Joining A Dating Show With Five Exes - Chapter 41

Chapter 41: Three Seconds Will Make You Tremble

Before the mysterious new guest appeared, the production team gave the existing guests a peek at the new changes that had taken place over the past half-month.

Because the small cottage where Ji Sheng and Wang Shu originally lived had too few people, and no new guests voluntarily chose it, the production team specially renovated the cottage where Cheng Shiyuan and the others were staying to encourage more interaction.

The original two bedrooms were increased to four, and each room now contained two beds.

Cozy rattan chairs were added to the balcony, and a “stargazing room” was set up on the rooftop terrace, perfect for viewing the stars and the sea.

In short, there would no longer be a situation where guests who didn’t get along would be miserably forced to sleep on the sofa.

However, the production team quickly realized they might have worried for nothing.

“Stop moving around.”

That evening, Cheng Shiyuan sat by the dressing table in the room that had originally belonged to Xia Ziran. She heard Xia Ziran’s phone vibrate several times, noticed the urge to reach for it, and, without blinking, grasped the other’s wrist and pressed it back into the soaking medicinal solution.

Cheng Shiyuan herself was watching the first episode content that the dating show production team had edited and released, but she wouldn’t allow Xia Ziran any other form of entertainment.

“Can’t you even last thirty minutes, CEO Xia?”

Xia Ziran didn’t even glance at the childish cartoon Cheng Shiyuan was playing on her iPad for her to pass the time.

She only stared at Cheng Shiyuan: “That sounds like you’re challenging me.”

Cheng Shiyuan held her wrist down, not allowing her to affect the medicine’s efficacy, and gave a perfunctory “Mhm” while checking the audience comments: “Challenging you, so what? I’m telling you, if you don’t soak it for half an hour, your hand will be ruined—”

“By then, don’t talk about three minutes, even three seconds will probably make you tremble.”

Xia Ziran: “…”

She was so amused she laughed out loud.

She secretly gnashed her teeth, thinking that once her hand injury was completely healed and recovered, she would definitely let Cheng Shiyuan know how long she could really last!

“Don’t give me that.” The straight-A student, unfazed by any threats, narrowed her eyes at her: “Last time, you told me the antidote would only last three days, and now you’re lying that if I don’t soak this for half an hour, I’ll be disabled. Can’t you come up with a better lie?”

Cheng Shiyuan’s eyes shifted slowly.

She suddenly remembered the look on Xia Ziran’s face, who had burst out laughing in the foreign hospital room on the day she’d conveyed the ‘antidote only lasts three days’ message.

“Cheng Shiyuan, the most important thing for you right now is to uninstall the novel app on your phone.”

“What is this, some kind of poisonous voodoo? That requires taking an antidote every so often?”

“I’ve heard of taking medicine three times a day, but never once every three days.”

However—

That wasn’t a lie she had told.

Thinking back now, it was probably because Shen Lingxi’s style of speaking and acting was so terrifying that everyone would take whatever she said as the truth.

“Hiss.”

Suddenly, someone bit her on the nose.

Cheng Shiyuan came back to her senses, looking at the woman who had leaned in.

Xia Ziran also couldn’t help but look at Cheng Shiyuan’s screen: “What are you looking at so intently? Is it more interesting than me?”

Then she looked down.

She happened to see the screen playing the scene of her and Cheng Shiyuan reuniting in the show’s dark hallway.

The production team’s audio recording was patchy, but the camera captured the two of them clearly.

The comments flashed across the screen:

Xia Ziran: “…”

Seeing Xia Ziran’s darkening expression, Cheng Shiyuan burst into joyful laughter. Although she had a shallow tooth mark on her nose, she was already magnanimously not mad at her.

Probably because a righteous audience member had already avenged her.

So Cheng Shiyuan held back her laughter and said, “I let you see, and now you’re unhappy.”

In that moment, Xia Ziran felt the urge to call her company’s legal department to sue these people for damaging her reputation.

Yet, seeing Cheng Shiyuan laugh so happily—

A few seconds later.

She pressed down on the basin of warm medicinal liquid, leaned in, and gave Cheng Shiyuan a loud kiss on the cheek.

In a highly competitive and personal response to the comments, she declared: “So what if they don’t like me? I was the one who got to kiss her first.”

Cheng Shiyuan: “Childish.”

Xia Ziran raised an eyebrow: “Childish, but I like you.”

The honest, unrestrained, and reckless declaration.

It overlapped with the awkward, arrogant, and extremely confident voice playing on Cheng Shiyuan’s phone, yet they were fundamentally different.

It was hard to believe the drastic changes in Xia Ziran had occurred in just one short month.

And the most critical turning point in this obvious transformation was…

“Knock, knock.”

The room door was knocked just as the timer alarm went off.

After Cheng Shiyuan said, “Please come in,” the person who turned the doorknob merely stood outside, looking over with gentle, dark eyes:

“I made coconut chicken hotpot for a late-night snack. Want some?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

Cheng Shiyuan’s movement, which had been patiently wiping the medicinal liquid off Xia Ziran’s hand, became a little more eager.

