ZS | Chapter 1

Gu Zheng had been dumped.

By his childhood friend.

He went to a bar and drank most of the night, ended up dead drunk, staggered back to the hotel in circles, flopped onto the bed, and found someone when he reached out.

In the past, Gu Zheng would definitely have refused, but today was different.

Today he had been dumped!

He was in a bad mood after a breakup, what was wrong with fooling around?

His lover was gone, did he still need to set up a chastity arch and keep widow's chastity?

Gu Zheng was not a saint, and he held the person and groped wildly.

Hm? He had a dick.

He really did understand him.

It had to be the person sent over by some annoying bastard he had run into at the negotiating table, someone who wanted to make peace first.

Gu Zheng was bi.

Before the age of 20, he had firmly believed he liked girls, until he rolled into bed with his childhood friend in college.

He had a face that looked like he played very hard, but in truth he had only had one boyfriend these years.

Like most long-distance couples, before graduation his ex went back to China, while Gu Zheng stayed on for grad school as an international student, the two of them separated by miles, and when the feelings faded, they broke up.

Gu Zheng had been single for two years, had drunk too much, and on top of that had just been dumped, and under the effect of the triple buff, he very much wanted to use a living thing to ease his frustration.

The body under him felt very good, with firm muscle, but it kept moving around and would not cooperate.

"Stay still, I don't have time to play hard to get with you."

When that person heard him, the struggling stopped, and Gu Zheng felt a little more satisfied. Just as he was about to go all the way, he suddenly thought of something.

"Are you sick?"

He really was drunk. What a stupid thing to ask. Could the guy selling stinky tofu say, "The tofu stinks, so don't buy it"?

Better to rely on himself than ask someone else. Gu Zheng pressed the other person down, slid to the bedside table to feel for a condom, slid back the same way, and when he passed the face, he hit the nose.

Why did he have such a high nose bridge!

Gu Zheng covered his nose with one hand and spread his palm with the other, smearing the man's face.

You dare hit my nose, I'll plaster your face!

The person under him shook off his hand and rolled half a meter away.

Oh, he was pretty strong.

"Running what?"

Gu Zheng grabbed the ankle and pulled him back, sliding his hand from the calf to the thigh. Those legs were really long.

In the dark, he heard a cool voice, "Turn on the light."

Hm? That voice sounded a little familiar.

A name popped into Gu Zheng's head, and he immediately denied the guess.

Impossible, this was absolutely impossible!

Gu Zheng kept groping around, and the other person caught his hand, his voice carrying a warning: "Gu Zheng, calm down."

Holy shit?

That voice was a little too much like...

At the thought of the person tied to that voice, the hair on Gu Zheng's body stood up, and it felt even more thrilling than screwing his ex.

In the pitch-black room, Gu Zheng used the belt by feel to tie up the restless paws, and the bastard words came out the moment he opened his mouth: "You crawl into my bed and still tell me to calm down, you're really trying to be both the whore and the saint."

The bound person tried to reason with the drunk man, who was out of his mind: "I just ate with the middleman. There was something mixed into the wine I drank, and I have no strength now."

Gu Zheng made it up on the spot, slurring his words, "The wine I just drank also had something mixed into it."

The person under him had a voice filled with a trace of anger, "Don't act like an in-heat beast, jumping anyone you catch!"

Still daring to curse?

Gu Zheng got worked up and, pressing the person down, shoved inward without caring about anything.

He forgot to take off his pants, so he did not get in.

The negotiation had failed, so he could only use violence to solve the problem.

The person under him raised the hand that had been bound and gave the back of Gu Zheng's head a hard slap.

Gu Zheng was hit headfirst, rolled forward twice on the bed, and after he steadied himself, he was mostly sober, looking blank.

"You, you weren't supposed to have any strength?"

Zhuo Hang turned on the light, threw off the belt that had bound his hands, and said coldly, "If I had strength, I'd beat you into a concussion."

Once he saw who was in front of him, Gu Zheng was completely sober.

Zhuo Hang's tie hung loosely around his neck, the collar of his shirt slightly open, revealing the collarbone he was rarely seen with in ordinary times.

Gu Zheng suspected he was living in a dream, tapped his dizzy head, rubbed his titanium-alloy dog eyes, and looked carefully.

This man was Zhuo Hang, the mortal enemy who had clung to him for 6 years.

Gu Zheng had thought the person on the bed was someone Zhuo Hang had sent, but he had not expected it to be the man himself.

How could Liu Bei and Lu Bu appear on the same bed at the same time?

From college to graduate school, this dog-skin plaster had stuck to him for 6 years, and he had not expected it to still be haunting him after returning home.

In response to the national strategic reserve supplies call, the Reserve Security and Emergency Supplies Guarantee Center held bidding every year for supply-guarantee projects, allocating funds to collect reserve grain in each province and city.

The specific categories were delegated by the state down to the provinces and cities, then to the districts and counties, and were coordinated by the relevant agencies.

Gu Zheng's father had been in contact with the provincial leader in charge of the project, and had wanted to take this bid, but the middleman kept not replying and then set up a gathering two days before the bid opening.

It was obvious the agency could not afford to offend either side and wanted to bring the two together.

Gu Zheng had originally thought that if the other side was a direct client, he could give an inch; if the other's status was far below the Gu family, he could send a favor, because business was business, friendship was friendship, and making one more friend meant one more road later.

But he had not expected Zhuo Hang to be sitting at the negotiating table.

Three months later, when they met again, Zhuo Hang had shed his usual casual sportswear style, and in a straight suit he looked all sharp and proper.

During the negotiation, the other side's logic was airtight, his pace neither fast nor slow, every word clear and forceful, and he was putting on a pretty convincing act.

