Chapter 158: Ch 158: A Plan Half-Remembered

As the morning strengthened and more of the village’s own workers filtered into the rows, the remaining guests finished their tasks one after another and collected what they had earned. Jingxue handed Zhao Yichen his points without ceremony. Around them, the others drifted toward the staff, forming the familiar loose cluster of people waiting to be told what came next.

The staff member at the front scratched the back of his head and offered the group a wry smile that already apologized before the words arrived.

"I’m so sorry." He bowed at a careful forty-five degrees. "Supposedly PD Xu would be the one delivering the next segment to you. However...."

He trailed off, the embarrassed smile returning as if the rest of the sentence might somehow become less awkward if left unfinished.

Su Wanyan and Mo Xingxue glanced at each other. The same thought passed between them without needing air. Both of them chuckled—quiet, shared, and intimate.

Qin Yuran heard the laughter and closed the distance at once, hooking an arm around Su Wanyan’s neck with the ease of long practice.

"What are you two chuckling about over here?" she asked as a teasing smirk was already in place.

Su Wanyan laughed and used her free hand to push Qin Yuran’s head away until the hold broke. "Nothing."

The denial convinced no one. They shared another laugh anyway, and the talk slid, as it often did when the three of them stood in one place too long, toward the morning’s work—soil resistance, the particular satisfaction of a clean row, the less satisfying discovery of how many muscles farming could invent. Zhao Yichen found them within a minute, slotting into the familiar triangle as if the regrouping had been scheduled. The trio closed ranks without effort.

A short distance away, their paired omegas had done the same. Song Meiyu and Han Jiho stood together, watching the alphas with matching wry smiles—the look of people who had accepted that "tilling technique" would occupy the next stretch of conversation whether anyone asked for it or not.

However, they too had some discussions about farming. So after looking at their alphas and making sure they weren’t doing anything.. questionable, they too went ahead and talked about their worries. The alphas talked soil. The omegas compared notes on seed depth and spacing. The whole arrangement was so harmonious, so thoroughly domestic in its small talk, that it sat oddly against the premise of a love variety show. Cameras or no cameras, the six of them looked less like competitors for affection and more like a group that had simply finished a shift.

However, not everyone shared the peace.

At the edge of the gathering, the last pair stood apart and did not bother disguising what they were doing. They stared. More accurately, they glared—Gu Chengze hardest of all, his attention fixed on Su Wanyan with the particular intensity of a man who seemed to believe a hard enough look might remove a head from a neck. Lin Xuanyu’s glare was wider, less precise, but no less sharp.

I should be the one they’re focusing on, he thought. His hands clenched at his sides. In the private theater of his mind the arrangement of the morning rearranged itself into the shape he preferred: himself at the center, describing how hard the work had been, drawing pity and hovering attention from the other omegas while Mo Xingxue remained exactly where background characters belonged.

The laugh from the seed line earlier, the easy cluster of the trio, the way the cameras and the chat seemed to find that pair without being asked—all of it stacked into a single offense.

This bitch stole every bit of attention that should have been mine.

Anger coiled tight around his chest and throat. The delicate, innocent face he had spent so long refining threatened to crack under the pressure of the thought. Then, as if a switch had been thrown somewhere behind his eyes, the fluctuation stopped.

The calm that replaced it was abrupt enough to feel wrong.

I need to settle down, he thought, taking a deep breath.

The difference between the seething of a second earlier and the stillness that followed was chilling in its neatness. His gaze moved from Mo Xingxue to the alpha standing too close to her.

The reason she’s this popular.. is her.

A cold smile touched the corner of his mouth. Calculation replaced heat.

So if I want what Mo Xingxue has, then all I have to do is—

"Lin Xuanyu."

Gu Chengze’s voice cut cleanly through the half-formed plan.

Every dark edge vanished on contact. Lin Xuanyu turned with a sweet, innocent smile already fitted into place, eyes crinkling as if the sound of his name in that particular mouth were the only thing the morning had been waiting to deliver.

"Yes, CEO Gu?"

Gu Chengze looked at the docile expression, at the careful performance of harmlessness, and the corner of his own mouth threatened to lift. He firmly pressed it down and glanced away before the reaction could fully show.

"I was asking if you want to stroll around the field while we wait for that accursed PD."

