Guo Fengnian and Liang Xiao were also chased away, leaving only the two of them at home again.
Zhang Xiyue sat cross-legged on the sofa, sounding as if she were discussing the weather that day: "So what do we do now, fix the door?"
"Of course the door has to be fixed..." Cheng Mingjiao glanced at her, paused for a long moment before asking, "How much is your progress bar at now?"
Zhang Xiyue paused, and answered truthfully, "49%."
Cheng Mingjiao clicked his tongue, displeased: "How did it drop so much? Chen Mingjiao is so useless. You haven't helped him for just a few days, and he's already messed everything up... You might as well go after me. If you were trying to win me over, you wouldn't have to do a single thing. I'd push that bar all the way to 200% on my own."
Zhang Xiyue burst into a laugh: "Sure sure, you're amazing."
"I'm not kidding you." Cheng Mingjiao frowned.
"I'm not kidding you either. I really think you're incredibly capable."
Back when she first joined Yu Huang, it happened to be the off-season. She watched him spend all day folding paper planes and thought he was a total slacker. But once work actually picked up, she realized just how extraordinary a person he really was.
He made brilliant decisions, acted with unyielding determination, and had a sharp, one-of-a-kind vision that always led him down the right path. No wonder he had managed to grow Yu Huang into the scale it was today in just a few short years.
"Cheng Mingjiao, you're the most amazing of all." Zhang Xiyue's praise was completely sincere.
Cheng Mingjiao felt a little happy after hearing that, but for some reason, also a little unhappy. The two of them suddenly fell into silence.
After a long while, he said casually, "I'm not going to keep you confined anymore."
Zhang Xiyue's eyes flickered. This decision didn't surprise her at all.
"I'm not going to stop you from doing your tasks either, but you can't stay at the Counterfeit's place anymore," Cheng Mingjiao laid out his demands. "You have to come back and live here."
Zhang Xiyue: "Okay."
"Even though the Counterfeit is an important prop for you to get home, you can't ignore your boyfriend just because of him. And you are absolutely not allowed to leave without saying a word again. You have to reply to my messages the second you see them, and you can't deliberately leave me hanging."
Zhang Xiyue, for the sake of world peace, didn't correct his description of Chen Mingjiao as a prop: "Alright."
"You're not going back to Yu Huang, are you?" Cheng Mingjiao asked.
Zhang Xiyue said nothing.
Cheng Mingjiao let out a light scoff: "Even if you don't go back, you still have to put my needs first. Because your boyfriend is more important than your boss and your target all put together, got it?"
Zhang Xiyue: "That works."
Zhang Xiyue had agreed so easily to all three demands Cheng Mingjiao made that he started to think if he brought up a few more, she would probably nod along to those too.
His eyes glinted a little as he began to hatch a mischievous plan.
Unfortunately, before he could come up with anything, Zhang Xiyue leaned over and gave his forehead a playful little flick.
"Thank you, Zhuangzhuang." She cupped his face in her hands.
Cheng Mingjiao didn't know why, but his heart suddenly felt a little tight and achy. But as a mature man, he didn't give himself any chance to wallow in that vulnerable feeling, and immediately ordered Zhang Xiyue to go with him to buy a new door.
Zhang Xiyue actually wanted to rest a bit, but seeing the suppressed emotion in his eyes, she went with him anyway.
That same evening, a brand new front door was installed at their place, and Zhang Xiyue got her phone back.
Chen Mingjiao had sent her a flood of messages during that time. At first, he was just asking what had happened to her, and if she needed him to do anything.
When he realized she wasn't going to reply, he turned their chat thread into a memo, sending a daily update of everything he had done, every difficulty he had run into, and how he had solved it, along with a question of when she would be coming back.
It was the first time Zhang Xiyue had ever seen such a chatty side of him, and thanks to his messages, she was able to get a full picture of his current situation in the shortest time possible.
During the days when she was staying alone with Cheng Mingjiao, Grandma Zhao's condition had taken a turn for the worse. Chen Mingjiao's father and stepmother, who had laid low for a while, started causing trouble for him again. They even tried to use the excuse of the old lady being mentally confused to take back the shares he was holding on behalf of her.