Xia Ziran glanced at Xie Zhiqing, who was blatantly trying to poach her person, and silently stared at the other for a moment before looking down again. She took the towel herself, wiping the crisscrossing pink, newly healed lacerations on her palm, and opened her mouth:

“Go ahead. I’ll do it myself, lest in another two seconds, my room gains a hungry ghost.”

“Alright, but you come out early too.”

Cheng Shiyuan had already smelled the aroma drifting in from outside and bounced towards Xie Zhiqing.

As she got close, Xie Zhiqing thoughtfully reached out and pressed down on the hem of her short skirt.

Before, when they were abroad, although Xie Zhiqing would take her out shopping to prevent her from getting bored in the hospital room, there were no cameras or outsiders, so Cheng Shiyuan actually preferred to wear comfortable T-shirts and casual long pants.

Because she looked good in anything, when she first became famous, back when airport street style was trending, fans had harshly criticized her studio, blaming the stylist for not dressing her better and more carefully, making her look like an ordinary passerby in solo shots.

To avoid causing more criticism for her studio, she started being more deliberate with her outfits when going out.

Now, having been “wild” for over half a month and returning to film the show, even the feel of foundation on her face felt unfamiliar—

So she had forgotten that the pretty dress she was wearing today was actually quite short.

However, after the conservatively dressed Xie Zhiqing smoothed down the fluffy skirt hem, she scanned the delicate straps of the off-shoulder design and the bright, spring-like wave of the sleeves. After a moment, she said:

“It looks good.”

Cheng Shiyuan blinked: “You praised it this morning.”

“I saw it outside this morning; it looked good in natural light,” Xie Zhiqing added calmly: “Now I think it looks good in indoor light too. I heard this brand’s designs are beautiful but difficult to wear and only suit certain people… so, you look the best in it.”

Cheng Shiyuan badly wanted to check if Xie Zhiqing had secretly had a spoonful of sugar while cooking the late-night snack in the kitchen.

But the anticipation in the eyes of the people waiting to eat by the dining table was too obvious.

In the end, she rubbed her nose, a little embarrassed, and had to abandon that thought.

She casually pulled out the closest chair to her at the dining table.

Thinking of something, Cheng Shiyuan deliberately bent down and turned to look at Wang Shu’s knees across the table: “Did you keep the scabs well-moistened? If they’re too hard, it’ll hurt when they come off.”

Her action was actually unnecessary, as she could only see the gauze covering the wound.

But she would always ask three times a day, so Wang Shu habitually responded with a smile in her eyes: “I did.”

She showed Cheng Shiyuan the alarm she had set on her phone to ring every day.

Due to the need to account for the cameras set up by the production team, Wang Shu wore a mask most of the time, only exposing the area above her eyes. Even so, one could vaguely see the residual faint bruising near the mask.

But at this moment, even with the mask, one could tell she was smiling.

Cheng Shiyuan wanted to ask something else but was interrupted by Xie Zhiqing handing her something.

It was two servings of dipping sauce, already mixed according to her taste.

“Hurry and eat while it’s hot.”

“Little housekeeper, are you trying to steal all their personal assistants’ jobs?”

Cheng Shiyuan said “Oh.”

Although she was determined to check Wang Shu’s face tonight, her hand obediently picked up her chopsticks.

But the direction of her chopsticks—

Took a sharp, sideways turn.

She intercepted Chen Chuxing’s chopsticks.

She turned her head calmly to look at the piece of chicken Chen Chuxing had clamped with her chopsticks; it had just been blown on repeatedly and rolled in the room-temperature dipping sauce, but she was certain the other person still wouldn’t accept that temperature.

Recently, Chen Chuxing had developed a minor eating disorder.

She only ate cold, chilled food.

After recovering from liquid food to a normal diet abroad, for a long time, her lunches consisted of specially sourced Northern chefs’ liangpi (cold skin noodles) and liangmian (cold noodles) on rotation, and she only drank ice water from the fridge.

The moment she touched a mouthful of something warm—not even hot—she would immediately put down her chopsticks and lose all desire to eat.

Cheng Shiyuan initially thought it was just the hot weather and didn’t think much of it, but today, she heard from Sister You that she had met her this afternoon and saw her clutching her stomach and running to the bathroom several times, worrying that she might have gotten sick from the foreign environment.

When Xie Zhiqing asked about a late-night snack tonight, Cheng Shiyuan thought long and hard, considering what would be most suitable for everyone to eat, before choosing coconut chicken.

If not for her ordering the dish, Chen Chuxing probably wouldn’t have appeared at the dining table tonight.

“Be patient, Sister.”

After saying this, she guessed that Chen Chuxing would surely pretend to eat normally in front of her to look compliant.

So Cheng Shiyuan had to move the piece of chicken to her own plate, use a serving chopstick to separate it, blow away the residual warmth inside, and test it against her lips before putting it back into Chen Chuxing’s bowl.

She guessed that Chen Chuxing had a psychological fear of hot food because of the previous incident.

