Chapter 28 “It’s to Restrain You.”

Chapter 28: "It's to Restrain You."

Lin'an Group—Chairman's Office.

Guo Shengyao entered with documents. The boss, head bowed, flipped through and signed each one.

She waited patiently for him to finish, occasionally sneaking a glance outside.

"What are you looking around for?" Zhou Yu asked, without lifting his head.

Guo Shengyao jumped, quickly averting her gaze. She mused, "How did Zhou the Tyrant grow eyes on the back of his head?"

"Nothing," she said faintly, then, unable to resist, whispered, "Is my mentor... not coming today?"

"What does that have to do with you?" Zhou Yu said coolly. "Young people, focus more on your work."

Guo Shengyao: "..."

The boss himself is a love-struck fool, so what's wrong with employees shipping their boss with someone? Is it only allowed for the boss to dole out sweetness but not for employees to ask for crumbs?

Wicked capitalist!

Guo Shengyao subtly rolled her eyes.

Zhou Yu: "If your eyes don't know how to behave, I don’t mind helping you remove them."

Guo Shengyao: "!!"

He really does have eyes on his head!

She instantly became docile, no longer daring to make any furtive movements. "I—I was just worried about my mentor. He didn’t reply to my messages."

"Why are you bothering him?" Zhou Yu frowned. "He’s sleeping. Don't go disturbing him for no reason."

Guo Shengyao: "???"

Wow, even jumping into the Yellow River couldn’t wash this clean!

Just who is disturbing whom? Zhou the Tyrant is so biased—how did my mentor ever fall for him?!

Guo Shengyao clenched her fists, then suddenly her eyes darted, and her tone shifted.

"I don’t want to disturb my mentor either, but I’m worried about him, so I came to you, Boss, to get some information."

"Boss?"

As soon as the words left her mouth, Zhou Yu's signing hand stopped.

He coughed lightly into his hand, leaned back in his chair, the corners of his mouth twitching upward before he forced them down.

He glanced at Guo Shengyao a few times. "Now that's how you should talk."

Guo Shengyao smiled ingratiatingly.

Zhou Yu took pity and relented. "Your mentor is fine. He’s just temporarily indisposed, so I gave him a day off."

Guo Shengyao: "!"

Her eyes went wide as saucers.

What does "fine, just temporarily indisposed" mean?

Heavens, Guo Shengyao’s mind was filled with a torrent of curses.

Zhou Yu: "If you want to reach him, try him again in a couple of hours. He usually sleeps this long—"

"Boss!"

Seeing Zhou Yu getting carried away and about to launch into a lengthy speech, Guo Shengyao quickly cut him off.

"Well, I understand," she said with a forced smile. "Thank you, Boss. Wishing you a long and happy life together."

With that, she picked up the thick stack of signed documents and made a quick exit without looking back.

She shouldn’t have asked in the first place!

Zhou Yu: "..."

He was just getting warmed up, but his audience had already run off.

He watched Guo Shengyao’s hurried escape, shook his head with a sigh, his face full of disappointment.

Employees these days have such weak mental resilience. They can’t even make conversation with their boss. What can they achieve out there?

He had a meeting with a business partner in half an hour, but now he suddenly found himself with free time.

Usually, Secretary Lin would be sitting outside. If the door was open, Zhou Yu could look up and see him working diligently.

Now Secretary Lin’s seat was empty, and without that beautiful face in sight, Zhou Yu felt strangely unsettled.

He swiveled his chair, bored out of his mind.

Normally, half an hour would fly by, but now every second felt incredibly drawn out.

Zhou Yu was missing Lin Yunshu.

He wanted to see him, to go back and hold him.

He took out his phone, hesitating over whether to make a video call. Lin Yunshu was probably still asleep, and Zhou Yu couldn’t bear to wake him so abruptly.

After some thought, he opened another chat and hit up Tan Cong on video call.

