Liu Chen finished speaking and stood outside the door, looking at Ren Yu, gazing at his handsome face and his eyes, whose emotions were unclear, waiting for any change.
"Going back to live in the Beijing apartment together, is—are you inviting me to live at your place? That Dadi Mansion?"
Ren Yu, his hand in the pocket of his bathrobe, quickly pinched his palm. It didn't hurt. This was a dream!
"Yes, I've been feeling tired lately, and I think letting the people behind the scenes think we're living together will provoke him more."
Liu Chen looked at Ren Yu's unchanging posture and felt an unspeakable sense of loss. After all, for a normal couple, wouldn't the man be excited to hear they were living together?
Thinking this, Liu Chen became even more dejected. Could it be...
Ren Yu's liking for her wasn't really romantic, or rather, the romantic liking wasn't deep enough. It was more like the feeling of taking care of a younger sister?
"Okay, if you agree, I'll go up."
After Liu Chen said this, her eyes locked onto Ren Yu's, and then... her gaze fell again to Ren Yu's neck. Of course, it wasn't out of infatuation, but because...
Liu Chen noticed that the area below Ren Yu's neck, at his collarbone, had turned a faint pink?
"Okay, I'll have Ren Mo pack my things and bring them over. My company is basically waiting until school starts to operate normally."
Ren Yu's face, even the casual smile from earlier, had faded, leaving only a serious expression, as if they were roommates who had just met.
"Okay, I'm going up."
Seeing Ren Yu's complete lack of excitement, Liu Chen quickly said this and turned away. Only after reaching the second floor did Liu Chen let out a long sigh.
"It was just purely living in the same house, wasn't Ren Yu's reaction normal? It proves he doesn't have any strange feelings for me."
But...
We're a couple!
As a couple, isn't there a lack of any impulse even when two people are in private space?
Thinking of this, Liu Chen suddenly remembered.
"Right, there's also Xia Tian and Dong Tian... so, it's actually the same as living at home with Ren Mo, Zhu Zhu, and the others. Thinking about it that way, Ren Yu's reaction seems to be the normal one?"
-
Downstairs,
In the guest room,
Ren Yu, dressed in a bathrobe, his eyes shone brightly through his gold-rimmed glasses. He sat at the desk in the guest room, his gaze fixed on the green code on the computer screen.
His hands danced on the keyboard like a performance.
"Before heading to Beijing, I'll upgrade all the game firewalls and then rebuild the company's firewalls. This will guarantee at least ten days of free time to properly date Chen Chen."
-
Completely unaware that Ren Yu, who had appeared so calm just moments ago, was already frantically working overtime to free up time, Liu Chen sat at her desk and opened her web version of Weibo. Well, she needed to clear out her private messages and reply to mentions before her phone would be usable.
Having not been online for several days, Liu Chen looked at the Weibo interface as if it were a different era.
"Time has become a bit confusing, it feels like my day is 36 hours long."
As she muttered, Liu Chen began to scroll through her Weibo comments. Honestly, she felt like she had accidentally stumbled upon the Weibo account of a "national husband" from her past life.
She had her own traffic.
However, after her official announcement, her fans' attitudes were not as accepting as the fans of that "national husband" from her past life.
"Huh?"
Scrolling through the comments, Liu Chen couldn't help but let out a puzzled sound.
"This familiar sense of steering the narrative..."
Liu Chen looked at the top comments:
'Talented man and beautiful woman, a perfect match.'
'A romance between a senior and a junior, so sweet?'
Raising an eyebrow, this kind of phrasing...
She tapped open a QQ chat window and messaged Lai Jielun.
"Did you hire people to control the comments in my comment section?"
Lai Jielun: It wasn't me, but I know it must have been Brother Ren Yu, because he can't stand people criticizing you.
Seeing this reply, Liu Chen fell silent for a moment, and finally said nothing, directly closing the chat window.
In her mind, Lai Jielun's words and Ren Yu's serious expression from earlier kept reappearing.
Finally, Liu Chen shook her head, pushed both matters out of her mind, and then started searching Weibo for Meimei Pork Jerky.
Meimei Pork Jerky had been on the market for quite some time. With the Chinese New Year visits mostly done, jerky, as a New Year's snack, should be in the stage of word-of-mouth spread.
As expected, there were quite a few Weibo posts about the pork jerky, but most of them indicated that the price was a bit high. After eating for less than ten minutes while sitting on the sofa, twenty yuan were gone.
After almost turning Weibo upside down, Liu Chen finally saw a post about someone who had bought Meimei Pork Jerky at a supermarket and scratched off a lucky card. According to the description, they redeemed a hundred yuan in cash at the supermarket.
Looking at this Weibo post, along with the scattered likes below and comments from what seemed to be friends praising their good luck, Liu Chen's brows furrowed slightly. She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair.
"Impossible. The probability of a lucky card is one percent. A box of pork jerky contains ten bags, meaning for every ten boxes of pork jerky, one person should win.
From before the New Year until now, the data from the warehouse shows over ten thousand boxes of pork jerky have been shipped. This means at least a thousand people should have won.
Weibo is in a period of explosive traffic. Even if the winners don't use Weibo themselves, people around them should have heard about it and posted it on Weibo.
Out of a thousand people, only one person posted on Weibo. This is impossible."
Liu Chen opened her Weibo homepage and began to edit a new post:
"Has anyone around you bought Meimei Pork Jerky and won a prize?"
Liu Chen's hand rested on the mouse, her eyes fixed on the Weibo post on the screen. Two minutes later, Liu Chen deleted what she had just written. She pondered for a moment in front of the computer and then said:
"If I post like this, although it will make netizens notice the lucky draw cards inside the pork jerky, it will only give them a concept of the draw. To leverage people's hope for a better future, I should increase their anticipation for drawing lucky cards in the future."
With that said, Liu Chen typed the words "future" and "lucky draw" into the editing box.
Five minutes later, Liu Chen's account, a few days after announcing her relationship, finally posted a new Weibo.
"To celebrate Meimei Pork Jerky sales exceeding one million, collect six lucky cards and post them on Weibo (showing the lucky card serial numbers) to receive a grand prize of one thousand yuan cash."
For a moment, the Weibo comments were filled with congratulations and confusion:
"What lucky cards?"