KC | Chapter 48

Chapter 58, Perhaps, He Liked Me a Little.

A wisp of white smoke burst out from inside the car, like demonic aura given off by a monster that had cultivated into a spirit. After being steamed by the hot, stifling heat, Lin Yiran seemed to be reborn. His face no longer looked as fierce and terrifying as it had inside the car, and his skin was not rough like an ordinary monster’s either. Instead, it revealed a few traces of transcendent, refined handsomeness.

With every sentence Lin Yiran said, Chen Xi’s face turned redder. His snow-white face reddened until it looked like it could drip blood, and he practically wanted to smash Lin Yiran’s head into the steering wheel on his behalf.

Chen Xi covered his face, peeking at Lin Yiran through the gaps between his fingers, thinking: Brother Lin, please shut up already, you are embarrassing Lanhai to death!

Shen Yuesheng had not never run into jealous people driving his Maserati, but being stopped openly like this was a first today. Looking at the other party’s posture, it was obvious he was here to pick a fight.

“Yuesheng” meant “victory”. His father had given him a name that sounded high-profile while reading low-key, and from a young age had demanded that he fight to win.

The cold male god’s competitive spirit had been stirred. His beautiful eyes looked toward Lin Yiran, and that icy, contemptuous gaze radiated a chill that seemed to go swoosh swoosh.

Poor B was jealous of the rich handsome guy, today you really ran into a steel plate!

Shen Yuesheng pulled the handbrake, shifted into neutral, and cut the engine, then sneered with provocation: “I don’t know how to drive.”

The Maserati, parked across the lot, came with its own spotlight and instantly became the center of attention, with the surrounding cars as spectators. The headlights shone on the windshield, making the driver’s expression impossible to see. Chen Xi felt a little afraid. He did not like being peeked at in his life, and he also could not adapt to this tense, oppressive atmosphere.

Chen Xi vaguely saw the air between the two of them mixing water and fire, flashing blue light. The air around Lin Yiran crackled with sparks, while the air around Shen Yuesheng seemed about to freeze. The three little figures in his head were so scared by this sea of suffering and fire that they were vomiting foam. Chen Xi secretly rubbed his fingers, not knowing what the two beasts had gone crazy over.

The two of them were at daggers drawn, water and fire incompatible.

The huge parking lot was quiet all around, and in the wisps of rising white smoke, the cheerful music from inside the car added even more absurdity: Grab the landlord, grab the landlord, grab the landlord……

Chen Xi braced himself and spoke: “I don’t think this can be cleared up in a short while. How about you two just block it here, and I’ll leave first.”

Under the eyes of those two beasts, there was no way the little white rabbit could run away.

Lin Yiran’s shadow slanted across the sports car, as if a sharp knife had stabbed into the car body. His face remained calm, and the color in his eyes was dark and unclear.

Shen Yuesheng turned off the cheerful Dou Dizhu music, and the surroundings fell silent, as if everything had frozen.

One person was in the car, one person was outside the car, the conflict was building up, swords drawn and bows bent.

Compared with the two cold-faced ones, Chen Xi’s emotions were all written on his face. He nervously swallowed, feeling tense on their behalf.

He knew that Shen Yuesheng’s way of speaking, thought logic, and decision speed were all a little different from normal people, but he could not figure out what crazy thing Lin Yiran had gone and done.

First he had been beeping nonstop from behind, and now he was provoking the client without distinguishing right from wrong. Was he sick of how easy it was for me to close deals?

Lin Yiran himself did not know what crazy thing had gotten into him either. Chen Xi always made his actions decide before his thoughts, and by the time he reacted, he had already stopped Shen Yuesheng’s car.

He prided himself on having clear principles and standards, yet with Chen Xi he kept breaking down.

Chen Xi did not meet his “standards”, but he wanted Chen Xi, exposed the old hidden illness to Chen Xi, and took the initiative to announce to everyone that he was single……

His principles and standards did not apply to Chen Xi, or more accurately, they only did not apply to Chen Xi.

The root cause was that he had never thought about it, Chen Xi would not wait for him in place, but he stubbornly attributed his impulse to the fan-the-flames of the three pig heads.

When others called him “that guy”, it sounded harsh. Lin Yiran had never thought of the scene of being together with Chen Xi, but he also could not bear to think of Chen Xi being together with someone else.

They had only circled around Lanhai with a cooperative relationship, and a bunch of gossip maniacs had already started chewing their tongues; I and Chen Xi were at Lanhai every day, drinking coffee, eating fish, riding the speedboat together, why did they not talk about that?

Lin Yiran had never so urgently hoped to become the main figure in public opinion, to take the place of “that guy”.

