After My Rebirth, My Husband Pampers Me Everyday!

Chapter 156: A DIFFERENT KIND OF BEAUTY

Cao Yifan gathered his things, Xu Zimo was already at the door, and the rest followed without a word, and they were gone.

The door closed.

The studio held its breath for three full seconds.

Then Bai Zichen turned to Guiying with the expression of a man who had just witnessed something he intended to recount for the rest of his natural life.

"I need you to know," he said, "that I would die for you."

"You don’t need to die for me," Guiying said.

"I want to," Bai Zichen said seriously. "It would be an honour."

Lin Yansu pressed her lips together very hard.

Pei Jiahao looked at the door Quinn had just walked through and said simply, "Good riddance."

Shao Mingye walked past with his camera bag over his shoulder and said without stopping or looking up, "Good shoot today, Mr. Tang," and kept walking, and somehow that landed heavier than everything else combined.

Guiying pulled out his phone and stepped into the elevator.

Liuxian picked up on the second ring.

"I’m done," Guiying said.

"And Quinn?" Liuxian asked.

"I told him if he ever opened his mouth about me again I’d make sure the only thing left of his career was the memory of it."

Liuxian went quiet.

Then he laughed, low and unhurried, the real kind that didn’t perform itself, but Guiying stood in the elevator with his bag over his shoulder and his face was completely neutral.

"You said that to his face?" Liuxian asked.

"He needed to hear it," Guiying said simply.

A pause. When Liuxian spoke again something warm was still sitting underneath his voice. "My terrifying little rose."

Guiying said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.

The elevator opened into the lobby and Guiying stepped out into the late afternoon light coming through TongShu’s glass front, and outside the Rolls Royce Boat Tail was already pulling up to the kerb, unhurried and obscenely expensive, exactly on time.

Guiying pushed through the doors.

The Rolls Royce Boat Tail was already at the kerb when Guiying pushed through TongShu’s glass doors, and Liuxian was standing beside it.

He stood with one hand resting on the roof and the other in his pocket, watching the entrance with the quiet certainty of someone who had been waiting and wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

Guiying walked toward him, and Liuxian went still. It wasn’t the composed, controlled stillness he wore in boardrooms and corridors as Liu Liuxian, CEO and untouchable. This was different. His body recognized something before his mind had finished processing it, and for a moment everything else paused.

He looked at Guiying. The late afternoon light caught in the blonde hair, and the blue eyes were clear without the wig and contacts. The face that had always been striking was now simply itself, unedited and unguarded.

Guiying stopped in front of him. Liuxian opened his mouth and closed it again. His hand came up slowly and the backs of his fingers brushed against Guiying’s cheek, light and careful, like he was checking that the moment was real. He said nothing for a long time, and the silence between them was completely unguarded.

"Liuxian," Guiying said.

"Give me a moment," Liuxian said quietly.

Guiying gave him the moment. Liuxian looked at him the way someone looks at something they hadn’t believed they deserved. His thumb traced the line of Guiying’s cheekbone, slow and deliberate.

"I used to wonder what it felt like to see something so beautiful it changed how you understood beauty," Liuxian said. "I thought it was something that happened to other people. But then you walked through those doors, and I understood."

Guiying didn’t answer right away. He was caught off guard and hadn’t decided what to do about it yet.

"You’re the kind of beautiful that makes the world feel quieter," Liuxian continued. "Everything else dims a little just to make room for you. Every room you walk into becomes the room you’re in. Every moment you’re present in becomes the moment that matters. I don’t know what I did to deserve standing this close to you, but I am grateful. Every single day, I am grateful."

Guiying looked at him. His chest was full of something warm and overwhelming that he didn’t have a name for. He stood on the pavement in the late afternoon light with Liuxian’s hand against his face and felt it pressing quietly against his ribs.

"You’re going to make me cry on a public pavement," Guiying said finally, his voice quieter than he meant it to be.

Liuxian smiled, the real one that only came out in moments like this. "I’ll allow it," he said softly. "Just this once."

Guiying laughed, short and involuntary, and Liuxian leaned forward and pressed his lips to Guiying’s forehead. He held him there, one hand still cradling his face, warm and steady and certain.

From the lobby, through TongShu’s glass front, Quinn watched. He had come back for something Xu Zimo had left at the reception desk, a small errand that turned into something else the moment he saw them.

Liuxian stood beside the car, and the way he looked at Guiying stripped away every version of himself Quinn had ever known.

The hand at Guiying’s face and the focus that shut the rest of the world out was unlike anything Quinn had ever received.

Quinn stood still with Xu Zimo’s forgotten phone in his hand and watched Liu Liuxian look at Tang XiaoYu like he was the only thing in the city worth looking at. Like he was the only thing in the world.

The receptionist glanced at him once and looked away again quickly. Quinn set the phone down without a word, turned, and walked out through the side exit. He didn’t look back through the glass.

Liuxian drew back slowly, his hand still cradling Guiying’s face, and looked at him for a moment with that expression that had no name and didn’t need one.

Then he dropped his hand, straightened, and opened the car door.

Guiying got in.

Liuxian came around and settled beside him and the door closed and the city resumed around them, indifferent and enormous, entirely unbothered by what had just happened on the pavement outside TongShu.