The middleman treated him with utmost respect, the agency leaders praised him highly, and Gu Zheng smiled on the surface while cursing Zhuo Hang 800 times in private. Because this guy, like him, was a paper tiger relying on family power, with no real ability.

The Zhuo and Gu families were equal in status and standing, and this time in the bidding they were both middlemen, so losing the bid could only mean Gu Zheng had a problem with his ability.

Gu Zheng could accept losing the bid, could not accept losing to Zhuo Hang, and even more could not accept his father saying he was no good. So he brought out 200% of his desire to win and nitpicked Zhuo Hang's views, taking them out of context.

Usually, when the agency set up a meeting, it was just going through the motions, telling both sides, anything that could be solved privately should not be brought into the open.

The two of them both pretended not to understand, voiced their own opinions at the negotiating table, and talked all morning without coming up with anything of substance.

The leader did not want to keep sitting there listening to meaningless negotiations, so he put pressure on the middleman. With no choice, the middleman could only resort to this underhanded move and give the two of them identical room cards.

"Why are you here?"

Zhuo Hang pulled out the room card for 1609. "This is my room."

Gu Zheng also pulled out a room card for 1609.

The two looked at each other, and in an instant they understood that someone had set them up.

Gu Zheng had drunk too much and his brain could not turn, so he analyzed wildly, "What were the people who set this up thinking? Even if they wanted us to settle it privately, they couldn't let me screw you!"

Zhuo Hang gathered up the collar that had been pulled open and massaged his temples, saying tiredly, "The gathering was set up in the morning. By normal reasoning, we should have gone back to our rooms in the afternoon."

So the middleman had wanted them to have a proper talk during the day, but he had not expected that for a 100 million yuan business negotiation, Gu Zheng would still have the mind to go drinking in the afternoon.

"Good things never come in pairs, bad things do." Gu Zheng fell stiffly back onto the bed, and the bump on his head from Zhuo Hang's beating hit the headboard, making him bare his teeth in pain.

He wanted to curse Zhuo Hang's family, but because the other had trained in Sanda, the words at his lips changed to, "Don't touch this bid. I have connections."

Whether or not he had connections actually had little effect on this bid. The bidding was posted on the local government website, the evaluation panel had at least 10 people, and the procurement condition was: lowest price wins.

At most, Gu Zheng only glanced at the reserve price, and copying his father's old trick of using connections to bluff people was purely an ingrained habit from the liquor hitting him.

Zhuo Hang's knife-like glance swept over him, and Gu Zheng's heart thudded under that look. It was not only because he was lying through his teeth, but more because of the groping just now.

No matter what, the other was a prominent businessman, and after being groped, he should at least say a couple of words.

Gu Zheng tried to cover for himself, "Uh, I drank too much, don't take it to heart."

He was the one who got handsy, he was also the one who was spouting nonsense, and he even had the nerve to grin and tell the other not to mind. That was said with no logic at all, but with all the confidence in the world.

Zhuo Hang's face was dark, and he did not look as if he did not care.

The agency wanting to set up a trap and bring the rivals together was not wrong, and Zhuo Hang going back to his own room at night was not wrong either. In the end, this mix-up was still his fault.

If it had been someone else, maybe a couple of perfunctory words would have gotten by. If that did not work, he could have compensated with some things. But Zhuo Hang was not an idiot easy to fool, and besides, he also did not want to compensate the other with anything.

Gu Zheng racked his brains and came up with a line that sounded like neither side would lose, "I touched you, and didn't you also hit me? Besides, touching you twice won't even take off a piece of meat. My head got a big lump from your beating, it'll take at least three days to go down!"

By that math, I was the one who lost!

Zhuo Hang ignored his crazy words, his expression light, "I won't withdraw from this bid."

Gu Zheng straightened his neck and started acting up again, "Fine, let's see this through to the end, whoever withdraws is a bastard!"

In a bid between two sides, usually one side gave the other some benefit before the other side would withdraw. When both sides were deadlocked, the one who backed down first often lost more benefit.

At a time like this, whoever spoke first lost.

Time passed second by second, and the room was eerily quiet.

Gu Zheng was so angry that he frowned and glared, breathing hard over and over; by contrast, Zhuo Hang was very calm, and kept scrolling on his phone.

What was he acting so calm for? He hated this kind of arrogant tight-lipped gourd the most!

They were both in the business management department, but the fields they studied were very different.

Zhuo Hang majored in finance and investment, and people in that major were not good people, only capable in the future of becoming black-hearted hot-money players who cut the leeks; he majored in finance and business management, and most people in that major became Wall Street M&A big shots and business negotiation experts, with broad prospects for future employment.

Though the grand blueprint was drawn well, without jobs, after graduation they could only stay home.

The two of them had known each other for 6 years and had not said more than 10 sentences in total, and more than half of those were Gu Zheng's sniping. People who talked too much would be three notches shorter, and that had severely wounded Gu Zheng's self-esteem.

Zhuo Hang had unexpectedly appeared on his bed right now, a few stray strands of hair hanging down over his forehead, his well-defined fingers sliding quickly over the phone screen, his handsome side profile focused and calm, his pants slightly messy from the earlier struggle, the trouser legs rolled up casually, revealing his long ankles.

Gu Zheng's head was full of the feel from just now.

Going up from the ankle, one could feel tight muscle, a thigh that felt very good, and ...

A wildly explosive thought burst into his mind, Zhuo Hang's abstinent look would definitely be especially intense in bed!

He wanted to dirty him, wanted to see whether the filthy version of him could still be proud.

Sometimes the one who spoke first did not necessarily lose, like now.

He wanted to disgust him a little.

Gu Zheng leaned carelessly against the headboard, his tone flippant, "Want this bid, trade yourself for it."