Chapter 119: NEXT TIME YOU TOUCH ME I’LL SHOOT YOU

Pei Jiahao nodded and went to get it.

Guiying sat in the small chair near the styling station and accepted the bottle when Pei Jiahao returned.

He turned it over in his hands before opening it, checking the seal without making it obvious that he was checking it, pressing the cap gently to confirm it hadn’t been tampered with.

It was sealed properly, untouched, and only then did he open it and drink.

It was a habit that had started a long time ago and had never gone away... laced drinks were harder to detect than laced water, and he had learned that particular lesson in a way that made it impossible to forget.

He didn’t trust drinks he hadn’t watched being made and he didn’t trust food he hadn’t seen prepared by someone whose hands he knew.

He pulled out his phone.

A message from Liuxian, sent forty minutes ago.

"How’s it going?"

Guiying typed back: ’Better than expected. They didn’t think I could do it.’ 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

The reply came in under a minute.

’Did you have fun proving them wrong?’

Guiying looked at the screen for a moment.

’Definitely’ he typed.

’Im proud’ Liuxian replied.

He almost smiled.

He was about to put his phone away when it buzzed again, ringing this time, Liuxian’s name on the screen.

He picked up.

"Break?" Liuxian said.

"A short one," Guiying said, leaning back in the chair. "They weren’t expecting much when I walked in this morning."

"And now?"

"Bai Zichen hasn’t stopped making noise for the last hour," Guiying said.

"I think that answers the question."

He could hear the quiet of Liuxian’s office on the other end. "When do you finish?"

"A few more hours. Then——"

A sound from across the studio.

Not loud exactly, but sharp, the kind of sound a room made when something unexpected had walked into it.

Voices, low and quickly hushed, the particular disruption of people who had been moving through their day and had suddenly been interrupted by something that required them to recalibrate.

Guiying straightened in his chair.

"One second," he said into the phone.

He stood and moved toward the sound, toward the entrance of the studio floor, phone still in his hand, already mid sentence.

"What’s going on..."

He stopped.

His feet stopped before his brain caught up with why.

Shen Zihao was standing right in front of him.

Guiying’s hand tightened around his phone without him telling it to.

His life had been going well... so well that somewhere between the second outfit and the fifth he had, without noticing, stopped carrying the weight of everything waiting for him outside this studio. He’d just been working. Just been present. And now the thing he’d stopped thinking about was standing two metres away from him in a TongShu studio on his first day and smiling at him like he’d been expecting this.

What was he doing here.

The question moved through him fast and cold, and then the answer followed just as fast... Ruijie Corporation.

Shen Zihao owned Ruijie Corporation.

Ruijie owned TongShu.

Of course he was here.

Of course.

He could feel his heartbeat picking up, that particular rhythm his body defaulted to when something dangerous walked into the room, something it had learned to recognise a long time ago and had never unlearned.

Then he heard another voice from behind Shen Zihao.

Quinn.

His eyes moved there briefly and darkened.

Both of them. Here. On his first day.

He looked down at his phone still in his hand, Liuxian’s voice coming through faintly.

"I’ll call you back," he said quickly.

"What’s——"

He ended the call.

Shen Zihao started moving toward him.

Guiying took a step back.

And then another, because Shen Zihao kept coming, unhurried, the particular kind of unhurried that meant he knew exactly where this was going and wasn’t in any rush to get there because the outcome was already settled in his mind.

Guiying’s back met the wall.

He had nowhere left to go.

Shen Zihao raised his hand.

"Don’t touch me," Guiying said.

That made Shen Zihao smile. Slow and wide, the kind of smile that knew something you didn’t and was enjoying knowing it.

"How did you know that’s what I was about to do?" he said.

He grabbed Guiying’s chin anyway, fingers closing around it with the casual ease of someone who had done this before and expected no consequences for doing it again.

"I’ve been searching for you everywhere," he said, tilting Guiying’s face up slightly, looking at him the way you looked at something you’d lost and found again. "And then you delivered yourself right to my doorstep." He chuckled, leaning closer. "Funny how that works..."

"Fuck." Guiying’s voice came out low and absolutely flat. "Don’t come any closer. I’m warning you."

"Or what?" Shen Zihao said pleasantly. "What are you going to do?"

"I’ll smash your head in, you fucking bastard," Guiying said. "Try me... just fucking try."

The fury that moved through him was the kind that didn’t announce itself with noise.

It came up quietly, from somewhere that had been waiting for exactly this, and his pheromones slipped out with it before he could pull them back... vanilla and heat, pushed out by anger rather than anything else, filling the space between them.

Shen Zihao’s eyes shifted.

He leaned closer, and his voice dropped to something that was meant only for Guiying.

"Ah... so feisty." A pause. "Keep those pheromones coming... my cock’s throbbing."

Piak.

The sound of Guiying’s palm connecting with Shen Zihao’s face cracked across the studio like a door slamming.

The room went absolutely still.

Bai Zichen’s mouth was open. Pei Jiahao had stopped writing. Lin Yansu had gone very still near the rack. Jiang Wenxi stood without moving, her expression unreadable, and Shao Mingye had lowered his camera and was staring.

Did he just...

Did Tang XiaoYu just slap Shen Zihao?

Guiying’s chest was heaving, his pheromones still bleeding out at the edges, his eyes fixed on Shen Zihao’s face with the particular focused fury of someone who had made a decision and was completely at peace with it.

"The next time you touch me," he said, and his voice was steady in the way that had nothing to do with calm, "or say anything like that to me again... I’ll shoot you."