The moment he thought of Chen Xi possibly eating with Shen Yuesheng, drinking coffee with him, sleeping with him…… doing the things they had once done, indignation surged out like a flood breaking through a dam, broken ice flying everywhere, a sudden storm howling.

Lin Yiran understood this unprecedented emotion, it was jealousy.

Shen Yuesheng rolled up the car window and asked, “Do you know him?”

Chen Xi nodded. Although he did not want to know that bastard leader who had brought shame to Lanhai, the objective facts had to be respected.

“Is he your divorced leader?”

Chen Xi nodded again.

“Your leader saw you get into my car and came over to pick a fight. Why did he come pick a fight with the client? Is there something wrong with his brain, or did he have a grudge with you and not want us to cooperate?”

Shen Yuesheng was using his own tactics against him, letting Chen Xi make a multiple-choice question. The stage plan provided by Guan Chao could be chosen, but the hypothesis proposed by Shen Yuesheng could not be chosen. Neither analysis was right.

“No, we get along pretty…… cough, our relationship is pretty good.” Lin Yiran would not be like Wang Shuang, jealous of the talented and resentful of the capable. The signing strategies for Shining, Gulin, and Pinsheng had all been proposed by Lin Yiran.

“Oh, looks like his brain really is having problems.”

Chen Xi: ……

He actually could not refute that.

“But how can someone with brain problems become a leader at Lanhai? Does your company give preferential treatment to disabled people?”

Chen Xi: ……That was really mean.

“My leader just simply wants to teach you how to drive, uh, given his age, please be understanding. The old grandpa downstairs in our neighborhood goes to direct young people whenever he sees them parking.” Chen Xi tried his best to make up for Lin Yiran’s intelligence.

Shen Yuesheng’s voice still did not sound like it rose or fell: “Oh, I know, he has ideas about you.”

“Only if he has ideas about you, plus brain problems, could he impulsively stop my car for a moment. He didn’t even think about it, what sort of thing could be done in a car during the day, a dog in heat?”

Chen Xi: A car during the day should be a pretty good setting for him…… if he wanted to do it, he would already have stopped being human.

Shen Yuesheng said thoughtfully, “You slept with him?”

“Huh?” This time Chen Xi did not dare nod. The red on his face instantly returned to its original white, and his head shook like a rattle drum, denying it three times in a row. “No, we are very clean, I’m straight!”

“Heh.”

Chen Xi’s back went cold: could you not laugh like that? Do you know how creepy your laugh is?

“You’re straight, straighter than the track on a school playground.” All emotions were written on his face, he really could not hide anything.

Chen Xi: ……

After figuring out what had happened, Shen Yuesheng no longer dug into it. He was not into gossip, and whether Chen Xi had slept with a leader whose brain had problems did not have much effect on their cooperation.

The “flammable ice” inside the car had temporarily gone out, but the “explosive item” outside the car had not yet withdrawn.

Lin Yiran kept knocking on the privacy glass again and again without letting it go.

At this moment, the broken van in front finally moved over. Shen Yuesheng did not want to engage in meaningless dealings with an idiot, so he started the car, turned the ignition, and slammed hard on the accelerator. The Maserati exploded with a roar.

The sports car moved forward, and Lin Yiran outside the window was thrown behind.

Chen Xi saw in the rearview mirror that Lin Yiran hurriedly jogged up to the Cadillac, but he did not keep up with the car, and a Honda cut in front of him.

Married for only a few years and greened by his ex-wife, middle-aged and his brain no longer working well, mocking others for not knowing how to drive only to be cut off by a Honda himself, how miserable.

“Haha!” Chen Xi saw the old beast suffer defeat and gloated, and very immorally laughed out loud.

The sports car left the parking lot and turned onto the elevated road. The Maserati sped along the asphalt, the body drawing a smooth curve, the engine emitting a low, rhythmic rumble. The scenery outside the window flashed by in a hurry, and there were barriers on both sides of the viaduct, so there was nothing much to look at. Chen Xi thought: this car sits so low, if it hits a stone along the way and goes crack, it is not as good as the Cadillac.

A poor laborer from the bottom could not get used to a luxury car. Bored from idling, he finally remembered he still had his phone.

Unlocking it, wow, all of them were messages from Lin Gou.

There were more recalls than sent messages. Was he insulting me because he was afraid I would see it? I used to curse Wang Shuang like this……

The messages sent this afternoon were even more than the total from the previous three years. Had Lin Yiran lost his mind?

「晨曦：Pinsheng’s project schedule is too tight. I was just talking to Shen Yuesheng about event execution, so I never looked at my phone.」

「晨曦：Brother Lin was right, Shen Yuesheng’s needs are full-case planning, Pinsheng definitely won’t just have this one job in the future.」

Lin Yiran replied instantly

「林狗：Where are you going now?」

「晨曦：To the event site, I’m going to scout it first. Tomorrow morning I’ll study the plan with the marketing department, and in the afternoon I’ll buy tools.」 Are you trying to have me report my work?

