A Secret Chef

Wen Rui had assumed that Zhou Ye had gone to work earlier in the day, so he'd expected Zhou Ye to be in a suit or at least business casual attire. This…t-shirt and joggers combo was casual in a way that made Wen Rui feel embarrassed, like he was suddenly privy to a secret, personal aspect of Zhou Ye that he had no right to know about.

Zhou Ye was also gazing at him strangely.

"You're going out later?" he asked.

Wen Rui returned his look of confusion. "Huh? No?" He noticed Zhou Ye staring at his clothes, and belatedly realised that maybe he was dressed a bit too formally for someone who had been bumming around in the house the whole day.

"…" It wasn't like Wen Rui didn't enjoy comfortable loungewear. But he'd been so pleased to find something he actually liked in his wardrobe that he'd worn it without thinking…

Elysium's background music blared out of the room. Zhou Ye glimpsed past Wen Rui's shoulder at the screen. "You've been gaming?"

Wen Rui narrowed his eyes. "Is it any of your business?" he muttered, although with less heat than usual. It was difficult to be self-righteous when living under someone else's roof.

This was the part of Zhou Ye that annoyed him the most, the way he always managed to sound so sanctimonious like he was better than Wen Rui and had the right to lecture him. His tone was rarely accusatory, but he always managed to choose words that made him seem disapproving. Wen Rui remembered that just a couple of weeks ago, at least to him, Wen Rui had landed in the school's infirmary because he'd exhausted himself by taking on both the National Mathematics and Chemistry Olympiads at the same time. Just because Zhou Ye had done it the year before and led the team to victory.

He'd woken up to Zhou Ye of all people sitting by the bedside with a frown on his face. And Zhou Ye's only words to him had been, "Don't bite off more than you can chew."

Wen Rui half-expected Zhou Ye to begin lecturing him now, but Zhou Ye merely said, "Dinner is ready." He turned and walked off without checking if Wen Rui was coming along.

Wen Rui paused in the doorway, unsure of whether he should follow Zhou Ye or not. Zhou Ye was…calling him to eat together? Did they normally have meals at the same time? Wen Rui couldn't for the life of him recall. But the alternative was trying to settle dinner himself or just skipping it altogether.

Besides, he needed to talk to Zhou Ye about their marriage.

Making up his mind, he closed his bedroom door and meandered towards the dining room.

A delectable scent wafted out onto the corridors, permeating the air of the apartment. The dining table that Wen Rui had already eaten breakfast at was a lovely oaken masterpiece, with design glass legs that looked transparent. This gave the impression that the table was levitating. It was a long table, enough to seat 8 diners in total, but Wen Rui was surprised to see that the table had been set for 2 guests sitting across from each other, instead of at the far ends.

This was a lot less formal than he'd expected for a son of the Zhou Group. He couldn't remember if Zhou Ye had a preferred seat or not, so he sank down in the closest one and waited for Auntie to bring the dishes out from the kitchen.

The dishes came out, but it wasn't Auntie who carried them. Wen Rui's eyes almost boggled out of their sockets at the sight of Zhou Ye balancing four plates on his arms.

"What—wait, I can help—" For the love of all things holy, Wen Rui wasn't going to sit down and let the—the—this heir apparent of the most powerful conglomerate in the country serve him! This didn't give him a sense of superior satisfaction, it just made him break out into nervous sweat. If Zhou Ye spilt hot sauce on himself, would the Zhou Group magically find some way to sue Wen Rui? He literally couldn't afford that right now.

Leaping out of the seat he'd barely begun to warm, Wen Rui tried to take one or two plates off Zhou Ye, but Zhou Ye evaded him expertly, setting them onto the table like a trained waiter.

"No need," Zhou Ye said. "Sit down and eat."

The dishes were the local SH City fare and Wen Rui was more than familiar with the taste. But because he knew this cuisine from the inside out, he knew how difficult it was to prepare well, let alone hit restaurant standards.

"Delicious," he murmured, after taking a bite of the smoked carp slices. The outer skin was just the perfect amount of crispy and once broken through, the white fish meat inside was tender and juicy. This was one of his favourite dishes. "Auntie has really outdone herself."

