BDBE 31

Chapter 31 Business Trip

Shen Wanchao, who was cooking soup in the kitchen, was unaware of the conversation between the father and son outside, and even less aware that he had instructed Zhou Mingchen to keep it a secret, only for that brat to turn around and betray him and defect to the enemy.

He was now completely absorbed in the yam and pork rib soup in front of him. He added a pinch of salt and tasted it, then added another pinch, tasted it again, added more, tasted it again, added more, and so on…

He hadn’t cooked for a long time, so he felt compelled to make amends, and feared he might do something wrong, or make it too bland or too salty.

The last time he cooked was when he was making baby food for Zhou Mingchen, who had just started teething.

His cooking skills were neither good nor bad; he generally disliked make mistakes when following recipes, but he had too few opportunities to practice, so he inevitably became rusty.

1:30 PM.

Zhou Mingchen came out of the room for the third time and earnestly asked his father, who was sitting on the sofa calmly watching the computer, “I’m so hungry. Are we really not going to order takeout?”

Zhou Hui looked up and ruthlessly rejected his son’s opinion: “No, just wait.”

Zhou Mingchen sighed, wondering what Shen Xiaochao was up to. It had been three hours already… Could he really be building an airplane in the kitchen?

But his father wouldn’t allow him to [visit our site]order takeout. It felt as though he was afraid of spoiling Shen Chao’s mood.

Shen Chao’s enthusiasm for cooking was certainly important, but wasn’t his growing son’s belly important too?

“Gurgle…”

The living room was quiet, making this discordant noise all the more noticeable.

Zhou Mingchen was certain that his stomach had already started acting up in the room, and this time it definitely wasn’t him. So he looked at his father.

Zhou Hui coughed, closed his laptop, stood up, and said, “I’ll go check on the kitchen.”

Fortunately, when Zhou Hui went in, Shen Wanchao’s last dish was just about to be taken off the heat. Zhou Hui lent a hand, and the two of them quickly brought the food to the table.

Zhou Mingchen was so hungry he felt like his soul was leaving his body. In less than three minutes, he devoured a whole bowl of rice and reached for more.

Throughout the process, Shen Wanchao stared at him expectantly, hoping he would offer some kind of evaluation.

Zhou Mingchen met his starry eyes, understood, and gave a thumbs up, “Delicious!”

Shen Wanchao’s eyes lit up, and he asked again, “Anything else?”

“Uh.” Zhou Mingchen hadn’t expected that his sincere praise wouldn’t satisfy Shen Wanchao. He racked his brains for a [unauthorized copy]moment, “It’s good with rice?”

“Anything else?” Shen Wanchao blinked.

Anything else!?

Zhou Mingchen was stunned. Did Shen Xiaochao want him to write a food review?

In the end, it was Zhou Hui who stepped in and saved Zhou Mingchen, who was almost forced to become a food critic on the spot.

He said to Shen Wanchao, “It’s already good that he could come up with these two comments after cooking for him for the first time.”

Shen Wanchao paused upon realizing that Zhou Hui was right.

Strictly speaking, this wasn’t the first time he had cooked for Zhou Mingchen, but Zhou Mingchen was too young at the time and had no memory of it. After he started remembering things, he never cooked for him again.

Therefore, Zhou Mingchen could not possibly taste any so-called “dad’s flavor” in the food he cooked.

Shen Wanchao’s plan to let his son discover his true identity from the clues was thus ruined.

He glanced at Zhou Hui. The Alpha ate calmly and elegantly, his face was expressionless, but he had seen through everything.

After a moment of sadness, Shen Wanchao quickly composed unauthorized copy himself and smiled as he added a piece of spare rib to Zhou Mingchen’s plate.

“Eat more, you’re still growing.”

Zhou Mingchen thanked him happily, then secretly glanced at his father, as if to say: Look, even Shen Xiaochao knows I’m growing taller, and you, my own father, still have the nerve to let me go hungry.

Zhou Hui chose to ignore it.

As the meal was about to end, Zhou Hui calmly announced, “I’ll be away on a business trip for a few days. You two should stay home and get along well. Aunt Liu will come over to take care of you.”

