Married A Man I Hate - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: The Annoying Man · 20% “My Husband is Really Good to Me…”

The car drove into the hotel parking lot.

Having finished the rehearsal, Le Qingfei hopped out of the car like nothing had happened. Fu Li sat for a moment before lifting his legs to follow him.

And now, facing Shi Yun’s interrogation, which felt like questioning a suspect, Le Qingfei was also doing a great job playing the role of a gentle and lovely wife.

Shi Yun: “President Fu is so busy with work, did we interrupt him?”

“Not busy at all! These past few days, hubby has been at home accompanying me. Today, he even took me to buy new clothes. Sister, look,”

Le Qingfei stood up, spun around, and crossed his arms over his chest, striking a pose like he was in a children’s clothing poster. “Does it look good?”

Shi Yun let out a heavy breath in anger, but Le Qingfei indeed wore the new DIOR collection very well. On the rice-white cashmere cardigan, embroidered little pink butterflies seemed to fly along with Le Qingfei.

She couldn’t stay mad.

“Yes, yes, yes, you look the best.” Shi Yun chuckled softly, told him to stop showing off, and sat down to eat.

Fu Li rested his left hand on the back of the chair beside him, leaning slightly. His gentle gaze behind his glasses fell entirely on the person who was currently displaying his new shoes. At the exact fraction of a second when Le Qingfei successfully tripped over his own feet, Fu Li rushed forward, caught him by the waist, and scooped him up.

Shi Yun took in every single one of Fu Li’s movements.

Becoming more and more perplexed, she went straight to the point before the main course was served: “President Fu is really good to my younger brother. One can’t tell at all that you are a straight man who was forced to marry a man.”

After hanging up the video call yesterday, Shi Yun still felt uneasy and looked into a lot of Fu Li’s information. She called her former classmates back home and finally asked about some details that differed from media reports.

Fu Li’s situation in the Fu family was not good.

Although he was the legitimate eldest son, he had been abroad for many years after all. The majority of the Fu Corporation’s industries were in the hands of his stepmother, the Zou family. He had been set up by his stepmother, and to gain the support of the group’s veterans, he was forced into a marriage alliance with a man.

The other party didn’t know the marriage partner, but Shi Yun was already so angry on the other end of the phone that she was seeing stars.

“President Fu, you…”

“Clang——!”

Le Qingfei spilled his juice. Grabbing a napkin, he dashed toward the restroom.

Both Fu Li and Shi Yun were stunned.

“Excuse me.” Fu Li stood up and chased after him.

Shi Yun closed her eyes, supported her forehead, and sighed, “This Le Qingfei, does he care about Fu Li that much?”

“Care?”

Le Qingfei sat on the sink, wiping his clothes, and said sadly: “Of course I care, these are new clothes and I just got them dirty…”

Fu Li sent a message to the driver and put away his phone. “Your sister probably misunderstood that you cared about the words you just heard. Come, take off the clothes first.”

“What words?” Le Qingfei cooperatively raised his arms, “What would I misunderstand?”

Fu Li took off Le Qingfei’s wet clothing and wrapped him in his own overcoat. “If you liked me, you would care whether my approaching you had an ulterior motive. Only when you don’t like someone will you not care.”

As he spoke, Fu Li looked up at Le Qingfei.

Le Qingfei was playing with the gemstone on the overcoat’s cuff. He let out an “oh” and asked him if that was true.

Fu Li smiled, unfastened it, handed it to him to play with, and said no more. After the driver delivered the spare clothes, he opened a room for Le Qingfei to go change.

Le Qingfei came out after changing his clothes. “Actually, I need to apologize to you. I misunderstood and thought you forced Uncle to make me marry. I didn’t expect that you were also forced. I’m sorry, Fu Li.”

Fu Li raised his hand to readjust the crooked strawberry hairpin. “Let’s go.”

The newly replaced clothes and shoes were also bought today. Le Qingfei liked them very much too. Using the elevator doors as a mirror, he stood on his tiptoes and turned half a circle. Inadvertently, he caught a glimpse of Fu Li’s profile reflected on the wall.

“Fu Li, are you unhappy?”

Le Qingfei didn’t know why he asked this, because Fu Li clearly looked no different from usual.

Fu Li looked up and said with a smile, “No.”

The elevator doors opened, and the two walked side by side down the long hallway. The carpet was very thick, and there was no sound.

Le Qingfei secretly looked at him again.

