Chapter 3: The Youth

The next morning, Tang Yuan had just finished getting ready to go out when she happened to run into Shen Zhou coming downstairs.

Today he was wearing a dark suit. At one hundred and eighty-seven centimeters tall, he was imposing enough to make the space feel smaller. When he saw that she was leaving, his brow tightened.

“Where are you going?”

She lowered her head to change her shoes at the entryway. For once, the softness had fallen away from her; she was dressed neatly and looked capable. “I want to go see the studio I used to run.”

Back then, she had partnered with others to set up a studio for cultivating entertainers, but after marrying him, she had basically become a hands-off owner.

Now she had a little spare money in her hands and wanted to put it back in to take a look. Besides, she had also signed a few entertainers before; she did not even know how they were doing now.

Shen Zhou’s expression darkened. “Is the two hundred thousand a month in pocket money not enough for you?”

She ought to stay home obediently and wait for him like a vase.

For the past two years, she had done exactly that.

Tang Yuan felt a tightness in her chest. She had already changed her shoes. “I want to go out and work.”

He looked at her for several seconds before withdrawing his gaze. His tone turned cool again. “Do as you please.”

When she goes out and gets hurt, she will understand that the world outside is not so easy to navigate.

He walked to the dining table and noticed that breakfast was different today.

“Who made this today?”

In the past, Tang Yuan had always made it herself, but the food before him was clearly not her doing.

“It was us. Madam said we should make it from now on.”

Shen Zhou said nothing, too lazy to argue.

Perhaps he really had neglected her too much lately, and this was just a fit of temper.

Buy her a gift or two and coax her; that would be enough.

Tang Yuan drove to the studio following her memory.

When she passed the shopping center, she happened to see a huge billboard hung outside. It was for the brand ambassador chosen for a perfume line under the Shen Group.

It was also the young starlet Shen Zhou had been tangled up with last night.

She withdrew her gaze, gripping the steering wheel more tightly.

The starlet was named Song Qianqian. She had been launched by Shen Zhou himself, and Tang Yuan did not know what exactly had captivated him so deeply, but now he had even handed over the ambassador deal to her.

She took a deep breath and pressed the accelerator.

The studio was not far from Shen Group’s headquarters, only about ten minutes away. The floor she had rented back then was the topmost one. Now the front door stood open, and all she could hear was the sound of fists striking a punching bag.

She turned the corner and saw a young man inside, wearing a black short-sleeved shirt and boxing gloves, throwing punch after punch at the bag.

His hair was a little long. The lines of muscle on his body were elegant and beautiful, lean without being overbuilt, with a trace of youthful sharpness. He was probably around one hundred and eighty-eight centimeters tall.

Tang Yuan only saw his profile. He looked younger than Shen Zhou. Though his temperament was quiet, his lotus-petal-shaped eyes, with their sharply slanted lids, carried a peculiar, indescribable tension.

“Excuse me...”

As soon as she spoke, the man turned his head to look at her and froze. The momentum sent the punching bag flying back into his face.

She hurriedly pushed open the glass door and went inside. “Are you all right?”

He tilted his head. His cheek was slightly red. He pressed his lips together and said nothing.

Tang Yuan’s gaze swept around the room.

Her memory had not been wrong. This was indeed the studio she had rented back then, and since she had paid the rent for five years in one lump sum, it had not been a small expense.

How had it turned into a boxing room now?

She stood there in silence, like some elegant lady who had wandered into a street corner market, utterly out of place.

The man lowered his head, took off his gloves, and casually tossed them aside before turning to open the glass door and leave.

Sweat dripped from his hair as he walked, and in his stride there seemed to be a restless yet restrained wind.

Just as he reached the door, he collided with a woman coming in.

The woman’s eyes were full of confusion. When she looked up and saw Tang Yuan, her face lit up with delight. “Yuan Yuan! Why are you here? My God, am I seeing things? Ever since you got married, you’ve never come back!”

Seeing her former partner and friend Chen Meng, Tang Yuan finally relaxed. For a moment she had thought she had come to the wrong place.

Chen Meng shoved the man over and scolded him, “What are you rushing off for? Weren’t you just asking when the boss would come? Well, here she is!”

He still had wrist guards on, the bones at his wrists taut. He turned his head away and gave a low “Mm.”

Only then did Tang Yuan take a proper look at his face. He was really handsome, not the noble, cool distance of Shen Zhou, but like a lone pine standing above mountain peaks. His skin was a cold, clear white, yet the color of his lips was rich, as though stained with rouge.

There was a contradiction to him that made it impossible to look away.

Chen Meng quickly pulled Tang Yuan aside and whispered, “You haven’t been here in two years, and my ability is limited. Our entertainers have gone and scattered, and now there’s only this one left. Thank goodness Yan Sheng didn’t run off, otherwise I’d have had to go begging on the streets these past two years.”

Tang Yuan felt somewhat ashamed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the young man standing nearby with his head lowered, as if lost in thought.

“Then why didn’t he run?”

Chen Meng stroked her chin. “That’s exactly what I can’t figure out. He’s only twenty-three, and he’s so good-looking. Plenty of people want to poach him. If he had gone to another company, he’d already be a superstar. Just seeing his face, directors want to cast him. He was born to do this.”

Tang Yuan said nothing. Back when she had founded the studio, she had made quite a spectacle of it, and with the backing of the Tang family, plenty of directors had been willing to give her face.

But after she married, she had stopped paying attention to this place. She had thought it had mostly fallen apart, yet unexpectedly one seedling remained.

And it was an especially good one.

She stared blankly at the young man. He slowly raised his head, met her gaze, then sharply looked away again, eyes lowered.