Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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With that said, Qiao Yang pulled Zu Qi into his lounge without any refusal. Everyone except Zhou Hai had finished eating the lunch box provided by the logistics. Zhou Hai wore a cute cartoon apron in front of him and held a plate of fragrant food in one hand. The dishes were then placed on the table.
Seeing Zu Qi following Qiao Yang awkwardly, Zhou Hai smiled so hard that the flesh on his face trembled, as if he was meeting a family member.
“Here you go.” Zhou Hai said hurriedly, “Hurry up and sit down. You can wipe your hands with wet paper towels first. You can start eating soon.”
He had to admit that Zhou Hai’s skill at cooking home-cooked dishes was really good. It was very ordinary, but it was quite filling. Zu Qi ate two bowls of white rice with the vegetables before he felt full.
Zu Qi had heard Zhou Hai say that Qiao Yang’s anorexia had improved a lot before, but he didn’t ask in detail at that time. Now that he saw it with his own eyes, he understood where Zhou Hai’s gratitude to him came from.
Qiao Yang actually ate three bowls of rice without stopping!
Zu Qi was stunned.
Finally, both Zu Qi and Zhou Hai finished eating, and the two of them sat on the edge without saying a word, watching Qiao Yang who was still slowly picking up vegetables and eating. Zu Qi was shocked, but Zhou Hai held his chin with his fingers intertwined, with a face full of happiness.
Zu Qi glanced at Zhou Hai silently, and suddenly didn’t know how to react, so he could only continue to act as a transparent person: “…”
After another half an hour, Qiao Yang finally finished his meal and took a tissue from Zhou Hai. When wiping his mouth with a tissue, he accidentally caught a glimpse of Zu Qi’s expression. He suddenly realized something and smiled sheepishly: “Did it scare you?”
Zu Qi couldn’t deny it: “It did.”
Qiao Yang’s eyes flashed. After a moment of confusion, he said: “I don’t know why. I used to see so many doctors and went to famous hospitals at home and abroad, but my anorexia couldn’t be cured. But now that I ate the food grown by your friend, I don’t know how it healed me so quickly.”
Zu Qi suddenly became nervous. He thought that Qiao Yang would ask how the mushrooms and apples were grown, but Qiao Yang just smiled and said, “It seems that you and I are destined.”
“…” Zu Qi twitched the corner of his mouth and said nothing.
Qiao Yang said again: “Let’s have dinner together from now on. You don’t want money, and I don’t know how to repay you. I can only compete with your fans to solve your dining problem.”
Zu Qi raised his eyes and looked at Qiao Yang. Qiao Yang’s eyes were sincere and his heart felt moved. It happened that he didn’t really want to let the two fans spend money, but it was difficult for him to refuse because of Director Wang’s persuasion.
“I’ll trouble you later.” Zu Qi said with a smile.
….
So after that day, Zu Qi, Xiao Dengzi and Duan Kai occupied half of the dining table, while Qiao Yang and Zhou Hai sat in the other half.
Dining together was a common thing on any set. When the assistant director heard that Zu Qi went to Qiao Yang’s place for dinner, he nodded and said nothing. After finishing his work, he remembered to tell Director Wang about it.
Unexpectedly, after listening to the assistant director’s words, Director Wang stood up from the rocking chair with excitement.
“You just let him go like this?” Director Wang slammed the table with hatred, gritted his teeth and glared at the assistant, with a terrifying look as if he was about to devour the assistant in one second.
The assistant director was so frightened that his face turned pale, and he shrank pitifully like a frightened quail, and said aggrievedly: “But, even if I don’t agree, Zu, Zu Qi may not listen to me.”
“You. How dare you say that?” Director Wang said angrily, “Did you persuade him? You didn’t! Just let him go!”
The assistant said in a low voice, “I didn’t know that you didn’t want Zu Qi to eat with Teacher Qiao. If I knew, I would have stopped it no matter what…”
“…” Director Wang fell silent, sighed deeply, held his forehead and sat back on the rocking chair with a feeling of going through vicissitude of life, while waving to the assistant, “Forget it, let’s go.”
The assistant looked aggrieved and left inexplicably.
Back in the lounge, the assistant felt more and more uncomfortable as he thought about it, and couldn’t help his eyes turning red. It so happened that Xiao Tong and a little girl from the props team who had just returned from doing things saw the appearance of the assistant and surrounded him with concern.
Initially, the assistant director did not want to reveal the conversation between him and Director Wang but was later comforted by others in turn. So, he still told most of the conversation and cried: “I didn’t expect Director Wang disliked Zu Qi so much that he didn’t even allow Zu Qi to have dinner with Teacher Qiao.”
Xiao Tong and Heng Jingchen knew each other. After Heng Jingchen’s request, she helped Zu Qi a lot during the interview and also understood Zu Qi’s personality. After listening to the assistant director’s words, Xiao Tong said in surprise and anger: “I think Zu Qi has a very good personality, can endure hardships and never loses his temper. Director Wang asked him to redo the scene twenty or thirty times before, and he was not impatient at all.”
Another girl said cautiously: “Actually, I can probably understand what Director Wang is thinking. After all, Zu Qi and Teacher Qiao are not on the same level. If Zu Qi offends Teacher Qiao, Director Wang will be the one in trouble in the end.”
“But Director Wang can’t bully people like this!” He said angrily.
“Maybe Director Wang is thinking about himself and the crew.” The girl sighed, and then she suddenly remembered something, and her expression became even sadder, “But having said that, I don’t think Zu Qi’s character and acting skills are as bad as what has been uploaded online, why do people slander him so much?”