Why did he say no when he was clearly unhappy?

He didn’t understand.

During the dinner, Fu Li explained to Shi Yun: love at first sight.

Yet, Shi Yun couldn’t find any flaws. From childhood to adulthood, Le Qingfei had been called silly, unable to study well, impulsive, and broad-minded—lacking big wisdom and short on petty cleverness—but all these evaluations had a second half to the sentence—

Le Qingfei rested his chin on the pure white tablecloth. His bright black eyes shifted left and right following the back-and-forth conversation between the two. Pink and white freesia petals drifted down in front of his face, like a curtain drawing open on a stage, making people’s eyes halt on his face.

「But he is truly beautiful after all」

When he was a child, she worried he would be tricked away by a bad person with a single piece of chocolate. Now, she was still worried he would be tricked by a bad person’s villas, estates, Rolls-Royces, Hermès… Well, this didn’t seem to be called tricking anymore.

Shi Yun pulled her thoughts back.

The dinner was arranged by Fu Li according to the preferences and tastes of the two, but it was a bit too indulgent toward Le Qingfei. It was entirely sweets and meat, without even a shadow of a vegetable leaf.

Shi Yun ordered vegetables for Le Qingfei and told him to eat them all.

Le Qingfei was originally full and dozing off. He rubbed his eyes, picked up the silver fork again, and ate the vegetable salad bite by bite.

Fu Li came back from answering a phone call outside. After wiping his hands, he picked up a new set of utensils and picked out the carrots and cucumbers one by one. “If you don’t want to eat it, don’t eat it.”

Chewing on a piece of lettuce, Le Qingfei looked up and stared at Fu Li blankly, like a little lamb whose grass-eating had been interrupted.

Shi Yun smiled and said, “He is just a rabbit transformed. When he was little, he liked to go to the kitchen at night to steal carrots and cucumbers.”

“Is that so?” Fu Li looked at Le Qingfei, “Do you like them?”

Le Qingfei seemed to still be sleepy. Dazed, he neither moved nor spoke.

Fu Li’s eyes behind the lenses looked at him gently, and he asked softly once more, “Does Qingfei really like them? Be a bit honest, so that we will know what Qingfei wants.”

Le Qingfei glanced at Shi Yun, still kept quiet, and lowered his head to continue eating the vegetables.

Shi Yun’s tightly furrowed brows slowly smoothed out. A few seconds later, she took away the food plate in front of Le Qingfei and said nothing more.

Before heading to the airport, Shi Yun and Fu Li talked alone in the private room for a long time.

Accompanied by bodyguards, Le Qingfei went to the rooftop terrace to watch the fireworks rehearsal for New Year’s Eve. He took many photos and shared them with his sister on the way accompanying her to the airport.

“Take good care of yourself,” Shi Yun hugged him, “Eat more meat.”

Growing up relying on each other in that kind of family, the two always shared a certain tacit understanding.

Le Qingfei nodded, waved to his sister to say see you next time, and the moment he turned around, his tears fell down.

On the way home, Fu Li did not avoid Le Qingfei’s tears out of mere politeness. He kept handing him handkerchiefs, one after another, until finally Le Qingfei broke into a smile through his tears.

“Just how many handkerchiefs do you have?”

“A lot,” Fu Li said with a smile, “It doesn’t matter even if you cry all the way back home.”

Le Qingfei looked at him, opened his mouth, and after hesitating, he still spoke up: “When sister went to boarding school, I was always unable to eat my fill, because aunt always said it’s not good for children to eat too much, and eating too much would make one very lazy. But I was really hungry.”

“The only things edible in the fridge were lettuce, carrots, and cucumbers… Actually, I like eating cucumbers the most, but if I only ate cucumbers, I would be found out, so I had to eat a bit of everything.”

Le Qingfei raised his arm to wipe his tears, saying in a muffled voice: “But I really don’t like eating carrots.”

Fu Li drew closer. His hand changed direction right when it touched the fabric of the clothing on Le Qingfei’s back; the embrace was canceled, and he gently rubbed Le Qingfei’s head instead. “Mm, from now on, we won’t eat carrots anymore.”

Le Qingfei lifted his eyelashes. His eyelashes, moistened by tears, lit up with a faint glimmer like ice crystals under the orange streetlights flashing past frame by frame. He looked toward him damply and nodded.

The two locked eyes for the duration of two streetlights before Fu Li took the lead to look away.

