CH 26

“Measure” was a very direct verb, but it was a bit ambiguous when applied to the two of them. Tang Yi always thought that Zhou Hao would progress step by step. Who knew that today he would step on the driven snow and go straight to the point aggressively.

Zhou Hao couldn’t be said to be bad to Tang Yi in any way. There were not many holidays after November, but even so Zhou Hao never let him feel alone. Whether it was a phone call or coming in person, he could always arrange things quietly and thoughtfully. So much so that many times Tang Yi could hardly detect the intention without paying attention to it deliberately.

Tang Yi gradually began to get used to this rhythm; when Zhou Hao occasionally came up with a sentence or two of love, he went from being anxious to clear up their relationship at the beginning to responding with a smile later. But at this moment he still didn’t react. Unfortunately, Zhou Hao didn’t give him a chance to react either. When Tang Yi raised his head and looked over blankly, his waist was already encircled and then Zhou Hao’s lips pressed down.

The TV in the living room was still blaring, and the entrance door behind was still open. When Tang Yi came back to his senses, his face was flushed and he lifted his knee subconsciously and pushed the man away.

Probably this was a bit fierce. Zhou Hao let out a muffled grunt and backed away a bit.

“Dad!” Zhou Weiwei was very excited watching the lions in the animal world. When he turned his head, he saw Zhou Hao leaning against the door frame, hissing, “Dad! Who is more powerful, a lion or a tiger?”

“……” Zhou Hao rubbed his hands to calm down and then his eyes stopped on Tang Yi’s face, “Neither of them is as powerful as Uncle Tang.”

A long time later Tang Yi learned that Zhou Hao’s words were not only to ease up the atmosphere but also said from the bottom of his heart.

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At that time, he was asked by Zhou Hao to help him receive an email. After entering the account that Zhou Hao gave him, it took him more than ten seconds to recover from the shock.

There were two unread emails in that mailbox. Tang Yi accidentally opened the first one. The attachments were not the files Zhou Hao wanted, but bloody photos.

Several lions that reigned supreme in the animal world were shot dead with blood all over their bodies. Tang Yi held back his immense horror and scrolled down to see the photos of these lions when they were young, their beautiful posture, well-proportioned and strong bones, and their unique rebellious aura of the kings.

They were raised and fed to a large size, but their ultimate fate was to be trapped in a hunting ground for the rich and powerful coming from all over the world to hunt. The vast majority of these hunters came from Europe and the United States. Zhou Hao was one of the first and most adventurous Asian hunters. He would choose his targets in advance, but the organisers were not allowed to put the lions under any anaesthesia during the hunt. Relying on the guns and ammunition issued by the organisers, Zhou Hao would shoot the targets to death one after another.

There was also a list of expenses. A rough look showed that the daily cost there was at least a few thousand dollars. Zhou Hao had paid the expenses for five years in advance.

Tang Yi was so shocked by the brutal photos that he sucked in a breath, chilled to the bone. After he calmed down, he collected the documents according to Zhou Hao’s request, but he couldn’t help mentioning it when he called.

“Those lions… I saw them.”

Zhou Hao was silent for a while, but then replied, “Tang Yi, I have never forced you to do anything. Not before, and not in the future. ”

—

At this moment, however, Tang Yi only regarded it as a joke.

It was only a matter of time before the two of them would have come to the point of relationship. They had long passed the age of falling in love in ignorance, and in the end it wasn’t about rolling around in the same bed. Tang Yi was always prepared. Who knew when and what was going to happen, so he was constantly on guard.

He paused for a while before saying softly to Zhou Hao, “I’m sorry.”

In the end, Zhou Hao took Weiwei to the hotel and Tang Yi inevitably felt guilty. On the contrary, Zhou Hao returned to his original light-heartedness. After watching the father and son complete the check-in procedures, Tang Yi hesitated and said to Zhou Hao, “Otherwise, let’s be friends.”

Zhou Hao rubbed his chin and smiled, “How do you think someone who gets hard at first sight can be a friend?”

Tang Yi was stunned.

“If you are not ready, you can take your time. If you don’t want to say yes yet, I can wait.” Zhou Hao lowered his eyes and said, “We are still young, and some things will happen sooner or later.”

Zhou Hao’s imperiousness made Tang Yi frown, yet he felt that this was the result of his own directing. From the time they first met, he didn’t have a good sense of proportion when he started to intervene in Zhou Weiwei’s affairs, and he didn’t directly reject Zhou Hao’s hints when he was in Sanya. The human heart is a filthy place of delusion, greed and intrigue. If Tang Yi cut open his outer skin and drilled into his heart to take a look, he could never deny that he had a moment when his heart was beating faster for Zhou Hao.

In fact, in everything else, Zhou Hao could be regarded as a perfect lover. He did what he said he would do and truly stopped crossing boundaries, giving Tang Yi all kinds of support, both explicitly and implicitly, and never talking about repaying.

After the reorganisation of ER, it finally developed in the direction of diversification. The original old business was gradually concentrated under Tang Yi, while Shen Fan focused on the newly acquired technology companies.

