How Can Two People From Different Sides Ever Fall in Love? - Chapter 18

Chapter 18

◎ As long as a man talks about work, he can get away with anything ◎

Early the next morning, Raven, who was washing up in the bathroom, suddenly heard Hollis say, “The office called, they need me to head in. I’ve put breakfast on the dining table; remember to eat it in a bit.”

Having just squeezed out some toothpaste, Raven poked his head out from the bathroom while holding his toothbrush. “What’s so sudden? Isn’t today Saturday?”

“They didn’t say over the phone.” Hollis was walking hurriedly, and his mouth was moving just as fast. “Probably busy discussing how to deal with you lot. Who told Councilor Raven to be so formidable all these days and you’re still completely impervious to persuasion, like a man clad in iron armor.”

The “formidable” Councilor Raven muttered a silent “get lost,” but chose to return good for evil with his words: “If you’re coming back today, remember to bring your keys.”

Hollis’s movement to change his shoes paused. He immediately pulled his keys out of his briefcase, gave them a jingle, and threw them back in. “Got it. I’m off then. Remember to eat breakfast, and be careful while driving later.”

“By the way,” Raven twisted his head back toward the bathroom, then halfway through, poked his whole face out again while still holding his toothbrush, “Did you eat breakfast?”

By then, Hollis had finished changing his shoes. He stood up, gazed at Raven gloomily for a moment, and spoke with a sharp edge to his tone: “I ate, Master.”

The “Master” closed the bathroom door first.

Hollis’s departure lasted until Monday, and he failed to reappear.

Raven had received his “leave of absence” call the day before. On the second day, he couldn’t quite describe his mood as he drove directly to the office.

With one person missing from the office, the original workflow was disrupted. Raven and Silver had no choice but to focus on the minor tasks at hand first.

“You talk much less when he’s not here.”

With him gone, Silver finally found an opportunity to speak.

Raven asked knowingly, “Who?”

Silver stopped her work, pressed her arms against the desk, leaned her upper body forward, and stared at Raven without blinking. “Who do you think it would be?”

Raven thought for a moment and decided to exhibit gentlemanly grace by playing along with her. “Oh, him. What about it?”

Silver retreated bit by bit, facing Raven with her profile, and said neutrally, “Raven, if you can’t act, you really don’t have to.”

“What am I acting?” Raven said, amused.

“Acting like you don’t care.”

Raven didn’t take it seriously and continued to be perfunctory. “Wasn’t I just joking? See through it but don’t say it aloud, Madam.”

“Not just now,” Silver said, “but from the beginning until now.”

Raven’s smile froze on his face.

Silver didn’t look at him and continued, “At first, you’d look at documents for a while, then daze off for a while. Your eyes would land on the empty workstation and linger for several seconds. You even spent more time looking at that spot than at me.”

“Madam, be reasonable, please,” Raven smiled again. “An adult male staring incessantly at a lady—do you think that’s proper?”

“Neither is proper.” Raven was startled as Silver unceremoniously exposed him. “Just like an adult male staring incessantly at an empty workstation is improper.”

“Also,” Silver suddenly said with indignation, “I have such large dark circles under my eyes. In the past, the moment you saw me, you’d ask me what was wrong. But today? We’ve been talking for this long, and you actually haven’t noticed at all!”

Faced with the facts, Raven was left without a defense.

“Hiss” Raven took a sharp intake of breath and instinctively summoned the panacea of excuses. “Work. I was thinking about matters related to work.”

As long as a man talks about work, he can get away with anything; Raven was well-versed in this path.

Thus, he was forced to pick and choose parts of his weekend discussion with Hollis regarding the Klaus Financial District to tell Silver.

Silver was non-committal, scanning him up and down before saying, “Don’t you always advocate for resting and not working, and working and not resting?”

Raven shrugged and spread his hands, putting on the air of a refined scoundrel who could do nothing about Hollis, while Silver could do nothing about him.

“Something’s wrong, something’s wrong,” Silver didn’t entirely believe him. She shook her head, constantly muttering, “Both of you are very much not right.”

Ever since that rooftop conversation, she felt the atmosphere between these two was indescribably bizarre.

One moment she saw Hollis “returning a favor with enmity,” using fierce words and refusing to yield an inch; the next moment she saw Hollis being solicitous toward Raven, showing meticulous care.

If the coffee went cold, he would re-brew it. If a trace of fatigue appeared at the corner of Raven’s eyes, he would proactively call for a break. He acted like he couldn’t stand Raven being too well off, yet couldn’t stand him being unwell either.

She didn’t know if Hollis felt fragmented, but she was certainly suffering for it, nearly splitting apart herself.

Back when her father and mother were arguing for a divorce, they weren’t as fickle as these two.

And Raven, who was usually calm and composed, handling work with ease, had not only uncharacteristically bickered with someone but also couldn’t stop thinking about that person.

Now that it was almost lunchtime, he hadn’t done much serious work either.

“I can’t help it. So many eyes are watching; I don’t dare slack off in the slightest.” Raven casually played the sentiment card, attempting to elicit Silver’s pity. “In our past work, when have we ever been under such pressure?”

