Chapter 344 - Princes, Yaoi, and Masks [2 in 1]
Chapter 344: Princes, Yaoi, and Masks [2 in 1]
Due to the favor that she had received… or rather, with the patience that Madam Grace had accorded Brother Shuang, she really almost got the permission to view the security plans. However, the thing that ultimately stopped her was the symbolic confirmation that the leader asked before he went away to prepare the documents. “Are you sure you want to take a look? I hear that you plan to leave today, but if you have even glanced at the defense system, then we will have to ask you to stay here for another few days.”
Brother Shuang gave it some thought. “…Then I guess I will skip.”
The leader thus stopped moving and turned around to look at Brother Shuang, who gave him no expression to read.
“Is there nothing that contains technical information but is not that important that I can look at and learn from?” Brother Shuang thought about it and revealed a mask of regret. He could not help but ask, “I am really curious.”
The leader studied Brother Shuang for a while and finally turned to give some orders to one of his men. He was given a laptop and pulled out a document. “If you are really that interested, this is the item catalogue that we’ve taken from our supplier. There are plenty of advanced and practical machines and items here… Oh, don’t worry, this is nothing confidential, but they are definitely interesting and can fulfill your curiosity. There are many technical studies in here that you can learn from.”
Ye Shuang accepted the laptop, and her mind went blank for a whole second. Ha ha, Sister Han Su, why didn’t you tell me that your business has turned international already?
With the same expressionless face, Brother Shuang put the laptop away. Then after a second of silence, Brother Shuang raised his head to reveal a polite yet fake smile. Then he made an extremely exaggerated expression of pleasant surprise. “This sure is something interesting… Erm, I wish to take this back with me to study it slowly. Do you mind calling me when it is time for lunch?”
How come the acting feels so fuddy-duddy? Is he too lazy to even put up an act anymore?
…
The period between the end of breakfast and the start of lunch was ample enough for Brother Shuang with his impressive memory to go over and memorize the several gigabytes of data in the catalogue. He was going through it like it was some kind of coloring book. In reality, Han Su had shown him this catalogue before, but at the time, Ye Shuang had merely glanced over it willy-nilly. Other than realizing that some of these items were banned inside the country, she did not pay closer attention to the smaller details.
Since she had nothing better to do, while she was waiting for lunch to begin, she treated this as some mental exercise that she could do to pass the time. During noon, after lunch, she returned the laptop. After making sure behind Ye Shuang’s back that she did not take away any information that she should not, the latter was finally allowed to leave Madam Grace’s villa.
Cedrick, who had made the decision to temporarily forget about Madam Grace, naturally took his leave alongside Ye Shuang.
Both the man whom she loved and the man that loved her left at the same time. When Madam Grace heard the report, she merely stretched her lips. She signaled for Tess to carry her to the window, and she looked through the glass down at the gate of the villa.
Edward had the silicon mask on and calmly decided to stand aside and watch; he showed no intention of sharing his thoughts.
Some time later, there was the sound of the engine being started, and the car appeared before it went over the horizon and disappeared around the corner… The sound of the automobile trailed away until the villa became completely silent again. It was not until then that Madam Grace seemed to recollect herself from her blank state or her thoughts.
She turned around and said with a serious expression that showed that she had been thinking, “I think it is about time for me to prepare for my fifth wedding.”
“…” Edward.
“But the question is, who shall be the groom?”
“…” Edward.
Putting aside Madam Grace’s conflict for now, based on Ye Shuang’s understanding of Edward, the latter was not someone who would kill others to resolve a problem. A highly intelligent person on the path of revenge always preferred to complicate things. To explain it from their perspective, it was to add some more dramatic flair to the whole process.
This was because to kill was the simplest thing. How to extend the pain, how to torture the enemy to witness their struggle, was the real skillful work.
