CH 33

There were people from other companies present, so Song Yunran’s lecture as president ended there.

He returned to the canopy just as Qin Ke took the last two cups of milk tea out of his bag and handed one over when he saw him coming.

The milk tea they served at the petrol station tasted mediocre, but the shop added a lot of ice cubes to it, so it was cold and refreshing. It helped to ease the stuffiness of being trapped in the dressing room.

Song Yunran was biting into the taro dumplings, when she heard Chen Jing ask Qin Ke, “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah?” Qin Ke was unsure.

Chen Jing said softly, “Assistant Tang said earlier that Xiao Song wanted to talk to you privately about something. Do you need my help?”

Qin Ke was stunned, he didn’t seem to understand what Chen Jing was talking about, and was trying to grasp the implications.

Song Yunran’s eyelids jumped.

Even though he was very unhappy with the mess that Assistant Tang had made, he didn’t want anyone to find out that his assistant was actually a crackhead.

It would look like he was the president who couldn’t control his subordinate’s CP brain.

He was about to go forward to explain, when Qin Ke gave a faint “oh”.

“It’s not that important.”

His gaze swept over carelessly, then rested on Song Yunran’s face, ” Xiao Song is just discussing the topic of…brotherhood and friendship with me.”

Chen Jing: “???”

Song Yunran: “……”

He took a few steps back, turned his head and asked Assistant Tang in a whisper, “Did you hear Qin Ke’s words? In your opinion, what does he mean by that?”

Is he really going to ask him to call him brother?

Not only did Assistant Tang hear Qin Ke’s words, but he also saw Qin Ke’s expression.

Objectively speaking, there was indeed something else to it.

But he hesitated for a few seconds and said hesitantly, “I don’t think so, he was just talking in a very casual way.”

“?”

Song Yunran didn’t believe him, “Think harder?”

Assistant Tang, who had just made a mistake, frowned and realised that things weren’t so simple.

He suspected that this was a test from his boss, and that if he got one word wrong, he could just pack his bags and leave.

“On reflection there’s none.”

Assistant Tang’s gaze was firm and his tone firm as he asked in return, “What do you think was wrong with his behaviour? Didn’t he look at you with respect?”

Song Yunran: “…… ah?”

Assistant Tang, who thought he had passed the test, smiled: “Don’t worry, I won’t make the same mistake again.”

After saying that, he raised his eyes and looked into the distance, as if he had woken up from an absurd dream.

It was ridiculous, what he had been thinking for the past six months.

I’m afraid that all those previous moments, like today, were just a misunderstanding that he had made up in his head.

President Xiao Song would never fall in love with Qin Ke!

In the car on the way back to the city, Song Yunran was silent the whole way.

Assistant Tang’s reflection was so badly timed that he didn’t have the heart to say that he thought Qin Ke was actually flirting with him after he had been stuck up for half a day.

Song Yunran didn’t want to become a brother before he could be a father.

He leaned back in his seat, staring at his dead phone screen in deep thought, and suddenly his mind flashed back to Qin Ke standing under the window, his arms open, ready to catch him.

The light at dusk shone on Qin Ke’s body, as if it was deliberately covered with a nice filter.

The breeze was still laden with the remnants of the day’s heat, which was not cool, but made his cheeks heat up along with it.

That bit of heat made his nerves sharper than usual.

It caused Song Yunran to remember the warmth in Qin Ke’s arms until now, as well as the faint vibrations coming from his chest when he spoke.

It didn’t make any sense.

Song Yunran unconsciously licked his lips, unable to figure out exactly why the impression was so strong.

Seeing Song Yunran’s sullen mood, Assistant Tang, who was sitting in the passenger seat, thought he was still angry and took the initiative to hand over a power bank, trying to make up for it: “Do you want to charge your phone?”

“Thanks.”

Song Yunran took the power bank and held it in his hand but didn’t use it, “Ah yes, I almost forgot, luckily you reminded me by speaking up, for making such a big mistake, you shouldn’t receive your year-end bonus this year.”

Assistant Tang secretly sighed in relief.

Luckily it was only a deduction of his year-end bonus, he had thought he was going to be fired.

Song Yunran successfully handed down his first punishment since he joined Xinghe, and his mood turned clear: “Also, is Qin Ke going to join the crew soon?”