Disdain for Xu Cui sat openly in the words. Lin Xuanyu gasped as if the insult itself might be recorded.

"CEO Gu!" He checked left, then right, then scanned for the nearest boom mic with the urgency of someone who treated production audio as a personal threat. When the immediate area looked clear he exhaled and turned back with an adorable pout, cheeks puffed for emphasis. "You mustn’t be that careless. We’re on set—what if one of his crew hears us?"

Gu Chengze snorted.

"So what if they heard us?"

The cold in the question was not for show. His gaze drifted toward the nearest staff as if he were already weighing what it would cost to make a problem of them. Lin Xuanyu, faced with that particular brand of disregard for consequence, showed no fear at all. Instead, admiration sat plain in his eyes—the private, greedy appreciation of someone who had decided that courage and dominance were among the qualities worth collecting in an alpha, and that Gu Chengze possessed both in satisfying measure.

This is why I love you, CEO Gu.

The thought warmed him more than the morning. His mouth curved. Then, as if a half-finished page had fluttered out of reach, he tipped his head.

What was I thinking about earlier?

He held the question for a few seconds, found nothing he cared to retrieve, and waved it off with the same ease he used to dismiss anything that did not serve the present.

Eh. Whatever. Surely it wasn’t important.

He went back to admiring Gu Chengze’s might, while across the gathering the other six continued their ordinary talk of soil and seeds, and the staff member at the front kept glancing toward the path as if PD Xu Cui might still appear and make the next segment someone else’s problem.

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Meanwhile, in the borrowed house, PD Xu Cui was fully occupied with a different kind of production.

He had his phone out and no intention of putting it away. Mo Yan occupied the center of the frame again and again—cheeks soft, mouth slack in sleep, a thin gleam of drool finding its way toward her chin with the determination of something that refused to be ignored. PD Xu Cui cooed under his breath, the sound entirely unprofessional and entirely sincere.

"Aw...!"

He bent, fished a tissue from the travel bag that lived within easy reach of the stroller, and wiped her face with the careful precision of a man who had decided that even unconscious dignity mattered. The drool surrendered. He discarded the tissue, lifted the phone once more, and took another shot for the growing private archive before turning toward the sofa.

Shen Guoxing slept the way she lived, with energy that did not fully clock out.

Her right arm was bent up near her head, hand open as if she had fallen asleep mid-gesture. Her left hung off the edge of the sofa, fingers dangling toward the floor. The blanket that should have been covering her had lost the argument sometime in the last hour and now lay in a discarded heap on the ground, leaving her exposed to whatever draft the room cared to offer.

PD Xu Cui chuckled.

He raised the phone, framed the chaos, and captured it before intervening.

Cute! So cute! The cutest toddler there is!

The verdict required no second opinion. Only after the image was safely stored did he set about repairs—easing the raised arm into a more sustainable position, lifting the dangling one back onto the cushions, retrieving the blanket from its exile on the floor. He tucked her in with the same firm care he brought to call sheets and difficult guests, smoothing the edge once so it would not slide off again at the first restless turn.

When both children were settled, he sat down on the floor where he was, back against nothing in particular, a smile still lingering at the corners of his mouth. The house was quiet in the particular way of a space that held sleeping children and no immediate crisis. Then, suspicious of the peace, he tilted his head.

Was I supposed to do something?

The question arrived late and without urgency. Somewhere beyond these walls there was a field, a cluster of waiting guests, a next segment that officially belonged to his mouth and his schedule. The thought of it brushed the edge of his awareness and failed to take hold. He was still turning the vague shape of forgotten duty over in his mind when a thin, rising cry cut through the quiet.

Mo Yan.

PD Xu Cui was on his feet before the second note fully formed. The forgotten obligation—whatever it had been—dropped from his hands without a struggle.

Whatever I was supposed to do can wait.

He lifted Mo Yan from the crib with the practiced ease. She settled against his chest in a warm, unhappy bundle, still working up to a full complaint. He cradled her, adjusted his hold, and began the slow, wordless work of coaxing her back toward sleep—sway, murmur, the steady pressure of a palm against a small back.

My babies come first.

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Before y’all come after my ahh, I just wanted to inform y’all I’ll try to make up for the missed updates. YEAH. ALL OF IT!