Chapter 73: CH 73

Ou Shaowen wasn’t in the mood to pay attention to what his fans were doing. After he posted a few photos to show that he was indeed fine, he opened the chat history with Ou Renjin again and scrolled it down a little bit.

Their chat history was actually not long. Ou Shaowen was not someone who would send messages to pester Ou Renjin all the time, and Ou Renjin didn’t reply to him often. Many times, when he saw Ou Shaowen’s message, he would call him directly.

So he didn’t have to scroll for long to reach the end, and Ou Shaowen paused there, slowly feeling shrouded in a stronger and stronger feeling of missing Ou Renjin.

He should have .. turned on the automatic phone recording function.

In this way, at least he would have had countless call recordings to listen to at this time.

He clicked on the settings page, and after setting up this function, he put down his phone in frustration.

Without Ou Renjin’s presence in the villa, it seemed to become empty in an instant. Obviously, at the beginning, Ou Renjin rarely came to stay in the villa, and at that time, Ou Shaowen felt relaxed and satisfied, and was very happy every day.

It was really better to get back to work quickly.

He called his manager and said that he could start working right away.

“But can you try not to schedule anything too long-term? I’m afraid there will be changes on my end.” Ou Shaowen was still thinking that in case Ou Renjin would reply to him soon, he would have to set aside time so that he could stay with him all day.

“Ou Shaowen, you have just taken more than two months off, and you have taken a long break before.” The manager’s tone was not very happy.

Originally, the contract signed by Dingyi Entertainment and Ou Shaowen was a temporary short-term contract for a year and a half, so a delay of three months was a waste of one-sixth of the time.

In this regard, they were already kind and generous enough.

“Okay, I understand.” Ou Shaowen’s tone was flat, and he didn’t mean to continue arguing.

On the contrary, the manager felt a little embarrassed and took a step back: “If something more long-term than a week is scheduled, I will discuss it with you before making a decision.”

“Good, can you send a car to pick me up tomorrow morning?”

“You can still take a day off tomorrow, the arrangements won’t be so urgent.”

Ou Shaowen lowered his eyes, “I want to come to the company. If I don’t have a job, I can practise dancing in the practice room.”

The next day, the first thing Ou Shaowen did when he opened his eyes was to turn on his mobile phone in a daze to see if there were any missed calls or WeChat messages.

There were none.

He was instantly awake, staring at the phone screen blankly. Not knowing why, he suddenly felt a little aggrieved and wanted to cry.

He stayed in bed for a while, letting his mind drift away, then got up and washed up as if nothing had happened.

It was like going back to the days before the surgery, jobs, practices, participating in variety shows, occasionally performing on stage with his teammates as a group, only there would no longer be one phone call a day. It was as if Ou Renjin had disappeared from the world. Weibo, WeChat, phone calls, he couldn’t be found anywhere.

Ou Shaowen at first sent two WeChat messages a day, but then gradually stopped sending them.

Forget it.

Wasn’t this what he had envisioned at the beginning? After the heart replacement, he had completed his mission, and he didn’t have to go back to the lab. He could still enjoy the real world every day, so he was already very happy.

Comforting himself in this way, he still felt more and more numb and desperate day by day.

When his teammates saw him like that, they hesitated for a long time and asked him cautiously, “Did something happen between you and Ou Renjin?”

Some entertainment marketing accounts on the Internet had already begun to speculate about the relationship between the two of them, and they were fully prepared and well-informed. They released the photos of Ou Shaowen coming back alone when he was discharged from the hospital, added screenshots of Ou Renjin not posting a new Weibo for several months, and they had been squatting for many days and found that Ou Renjin had moved out of the villa, and Ou Shaowen was alone all day.

They came to the conclusion that Ou Renjin and Ou Shaowen were likely to have a change of heart and had already broken up

“Uh-huh.” Ou Shaowen nodded, “He hasn’t contacted me for a long time.”

The teammates glanced at each other, and for a while they didn’t know what to say to comfort him.