Assistant Tang adjusted his state and immediately replied, “Yes, the flight has been booked. The day after tomorrow he’ll go straight to the airport after shooting the commercial.”

“So soon?!”

Song Yunran was stunned, he had recently been so busy recuperating from his injuries and mulling over the ‘Legend of Nan Hua’ that he had completely forgotten that the start of the production for ”Jianghu Lu” was around the corner.

If it were in the past, Assistant Tang would have definitely thought that ‘young couples in love really don’t want to be separated.’

But now he learned his lesson and calmly said, “Actors are supposed to be in the crew as often as possible.”

Song Yunran was shocked by his colleague’s righteous attitude.

It was true, but when he thought of Qin Ke leaving Yan City for a few months, he felt a little uncomfortable.

Song Yunran was so shocked by his own thoughts that he almost lost his soul.

Has Qin Ke put a spell on you? This rebellious son of his who refuses to acknowledge his ancestors will not be useful to your career if he stays in Yan City.

Letting him go out as a worker to make money for you is the normal thinking a president should have.

Toughen up your heart and be a stern father, yourself.

What’s there to be upset about, it’s not like Qin Ke is going up to the edge of the sword or down to the bottom of the fire.

He’s just filming a movie, wouldn’t he…

“!!!”

Song Yunran slapped his thighs, finally comprehending where the source of his unease was coming from.

There was still Cheng Jiaming, the villain, in the cast of ” Jianghu Lu”!

“You should hurry up and contact the people and arrange ten bodyguards for Qin Ke in the area.” Song Yunran immediately instructed.

Assistant Tang thought he had heard wrong: “You mean, four or ten?”

Even four would be outrageous for a man of Qin Ke’s reputation, he thought.

However, Song Yunran would only be more outrageous than he thought: “Is my Mandarin not standard? Ten, you heard me right, ten.”

Assistant Tang took a deep breath.

He wanted to think wildly, but his passed year-end bonus wouldn’t allow him to think outside the box.

So he had to grit his teeth and agree with great difficulty.

Ten it would be.

Maybe the benefits of our company are, just that good.

Two days later, late into the night.

Qin Ke was standing at the airport, lost in thought about his life.

In front of him was the Arrival Hall of the airport, and today too, as usual, there were many people holding name tags surrounding the barriers, anxiously waiting for their friends and family to be spotted.

Only, if he was not mistaken ……

“So, are those people the bodyguards who came to pick us up?”

Assistant Xiao Ke’s trembling voice was the first to ring out, “That’s too many people, isn’t it? Or do you have any enemies here?”

“…… No.”

Qin Ke frowned in the same confusion.

Before he left today, Chen Jing said that the company had arranged some bodyguards for him, so as to ensure his personal safety during the shooting.

But what he didn’t expect was that the company had actually sent ten of them in one go, and they all looked so tall and big that the airport ground would tremble with a single blow.

With the feeling that everyone was already here, Qin Ke walked up and asked, “Are you the security personnel hired by Xinghe?”

The strongest bodyguard looked at him and compared the data on his phone before saying, “Hello Mr. Qin, we will be guarding your safety for the next few months, please don’t worry.”

With a wave of his hand, he gathered the other nine bodyguards over, “Brothers, let’s go!”

Maybe the corporate culture of this company was the Chinese word “thunder and lightning”.

Qin Ke had no time to think about it before he was led to the parking lot.

At this moment, the airport was not as crowded as during the day.

However, when the group arrived at the parking lot, some passersby immediately noticed Qin Ke wearing a mask.

“Look, is that a star?”

“He’s so tall and has such a good temperament, he must be a star.”

“Let’s take a few pictures, he’s surrounded by so many bodyguards, he looks like a big star.”

No sooner had the passerby’s mobile phone been raised than several bodyguards rushed over in unison: “No photos!”

The other party, who had never seen such a show before, apologised in fear and ran away with his buddy.

Several bodyguards successfully completed their task and immediately returned to form an impermeable wall of people to surround Qin Ke and his assistant and escort them to the car.

The situation made Qin Ke suspect that they were not in an airport, but in a battlefield where bullets would come at any moment.

After getting into the car, Xiao Ke shivered: “Why do I feel like I’ve been kidnapped?”

Qin Ke: “……”

Really, I have never been so dumbfounded in both my lives.

He made a call to Chen Jing, after describing the exaggerated situation here, and proposed that he should step in to communicate with the company.

