The front door opened and closed, Li Yuan took no notice of it. It was past evening and the boys were returning from their 'jobs'.
Yu Youhan would join them too but, he was probably doing his mistress, like she was some ch.o.r.es, that's what he had collected from Ji Zhou intel.
The living room is where they spent their Fridays, resting, and recounting their week and on weekends they went on 'booty-hunts'.
No commitments, no arguments, no drunken fiance, no family drama: single life was f*cking heaven!
"Sh*tty days?" Li Qiang plopped on the couch Li Yuan was sitting on, with a beer bottle and half-eaten lasagna in hand. He had spoken with mouth-full just like he did when he was a teenager.
Li Yuan ruffled his hair and chuckled lightly and murmured tiredly under his breath, "You have no idea!"
Despite their complicated relation, their hearts didn't wither. Li Yuan loved his younger brother, his father sin wasn't his brother's fault.
When he was young he hated his half-brother and his mother for ruining his own mother and family but it didn't take long for him to realize who was in the most disadvantage by the scenario and who was the actual root of evil.
His half-brother was an imitation of an angel. Serene and calm. He even hooked-up gentlemanly!
His speciality was science and tech. He was literally a worshipper of machines!
Li Qiang took another bite like a starved man and surveyed the living room, "You broke the lamp, Yu Jian, off and on... girlfriend brought that for him from Italy. He is going to throw a tantrum for that."
Now that Li Yaun took another glance at it. He could tell it was hideous. It was an evil leprechaun, with a once lightened hat.
Either the girl really hated him or she had a horrible eye-sight plus a horrible taste.
He raised his bro mockingly, "Though I think... I did him a favour."
"You did us all." Yu w.a.n.g spoke from behind as he and Jiang Cheng entered with grins. They too plopped on the couches.
Ji Zhou too descended from the stairs, freshly bathed, "Our interior designer will stay grateful till his last breath. Though Yu Jian nad his...woman might have other thoughts."
Yu Jian and Su Qianwei's sister 'relation', if you could call it, was... strange. Like really strange!
She dated guys like he dated girls but they always fell back on the bed with each other. Very often. They weren't compatible, not at all, they fought every second they are together except in the bedroom.
They were each other firsts.
After their work hours, the guys didn't bind by formalities because of their histories with each other. They were irreplaceable because their loyalties weren't sold but earned.
Li Yuan scoffed, and opened the beer bottle from the carate that was on the table, "That would be an addition to sh*tty life."
Yu w.a.n.g snickered, "You can always put some colours in with a good piece of a.s.s."
That was the thing about them, they didn't prey. Either the consoled you or beat the sh*t out of you. Never fished for gossips.
Li Yuan raised a brow and half-smirked, "Are you offering yourself?"
The room erupted in chuckles and hooting.
It was a provoking act and if Yu w.a.n.g reddening face was a sign, the job was well done. Always so short-tempered!
Even when his temper was already lost, he snorted playing-it-cool, "If even I was into men, I wouldn't choose a jerk to f*ck!"
Another round of snickers followed.
Saying that he opened the beer bottle. They all chatted, joked, drank and discussed issues. Li Yuan half-heartedly listened to them and drank for the most part.
Ji Zhou had lit a cigar and offered everybody. Everybody took one except LI Qiang, who didn't smoke.
Li Yuan took the packet out of his hand and lit his first cigar of the night.
What he could think of was a raven-head woman, sitting on damp gra.s.s with his head resting on her lap, on a sunny afternoon under an old willow tree.
Her blabbering about all irrelevant things with a genuine smile on her face and glee shimmering from her eyes.
He mockingly smirked and chuckled at the irony of his own thought.
All the common things the normal couples had and they would never have. It was alcohol playing tricks on him or he was seriously going insane, he couldn't really tell.
Since when did he want these chic-flick things like normal couples?
He had always wanted an explosive and pa.s.sionate relationship. One that would drag them to insanities yet would be their only strand of sanity.
"Aren't you too into this girl. Too obsessed!? Like why still hung up on her?" Jiang Cheng voice cut him out of his over-the-top thoughts. He was looking at him with a frown etched on his face.
Obsessed? Maybe he was, but she a soul to be obsessed for. Layers and layers below was her core, as complicated as her exterior.
Yu w.a.n.g put his feet above the table and snickered in mockery, "When I am obsessed with a girl I f*ck her out of my system."
A petty retaliation it was to him. He was calling upon his manliness.
Ji Zhou scoffed and a taunting smirk rose on his drunk-dulled eyes.
"There was one you didn't." His voice was low yet filled with volumes of ridicule.
Yu w.a.n.g face darkened at once at the thought of the woman he hated till his bones. He took a deep puff and it left a bitter taste in his mouth.
He wanted to f*ck her out of the system too but she wasn't the kind you could flush out of your head or heart.
You couldn't hate her without falling deep for her.
He gritted his teeth and pursed his lips. He wanted to smash that smug off Ji Zhou's face. He opened his mouth less but when he did, he made sure to spit venom.
