Chapter 940: Trouble Itself
—there was one more problem
Or perhaps it was a problem.
The shoot, as it turned out, had never been arranged only around Phei and his people.
There were five faces on the campaign in total. Three men. Two women:
The men were Phei himself, Landon, and Brian. David was also present, though safely behind a lens rather than in front of one, where he could exist without being dragged into the beautiful circus.
That suited everyone. David most of all.
The two women, however, were clearly celebrities in their own right.
Phei could tell before anyone introduced them.
It was in the way the crew shifted when they walked past, the way phones drifted upward, almost accidentally, then remained there with all the innocence of thieves caught holding silverware; assistants became quicker, stylists became softer, and even the air seemed to understand that these women were accustomed to being watched.
One of them was a model.
A serious one.
Phei did not know how to quantify fame in that industry with any proper precision. Fashion people had their own aristocracy, their own silent wars and their own sacred little hierarchies built on bone structure, magazine covers, and the ability to look bored while wearing something that cost more than a functioning village.
Still, even he could tell she belonged near the top.
The 0.1 percent, perhaps, if such beauty could be measured without making mathematics feel cheap.
She was devastating in the clean, architectural way the best models often were. Tall, long-limbed, built with that rare balance cameras adored: soft enough to feel alive, sharp enough to photograph like a blade.
Her waist drew in with elegant cruelty, her shoulders carried garments as though fabric had been invented for her benefit, and every pose she took looked less like movement and more like a decision made by expensive lighting.
’Beautiful.’
Professionally, dangerously beautiful.
Phei appreciated the artistry of her though he wasn’t really attracted to her the way she did him.
There was no quiet inner shift telling him this woman belonged somewhere near his orbit. He could admire her body, her face, the disciplined command she had over the camera, and still feel no real urge to step closer.
Beauty alone had never been enough. If it had, his life would have become completely unmanageable long ago.
’More unmanageable, anyway.’
The current state was already a legal hazard disguised as a harem.
Landon and Brian, naturally, had opinions.
Landon’s opinion lasted until Cherry caught the direction of his eyes.
She did not speak.
She did not need to; Cherry merely looked at him, flat, level and entirely sufficient.
Phei laughed out loud when Landon sighed; he’d raised both hands in immediate surrender, and visibly recalibrated his entire afternoon.
It was a beautiful little performance of survival instinct.
The model was gorgeous, yes. She might even have entertained a boy like Landon if he had made a move.
But Landon took one glance at the possible trade, thought of Cherry, thought of his future blood pressure, and declined with the calm wisdom of a man who had just remembered paradise could still include consequences.
The thing Landon had with Cherry, Phei had slowly come to understand, ran deeper than he had first assumed.
He respected it.
Landon loved that girl too much to drag her against her pace, into the kind of sprawling many-women arrangement Phei and Brian made look effortless, tempting, and probably criminal in several jealous countries.
Cherry was not there.
’She might never be there.’
And YET Landon, watched her laugh across the garden; the boy had no intention of trading her for a prettier distraction, and he seemed entirely fine with that.
’Content, even.’
That, in Phei’s private accounting, was its own kind of strength.
To look at everything one could have and decide what one already held was enough required a discipline Phei was not sure he possessed. His own life had become a museum exhibit titled: Young Dragon Encounters Beautiful Complications and Learns Nothing. Very educational. Terrible for scheduling.
Brian, of course, had no such restraint.
’None.’
By the time Phei glanced over again, Brian and the model were already chatting like old friends.
More absurdly, Rhea was there too, Brian’s own woman, folded happily into the conversation as if her man befriending a top-tier beauty were the most natural thing in the world. She looked comfortable. Amused, even.
There was no tension in her smile or sharpness behind her eyes of a quiet plan to murder him later with a hairpin and emotional justification.
Phei’s eyebrow rose.
’Lucky bastard.’
Even Brian’s newest woman seemed perfectly at ease with the shape of his life, just as his first two had been.
And those first two were arriving today as well, travelling in together with Mother and Diana.
So no, the model was not the problem.
The problem was Evy.
He finally had her name now:
’Evy.’
The very woman who had pulled his strings yesterday at the boutique, arranged things around him with that suspicious little invisible hand of hers, then capped the whole encounter by calling him, of all things, a stalker.
The irony remained rude.
’And yet, today, she is really strange.’
When the shoot threw them together for paired shots, Evy behaved as if someone had placed her directly beside a sacred relic, a battlefield hazard, and a childhood dream all at once.
She would flush a deep rose, then dip into a small bashful bow to him so formal it nearly became comedy. The courtesy had the energy of someone greeting a venerable senior she was deeply honoured to share a frame with.
’Senior.’
That was the exact feeling.
Which was ridiculous, considering he was the youngest of everyone here and yet currently being treated like a dangerous historical monument with good cheekbones.
She did manage to joke with him now and then. Bright little comments, a touch too rehearsed.
It was like she had practiced the jokes in a mirror and edited three times in her head, then released into the world with the quiet terror like she was throwing a jewel into a pond and waiting to see if it sink.
After every joke, she watched his face with breathless attention, as if his reaction might determine the next five years of her emotional stability.
Phei understood it eventually.
She was not playing a game.
’Not exactly.’
Evy was a fan who had collided, through some cruel administrative accident, with the object of her own fixation.
Now she had to survive standing three feet away from him for hours while her inner life ran around screaming and knocking over furniture.
One moment, she behaved like an older sister at the young Phei new in this industry, trying to act composed and superior.
The next, she looked at him with the stunned shine of a young admirer who had somehow ended up beside the person her thoughts had been orbiting in secret.
Harmless.
Mostly.
So far.
But the movement between those two versions of her was what wore on him.
One minute, she leaned in too eagerly, chasing acquaintance, asking questions with that overly bright sparkle in her eyes. The next, she recoiled three steps and refused to meet his gaze, as if she had frightened herself by wanting to be near him.
Close, then gone. Bold, then bashful.
A flicker of mischief, followed immediately by panic.
’Watching her is like trying to follow a candle flame in a room with bad ventilation.’
There were moments he found her cute.
’Helplessly so.’
Then there were moments he looked at her and wondered, with genuine concern, whether she needed help in her head more than she needed his attention.
Phei gave up trying to map her.
Some weather systems did not deserve forecasts; one simply stayed indoors and hoped the roof had good insurance.
Whenever they were not shooting, he kept his distance. Pleasant. Polite. Unavailable.
Because no matter how cute Evy was, no matter how attractive, no matter that yesterday at the boutique some part of him had been genuinely tempted to try his luck with her, he wanted to stay clear for now:
An alarm of crazy Yandere was blasting in Phei’s head!
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