The company’s response to the call was to ask Assistant Tang to confirm the situation and get in touch with him.

Who knew that a few minutes later, Qin Ke received a call from Song Yunran.

Through the phone, Xiao Song’s tone was quite smug: “Satisfied with what you saw?”

Qin Ke didn’t want to see such a picture: “Did you arrange this?”

“Yes, I was afraid that something would happen to you on the set.”

Song Yunran was probably playing outside, there was a lot of commotion on the other end of the phone, so he said loudly, “This is the professional team I asked Assistant Tang to find!”

Qin Ke looked at the poor assistant who was sandwiched between two bodyguards and whispered, “I don’t need so many people, you can let them go back.”

“How would that work? If there aren’t enough bodyguards, what if something happens to you on the set?” Song Yunran said.

Qin Ke was silent for a few seconds before he said in a slow voice, “Won’t .”

Now that he knew that he had to watch out for Cheng Jiaming, two more bodyguards would be more than enough.

But Song Yunran insisted, “You don’t understand the dangers of society.”

He couldn’t stand the wailing He Ziyou who was holding the microphone next to him, so he went into the bathroom of the private room, “There are some things I can’t say directly, but you should listen to me anyway.”

Qin Ke was stunned, and a strong suspicion welled up in his heart.

But thinking about the previous tests, he became less sure again.

After thinking about it for a while, he could only say, “I’m the junior-most actor in the cast, so if I bring ten bodyguards as soon as I arrive, I’ll probably be accused of playing a big name. You have to know that Director Tan hates it when artists put on a show.”

Ah, that seems to be true.

Song Yunran was in a dilemma. He didn’t want Qin Ke to be hated by Tan Ming or even kicked out of the cast because of this, but he also didn’t want Qin Ke to be set up by Cheng Jiaming to quit the cast, so for a moment he didn’t know what to choose.

In the end, he could only say reluctantly, “But I’ve paid all the money. Let me tell you, this professional team is particularly difficult to hire, and I paid a lump sum in order to gather ten people for the schedule.”

Qin Ke was so amused by his earnest tone that he chuckled softly.

In the end, he had no choice but to suggest, “Doesn’t the company have other artists, assign them.”

After a lot of twists and turns, Qin Ke finally convinced the wealthy President Song to successfully reduce his team of bodyguards from ten to two.

In the next half month, Qin Ke became extremely busy.

As the lead actor of “Jianghu Lu”, his schedule was always full of call sheets, and he could only finish work at 3am every day at the earliest, returning to sleep for three to four hours before getting up and starting make-up.

The good thing is that Cheng Jiaming is only the fifth male lead and has not yet had the chance to enter the set.

Therefore, although he was a bit tired, he was still having a safe time on the whole.

As a result, in the early hours of one morning, Qin Ke had just finished his shower when he heard a sharp knock at the door.

“Mr. Qin, we’ve caught a suspicious person in the corridor at the other end!”

Bodyguard A had been working for half a month for nothing, but this time he could finally take credit for something, so he was inevitably a bit excited, “Do you want to go over and take a look, or should I just ask the hotel to call the police?”

Qin Ke: “?”

Even if Cheng Jiaming was brain-damaged, he wouldn’t ambush him in the corridor in the middle of the night.

He put his mind at ease and asked, “Male or female?”

Bodyguard A: “Male. You can say that he is not bad looking, but he has two dark circles under his eyes, which are bigger than a panda’s. It seems that he has done a lot of bad things like stealing chickens and dogs. He was caught but refused to admit it, saying he was here to see you.”

Qin Ke had a foreboding feeling in his heart: “Did he say his name?”

“Hiss, what was it called. Let’s see, there seems to be a Xiao character in the middle.”

Qin Ke’s mind became clear.

He lifted his eyes and asked softly, “…Zhong Xiaofeng?”

Meanwhile, Song Yunran, who had already gone to sleep, was sitting at the head of the bed holding the phone tightly, questioning Assistant Tang on the other end of the phone in surprise.

—- “What?! Zhong Xiaofeng ran away?!”

T/N: Sorry for disappearing for 4 days it’s my cousin’s engagement yesterday and I forgot to post the chapter amidst the celebrations.

My first language isn’t English, and there may be some grammatical errors. But I try not to deviate from the author’s narrative. If there are any errors or nonsensical sentences, feel free to comment.