An expression of breathtaking, stunning beauty on Fu Hongli's face was masked by a bone-chilling frost.
It was clear that she was furious.
Lin Yang hastily sat up from the sofa.
"What is it?" he said hurriedly. "Tell me, and I'll do whatever you say!"
Fu Hongli let out a cold snort.
"Even though you're just a shield I hired, in the eyes of outsiders, you are my, Fu Hongli's, boyfriend. So you'd better not go flirting and messing around with other girls. I, Fu Hongli, cannot afford to lose face like that. Did you hear me?"
Lin Yang instantly realized that Fu Hongli must have overheard his phone call with Ruan Mi just now.
Otherwise, she wouldn't have come out specifically to lecture him.
Lin Yang guessed correctly; she really had heard his conversation with Ruan Mi.
It wasn't that Fu Hongli was jealous.
She simply felt that Lin Yang was going too far.
He was clearly someone she had paid to play her boyfriend, yet here he was, chatting intimately with another girl.
If other people found out about this, where would she put her face?
That was why she had put on a cold expression and come out to warn Lin Yang.
Lin Yang originally wanted to explain his relationship with Ruan Mi, but seeing Fu Hongli's icy-cold face, he abandoned the idea.
He nodded and said, "Got it, I'll pay attention. I will definitely not get involved in any scandals with anyone, and I will never make you lose face!"
"Remember what you said!"
Dropping those cold words, Fu Hongli turned and walked back to her bedroom.
Lin Yang let out a sigh of relief.
Fu Hongli was clearly a delicate and gorgeous beauty.
Yet Lin Yang inexplicably had the illusion that being around her was like walking on thin ice with a monarch.
Damn it, once he paid off his debts, he had better stay far away from her.
Having made up his mind, Lin Yang lay back down on the sofa and tried to drift off to sleep.
However, he failed.
His mind was entirely consumed by the events of the day.
Lin Yang genuinely felt as though he were living in a dream.
First, around midday, he had inexplicably become the campus belle Fu Hongli's boyfriend, and by evening, he had actually ended up staying overnight at her place.
Not even scripts dared to be written this way.
After pondering this for a while, Lin Yang looked over his ledger.
Every single entry recorded here was an external debt.
Looking through it item by item was truly horrifying.
However, subtracting the hundred and twenty thousand he currently had on hand, he still owed one million three hundred and twenty thousand.
It was truly an astronomical sum.
Still, Lin Yang had grown numb to it.
Over the past two years, he had flipped through this ledger countless times.
His mood had long since shifted from initial panic and terror to complete numbness.
For the past two years, he had lived like a wound-up clock, with no life of his own, no personal destiny.
Day in and day out, he lived numbly.
When the bankruptcy first happened, dozens of creditors had come knocking at his door demanding payment, and Lin Yang had desperately wanted to leap off the roof.
Later, when his mother fell ill, Lin Yang forced himself to shoulder it all.
He had knelt before debt collectors, begging them for a few days' grace; he had knelt before his boss at work, begging him not to withhold his wages.
After that, Lin Yang simply got used to it—used to being treated as inferior, used to accepting reality, used to being trampled into the dust.
As he thought of these things, Lin Yang snapped back to reality.
He closed the ledger and put away his phone, whose screen was already shattered like a spiderweb.
You see, he didn't even have the luxury of time to wallow in self-pity. It was already past ten o'clock at night, and he had to sleep.
He had no choice; he had to be at the school cafeteria to work by five o'clock tomorrow morning.
Back in her room, Fu Hongli felt no inclination to sleep.With a member of the opposite sex suddenly moving into her home, she really couldn't fall asleep.
She felt as though her personal space had been invaded.
Yet the true reason she couldn't sleep was that she did not trust Lin Yang.
Tossing and turning in bed past eleven o'clock, Fu Hongli still had no sleepiness at all.
She simply got up and left her room, determined to see what Lin Yang was doing.
Lin Yang was already asleep.
In the dim light, his breathing was exceptionally even.
To be frank, it was the first time Fu Hongli had looked closely at Lin Yang's face.
Even though Fu Hongli had seen countless handsome men and beautiful women, at this moment she had to admit to herself that the Lin Yang before her was indeed very handsome.
Even asleep, that sharply defined face still radiated an astonishing charm.
His skin was wonderful—the kind where you couldn't even see the pores.
His nasal bridge was high and straight, standing like a small hill on that captivating face.
Perhaps dreaming, Lin Yang murmured something.
Startled back to her senses, Fu Hongli felt her pretty face inexplicably grow warm.
Then, like a frightened little rabbit, she hurried back to her own room.
Fu Hongli buried her fair, pretty face deep into her pillow, and inexplicably, Lin Yang's face surfaced in her mind once again.
The rest of the night passed in silence.
At half-past four in the morning, Lin Yang opened his eyes.
His eyes still held a trace of red veins, caused by a lack of proper rest.
Yet Lin Yang's mind was already fully awake.
For the past two years, he had grown accustomed to waking up at this hour.
He tiptoed over to the entryway, changed his shoes, and then slowly opened the door, quietly leaving Fu Hongli's home.
Jiangcheng at four-thirty in the morning appeared full of vitality; sanitation workers had already started their shifts, and breakfast shop owners were beginning their busy day.
Lin Yang had no time to admire this scenery as he rode a shared bicycle in a desperate rush toward Jiang University.
The job at the campus cafeteria was something his counselor had found for him when he first enrolled.
The pay wasn't high—only twelve hundred yuan a month.
Yet at the time, that twelve hundred yuan meant life or death to Lin Yang; at the very least, it kept him and his mother from going hungry.
Therefore, even when Lin Yang later found better options, he had never considered leaving.
For one, he was grateful to the elderly couple for helping him when he was at his lowest, and for another, they needed him.
When he arrived at the cafeteria, it was exactly five o'clock.
The cafeteria was brightly lit, and all the food stalls were already bustling with activity.
Lin Yang entered the stall where he worked from the back.
The stall was run by an elderly couple who used to be professors at Jiang University. After retiring, with nothing better to do, they had taken over this food stall.
Every morning they sold items like steamed buns and congee.
Lin Yang's main task was making steamed buns.
For Lin Yang, this was much easier than being a sparring partner at a club, and much easier than teaching Bai Zhiqian how to play the piano.
After all, Lin Yang's family used to be in the catering business; by the age of twelve, he was already adept at wrapping steamed buns with twenty-four evenly spaced pleats.
As soon as he stepped into the stall, he saw Shen Lizhou.
Shen Lizhou, just like Lin Yang, was a work-study student.
At this moment, she was squatting on the floor, sobbing.
Lin Yang was startled.
He hurried over and asked, "Shen Lizhou, what's wrong?"