Zhou Mingchen gave an indifferent “Oh,” and carried the dirty dishes to the kitchen.

Shen Wanchao paused, then asked Zhou Hui, “How long will you be away on this business trip?”

Zhou Hui replied, “About a week, what’s wrong?”

Shen Wanchao shook his head; he felt somewhat disappointed.

After returning from the mountain last night, he spent half the night reflecting on himself.

In just two days, first his spouse, then his son, began to doubt his love for them.

Shen Wanchao was not a stubborn person. He knew that he must have done something wrong to make the father and son say the same thing at almost the same time.

He made up his mind to take advantage of this vacation to repair the relationships between his family members, which was why he offered to cook today.

Unexpectedly, Zhou Hui was about to go on a business trip.

How could he express his love if no one was around?

But work matters were not to be taken lightly, and Shen Wanchao couldn’t let Zhou Hui cancel his business trip and stay home just for his own sake. So he said nothing.

But when evening came, Shen Wanchao finally couldn’t resist and pushed open the door to Zhou Hui’s room.

Zhou Mingchen was in his room. Zhou Hui already knew his identity, so Shen Wanchao didn’t treat himself like an outsider.

He wasn’t an outsider to begin with; just over a month ago, he was still sleeping in this big bed.

That was how he bumped into Zhou Hui, who had just taken a shower and wasn’t wearing a shirt.

Zhou Hui had a great figure, and no one knew this better than Shen Wanchao. He also knew that Zhou Hui had three small moles lined up in a row on his left shoulder blade. Every time he went into heat, Shen Wanchao will use his fingernail to connect these three small black moles together with a red thread.

What am I thinking…?

Shen Wanchao quickly shook off the inappropriate images in his mind, stood at the door, and asked, “If you’re [stolen content]going on a business trip, have you packed your luggage?”

Zhou Hui put on his shirt, saying as he did so, “We’re not leaving until tomorrow afternoon. Xiao Zhao will have everything ready and come to pick me up before noon.”

“What about clothes?” Shen Wanchao asked. “You’ll definitely need to bring formal attire from home, right?”

Zhou Hui nodded: “The clothes I need to bring were picked out a couple of days ago and sent to the dry cleaners for ironing. Xiao Zhao will pick them up.”

How come this Xiao Zhao was so versatile?

Shen Wanchao tried hard to think of what else he could do for Zhou Hui.

In the end, he gave up.

Zhou Hui would leave tomorrow, and everything must have been arranged by those around him several days in advance, leaving him no room to use his skills.

When he saw his rather disappointed look, Zhou Hui couldn’t help but chuckle: “Are you trying to express your concern?”

“Yes.” Shen Wanchao sat down on the bed in a deflated manner. “It’s a pity that the people around you are too considerate, so I don’t have to worry about you.”

“That’s their job.” Zhou Hui stopped in front of him.

Shen Wanchao sighed: “But they’ve already done all these things, how can I tell you ‘I love you’?”

Zhou Hui’s fingers, which were hanging by his legs, twitched, he wanted to brush away the stray hairs on Shen Wanchao’s face, but in the end he did nothing.

“It’s not about doing these things to express love. They do these things not because they love me, but because I pay them a salary.”

Shen Wanchao listlessly looked up at him: “Then tell me, is there anything else you can say?”

“I don’t know.” Zhou Hui’s expression was very serious. “I only know that if you really love me, you don’t need to do anything, I can feel it.”

Shen Wanchao felt that this statement was too cryptic.

Whether a company was profitable could be seen from its financial statements, employee performance could be seen from their performance appraisal reports, students’ learning progress could be seen directly from their exam scores, the quality of a report could be seen from its post-publication browsing data, and the quality of a film could be seen from its box office and awards…

But how can he prove that he loves Zhou Hui?

He asked Zhou Hui, the referee, and the referee said he didn’t know either. So how could he be considered to love Zhou Hui?

There was not even a direction to strive for.

Suddenly, Zhou Hui’s deep voice rang out again, interrupting Shen Wanchao’s troubled thoughts.