As soon as he finished speaking, his phone dinged. Ou Shaowen subconsciously looked at it, and then he saw a red number “1” lit up next to Ou Renjin’s name. He was taken aback. At that moment, he even wondered if he was hallucinating.

For the first time in almost a month, he had received a message from Ou Renjin.

He clicked on the chat.

It was indeed a message from Ou Renjin.

“The answer is incomplete, keep answering, how can you give up so quickly?”

Ou Shaowen curled his mouth, and his eyes turned red in an instant.

He raised his head and said to his teammates, aggrieved, “He has contacted me again just now.”

Zhang Houyue wrapped his arm around his shoulders, trying to take advantage of the situation to glance at the mobile phone screen to eat melons, “I’m scared of these ups and downs. What did he tell you?”

Ou Shaowen quickly pressed the phone to his chest, “You can’t see this.”

“Ouch.” Never mind. “Forget it, the young couple is probably quarrelling, so let’s not disturb people here. Let’s get out of here, it’s a waste of time to worry about nothing.”

Everyone dispersed in a hurry, leaving Ou Shaowen enough space.

Ou Shaowen was actually very grateful to them in his heart. Although they didn’t have many opportunities to get together these days, his phone was always buzzing with activity. There were gags in the group every day, and the chat history couldn’t be scrolled down in half a day. They invited him to eat together, and although he was not in high spirits and would agree one time out of three, these people let him have a sense of belonging to a certain group, not just floating away from this world.

He moved his gaze back to the phone, stared at the line of words for a long time, and tried to make a call to Ou Renjin.

“Beep… beep…”

Ou Shaowen listened to the familiar busy tone and meditated on the numbers in silence. Under normal circumstances, the call would end automatically in about 70 seconds.

He counted slowly, and when he counted to the twenty-third second, the phone was answered, and he heard the voice that he began to find a little unfamiliar.

“Hello.” The background sound on Ou Renjin’s side was a bit noisy, and Ou Shaowen couldn’t help but start guessing where he had been during all this time.

“… I really can’t figure out why the answer is incomplete.” His voice trembled a little, and he tried to suppress it to make himself appear calmer.

“Let’s not mention this for now,” Ou Renjin’s voice became clearer, with a broadcast sound in the background that seemed to belong to a station or an airport, “You insisted on sending me WeChat messages for a few days, why did you stop later?”

The tone was brisk, but it didn’t look like he was still angry.

“I…” Ou Shaowen pursed his lips, “You never replied to me, and I thought if you saw the messages I sent, you would be angry.”

All these days of tossing and turning, doubting and questioning seemed like they couldn’t be expressed in a couple of words.

“I’m just waiting for the correct answer, but I don’t seem to get it.” There were noisy human voices around Ou Renjin and the faint sound of countless small wheels rolling. Ou Shaowen tried to distinguish them and confirm his guess.

He should be at the airport now, did he just come back? Or was he preparing to leave?

“I will never hurt myself again.” He felt that this should be the correct answer Ou Renjin wanted, and he was a little uncertain, “But haven’t I already said this? I will not break my promise again.”

Ou Renjin changed the subject and asked, “Do you know where I am now?”

“Where?”

“At the airport,” Ou Renjin rubbed his forehead wearily, “Just returned from a scientific research institute in the United States. You know that scientific research institute. The surgeon who operated on you, and all the equipment that sustained your life in those two months came from that scientific research institute.”

Ou Shaowen began to panic when he heard the words “surgeon” and “operated”, very afraid that Ou Renjin would start to blame him for his deception and initiative in the next second.

He didn’t know why Ou Renjin was suddenly talking about this, “Yes, what about it?”

“Let’s talk about the details later. There are other things I wanted to tell you when I answered your call,” Ou Renjin recalled the 18th tier artist who got off the plane with him just now and deliberately bumped into him while there was the person who held the camera not far away, “Whether it’s me not replying to your WeChat messages, not picking up your calls, being angry at you or not wanting to see you, it doesn’t mean I don’t like you anymore. I still love you and no one else. No matter what, you need to remember that, okay?”