It was also because most of these people had no other goals in their life. A deep and convoluted revenge plot became the most important part of their life. Therefore, if they finished their work too soon, not only would they not receive the necessary satisfaction, they might even lose all meaning in their life…
“So, because of that, you are relaxed enough to allow Edward, this ticking time bomb, to stay next to Madam Grace, and you returned on your own?” Han Chu looked at Ye Shuang with more than a little bit of shock. It felt like he wanted to pry her head open to see how the wires in her brain were arranged and how strange her brain must be. “What if your speculation is wrong? I thought you are a materialist. Who would have thought that you have such sentimental moments?”
“There is nothing that can be confirmed one hundred percent in this world.” Ye Shuang who was lying on the table, using the papers and pens to draw, raised her head. She tried to explain her situation as best as she could. “I have already made the most suitable decision according to the largest possibility that I’ve calculated. If the ‘accidents’ with lesser possibility really do happen, that is already beyond the realm that I can control… Look at this from another perspective. Even if I stay at the villa, if Edward really wanted to do something, he could have easily added something to the drip. Do you think I can watch over him twenty-four hours every day?”
Su Zheng curled up next to Ye Shuang, watching the latter sketch out the layout of the villa. After hearing the conversation, she raised her head and asked with some confusion, “Brother Han, Brother Ye, I am rather confused by what you’re saying. Isn’t Madam Grace not someone that is on our side? So what if something really happens to her, what has that got to do with us?”
“Yes, she is indeed not on our side, but now we have to take into consideration Cedrick’s feelings.” Han Chu frowned. “Of course, this does not mean that our stance has changed. It is just that we know that Edward has put on a disguise and hidden beside Madam Grace, and Edward himself has some vengeance that he needs to exact from Madam Grace. We have hidden this most important detail, so if something bad really happens to Madam Grace in the future and Cedrick somehow finds out about the thing that we have been hiding from him, we will have no leg to stand on.”
“That is not even the most crucial thing,” Ye Shuang said as she kept her head lowered to continue drawing out the layout for Madam Grace’s villa. “Other than the issue with Edward, have I told you it was Cedrick who was the big hero who saved Madam Grace’s life yesterday?”
“Compelled by overwhelming family ties?” Han Chu asked lightly.
“No, Madam Grace thinks this is love,” Ye Shuang said and then her pen also stopped moving.
Neither Han Chu nor Su Zheng had anything to say.
“…What did you say earlier? I don’t think I heard you right. Can you repeat it?’
Ye Shuang took a deep breath and smiled helplessly as she repeated herself as per Han Chu’s request. “Madam Grace thinks that Cedrick’s feeling toward her is true love, or else he would not have used his life to save her during that crucial moment.”
“Has she been blinded to Cedrick’s attitude before this? He was obviously… wait a minute.” Han Chu was halfway through his mocking when he suddenly shut up. He went silent to seriously think about it. “I think I can understand it. With Madam Grace’s personal life, it will be hard for her to change her understanding of men. So, with the contrast between the hatred that Cedrick showed earlier and the selflessness that he showed when he offered up his life for her, she could only construe that as ‘true love’… So, does this mean that Madam Grace thinks that Cedrick is acting so brashly around her because he is jealous of her favor toward you?”
“Bingo!” Ye Shuang clapped and did the finishing touches on her three-dimensional plan. After making sure that there were no mistakes, she picked it up and handed it over to Han Chu. “I’m done, is there a reason for you to ask for this?”
“Perhaps there is, perhaps there isn’t.” Han Chu grumbled a vague answer. Currently, he was not focused enough to come up with a reply. Just from the explosive gossip alone, his mind was a muddled mess.
After he recovered slightly, Han Chu took the sketch to the computer to be scanned. When the machine was operating, he looked up at Ye Shuang, who had a confused frown on her face. “No matter the occasion, trying your best to grasp as much information as possible is something very important because these things might come in handy at any unforeseeable moment. Even if there is no opportunity for them to shine, it’ll be fine because if you only start looking for them when you need them, it’ll be too late.”
The unicellular organism Su Zheng normally would not show any form of intelligence, but the good thing was that she could pick up things very quickly. For example, the end of the world and the rise in the price of pork were the same thing in her mind. After listening to them, a few minutes later, she would have forgotten everything because her attention was distracted by something else.