He asked, “Do you think I love you?”

Shen Wanchao wanted to say ” You love me,” but stopped himself at the last minute. He found Zhou Hui, who insisted on saying he didn’t love him, annoying and didn’t want to tell the truth and give him any chance to be smug.

But Shen Wanchao was a man of principle, and even though he was unwilling, he still answered truthfully: “You love me.”

“Why do you think that?” Zhou Hui continued to ask.

Shen Wanchao opened his mouth to answer, but then didn’t know what to say. In the end, he gave the same answer as Zhou Hui: “I don’t know, I guess…”

Zhou Hui squatted down to be at eye level with him, smiled slightly, and said, “Yes. So I really can’t give you a definite answer, not to give you a perfunctory answer.”

Shen Wanchao understood, and stopped complaining that Zhou Hui’s test questions were too difficult. He said goodnight to him and returned to the guest room.

…

The next day was Sunday. Shen Wanchao called Qi Xiao and Tao Yan, and the three of them found a coffee shop and sat on the second-floor balcony, basking in the sun and chatting.

The reason Shen Wanchao called them out was because he was really out of ideas and needed to brainstorm, and they were the only two friends who knew that he had become younger.

Shen Wanchao summarized what had happened between him and Zhou Hui over the past two days and told his two friends about it.

Qi Xiao then realized that he had actually revealed his true identity to Zhou Hui. He slammed his fist on the table and exclaimed excitedly, “Why didn’t you say so sooner? I was even covering for you! Now look what happened, that bastard Zhou Hui definitely thinks I’m a fool!”

Shen Wanchao felt very apologetic and promised to give him a set of original books treasured at home before he could barely appease him.

“You two help me think of a way to get Zhou Hui to change his mind,” Shen Wanchao steered the slightly off-topic conversation back on track.

Qi Xiao was quite blunt: “Then do you still love him?”

“I…” Of course I love him!

Shen Wanchao originally wanted to say that.

But when he met Qi Xiao’s eyes, which clearly said, “If you dare to say you still love him, you are no longer my good friend,” Shen Wanchao’s heart skipped a beat, and he couldn’t say the next half of his sentence.

While he was still hesitating, Qi Xiao clapped his hands and said, “Then that settles it. You really don’t love him anymore, so why are you still agonizing over this?”

Shen Wanchao realized he had misunderstood something big and quickly tried to explain.

However, Qi Xiao continued speaking: “Do you know that there is a term in psychology called ‘projection’?”

Tao Yan, who had no background in psychology, shook his head and asked, “What do you mean?”

Upon receiving feedback from the audience, Qi Xiao became even more interested and said, “It means that people project their [unauthorized copy]deepest emotions onto others. In Xiao Wan’s case, Zhou Hui stopped loving Xiao Wan first, so he felt that Xiao Wan didn’t love him anymore, which is why he cheated on him, and why no matter how Xiao Wan asked him, he could only give an ‘I don’t know’ answer. Conclusion: He’s a complete scumbag, crying ‘stop thief’ while being the thief himself.”

Shen Wanchao couldn’t stand it anymore and hurriedly said, “The affair was a misunderstanding. Zhou Hui said that Secretary Han was drunk that day, and he helped him without noticing that he was photographed.”

“What he said?” Qi Xiao asked skeptically. “Is what he said the truth? Where’s the evidence?”

Shen Wanchao had no evidence. The reason he believed Zhou Hui was simply because he felt that if Zhou Hui really had fallen for someone else, he would definitely lay everything out in the open instead of doing something sneaky and shady.

But he couldn’t say this to Qi Xiao’s face, or he would definitely scold him for being love-struck.

“Let’s get a divorce, Xiao Wan.” Qi Xiao held his hand. “Anyway, you don’t love him anymore. You bring Xiao Chen out and move in with me. We’ll wander the world together and experience the taste of more handsome Alpha men. Don’t hang yourself on one tree.”

Shen Wanchao finally found an opportunity to clarify. He pulled his hand away and smiled: “No, I still love him. You can go ahead and have your fun.”

Qi Xiao: ? ? ?