"Whaaat uuup!" Tan Cong shouted.

Zhou Yu could vaguely make out the other’s nostrils in the flashing, pixelated darkness.

He immediately held the phone farther away, disgusted. "You should trim your nose hair."

Tan Cong: "o . o"

He covered his nose.

The video shook and flickered for what felt like ages before stabilizing. Tan Cong’s face finally appeared clearly on the screen.

"What are you doing?" Zhou Yu asked impatiently. "Do you know how much money you’ve cost me in those few seconds?"

Tan Cong laughed. "Bro, all I know is you should lay off the short videos."

He found a quiet spot and slumped into the sofa casually: "Buddy, I'm at my own farewell party."

Zhou Yu suddenly remembered that Tan Cong was about to return to China: "Someone actually threw you a farewell party?"

"Can't help it," Tan Cong humbly brushed his hairspray-stiffened hair, "The guys just like me that much, unlike you, tsk..."

"Heh," something this small didn't even faze Zhou Yu, "No matter how popular you are, you still don't have a wife."

K.O.

President Tan: "..."

He clicked his molars irritably: "Yeah, you're really something."

Zhou Yu accepted his friend's "compliment" with a smile.

"When are you coming back?" he asked.

"Within a couple days," Tan Cong said, "I'll land there the afternoon of the day after tomorrow. Remember to pick me up, personally. Don’t pawn me off on some assistant or driver."

Zhou Yu scoffed, "Who do you think you are?"

"Not coming?" Tan Cong wasn’t fazed, "Fine then, I’ll just tell our school junior Yun Shu myself. When his Brother Cong comes back, he can pick me up. Just don’t come tagging along begging."

Zhou Yu: "..."

He sneered again, "You think that’s enough to pressure me? As if... Send the flight info."

Tan Cong slammed the table laughing.

"Funny?" Zhou Yu said sternly, "Let me remind you again, privately contacting a friend’s spouse is highly inappropriate behavior. I suggest you restrain yourself."

Tan Cong laughed right off the screen.

He couldn’t stop laughing for a long time, like he'd eaten laughing gas.

He thought someone like Zhou Yu would’ve hung up long ago, but when he wiped his tears and returned to the screen, the guy was still sitting there.

Solemn and imposing, like a guardian statue.

Tan Cong burst out laughing again.

"What’s up? Why haven’t you hung up? Something else?"

"Heh," Zhou Yu smirked, tapping the table lightly with his index finger, "Did something major?"

"Oh?" Tan Cong finally got serious, "Did you become an angel investor for some oddball little team again?"

Zhou Yu shook his head.

"Then did you close a deal with our family’s business?"

Zhou Yu waggled a finger.

Tan Cong scratched his head in frustration: "It can’t be... your old man kicked the bucket, right...?"

"Tsk," Zhou Yu said disdainfully, "How did someone with your limited imagination and intelligence even get a PhD?"

President Tan: "...If you won't say, I’m hanging up."

"Wait!" Zhou Yu straightened up and cleared his throat, "I professed my feelings."

Tan Cong: "...?"

His serious expression froze, almost becoming a massive eye-roll.

"You fucker..." He wished he could punch through the screen, "How is that a big deal?!"

"Me declaring love to my wife isn’t a big deal?"

"You know that's your wife, man!" Tan Cong shouted, "You only confessed after getting married? Is that something to be proud of?!"

Zhou Yu: "..."

For a moment, he actually thought Tan Cong had a point.

"No, no," he tried to recover his argument, "You can’t look at it that way. Our situation is different. It was a contract. Yun Shu only saw me as a convenient arrangement at first, but now he understands, you understand? He understands now!"

He waved his arms dramatically, trying to make his long-time single friend understand the troubles of love.

Tan Cong: "..."

"Everything before was just prologue," Zhou Yu said, "Now it’s the real beginning, our new chapter!"