Speaking of distraction, Su Zheng looked at the map in Han Chu’s hands with stars in her eyes. “Brother Han, Brother Han, when you’re done scanning the map, can you give it to me? I want to study it closer.”
“Have you lost your mind? Madam Grace won’t be reporting to the police due to a break-in. Instead, it is the normal protocol for them to kill any trespassers.” Han Chu looked at Su Zheng like the latter had gone insane.
“I’m not going to go steal from her,” Su Zheng promised. “I just want to see the type of defense system that the international mafia are using nowadays.”
Ye Shuang decided wisely to stay out of these two’s business. Seeing as Han Chu did not have any other orders for her, she stood up and waved her hands. “I still need to go to the film set to visit the little plainclothes. Have fun, you two.”
Han Chu did not intend to stop her, but he still pulled away from Su Zheng to ask, “That man is nothing more than a decoration, what use do you have for him?”
“The case yesterday was quite big; I’m going to go fish for some information to see if there’s any update at the law reinforcement.” Ye Shuang smiled. “Even though the plainclothes is not that good at his job, he comes from a very powerful family.”
“Hmm, then go ahead.”
After leaving the apartment, she got down the stairs and hopped into the car. When she started the engine, she glanced at her phone. She was surprised to find two missed calls, and they were both from Cedrick, who had returned to his hotel.
The man was probably still unfamiliar with the Chinese phone system, so he did not know how to send messages. Ye Shuang decided to call the man back… but… the phone was not on? Perfect, then she could just ignore it.
…
“Brother Ye, you have no idea what happened yesterday!” The plainclothes was so close to Ye Shuang now, and when he saw the man arrive at the set, he quickly wandered over to greet him. He had put his actual job of observing the crew aside. He would occasionally glance at people who walked by, but most of his attention was reserved to spread gossip with Brother Shuang.
Ye Shuang was very cooperative with the plainclothes. Seeing how the man was trying to be all mysterious, she understandably exposed a curious expression, “Yesterday? Did you find out something at the set?”
“Of course not.” The man shook his head and lowered his voice to act serious. “Yesterday, there was an assassination attempt in Feng Yuan City, and it was at a park. Nowadays, the criminals are becoming more and more brazen. My dad… Cough! I think there will be a big thing happening soon. Brother Ye, if it’s possible, you should try to stay home.”
Ye Shuang frowned. “There won’t be any real danger, right? I have no real enemies, and for something this big, it is often the big wigs who are targeted. If there is really such a high-profile criminal, they would not waste their time to kill a few random strangers on the street, would they?”
“You can’t ever be sure with these people.” The plainclothes sighed. “You have no idea how common this is. Have you heard of something called collateral damage? For example, there might not be casualties since this was a sniper, but what if they decided to go for an explosion next time?”
“I now suspect you of intending to harm the peace of society.” Ye Shuang looked at the plainclothes speechlessly. They were talking about possibilities here, and even if something like that really did happen, would it not be the common thing to suppress the news so that panic would not spread instead of predicting it for others?
The plainclothes coughed awkwardly. “I’m just sharing it with you. Please don’t go telling other people.”
He just said that when ‘other people’ appeared at the scene. Luo Mingxin in his character’s costume walked over gracefully while holding a water bottle. “What are you two talking about?”
The plainclothes immediately turned serious and harsh. “We’re not talking about anything, what are you doing here?”
After that, he realized that something was wrong. He was not a police officer on duty trying to get the citizens away from the crime scene; he was a plainclothes who was trying to keep his identity hidden, so he quickly fixed a smile on his face and changed his tone. “Brother Luo, do you want to have some water and take a rest? How was your latest scene? I hope it’s not too demanding. Brother Luo was so good in the scene that I got lost from just watching it!”
Luo Mingxin gave the young man a side-eye. “Yes, so lost in the acting that you started talking with others.”
“Well, I happened to find a kindred spirit, and we were talking about how much we admired Brother Luo,” the plainclothes said in a hurry and tried to poke at Ye Shuang when he thought Luo Mingxin was not looking.