He didn’t know if things were as he suspected, if he would see himself in the entertainment news afterwards with gossip about his new love or something like that, but he knew that Ou Shaowen had never been someone with confidence about his feelings. He carefully reached out to the world, always giving and giving subconsciously, not expecting to get the same in return.

Ou Renjin was hoping to change his mind, hoping that he would understand that no one in the world was worth giving his life for. He was angry and disappointed with Ou Shaowen, wanting him to feel the despair and anxiety he had felt during those two months.

He had his dark side, but it didn’t mean that he wanted Ou Shaowen to doubt that he was loved, and he didn’t want his hand that he finally stretched out to shrink back again. They had some contradictions that still needed to be resolved, but he couldn’t have any misunderstandings about their feelings.

This was why he finally replied to his WeChat and answered his call.

If not for the suspicion that he might be used for touching porcelain (arranging a scam), he would have extended this period a little longer.

Ou Shaowen’s heart felt warm and astringent. Hearing Ou Renjin’s words, he suddenly felt that he had become so fragile that if someone came and poked him twice, he would cry out in pain.

He was grateful and aggrieved at the same time.

“I thought…”

“Okay, don’t say the next half of the sentence, I’m not happy to repeat it again.” Ou Renjin interrupted him, thinking that he knew what he was going to say in the second half of the sentence.

I thought you didn’t like me anymore, I thought you were going to break up with me, I thought you didn’t want me anymore.

He wasn’t born knowing how to deal with someone like Ou Shaowen, he was also figuring out how to get along with him, and there were many times when it was as much of a headache as teaching a child who couldn’t understand something no matter how much he was taught, but…

“Keep sending me the answer. I won’t go back to the villa until I see the correct answer, got it?”

“What?” Ou Shaowen’s voice dropped to the bottom again, “Weren’t the previous ones correct answers?”

He obviously felt that he had already said everything he should and shouldn’t have said.

“Not as much as I’d like to see.”

Ou Shaowen softened his voice slightly, a bit like being coquettish, “Can’t you give me a hint?”

“If you really can’t think of the answer, you can code our story and ask your acquaintances and friends around you, and learn what a normal view of love looks like, by the way. Hand in the assignment to me after you’re done learning.”

It was time for Ou Shaowen to learn that it was a completely different world, and that none of the ideas he had had before were natural and should be taken for granted.

“Well, I see.” Ou Shaowen said a little bit bitterly.

Ou Renjin had already gotten into the car with Xiao Liu who came to pick him up, and leaned back in the seat, a little tired, “That’s it, I’ll hang up now.”

“Wait a minute…” Ou Shaowen suddenly became anxious, “Will you still call me? Just… can we still call each other before I give you the correct answer?”

Ou Renjin was silent for a while. This was why he had hardly looked at his mobile phone this month; because it seemed that once he heard Ou Shaowen’s voice, once he recalled his presence, his heart would begin to soften.

“You can try to call me again. In the absence of business and other accidents, I should be able to pick up.”

“Okay, then you hang up.” Ou Shaowen’s tone rose, as if he instantly possessed expectation and strength.

So Ou Renjin pressed down the phone.

“Go to the apartment near the company, I have a lot of things to do there,” he instructed Xiao Liu in front of him. “By the way, help me pay attention to whether any media on the Internet posted an intimate photo of me and the little star at the airport. He bumped into my chest, if you pick an angle, it might look a bit like a hug. If so, let me know as soon as possible.”

“Okay, President Ou.” Xiao Liu smiled like a spring breeze, looking very happy.

“Also, the company…”

What he was about to say was interrupted by the sudden ringing of his mobile phone. Ou Renjin glanced down, and Ou Shaowen’s name flashed on the screen again.

He smiled helplessly and answered, “Our last call seems to have just ended less than half a minute ago?”