My Queen, My Rules - Chapter 34

Chapter 34

The lighting in the hotel suites under the Junyi Group is always carefully curated. The wine cabinets and bookshelves are illuminated by a row of bright, focused spotlights, and the bathroom mirrors feature circular LED sensor lights, while the bamboo floor lamp by the bed casts a soft, warm yellow glow that seems to leak light where it doesn't. When the surroundings are silent and two people are face to face, this quiet atmosphere seems to add a touch of gentle, ambiguous intimacy.

The distance between them grew smaller, and their heartbeats could be heard clearly in each other's ears.

For adult men and women, it seemed only logical that something might happen next.

—That is, if Ji Mingshu’s stomach hadn't growled from hunger.

From the time she woke up the next day until she continued filming the show, Ji Mingshu kept thinking about last night.

Her head was filled with the image of them face to face, about to kiss. She felt an unconscious regret over her stomach’s uncooperative growl, and she even found herself uncontrollably reconstructing the shaming, intimate scene that should have happened, following the trajectory of last night's atmosphere.

"Mingshu, Mingshu?" Feng Yan called out to her twice. "What are you smiling about? We're here."

Yan Yuexing looked at her with a hint of disdain. Seeing that the cameras weren't rolling yet, she couldn't be bothered to act and said with a sarcastic tone, "In heat!"

After saying that, she got out of the car first. While calling for the makeup artist to fix her look, she turned back nervously, pretending to glance into the car by accident.

These past few days, Yan Yuexing had been suppressed by Ji Mingshu until she was full of rage. The problem was that she was a teen idol; she could have a thousand or ten thousand swear words in her heart, but she couldn't be as fearless in front of the camera as Ji Mingshu.

Furthermore, Ji Mingshu was an incredibly "evil" woman. Yan didn't know where Ji got her confidence; she didn't know the meaning of humility or restraint, always charging straight ahead and doing things out in the open.

Having fully experienced Ji Mingshu’s arrogance these past days, Yan Yuexing inevitably felt regret and anxiety after her snide comment, fearing that Ji Mingshu would realize what was said, storm off the car, and slap her across the face twice. She felt that Ji Mingshu was absolutely capable of such a thing.

However, Ji Mingshu, currently recovering from her mental simulation, had no time to settle scores with Yan Yuexing for her sharp tongue. She was quickly plunged back into the shock of "I actually had improper thoughts about Cen Sen," and couldn't recover for a long time.

It was too shameful!

It was too surreal!

Ji Mingshu patted her cheeks, constantly telling herself to wake up.

How could she possibly feel annoyed that nothing happened with Cen Sen, to the point of reconstructing the scene herself?

No, impossible! It must be because she hadn't had sex in too long, making her this thirsty!

Besides, it was impossible for her to like a man like Cen Sen, who had been incompatible with her since childhood. It was practically a joke!

She simply, purely liked his money!

Yes, that was right, that was it.

After convincing herself, Ji Mingshu nodded solemnly.

Yesterday had been chaotic, and her sleep last night was light; Cen Sen hadn't even adjusted to the time zone yet.

Early this morning, he had summoned the branch’s top executives for a meeting. A group of people who usually looked impeccably dressed sat there pointing fingers and shifting responsibility, bickering for a full three hours.

With Cen Sen, a living, breathing person, sitting in the head seat, they argued with red faces and would not give an inch, creating a scene like a fight over an inheritance.

By the time the meeting ended, the noise of the clamoring ducks was still echoing in Cen Sen's mind.

He entered his office alone and instructed Zhou Jiaheng not to let anyone in. He leaned back in his office chair and listened to piano music for half an hour before he could calm himself down.

They always said women were noisy, but compared to this group of men, he felt Ji Mingshu could be described as gentle and considerate.

Thinking of Ji Mingshu, he picked up his phone, opened WeChat, and accepted her friend request.

Cen Sen rarely scrolled through his Moments, but seeing that Ji Mingshu had posted photos to her album, he casually clicked in to take a look.

Unexpectedly, this casual glance lasted for over half an hour.

Ji Mingshu’s Moments were roughly as he had imagined, but aside from posing as an elegant socialite and a wealthy wife, there were many posts filled with life, even tinged with a bit of silliness.

He only stopped scrolling when Zhou Jiaheng dialed the internal line to remind him of his afternoon appointments; he had just reached the New Year photos Ji Mingshu posted early this year.

She was building a snowman with the younger generation of the Cen family, wrapped in a fluffy coat with a small red hat on her head. Her eyes were curved in a smile; she looked radiant and cute.

While saving the photos, he calmly gave orders for work.

On the other side, Ji Mingshu, who was scrolling through her phone while eating a delivered hotel lunchbox, was so shocked she almost dropped her meal.

She had just opened her Moments when she saw numerous notifications. She clicked in and saw that Cen Sen had "liked" over a hundred of her posts.

And just as she was doubting whether the trash software really had a bug, Cen Sen was still liking posts in real-time.

One notification after another popped up, the content being liked grew more ancient, and he even began commenting online.

Cen Sen: [The photo isn't focused.]

Cen Sen: [The color of the clothes is too bright.]

Cen Sen: [Used the wrong tense.]

Cen Sen: [Used the idiom incorrectly.]

Ji Mingshu stared straight at the comment notifications, her head full of question marks. Did he think he was a homeroom teacher, correcting her as he read!

Ji Mingshu: [?]

Ji Mingshu: [What are you doing?]

Cen Sen: [Looking at your Moments.]

Although she had always shared her Moments publicly, Cen Sen was never among the people she expected to see them.