“…Ha ha.” Ye Shuang chuckled. “Brother Luo, are you not going to go prepare for the next scene?”
“Fine, fine, I know when I am not welcome.” Luo Mingxin rolled his eyes and raised his arms in surrender. Luo Mingxin allowed his assistant to pull him away to get ready to change for his next scene.
The plainclothes wiped the sweat from his forehead after making that narrow escape. He shared jokingly with Ye Shuang, “It is definitely not easy to trick that man. My dad told me, in this film set, the most difficult people to deal with are the director and this Luo Mingxin. We’ve already told the director, and I think Luo Mingxin probably also knows something, but it is better for him to not discover my real identity. Thankfully, I was assigned to play the role of a set manager, and it is not that conspicuous hiding amid so many people.”
Ye Shuang looked at the plainclothes silently with complicated emotions in her eyes.
The plainclothes was confused being stared like that. “What’s wrong?”
“…Nothing, I just suddenly realized that you have a superhuman level of confidence in yourself.”
“Hmm?”
Then, she continued to chat with the plainclothes, and the young man practically revealed everything that he knew. There was no progress for the assassination attempt that happened two days ago. This was within Ye Shuang’s expectations. After all, the victim, Madam Grace, refused to cooperate, and the culprit, Edward, was hiding behind Madam Grace. With such a high-level cover up, no matter how sensitive the officers were, they would not know where to begin, and it would not be easy for them to find an opening.
Many first wishes for retired officers was not to go plant flowers or other common retirement activity but to remove their uniform and chase after every lawyer that they had come across on the street. This showed how hated this type of people was within the force. Madam Grace’s lawyers were definitely the best of the best. Without a certain level of expertise and experience, they would not even have the chance to touch Madam Grace’s toe.
After getting the necessary information, Ye Shuang abandoned the plainclothes. Luo Mingxin sat in his own car and saw Ye Shuang pull open the backseat and crawl in. He pouted and tossed the script in his hands away. “What is so fun about playing with the ditzy youth?”
“It’s fun because he is a ditzy youth. The real thing that is not fun is playing with an old fox like yourself,” Ye Shuang replied with a smile and greeted the assistant who was in the driver’s seat. Then she turned back to ask, “Aren’t you busy today? Why did you suddenly ask me out for dinner?”
Luo Mingxin used his finger to support his chin as he looked at Ye Shuang. “It’s nothing. I just thought that there has been something interesting going on with you recently.”
“Even if there is anything interesting, I’m not going to bring you with me.” Ye Shuang smiled helplessly. “You’re too obvious no matter where you go since you’re a public figure, and on top of that, you have to shoot a movie…”
Luo Mingxin sighed. “This sure is dull.”
The assistant focused on driving, and he had been keeping his mouth shut, but he finally had to speak up. “Brother Luo, we’ve been preparing for this movie for such a long time already. If we ruin this, the director won’t give you any more face.”
The hidden meaning was—Please do not split your attention since this is such an important project and get distracted by these not so important matters. What if you ruin the good reputation that you have accumulated over time?
The assistant had noticed by now that Celebrity Luo had been easy to manage before because he had not found a partner whom he could share an interest with, so he could only focus his attention on his career. Now that he had found one, the delayed period of rebellion had exploded all at once.
Ever since meeting this Brother Shuang, the assistant realized that their Celebrity Luo had become livelier and started to do rebellious things. While he studied the script, the news and gossip that he followed online was near the edge of illegal stuff.
Please don’t do this to me! It is rare to have a famous celebrity in the business without much negative news. Please don’t ruin this wonderful name!
Ye Shuang could not help but laugh. “Brother Luo, I advise you forget it. If you continue to be like this, your assistant is going to drive us into the river.”
Luo Mingxin followed the direction that Ye Shuang’s chin was pointing. Through the rear-view mirror, he saw the grief and indignation in his assistant’s eyes.
Luo Mingxin sighed again. “I’m just joking. Focus on your driving. If you get distracted again, I’ll cancel your bonus.”