"From now on, everything I do for him, every kindness I show him, he’ll know it’s because I love him! With time and consistency, how could he help but fall for me?" he said confidently, "I’m quite a catch, right?"

Tan Cong: "........"

"You don’t get it. Keeping a wife takes effort!" Zhou Yu was already caught up in his own performance, "If this isn’t a big deal, I don’t know what is."

Click!

The screen cut to black. The call ended.

Zhou Yu snapped out of his dramatic monologue, picked up his phone, and examined it.

"..."

He put the phone down.

Accepting the fact that he had killed the chat once again.

·

Lin Yunshu didn’t stay home to catch more sleep.

After Zhou Yu left for the office, he changed into a black shirt and took a taxi to the suburban cemetery.

He visited his parents here every month.

Back when he was studying or just starting work, he sometimes got really stressed. Sitting by his parents’ graves always helped calm him.

Today, Lin Yunshu brought spirit money and fruit as usual, set them out properly, stepped back a few paces, and sat down.

Truthfully, he never knew his parents' fruit preferences, so he always brought the freshest of the season. That way, over the year, Mom and Dad would get to taste everything.

Lin Yunshu sat quietly.

Not like other kids, he didn't share many joyful memories with his parents.

He only heard from his aunt when he was young that his father was once a soldier who went missing during a mission but, for various reasons, was never recognized as a martyr.

These were all just rumors.

For parents he had never met, the most familiar things to him were the two black-and-white photos on the tombstone.

So rather than reminiscing and expressing attachment, he was more accustomed to treating this place as a "tree hole"—a sounding board.

Whenever he felt hesitant or troubled, he would come here to talk, hoping the occasional breeze might answer.

"I'm married," he said softly.

"He said he likes me."

He looked at the photos of his parents on the tombstone.

Both had died in their prime, so they looked exceptionally young, with beautiful smiles, almost like they were Lin Yunshu's age.

He found it hard to connect these two photos with the concept of "parents," yet his own eye and brow shape bore a genuine resemblance to theirs.

It was a very strange feeling.

Like talking to himself.

"What does it mean to like someone?" he murmured, a rare confused expression on his face.

He had never met his parents and knew nothing about their love story—how they met and came to understand each other.

But his mother, despite knowing his father's fate was uncertain, stubbornly refused her relatives' suggestions to have an abortion and insisted on giving birth to him alone.

Was that love?

Lin Yunshu didn’t really understand.

If it were him, he would have advised his mother, like all the relatives back then, to terminate the pregnancy. She had her whole life ahead of her; she shouldn't have thrown it away like that.

He always believed that feelings were the hardest thing to hold onto—born in the heart, expressed through words, but ultimately fading away in the heart.

If someone treated him well, he would be grateful.

But relying completely on someone? That terrified him. He needed to hold onto an escape route to feel safe.

So what was going through his mother's mind back then, waiting alone for someone who might never return, with no one understanding her?

And what must his father have felt, trapped in a foreign land, yearning to return to his wife?

Lin Yunshu couldn’t imagine.

He sighed.

Before, he thought that even without parents, he could grow up alone and turn out just fine on his own.

But now, for the first time, Lin Yunshu genuinely wished he had parents.

Emotions weren’t something that could be reasoned or analyzed.

But if he had parents, perhaps they could have taught him.

Now, trying to figure it out alone felt impossible.

The sun set, and the wind grew chilly.

Lin Yunshu sat until his body stiffened, yet he still hadn’t found an answer.

Pushing himself up slowly from the ground, he made his way back alone.

·

Zhou Yu left work on time, turned down all dinner invitations, and was eager to get home.

He returned home, unlocked the door, and entered. The lights were off, and the setting sun painted the tile floor in broad red strokes.

A small figure was curled up on the sofa.

Zhou Yu approached and saw Yun Shu sleeping there fully dressed, his profile bathed in the sunset, even his eyelashes looked dusted with gold.