The painful shadow of the oral burn still lingered over her.

But clearly, a stomach accustomed to years of irregular eating couldn’t accept its owner’s sudden switch to cold food.

So Cheng Shiyuan could only watch her eat.

While furiously internally scolding Shen Lingxi, she pondered whether she should specially assign Chen Chuxing an assistant whose sole job would be to supervise her meals every day.

Or perhaps—

Why not start a mukbang stream for Queen Chen?

That way, for the sake of the broadcast effect, she would have to eat some delicious-looking, hot food.

Although, that might not be very friendly to her weight.

Amused by her own wicked thought, Cheng Shiyuan’s lips just started to curve into a smile when she noticed Xie Zhiqing’s increasingly cold, warning gaze.

Especially since Xia Ziran just happened to sit down next to Wang Shu at that moment.

There was now one more patient who needed comforting.

If she continued to care for everyone endlessly, she probably wouldn’t get to eat this late-night snack tonight.

Cheng Shiyuan shrunk her neck and reluctantly grabbed a perfectly shaped chicken wing that she had already spotted, sacrificing it to bribe Xie Zhiqing.

“You eat too!”

Xie Zhiqing looked at her helplessly.

She gave the chicken wing back to her: “Only you love these.”

It had always been this way.

Whenever the Cheng family had a family dinner, or a private banquet with the Xie family elders, Cheng Shiyuan would be attentive and observant like a thoughtful junior, yet secretly poke Xie Zhiqing:

“That chicken wing looks perfect; help me grab it later.”

When toasting the elders, she would appear serious and polite while listening to their advice, but when she looked down, her eyes would be scanning the food.

In fact, every time Cheng Shiyuan eagerly volunteered to order the food during gatherings, it was to secretly order her favorite dishes.

Now, whenever Xie Zhiqing got a menu outside, she could always predict which dishes Cheng Shiyuan would quietly nudge her to order if she were there.

At the moment, Cheng Shiyuan stared at her in shock.

She couldn’t believe her bribery attempt had utterly failed!

It was impossible for anyone in the world not to love chicken wings, so it definitely wasn’t the chicken wing’s fault… The problem, then, was obvious.

After the meal, she stayed behind with a solemn expression, slowly starting to clear the mess on the table.

The few people sitting in a circle by the living room couldn’t help but look at her curiously.

Even Xie Zhiqing’s dark eyes showed surprise, and she asked with uncertainty: “Shiyuan, what are you doing?”

Cheng Shiyuan slowly pointed at the “old, weak, and sick” people in the living room: “They can’t move.”

Then, carrying the pile of bowls and chopsticks, she walked toward Xie Zhiqing in the kitchen:

“You were the one who cooked, and the cook doesn’t do the dishes—”

“So, only I can wash them. Help me tie the apron.”

The production team seemed to think the kitchen was perfect for warm interaction.

So, very unethically, they didn’t install a dishwasher in the kitchen at all.

Xie Zhiqing looked at her pretty little skirt, reached out to try and wipe the oil from her fingertips with a clean towel, and tried to push her away. But Cheng Shiyuan seemed to know what she was thinking and peered at her with narrowed eyes:

“What are you doing? Do you want the audience to think I haven’t done any housework since joining the dating show? That I’m a little princess?”

She was already the princess Xie Zhiqing held in her palm.

Xie Zhiqing thought this but couldn’t win against her, so she could only choose a clean checkered apron and tie it around her.

She was constantly ready to help her.

However, once the apron was tied on, it covered the lower edge of the skirt. At first glance, it looked like her lower half was bare, only wearing an apron…

As if they were engaging in some special kitchen play.

Xie Zhiqing’s gaze involuntarily darted toward Cheng Shiyuan’s long legs by her side.

Even the others, who had agreed at the dining table to watch the first edited episode with Cheng Shiyuan later, tacitly and quietly looked toward the kitchen from time to time.

It sounded like it might start raining outside; a faint rumble of thunder could be heard, but the air inside the cottage was warm and quiet.

—Until the peaceful night was suddenly broken by the doorbell.

The person sitting closest to the door in the living room, whose injuries were healing the fastest, was Chen Chuxing.

The glass shards had only pierced her skin through the skirt fabric before, and now the scabs on both her knees had fully shed.

With her manager and assistant constantly looking after her, she was fully healed; only her skin needed a little more time to return to its original smoothness.

But as she walked to the door and her palm just rested on the doorknob, the door suddenly opened on its own from the outside.

As if the knock before had only been a polite notification.

She froze for a moment.

The next second.

The person was already smiling and waving at her:

“Long time no see, Chuxing.”

As if oblivious to Chen Chuxing’s sudden pale face, the person peered inside and greeted the others in the room:

“I was stuck in traffic, so I’m late. Are you all waiting for me this late? That’s really touching.”

She smiled nonchalantly in front of everyone’s darkening faces:

“Hello everyone, I’m the new guest, Shen Lingxi.”

A flash of lightning cut across the night sky outside the door, illuminating her pale, almost lifeless face.