The branch in T City was turned into a subsidiary, and Tang Yi finally moved from the position of the person in charge to the legal entity and the head of the subsidiary.

He was happy in the workplace, and his bad luck in this life seemed to have stopped quietly after Gu Yanting left. Life gave Tang Yi a superb gift of good fortune and almost pampered him as the years went by.

The love scene was also considered peaceful and stable. In the past two years, the mad bees and butterflies around him were beaten down by a single swat of Zhou Hao. Both female and male animals with abnormal hormone secretion were strictly banned within a 500-metre radius of Tang Yi, leaving only Zhou Hao himself.

Tang Yi said, don’t go to South Africa to kill animals, and Zhou Hao said okay.

When Tang Yi became the head of the subsidiary, he said: the parent company has a controlling stake but the management power is in my hands. You listen to me or you shut up. Some were angry, but Zhou Hao suppressed them all, turned around and said okay anyway.

Tang Yi said: I was hurt by love and won’t get better for a while. It can be less than three years, or it can be more than five years. If you can wait, you wait, if you don’t, you can go. Zhou Hao still said okay unconditionally.

In the end, Shen Fan couldn’t help being speechless. On the one hand, he maliciously speculated that Zhou Hao was ill-intentioned, but he couldn’t find anything wrong in his treatment of Tang Yi even if he washed and peeled him. On the other hand, he felt that Zhou Hao was unwilling to ask for what he could not get.

Everyone forgot that there was such a person as Gu Yanting.

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After parting, the two became parallel lines.

Gu Yanting, who was far away, almost turned into an inconspicuous dot in the past. Tang Yi sent things to Mom and Dad Gu anonymously, and he also helped Fat Sod with some problems after achieving success. Only from Gu Yanting there was no news, and Tang Yi had no intention of inquiring. Fat Sod didn’t know, and he didn’t want to ask Mom Gu, but the initial senior from the design company persisted and called every once in a while.

“Where is Xiao Gu working now?”

“Has Xiao Gu come back yet?”

Tang Yi was impatient at first, but in the end simply put the caller into the blacklist to keep his ears clean.

The more time passed, the less he wanted to mention the past. Both with Shen Fan and Zhou Hao, Tang Yi kept his mouth shut about those three years. Sometimes he was so tired of being asked that he wanted to go back to the past and tear up that period of time into pieces.

Sometimes he was inevitably angry. But Zhou Hao hadn’t done anything excessive since that Christmas and Tang Yi couldn’t turn a blind eye to his kindness. Sometimes he wanted to take a step forward and put his paw out tremblingly, but then he didn’t know where to put it.

Zhou Hao’s arrangements were always nearly perfect, but Tang Yi didn’t like to accept them passively. Then one Mid-Autumn Festival when Zhou Hao encountered heavy rain in a neighbouring city, Tang Yi got his opportunity.

That day, Zhou Hao had gone to do an errand and agreed to go back to the city to have dinner with Tang Yi, but who knew that after arriving in the neighbouring city, it would suddenly rain heavily and their group would be stuck there.

Tang Yi, who was alone, looked up at the sky, smiled and comforted Zhou Hao on the phone, saying: I’m fine, I’ll just eat by myself, it’s just the Mid-Autumn Festival. Then he drove straight for two hundred kilometres in the rain and arrived at the hotel where Zhou Hao was staying.

He had a calm face and strict clothes, and he kept a dignified smile when he knocked on Zhou Hao’s door.

The moment Zhou Hao opened the door, his calm and self-assured face fluctuated violently. Only when Secretary Zhao, who was holding a notebook, respectfully came over to greet Tang Yi, did Zhou Hao side-stepped slightly and signalled to Secretary Zhao to leave.

Secretary Zhao was very discerning and slipped away through the crack in the door, feeling extremely happy. Zhou Hao’s anxiety about not being able to return to T City led him to torment his entourage. The others didn’t understand Zhou Hao’s temperament and could only follow him in fear and trepidation. Secretary Zhao himself thought that the boss had always been brilliant in his methods. He pursued Mr. Tang for a year and a half, and Mr. Tang, the former little manager, jumped over the Dragon Gate(1), but his boss didn’t get a penny out of it. Now it was just the Mid-Autumn Festival, so what’s the big deal?

However, after being tormented by various reports for an hour and a half, Secretary Zhao couldn’t help but start self-examining, begging heaven and earth: I was wrong, I really didn’t know that the Mid-Autumn Festival could be so important.

Zhou Hao looked at Tang Yi, who was standing there with a smile, and could hardly move for a long time. Tang Yi came in by himself, locked the door, smiled and pushed the man back, cupped Zhou Hao’s chin and kissed him.

Zhou Hao quickly regained his senses from the shock, and when their lips met, he even had the thought that it was worth dying at this moment. Adrenaline spiked dramatically, all the proteins were active, he felt himself burning all over. His body that had been suppressed for more than twenty years felt like it had just touched the threshold of paradise.

“Tang Yi…” Zhou Hao let out a low sigh, “Give it a try with me, okay? If you don’t like it, we’ll part again. ”