He was sound asleep, not even noticing Zhou Yu’s return.

The blanket had been pushed aside, and Zhou Yu realized Yun Shu was covered with his own jacket. His heart softened immediately.

"Yun Shu?"

He crouched by the sofa, gently stroking the corner of Yun Shu’s eyes, which were tinged gold by the sunset. Leaning down, he embraced him and slowly released his pheromones.

Yun Shu stirred, still half-asleep, but instinctively snuggled closer into his arms, drawn to the scent.

Zhou Yu gently rubbed his back. "Why sleep here? You'll catch cold out here."

"I won’t," Yun Shu murmured softly.

He didn't seem well. Dressed in a black shirt, Zhou Yu caught the faint smell of incense ash from his hair and immediately understood.

"Did you visit your parents?"

Yun Shu lifted his head from Zhou Yu’s embrace. "You guessed?"

"Not hard to guess," Zhou Yu said with a smile.

Yun Shu’s expression softened. "What sort of gifts do you want to prepare for them?"

"Burn some paper houses, cars, maybe some transportation for them?" Zhou Yu pondered. "Who knows about the exchange rate there, but you can never have too much money. Let’s make sure they’re well-off, so if they want to send us a dream or handle something, it’ll be easier."

Yun Shu laughed softly. "Alright, I’ll take you with me next time."

Zhou Yu: ":D"

"Also," Yun Shu said, "I've got your back."

His sudden seriousness made Zhou Yu pay attention. "Go on."

Yun Shu lowered his gaze. "I’m not afraid to tell you—I’m pretty confused about feelings. It might take me some time to figure out what I want."

"I understand," Zhou Yu said urgently. "I’ll give you time."

Yun Shu's eyes crinkled with a faint smile. "I know. But I also want you to understand that, first and foremost, I’ll stand by your side."

"Regardless of my personal feelings, whether emotionally, logically, or professionally, I’m on the same side as you. And thanks for putting up with me."

"As you said, I might never figure out what love is, but you will always be the senior I trust most. I would never do anything to betray you."

After speaking, Lin Yunshu mulled it over briefly, feeling that was about enough.

He wasn’t sure he would live very long, nor did he dare make any romantic promises. Unconditional support was the only thing he could guarantee Zhou Yu.

He wondered what Zhou Yu was thinking.

Anxiously, he looked up, only to find Zhou Yu's eyes shining, as if surrounded by a golden glow, with an invisible tail wagging furiously behind him.

Lin Yunshu: "?"

He was stunned for a moment.

Zhou Yu was overjoyed!

He had his own way of processing verbal information—filtering out everything unimportant, the conclusion he reached was—Lin Yunshu was relenting!

He had moved this ice-sculpture Buddha of a Lin Yunshu!

He said he trusts me, he’ll always stand by me, I’m his most trusted husband!

Good heavens, if this isn't love?!

Zhou Yu was so giddy with joy that all he could think of was Lin Yunshu’s smiling face and soft voice.

"Okay, okay, of course I believe you! Whatever you say is right!"

He took Lin Yunshu’s cold fingers, sat down on the sofa, and slid his whole body smoothly against Lin Yunshu.

Lin Yunshu: "!"

He backed away in alarm, instinctively wanting to cover his backside.

"Wait, hold on!" He collected himself and tried to reason with his suddenly altered boss. "I admit, every time we... come together, because of your pheromones, I do feel much better."

"But!"

He emphasized, "I still think it’s necessary for us to establish some boundaries in that area, maybe add a supplementary clause."

"Constraints for what?"

Zhou Yu was too overjoyed to think straight. Full of passion, he grasped Lin Yunshu’s hand:

"No need! I don’t want you constrained by too many rules when you’re with me. Just be free and comfortable!"

Lin Yunshu: "…"

The look he gave Zhou Yu suddenly turned extremely complicated.

After a long moment, he slowly spoke:

"The constraints are for you."