“By the way, how did you know I don’t like them?”

Fu Li kept his eyes down, unscrewed a water bottle, and handed it to him. “Just a guess. These past two days, you didn’t eat them.”

“Is that so?” Le Qingfei tilted his head and held out his finger, “How come I don’t remember eating… mhm.”

Fu Li stuffed a bar of chocolate into his mouth.

Le Qingfei stopped talking, leaned back, nestled into the corner between the car window and the seat, and quietly looked at the snow scene outside the window while eating the chocolate bar.

Fu Li took out his phone to reply to the emails piled up from the day. He forgot to give him another chocolate, and Le Qingfei began to ponder.

“What about you?”

“Hmm?”

Le Qingfei leaned against the car window, looked at Fu Li who was gazing back at him in confusion, and said: “You told me to be a bit honest, then why were you clearly unhappy today, yet said you weren’t?”

What?

Fu Li froze.

He didn’t expect Le Qingfei to still remember this matter. Like a massive 24/7 shredder, Le Qingfei’s emotions and memories were always fleeting.

On the first day of living together, he was clearly still so scared and nervous during the day, yet at night he could forget to close his bedroom door. Everything in his eyes only had a difference between 0 and 1: has not happened versus is happening.

Fu Li felt worried about this, yet he frequently felt fortunate for Le Qingfei’s forgetfulness and fickleness—at least it meant that the hardships he had suffered in the past would be easily forgotten.

So the forgetful Le Qingfei remembered the sadness he had once denied; that was enough.

“I forgot.” Fu Li said with a smile.

Le Qingfei nodded with deep empathy. “I also often forget. Then next time you must also be a bit more honest, otherwise, if you forget why you were sad, that would be even sadder.”

Fu Li nodded and said “Okay”.

Arriving home, Le Qingfei quickly took a shower and happily went back to his room to look at the clothes bought today.

But Rosita told him that the clothes were still being washed, though the shoes had already been organized. After thanking her, Le Qingfei ran into the walk-in closet but didn’t see where the shoes were.

Rosita smiled and pushed open the door on the right side of the living room. “The Master canceled the study room, saying a shoe room might be more suitable for the Little Master.”

Le Qingfei’s shoes also got to live in a big house—oh wait, they were cohabiting with the skateboard and road bike he had always wanted to play with.

He liked every single item so much that he could hardly take it all in.

Right then, Le Qingfei remembered something.

Fu Li didn’t like people entering the study. Coming out to brew coffee, he picked up a thank-you card Le Qingfei had stuffed through the door crack.

[Thank you for buying me the beautiful clothes and shoes, and so many fun things. I will play with them well. Le Qingfei (heart)]

The corners of Fu Li’s lips hooked up. Suddenly, a “thud” sound echoed from the room diagonally opposite.

“Qingfei,” Fu Li knocked on the door, “If you want a trampoline, we can buy one right now.”

Le Qingfei, dripping with sweat, pulled open the door. His pink and white face looked like a freshly steamed little longevity peach amidst the swirling warm vapor. “Did I disturb you? I’m sorry.”

Fu Li raised his hand to flip the little braid that had fallen over from exhaustion back behind his head, and looked at the television screen playing “Master Skiing in One Day”, as well as the skateboard lying splayed open on the floor.

“Want to ski?”

“Mm,” Le Qingfei hugged the door, looking a bit embarrassed, “My friends invited me to go skiing. I didn’t go before, but this time I want to go a little bit.”

Le Qingfei watched Fu Li nod and leave, and added another line saying he wouldn’t disturb his rest anymore, before closing the room door.

Just as he stood onto the skateboard, the room door was knocked on again.

“Come in.”

Fu Li held his phone, pushed open the room door, and asked him: “Do you want to go to the ski resort tonight, or tomorrow?”

Le Qingfei pointed at himself, his eyes wide. “Me?”

“Are you going to take me skiing? Can I go skiing now? But, I don’t know how, and I don’t have a ski suit or ski boards either.”

Fu Li smiled and took Le Qingfei to another room at the end of the hallway.

The lights flared bright, presenting a dazzling array.

It seemed Fu Li had bought back all the ski equipment released by all the luxury brands this year, placing them here waiting for Le Qingfei to choose.

“These… are all mine?”

“Mm,” Fu Li stood behind him, his hands lightly supporting his waist, and said softly, “They are all Qingfei’s.”