They were all exceptionally high trained ex-a.s.sa.s.sins, reading the raw emotions on his face wasn't f*cking rocket science.
To rub further salt on his throbbing Li Yuan chuckled, "The one who is Youhan's mistress?"
"She is not his mistress!"
"My sister is not a wh*re!"
Yu w.a.n.g and Jiang Cheng cried out at the same time. It was involuntary for Jiang Cheng as it was his sister they were talking about but Yu w.a.n.g had slipped.
And by the way, he was cursing under his breath he too realized that.
A smirk formed on Li Yuan's face that he hid behind the rim of his bottle. "So why didn't you?"
Yu w.a.n.g turned his razor-sharp glare to him, cursed and stood up, "I am f*cking done for the night!"
The night continued with smoke fueling their spirits. The gla.s.s door of the living room slid open and Yu Jian walked in with his usual jolly persona.
"I got foo...where is my lamp?" His smile disappeared at once and his eyes at once filled with panic and horror.
Su Qing had insisted that he place it here so that he can see it whenever he comes home and remembers her. And he did look at the lamp, first thing when he came home.
"Resting in peace." Jiang Cheng snickered and pointed at the broken ghastly repulsive lamp then at Li Yuan.
He looked at him in horror and astonishment, the take-out food from the high-end restaurant dropped from his hands and collided with the Persian carpeted floor.
"How could you, brother?! Su Qing said it reminds her of me!" Their mirthful expression at once turned to sympathetic.
So, it was confirmed. He really needed a new f*ck buddy!
Yu Jian picked the broken pieces of the once illuminating ghastly leprechaun lamp, gave Li Yuan an accusatory glare and ran up to his room. Muttering something about his broken loves pieces.
Ji Zhou who was spent excused himself for the night. Li Yuan and Jiang Cheng sat in silence smoking.
Jiang Cheng picked the wrapped food from the floor and kept it on the table. n.o.body had eaten so they were bound to come looking for food at midnight.
"Congrats about the baby." Jiang Cheng said after a while in a gruff voice from constant smoking.
Even they didn't know about Baby's reality.
All they had a.s.sumed was that he was doing his chick-fiance unprotected when drunk and boom! Calamity befalls. That's why no one was talking about it.
They all knew how sticky a situation can get in that case.
The others were smoking for relaxation but both of them were smoking because of the heavy thoughts weighing them down.
"...Thanks."
Jiang Cheng threw his cigar in the ashtray and sat back on the sofa, taking a pasta package in his hand, and started unwrapping it.
"You could have gone in any one of your villas but you chose to come here in a house full of men, not to mention you haven't touched a woman since, so it must be because you wanted... witnesses."
He nodded his head at his own a.n.a.lysis and put a mouthful of pasta in his mouth.
He wasn't the a.n.a.lyst and semi-strategist for nothing. He was accurate to the point it was annoying!
His co-strategist was Ji Zhou. While Ji Zhou was keen on the minute and figural details, Jiang Cheng was an expert in taking over-views and systematic concretes.
He pointed his spoon at him, "You want the woman but don't get along?"
He could have lived in any other villa of his but if his 'fiance' put the label of an infidel who would prove his innocence? At least he will have alibi now.
Otherwise, the woman didn't have the trust of the size of a peanut on him.
"Want?" He tested the estranged word on his tongue, then shook his head. "I don't really think if I should call it w.a.n.g."
He smiled thinking of her, "She is a mystery. A f*cking labyrinth. A piece of art, the profound type. You can't help but fall for her. A woman confident in her skin is sacred and she is an epitome of atrocity yet... beyond beautiful. You can't hold her but you can't even let her go."
Jiang Cheng looked at him in astonishment then quickly shook out of it.
He couldn't imagine Li Yuan speaking these poetic words, that also for a woman, even if he was thrown in a rabbit hole!
"You should visit her. Women never accepts their mistakes, much less apologize. Though she sounds like a person to be seen."
"She is." Li Yuan smiled looking at a distance, then turned to him, "How is your sister?"
He had heard of his sister. She was dangerous to her bones. F*ck she was a Lei and a runaway to!
A Lei couldn't be trusted because their loyalties lies nowhere but with themselves.
She was an efficient one-shot killer and an expert surgeon, that she could bring a man back from the brink of death. She could make poisons and medicines out of leaves and petals, literally.
It was beyond him how Jiang Cheng even trusted her and how could Yu Youhan allow her in his personal Mansion. She was said to be a siren, ethereal and lethal, a terrible combination.
"She is...fine." Jiang Cheng sighed, she wasn't actually.
"She is acting out of her nature since her amnesia. She is still intelligent but...there is something wrong, I worry...mentally. She is so fragile now... when she is a battalion in real but...I think it is the trauma. She has had a very tough life, somewhere I feel happy that she has lost such bitter memories but..."
Li Yuan looked at him. It was a pity such a talent was lost.
"I know a friend who is a good psychiatrist, Su Qianwei."