The Chen patriarch was also biased in favor of his own son, so Chen Mingjiao had been walking on eggshells this whole time, but he still wrote in the chat box that he would work hard to get everything done.
Zhang Xiyue stared at the messages for a long time, and was just about to reply to him when her phone vanished out of thin air.
She looked up instinctively, and saw Cheng Mingjiao, who flipped through a couple of pages of the chat very rudely and said disdainfully, "Little loser."
Zhang Xiyue: "..."
"He really has no talent for business. You've given him all those master classes for so long, and he still got cornered into such a tight spot so easily," Cheng Mingjiao commented unsparingly. "I remember he's pretty good at drawing. If it weren't for the fact that I need to help you finish your task, I really would have advised him to go abroad and study fine art."
Zhang Xiyue spoke up for Chen Mingjiao: "He's never been exposed to any of this before. It's already really impressive that he's gotten this far."
"His current ability is on par with a full-grown coconut crab. I have zero doubt that if no one helps him, he'll keep butting his head against a coconut tree that doesn't even have a single coconut on it until he starves to death." Cheng Mingjiao's evaluation was as sharp and unkind as it could get.
Zhang Xiyue knew that if she kept arguing, he would have even meaner lines waiting for her. So after a few seconds of silence, she smiled and said, "I'm so tired. Let's go back to the room."
"You're changing the subject?" the Emperor's sensitivity flared up all over again. "Are you upset because I was talking about him?"
Zhang Xiyue: "..."
The ever-so-sensitive Emperor insisted that she give him a proper explanation, and it took Zhang Xiyue half an hour of coaxing to finally calm him down.
While he was humming a tune and taking a shower, she quickly sent Chen Mingjiao a message: I'll go see you tomorrow.
Chen Mingjiao replied with an exclamation mark right away, and then kept spamming her with phone calls.
Zhang Xiyue hung up quickly and told him it wasn't a good time to talk.
Chen Mingjiao had been typing for ages, and then asked: Are you safe? Do you need to call the police?
Zhang Xiyue didn't know whether to laugh or cry, realizing he had obviously imagined all kinds of dramatic scenarios.
She chatted briefly with Chen Mingjiao, and as soon as Cheng Mingjiao came out of the bathroom, she put her phone down and walked over to give him a big, warm smile and a hug.
"Do you know what you look like right now?" Cheng Mingjiao asked.
Zhang Xiyue: "What?"
Cheng Mingjiao: "You look exactly like that bad person who cheated on their partner and is being extra affectionate on purpose because you feel guilty."
Zhang Xiyue, who was only trying to be a little nicer to him because she knew she might leave at any moment: "..."
"Did you secretly contact the Counterfeit?" Cheng Mingjiao asked coldly, referring to Chen Mingjiao as the Counterfeit over and over, as if he had forgotten that just a few days ago, he was the one who had choked up and said he himself was the fake.
Faced with his unreasonable fit, Zhang Xiyue gave him a light little slap.
The smacked Cheng Mingjiao was perfectly satisfied, and he wrapped his arms around his girlfriend and went to sleep.
At eight o'clock the next morning, the long-unheard workday alarm went off.
Cheng Mingjiao rolled over, eyes still closed, and reached out his hand to the side of the bed.
He grabbed nothing but empty air.
He jolted upright, saw the empty space next to him, and immediately ran downstairs in a panic.
Zhang Xiyue had just finished making breakfast and walked out of the kitchen, when she saw him rushing through the living room in a flustered state, heading straight for the front door.
"Zhuangzhuang!" Zhang Xiyue called out to him quickly.
Cheng Mingjiao stopped dead in his tracks. It took him a few seconds to register that it was her, before he suddenly regained his composure. "That smells great. What did you make to eat?"
Zhang Xiyue noticed his bare feet and smiled. "Coconut chicken soup."
"Is it pre-made again?" Cheng Mingjiao scratched his head and asked.