…
She said that she did not want Luo Mingxin to get involved, but to Ye Shuang’s surprise, the need for the man to get involved came so soon. The dinner went smoothly, but things were not that smooth after dinner.
The whole morning, she was at Madam Grace’s villa, and in the afternoon, she was hung up at the film set. Without a little girl for Brother Shuang to show his love, without lips to kiss, naturally, the handsome man would turn back into Cinderella after midnight.
This was originally just a small problem. After all, there had been too many eyes on Brother Shuang recently, and she had been planning to switch genders to catch a break.
But one could never count out the tragedy of fate. Ye Shuang did not expect that the usually easy-going Luo Mingxin would drag the dinner until 9 pm. And to make matters worse, the inexperienced plainclothes had his cover blown the minute that he got home. After knowing that his idiot son reveal so much sensitive information at work, the senior veteran decided to come personally to meet Ye Shuang to see for himself who the kind of man this Ye Shuang was, whether he was trustworthy or not, and if he would negatively influence the development of the case.
When Ye Shuang and Luo Mingxin exited the restaurant, it was already 9:30 pm. Then, Han Chu’s call came. Even though many people would give Han Chu face, police officer were sometimes that hard to please. In other words, no matter who it was, they would not waver on things related to principles, and they had to check it for themselves before they could be relieved.
Han Chu was vague on the phone, but Ye Shuang still discerned the thing that he wanted to say. The plainclothes’ father was coming to personally chat with male Ye Shuang, and he would not rest until he had that conversation.
Therefore, the hidden meaning was—You’d better go and find a girl to kiss before the clock strikes twelve, or else even I will not be able to help you keep your secret!
Ye Shuang held the phone, and her face instantly turned down. Luo Mingxin was a drunken mess on the backseat. In his drunken haze, he saw a beautiful woman, and he could not help but reach out his paw to tickle the woman’s chin. Without even realizing it, he recited the lines that he had memorized from the script. “Miss, why are you looking so down? Share with me your misery, and your prince will help you solve your problem.”
The face of a damn fatty crossed Ye Shuang’s mind as she studied Luo Mingxin’s height and build. Half a minute later, under the assistant’s watchful gaze, she smiled lightly and teased the man back. “Are you not lying?”
“When has your prince ever lied to you‽” Luo Mingxin was still in his dream, and his whole personality was in the character as he waved the sleeves that were not there.
Ye Shuang sighed in relief. Even though there were still some details that needed to be ironed out, she could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Therefore, with a snap of her finger, she told the assistant who was driving. “Turn at the corner in front and drive to XX Street.”
The assistant looked at Luo Mingxin in shock.
Luo Mingxin very cooperatively said, “Tonight, we’re going to Kun Ning Palace. Your emperor is going to visit Zi Tong tonight.”
“What the f*ck! Weren’t you just the prince earlier‽”
…
The assistant was chased away with a few words from Ye Shuang. Ye Shuang took out her phone to call someone. While she waited for the man to arrive, she grabbed the bottle of cold water from the fridge inside the car to help Luo Mingxin wake up from his drunken haze.
Luo Mingxin was muddled but not completely so. In any case, one could say that he was not completely there but not to the stage where he could not think rationally.
With the aid of a bottle of cold water and a towel over the face, the alcohol in his system was almost squeezed out already.
Therefore, when Edward’s rotund body appeared outside the car, knocking on the window, he saw Luo Mingxin, who had recovered slightly, holding his head in his hands and Brother Shuang, who looked completely normal at the driver’s seat.
“You called me out so late at night for a threesome?” Edward like usual started with a mocking joke.
Luo Mingxin knew English, and he paused to stare at Ye Shuang when he heard that. Ye Shuang was speechless as well. She quickly said, “Stop wasting time with all this inconsequential stuff. I hear you are good at making silicone masks. Can you help make a mask that looks like my face?”
At this point, she paused and used her thumb to point at the rather out of it Luo Mingxin. “It’s for this famous brother to wear.”
Wait, this sounds like something interesting!
Edward narrowed his eyes, and his lips curled up lazily, “Wow, what kind of devious plot are you two up to this time?”