The girl paused mid-sentence.
The boy bumped the girl with his elbow a few times and urged: “Don’t gasp when you speak. What did those people say?”
“They said…” The girl hesitated for a long time, but she couldn’t control her gossiping heart. “Xue Jue and Zu Qi are in a fake marriage. They appear to be a couple on the surface, but they are actually doing their own thing in private.”
The assistant director exclaimed, “Is it true? Mr. Xue and Zu Qi don’t look like that.”
“I don’t know if it’s true or not,” the girl said with a frown, “and those people said it with evidence and pictures. It looks like it’s true.
“I also saw it, it was posted by a few skinny marketing accounts!” A passing girl joined in enthusiastically and provided some more powerful information, “There is also a marketing account that said that Zu Qi and our national husband were in a relationship. They met at a private party… No, they didn’t know each other at all at that time. They just after being drunk, slept with each other. Who would have expected that it was a hit and soon Zu Qi got pregnant with a child. So he brought the child to threaten the nation’s husband…”
A group of girls discussed it with gusto, but the story became more and more ridiculous as Xiao Tong listened. Xiao Tong couldn’t listen anymore and told them to shut up sternly and warned them not to spread these false rumors.
Several girls curled their lips, dissatisfied with Xiao Tong’s attitude, and knowing that they couldn’t refute anything, they left unhappy.
Although Xiao Tong had repeatedly warned several girls, she still underestimated the human tendency to seek gossip. In just two or three days, Zu Qi’s dark history on the Internet had already spread to the crew’s gossip circle.
Fortunately, Zu Qi usually behaved well, had a peaceful temperament and rarely refused others’ requests for help. Over time, everyone had a very good impression of him, so that after this happened, everyone’s only reaction was to sympathize with him.
“After all, such an unpleasant thing happened before. I guess Xue Jue won’t look nicely on him after that, right? Hey, I think Zu Qi is a really good person. I guess he just wanted to take a shortcut out of confusion…”
“You don’t want to think about it either. What kind of situation was Zu Qi in at that time? He was dumped by Shi Hao and had so many resources taken away by Tang Moning. If he hadn’t been forced into desperation, no one would be willing to do that kind of thing.”
“No wonder the Xue family organized the full-moon banquet for the child so late. I think the Xue family doesn’t value Zu Qi and the child at all.”
“I don’t know if the Xue family values the child. Anyway, I can see that Xue Jue doesn’t value Zu Qi. After all, their son is also from when Zu Qi got pregnant, right? But Xue Jue never posted photos of Zu Qi on Weibo. Even when their son was one month old, he only posted photos of their son. It is obvious that he doesn’t like Zu Qi at all.”
“So it’s better for us not to mention Mr. Xue in front of Zu Qi, and stop poking at his sadness, hey…”
For a time, Zu Qi became the key protection target of the entire crew.
Even Qiao Yang and Zhou Hai carefully avoided sensitive topics such as family and objects when talking.
One day Zhou Hai accidentally mentioned his wife and daughter, and Qiao Yang glared at him fiercely. Zhou Hai was like a rooster that had been strangled by the neck, and he suddenly became silent.
Zu Qi was holding the bowl and chopsticks, looking at Zhou Hai with strange eyes for a long time, and suddenly asked softly: “Are you okay?”
Zhou Hai forced a smile and said: “I’m fine, I’m very fine.”
Zu Qi took Zhou Hai’s reaction into his eyes, he then avoided Zhou Hai afterwards and asked Qiao Yang quietly: “Brother Zhou, has his family been having trouble recently?”
“…” Qiao Yang looked at Zu Qi very speechlessly and saw that the other person’s eyes were clear and serious. Knowing nothing, he gritted his teeth and made up an extremely tragic story to put on Zhou Hai, and solemnly told Zu Qi, “Marriage and children should not occupy our entire lives, we should set our sights further away.”
Zu Qi was confused: “For example?”
“For example…” Qiao Yang thought for a while, “Career!”
Zu Qi benefited a lot and nodded firmly: “I understand, I will work hard on my career!”
Seeing this, Qiao Yang patted Zu Qi on the back with great satisfaction: “As long as you understand, go ahead.”
Recently, Zu Qi often went to Tang Yukuan’s breeding farm alone to get the land transferred. After going through many complicated procedures, Zu Qi didn’t want Xiao Dengzi and Duan Kai to know about his land purchase for the time being, so he had to do many things himself.
Fortunately, Tang Yukuan was more proactive than Zu Qi. It only took them a week to complete all the procedures, and the rest only needed to wait for the notification from the relevant departments.
During this period, Tang Yukuan had been living in a small house on the farm. After his father fell ill, he sold all the RVs in his name and was currently homeless.
Tang Yukuan had very little possessions. In his words, the only valuable things on him were the organs in his body.
That afternoon, Zu Qi used his mobile phone to transfer the remaining balance into Tang Yukuan’s account in front of him.
Tang Yukuan smiled with the corners of his mouth pulled. His tense expression did not relax just because he received the money. He looked around the room with complicated eyes, stood up and said, “I will move out tonight.”
Zu Qi Said: “Wait a minute.”
Tang Yukuan paused, turned his head pretending to be relaxed, and raised his eyebrows: “Are you reluctant to let me go? I have a bottom line. I will sell my land but not my body.”
“…” Zu Qi was speechless, “Didn’t I tell you before that I have something I want to tell you in person.”
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