Silver only offered half her pity. “I thought you were competing with Mr. Lancelot.”

Raven was confused and amused. “What would I have to compete with him about?”

“Similar ages, outstanding looks, and abilities that are basically equal,” Silver mimicked the descriptions from the rumors. “The ‘Rising Twin Stars’ of the People’s Rationality Party and the Dawn Party.”

“Stop right there,” Raven frowned, breaking out in goosebumps. “What on earth is that?”

Regarding the so-called “Twin Stars,” he wasn’t entirely ignorant, but as one of the parties involved, no matter how curious others were, they wouldn’t run up to him to probe for information.

This string of descriptions was something he had never heard of; he hadn’t expected the private rumors to be so outrageous.

“Do you know what your relationship is?”

Raven opened a pair of bewildered peach blossom eyes. “Colleagues?”

“No, arch-enemies.”

Raven’s peach blossom eyes almost turned into dead fish eyes. He pointed at himself and asked back, “Who? Arch-enemies? Me and Hollis?”

“Who else could it be? Me and Mr. Lancelot? Please, before this, I hadn’t even spoken to him.” As soon as the words fell, Silver realized she had almost let something slip and quickly shut her mouth.

Fortunately, Raven’s focus was entirely on this mess of a relationship.

“Stop spreading rumors. It’s just that during work, some differences arose due to matters of position, yet people speak as if we’ve held a grudge for several lifetimes. Arch-enemies? There’s no such thing as an arch-enemy without a cause.”

“You simply know nothing about arch-enemies.” Silver wrinkled her nose, acting like a junior who had encountered an elder out of touch with society—unable to find common ground, yet still needing to maintain politeness.

Raven also had no desire to understand what kind of “arch-enemies” she was talking about and skipped the topic directly. “There’s still a bit of time; let’s finish processing this bit of work on hand first.”

“There’s still a bit of time, why don’t we chat first?”

Raven gave a benevolent smile, as if looking at a naughty child.

The naughty child did not fail expectations, climbing up the pole given to her and taking Raven’s silence as tacit consent. “Have you noticed?”

The matter wasn’t urgent, but Raven didn’t want to grant her wish easily. “No.”

Silver didn’t care and said bluntly, “Mr. Lancelot’s attitude toward you is very different.”

“True,” seeing Silver being relentless, Raven had no choice but to put down the documents in his hand and look into her eyes while saying, “I haven’t seen him be as impolite to others as he is to me.”

Silver clapped her chest in affirmation. “See! I said his attitude toward you is very different.”

Raven was oblivious and accidentally fell into Silver’s trap. A trace of surprise flashed in his heart, and the gaze he leveled at Silver now held a bit more color that would make Hollis envious.

However, he said mercilessly, “Why don’t I see you go and interrogate Hollis? Maybe you could squeeze some Dawn Party secrets out of his mouth.”

Silver had indeed accidentally squeezed out some secrets, but she had promised not to tell. Looking at Raven’s kindly sarcasms, she said with a distorted expression, “Reject vicious competition; we should have friendly exchanges.”

“Then why don’t you have a friendly exchange with me?” Raven simply couldn’t understand why this relationship between him and Hollis was worth so much of Silver’s attention.

Since when had their most discussed private topic actually become Hollis?

“Am I not polite enough?” Silver said aggrievedly. “If I weren’t polite, I wouldn’t be asking like this.”

Raven sensed something was wrong but was also somewhat curious. “Then how would you ask?”

“First,” Silver raised her index finger, “I would ask you why Mr. Lancelot’s gaze was so strange when he looked at me during our first meeting.”

“What was strange about it?”

Silver raised her hand to stop Raven. “Don’t interrupt.”

The reason she hadn’t asked was, naturally, because she had an answer. After all, friends aren’t necessarily more magnanimous than lovers—it’s finally possible to get close to a long-admired benefactor, but he has an inseparable close friend by his side; it’s not surprising there would be some strange behavior at a time like that.

But she couldn’t tell Raven.

“Second,” Silver raised her middle finger, “I would ask you if Mr. Lancelot has other intentions toward you.”

Raven’s eyelids flickered as he listened to Silver’s “brilliant insight” with trepidation.

Silver decided to give Hollis a hand. “I think, maybe he wants to become good friends with you, but due to his personality, he just hasn’t found an opportunity to say it.”

“Don’t you both have the reputation of the ‘Twin Stars’? So, hero recognizes hero; he has looked up to you for a long time. Now that he can work with you and finds you even more excellent than the rumors, he has long admired you and yearns for your friendship.”

Silver grew more excited as she spoke. The image of Hollis discovering the truth and thanking her properly in the future slowly took shape in her mind—it was no different from her sitting at the head table at a shipping wedding.

Raven, however, let out a sigh of relief. But having misjudged Silver’s IQ several times, his brain was in a daze, and he failed to notice the footsteps gradually approaching the door.

Arriving before the sound of the footsteps was a familiar male voice: “What ‘long-admired’ and ‘yearning’?”

Support