And what was up with this man? If he wanted to look, he could look, but why did he have to "like" them and write comments? Was he saying, "The Emperor has read this"? How utterly inexplicable!

Ji Mingshu didn't want to debate with him; she curbed the source by changing her Moments visibility to the last three days, and then sent a smug, tongue-poking emoji.

Unexpectedly, Cen Sen didn't play by the rules. He suddenly sent her the candid photo of her building the snowman during the New Year and commented on it one-on-one.

Cen Sen: [This one looks best.]

Ji Mingshu: [……]

Cen Sen: [Quite cute.]

Ji Mingshu: [……]

Her ears turned red.

This—this dog of a man, wasn't he trying to seduce her? What was with this sudden straight-talking approach?

Feeling inexplicably guilty, she quickly hid her phone in her bag.

After eating her lunchbox distractedly, she happened to run into Feng Yan and Pei Xiyan sawing wood on the floor above.

Most of the wood they sawed was useless; it was just to increase the show’s watchability, making the audience think the guests had a hand in the custom furniture.

With the cameras off, they were just practicing. After all, if they sawed with strange postures during the actual recording, they might get mocked.

She squatted nearby, cupping her face and watching, but her thoughts were drifting in outer space.

Feng Yan asked casually, "Mingshu, what's wrong? You seem a bit out of it today."

Ji Mingshu recovered her senses. "I'm fine. I'm just thinking... about how we can specifically enhance the practicality of our plan."

Feng Yan and Pei Xiyan couldn't offer much input on this.

They were celebrities who had lived privileged lives; they could appreciate Ji Mingshu’s high-end designs, but they didn't know how to make designs blend into everyday life.

Cen Sen said last night that her design lacked practicality, and Ji Mingshu had been thinking about it seriously for quite a while.

However, they were already halfway through the renovation period, and there wasn't much room to change the hard fixtures; she could only start with the soft furnishings.

She felt the root cause of the lack of domestic comfort was insufficient storage space. When she came over today, she had visited the neighbor’s house in the building. Based on her observations, she had temporarily modified the blueprints of a few custom furniture pieces.

For example, the sofa.

Star City was in the south and didn't provide floor heating in the winter; most families were accustomed to using electric heaters for warmth.

She saw at the neighbor's house that they put the electric heater under the coffee table, but the heaters were relatively large. Placing them under the coffee table took up the bottom space, making it uncomfortable to stretch one's legs while watching TV, and it wasn't aesthetically pleasing.

Therefore, she modified the custom sofa, leaving a rectangular space under the base of the long sofa to store the electric heater, making the exterior look like a small wooden door that slid up and down, and turning the bottom of the sofa on both sides into storage cabinets.

Of course, more specific details would have to wait until she returned today to make overall changes to the design drawings.

Ji Mingshu squatted for a while longer. Seeing them change the direction of the wood, she suddenly said out of the blue, "I want to ask you a question."

Feng Yan: "What question?"

Ji Mingshu: "Like, would you suddenly give a girl a lot of likes, save a girl’s Moments photos, send them to that girl, and tell her that the photo looks very good and even praise her for being cute?"

Feng Yan and Pei Xiyan’s movements paused. They locked eyes, looking at each other in dismay, and then both shook their heads.

It made sense for Yan-zai, who was still a kid with no dating experience, but Feng Yan wasn't young; why was he shaking his head?

Ji Mingshu grabbed him to ask, "Then what do you think such behavior generally means?"

Feng Yan: "This... maybe it means he likes her?"

"Like what like? Isn't that just flirting?"

Yan Yuexing rolled her eyes, feeling extremely speechless at these three people who were collectively over sixty years old yet pretending to be innocent.

Feng Yan, afraid the two girls would fight again, hurriedly shook his head slightly at Ji Mingshu, signaling her not to bother.

These past days, everyone had finally seen Yan Yuexing's true colors—a cute, moe girl and teen idol in front of the camera, but a little hooligan the moment the camera was pulled away.

She had initially wanted to maintain a good image to get close to Pei Xiyan, but with Ji Mingshu protecting the kid in front and Pei Xiyan’s maxed-out "Flash" evasion skills behind, she couldn't get near him while filming together, and couldn't even say a few words, so she stopped wasting the effort.

She and Cen Sen were a married couple who could sleep together directly, so what was there to "flirt" about? Ji Mingshu didn't care about Yan Yuexing’s nonsense; she just supported her chin and thought deeply about what Feng Yan had said. Was Cen Sen really liking her?

It was so strange; she couldn't feel it at all usually, and he only did it once in a while. Did he have intermittent liking along with his intermittent amnesia?

She discussed it with Feng Yan some more.

During this process, Pei Xiyan maintained a polite and distant attitude, not participating in the topic. However, halfway through, he went outside to take a phone call from Cen Sen.

Cen Sen called him to ask if Ji Mingshu had modified the design plan. He had just WeChatted Ji Mingshu to ask, but Ji Mingshu didn't seem to have looked at her phone, as she hadn't replied.

Pei Xiyan responded to a few things, but after thinking about it at the end, he reminded him, "Brother Sen, it's just... recently, it seems like someone is pursuing Sister Mingshu."

Cen Sen: "What."

Pei Xiyan felt that, as a guy, he shouldn't be so gossipy, and he just told him to ask Ji Mingshu.

But Cen Sen asked again. Helpless, Pei Xiyan coughed lightly and said briefly: "There’s a man giving Sister Mingshu’s Moments a lot of likes, and he even sent her photos of herself to her, praising her for being pretty and cute. That’s it; don't say it was me who told you."

He coughed again, seemingly embarrassed by the act of snitching.