Zhang Xiyue: "No. I got up an hour early to simmer it from scratch."
Cheng Mingjiao nodded. "Then, I'll go back and change my clothes first."
Zhang Xiyue agreed. Only after his figure vanished at the stairwell did the smile on her lips fade away abruptly.
She stood still for a moment, then lowered her head to serve the rice.
Cheng Mingjiao came back soon, and the two of them sat side by side, sharing their breakfast.
Zhang Xiyue looked down, took a sip of chicken soup, and chuckled. "Freshly made food really tastes better than pre-made meals."
"...They're more or less the same," Cheng Mingjiao had meant to say that whatever she made was delicious, but the words slipped out and he realized it sounded like he was dismissing her efforts. He immediately added, "This kind of thing takes too much time. Don't go through the trouble of making it next time."
The little emperor, who had been spoiled his entire life, had suddenly learned the advanced emotion of "thoughtfulness" after meeting his visitor from beyond the heavens.
Zhang Xiyue stared at him for a long moment and said, "I won't leave all of a sudden."
The long lashes on Cheng Mingjiao's drooping eyes fluttered, like a tiny fan brushing against the tip of Zhang Xiyue's heart.
"The progress bar goes up slowly. Before I leave, I'll have more than enough time to say goodbye to you," Zhang Xiyue said in a soft voice, trying to ease his worries.
Cheng Mingjiao took another sip of the chicken soup, let out a small breath, and regained his usual proud look. "Then there's no need to drag out the goodbye for ages. At least wait until the progress bar hits 90% before you start saying farewell. I don't want to start saying goodbye to you right now."
"Of course," Zhang Xiyue agreed readily.
Cheng Mingjiao huffed lightly, and it was unclear what he was grumbling about.
After breakfast, the two of them headed out. Zhang Xiyue was going to meet Chen Mingjiao, while Cheng Mingjiao had to return to Yuhuang Corporation.
Their destinations were in completely opposite directions.
Yet Cheng Mingjiao insisted on seeing Zhang Xiyue off.
Zhang Xiyue had learned that Cheng Mingjiao had passed his driver's test from him as early as the third day he had been locked up. Even though she had praised him for it back then, she still remembered his ridiculous theory of "not crashing the old or the young, only hitting able-bodied adults", so she really did not want to ride in a car he was driving.
"You're going to be late if you don't go now. Hurry to your company. It must be total chaos after all these days you've been away," Zhang Xiyue urged him to leave. "I'll just take a taxi."
Cheng Mingjiao stood his ground. "What taxi? I said I'd drive you..."
"No, really, you don't have to!" Zhang Xiyue cut him off.
Cheng Mingjiao narrowed his eyes. "Do you not trust my driving skills?"
"...Of course not," Zhang Xiyue said with a perfectly sincere expression.
Cheng Mingjiao: "Then let me drive you there."
Zhang Xiyue: "I..."
She racked her brains, trying to come up with a reasonable excuse.
Cheng Mingjiao suddenly relented. "Fine, you drive, but I still get to see you there."
Zhang Xiyue: "...Huh?"
"You drive me to Chen Mingjiao's place first, then I'll head to the company from there."
Zhang Xiyue: "..."
What on earth was the point of that?
Zhang Xiyue had originally planned for them to go their separate ways, but after a back-and-forth of bickering, she finally agreed to his suggestion.
She slid into Cheng Mingjiao's driver's seat for the first time in a long while, and Cheng Mingjiao sat in the passenger seat beside her as they set off.
Half an hour later, Zhang Xiyue got out of the car. Cheng Mingjiao, who had switched to the driver's seat, waved at her.
Zhang Xiyue leaned over. "I don't think I can have lunch with you today..."
Before she could finish her sentence, Cheng Mingjiao wrapped an arm around her neck and gave her a parting kiss.
Zhang Xiyue was completely caught off guard by the kiss. When she finally pulled away, she turned her head and saw Chen Mingjiao standing there, looking utterly stern.
She: "..."
She finally realized why Cheng Mingjiao had been so insistent on seeing her off.
