts testing her step by step, even trying to use fruit to declare sovereignty in front of the official boyfriend. He’s openly trying to poach her.]

[He even wanted to use forceful methods to make the supporting female lead accept his invasion, but she clearly doesn’t fall for that. She rejects him outright and makes it clear she’s protecting her boyfriend.]

[I’m dying. He wanted to climb out into the open and kick the official boyfriend away, but the supporting female lead pressed him right back into the dirt.]

[Supporting male lead: I want to be the side piece in broad daylight.
Supporting female lead: Get back where you came from. If you can’t behave, I’ll replace you.
Supporting male lead: Okay.]

[The supporting female lead is seriously skilled. Clear rewards and punishments. She doesn’t go soft when it’s time to punish him, and after punishing him, she gives him a little pat, all like, “I may have punished you, but I still care about you.”]

[At first I didn’t get why both the male lead and the supporting male lead were so eager to throw themselves at her. Now I get it. If the supporting female lead treated me like this, I’d be an even bigger dog than either of them.]

[Mommy, can you make out with Second Dad and let me watch?]