Zhou Ye was using the knife to divide the braised pork belly into neat, equal pieces. "Thank you for the compliment," he said.

It took Wen Rui a little while to process that. But when he finally did, the chopsticks slipped from his slack fingers to clatter noisily against his bowl.

"You—" Wen Rui gaped. "You cooked all this?!"

Zhou Ye looked up. "Is that so odd?"

For the average common folk, no, not at all, although not everyone would be able to boast of such culinary skill either. But for this most young master of young masters, it was as incongruous as it could get. If Wen Rui had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, then Zhou Ye's spoon was crafted out of 24K gold. Why would someone like that, who must have had butlers and maids waiting on his every beck and call, even enter the kitchen of his own volition?

But Wen Rui didn't say anything in response. Truthfully, what could he say? Whatever came out of his mouth now would just make him sound like an unreasonable spoiled brat who didn't know any hardship in life. Which wasn't false but he didn't need to give Zhou Ye another reason to look down on him.

…stupid perfect Zhou Ye. Was he bad at anything? Wen Rui would die to find out.

"You still play?"

Wen Rui blinked, snapping out of his inner grumbling. "Sorry?"

"Elysium. You were still playing it at 18?"

Oh yeah. Zhou Ye used to play Elysium too. Or at least, Wen Rui had heard from others that he had, even though no one had ever managed to add him in-game or get him to join in their dungeon raid sessions. Wen Rui had once spitefully thought that Zhou Ye had been lying about playing, just to try and remain cool in everyone's eyes. Elysium had been super popular by then and he hadn't put it past Zhou Ye to use it to zhuang B.

But the fact that Zhou Ye could recognise the background music…

Wen Rui made a non-committal noise. "Less and less as the exams approached," he said, finding it weird to be talking about the university entrance exams like they were a thing of the past when to him, they hadn't even happened yet. "…but I don't think I've played it recently, I had to install a big patch just now."

"Mm." Zhou Ye didn't ask any more questions about the game like he wasn't actually that invested in Wen Rui's answer. Had he just been trying to make small talk?

Wen Rui sucked in a deep breath and told himself to weather through it. This was such an excruciating meal, he couldn't imagine sitting here and going through this daily with Zhou Ye. Luckily, he would be in dorms for most of the week and could avoid this happening again in the near future. A couple more meals like that and he would have chronic indigestion.

Anyway, he had more important matters to discuss with Zhou Ye. He'd best get them over and done with so he could hightail it back to his room and hide there till Zhou Ye left for work again.

"I saw my bank account today," he muttered.

"Oh?"

"There…wasn't much left in it."

Zhou Ye paused in his meal to regard Wen Rui silently. The scrutiny made Wen Rui uneasy. Did Zhou Ye think he was hinting that he wanted to borrow cash?

"I—I'm not asking for a loan or anything, I just wanted to know what I've been spending on—"

"I don't keep tabs on you," Zhou Ye interrupted. "I only know that you attended a lot of parties."

Wen Rui sighed. He'd suspected as much given that a dumb party was the reason why he was suffering from amnesia in the first place. It was also very likely that he'd often played the role of the foolish blockhead who had treated everyone to a good time. Free flow Louis XIII and all that jazz.

He'd never thought that he would grow up to be a person with more money than sense.

Oh wait. He didn't even have money anymore. Ouch.

"I tried breaking the contract with CE," Wen Rui admitted. "But…I can't afford that at the moment."

"I can settle the termination sum first if you'd like."

A heaviness weighed down on Wen Rui's shoulders like it was trying to force him to lower his head in defeat. He was so tempted, had known that if he'd mentioned it, Zhou Ye would probably bring up helping him make the payment first. Zhou Ye was offering to fix everything in one fell swoop, just like Wen Rui's parents had done for him whenever he made mistakes when younger.

But what was Zhou Ye to him? He wasn't Wen Rui's dad, he wasn't Wen Rui's brother. He had zero blood relations to Wen Rui. He wasn't even really Wen Rui's husband, had no obligations to Wen Rui besides some marriage of convenience that Wen Rui was certain neither of them signed up for.

Wen Rui might have been a pampered prince once, but he wasn't enough of a bastard to force his problems onto someone else.

"No thank you," he said politely.