「林狗：Okay, where is the event location?」 I will try to finish eating with the client as fast as possible. If the client is really difficult, I will call a car to pick you up. I can’t let you go home late, and even more, I can’t let Shen Yuesheng send you home!

「晨曦：Location」 Brother Lin, seriously, checking up on me even after work_(|3」∠)_

Chen Xi could guess Sun Xingshun’s selfishness, could infer Wang Yaohua’s ambition, could calmly analyze Shen Yuesheng’s twisted psychology…… but he could not understand Lin Yiran’s intention. Because the former were all clients, he could be rational; but when facing the person he liked, his heartbeat always interfered with reason.

The unlucky Cadillac was still blocked in the parking lot, and Lin Yiran was filled with mixed feelings.

Even if Shen Yuesheng had not known me before, after I knocked on the car window, Chen Xi would explain my identity. After a normal client and contractor confirmed cooperation, the client would not easily give the contractor’s leader a cold face, but after I knocked on the car window a second time, he actually ran away!

Shen Yuesheng drove the Maserati to Lihua, being unfriendly to the contractor’s leader while proactively giving benefits to the employee. There was only one reasonable explanation for this behavior, he was not doing it for Lanhai, but for Chen Xi.

The parking lot around him was pitch-black. A thick gloom shrouded Lin Yiran’s face, and the air inside the car seemed to have frozen, vexed and oppressive.

The Cadillac finally left the parking lot, but Lin Yiran did not see the Maserati. Autumn leaves fell, and the depths of those dark eyes were like chaotic autumn waters, surging and burning. His expression was so gloomy it was terrifying, his whole body wrapped in a murderous aura. The raging jealousy burned through him completely, and in order to counterbalance that emotion, he had no choice but to put on a false skin of ice-cold exterior and hypocritical gentleness.

「林狗：Pinsheng’s event execution gross profit is less than 10%, it does not greatly promote performance. It is recommended to take fewer such clients in the future or not take them at all, this client is not worth wasting energy on.」

Having worked as KA for more than a year, the Lin Yiran in Chen Xi’s impression had always done everything possible to help every KA handle clients. This current behavior completely did not fit logic, and also did not fit his past habits of action.

The Lin Yiran who used to seize the client’s resources by force and wished he could squeeze out the last bit of budget was actually suggesting that I should not take the client’s jobs?

Looks like it was not just that he lost his mind and his brain was not working well, he was also not dedicated!

Being in sales for years meant one’s mental state was always a little off. In Chen Xi’s eyes, being not dedicated was even more serious than schizophrenia.

KA performance equaled dignity.

The generation gap between them was very deep, and their communication was rarely on the same frequency.

Chen Xi had always been filled with both mental and physical fantasies about Lin Yiran. Before, constrained by morality and ethics, every time he forced himself to think in the opposite direction. It was like a patient receiving electroshock therapy in order to quit some behavior, shocking himself whenever he thought of a certain thing. Over time, he no longer dared to think about it.

So when Lin Yiran handed him his hand, his first reaction was not to take it, but to subconsciously step back.

His crush was too smart. Every time Chen Xi interacted with Lin Yiran, he was on tenterhooks and extremely careful, like he was in a game of strategy. He had to rack his brains to infer what the other was thinking, and still might not guess right; he had to do his best to cater to the other’s tastes, while not losing his principles; he had to obtain more attention while maintaining the superior subordinate status in the workplace……

He was very tired, but he could not stop.

From ambiguous to openly flirtatious, from hints to direct statements, Lin Yiran had already done enough to make it obvious. The three pig heads and the fox spirit had seen it with their own eyes, and a schizophrenia patient was even more sensitive than others. Chen Xi was not dull, he was forcing himself not to dare have any improper thoughts.

The escape at the fish restaurant, the rejection at the coffee shop, every time he crossed even slightly over the red line, Lin Yiran ran faster than a dog.

But these past few days, Lin Yiran’s repeated strange actions had made him feel that the fantasy was not unrealistic.

If he only “liked me in a vanilla way”, there was no need to publicly reveal his divorce, no need to send me so many messages, and even less need to stop Shen Yuesheng’s car in the parking lot……

If Lin Yiran only wanted a physical relationship, there was no need to have a conflict with the client.

So, he was nervous about me.

Could it really be, just as Shen Yuesheng said, that Lin Yiran had ideas about me?

The evidence was conclusive, the logic chain complete, everything pointed to the answer Chen Xi did not dare to hope for,

Perhaps, he liked me a little.