Mr. Yuan is Always Unhappy - Chap 28
Edited by Yummers
Actually, before Zheng Qiuyang even came home that night, he was already very afflicted.
After he and Yuan Rui scheduled to meet Yuan Rui’s stepdad, Suo Jianjun, for Lunar New Year’s in the morning, he made an instantaneous decision on his way to work. He can’t continue to be swayed by the tide and dawdle away any more precious time. Although he couldn’t be in control of his elders’ decisions, he can still decide his future for himself.
He didn’t go to the company. He invited his dad out for a meeting and cut straight to the point. He wanted to resign and leave the Yun Chang Jewelry company.
His dad asked, “What are you going to do after resigning?”
Zheng Qiuyang replied, “Apply for other jewelry companies or become a freelancer. All in all, I don’t want to dawdle in Yun Chang any longer.”
“I’ve given you other choices, but you were the one who turned them down.”
When he came back from studying abroad a few years ago, his dad had hinted that he had two choices. One was to be a solitary designer that wouldn’t step in any of their businesses and the other was to learn some useful stuff from his dad before he retired. Even if his future couldn’t turn out the same as his older brother, Zheng Shaoyang, he could at least have a spot in the board of directors in Yun Chang.
But he chose to become a designer.
He never told anyone about it, including his mom. If she’d known, she would’ve definitely wished for him to pick the latter. She wanted recognition so badly, if she couldn’t obtain it herself, it was still a victory to her if she could obtain it through her son.
However, Zheng Qiuyang didn’t want any of it. If he had the choice, he wouldn’t even want his surname to be Zheng.
He told his dad, “Even if you were to give me another chance, I would still do the same thing. “
His dad looked at him for a while before declaring, “Then think of this as another chance. No matter what, your surname will always be Zheng——having my son working under someone else’s corporation brings shame to me.”
His dad had him return to the company first. That evening when he was almost off work, Zheng Shaoyang called him over to meet with a client together. He told him with an irritated face, “The old man wanted me to train you a bit.”
Ever since they were young, the two of them never had a proper conversation that would surpass ten lines under normal conditions. As children, while their moms chewed each other out, the two of them would also throw hands on the side. When they grew a little older, before their moms even started to argue, the two of them would have already landed harsh attacks on each other. Now, while the two women continued to insult each other, they had learned how to hold their moms back calmly. After all, they were both grown men now, some things had already come clear to them.
But that wouldn’t automatically make them not see each other as an eyesore.
Zheng Qiuyang knew well that his dad’s actions would only turn out to be futile. Yet he didn’t want to ignore the last favor from his old man, so he followed Zheng Shaoyang.
What was supposed to be a business meal with the client somehow turned into a competition between the two brothers. They went harder and harder on the alcohol, the client didn’t even dare to raise his own glass.
Since he’d gotten together with Yuan Rui, he barely ever drank this freely again. Such a thing as tolerance to alcohol can be built over time, but because he had stopped drinking in such large quantities a while ago, he couldn’t really hang in there then. In the end, he ended up drinking himself into that state.
His reactions were delayed due to the alcohol, he couldn’t control his strength too well either. Yuan Rui did feel some pain, but he didn’t want it to affect the other as he said nothing about it. Somehow, the aching pain became a bit pleasurable to him.
Ever since Zheng Qiuyang heard that Yuan Rui minded him rubbing his chest from Fang Shiqing the last time, he never touched Yuan Rui’s chest again after that. Now with his mind numbed by alcohol, he forgot it completely. Not only did he rub them, he even pinched them, bit them, and sucked on them. At last, the two red beans became bigger than peanuts.
Yuan Rui let out pleasurable moans while uncontrollable thoughts popped up. My chest hasn’t been rubbed in so long, somehow it feels really good today…am I a pervert now? Am I getting more and more feminine, oh god——isn’t a 189cm, tanned femboy way too terrifying?
On Friday night, the first episode of The Sparkling Friends was finally broadcasted at a golden time.
Other than Yuan Rui, most of the other fixed guests on the show had no experience doing reality shows. Only a female artist from Taiwan had been in a lot of variety content. Since Treasure Island was rather ahead in its variety show area, she was very good at pumping up the atmosphere. Though at the same time, Treasure Island’s comedy style was overly dramatic, so not many audience members could get her jokes. To balance it out, the production team invited an indoor host from their TV station that had a great humor presence. But indoor hosting was entirely different from a reality show. It was his first time taking on such a job so there were limits, he couldn’t really keep up either.
Under such conditions, Li Lingling was able to negotiate Yuan Rui’s pay to a million per episode. Which was the same net price as one of the top actors on the guest list. It was certainly due to him being the only experienced member of reality shows. Yuan Rui basically rose to fame from a nobody all by reality shows. He had been on that side of the entertainment industry for many years, which helped him build his standard audience. Plus the skyrocketing viewing rate of the two previous shows that Yuan Rui attended, he was not only a familiar face to those who watch variety shows normally, but also a popular favorite. For this show, since the other guests weren’t very well orientated yet, they wouldn’t attract much attention. But Yuan Rui was certain to drag in a good amount of views.
Speaking of, they really seemed to have received help from god. Another channel’s ace reality show was scheduled to come back with its season 2 on the same day. If they were to compete, The Sparkling Friends would most likely be eliminated entirely on its first episode release. But the other show’s first episode didn’t pass censorship. After half a month of tirelessly promoting their show boldly, that afternoon, they made an official Weibo announcement that began with “Unfortunately, we…” and then went on to declare an unclear delay.
Li Lingling and Zhao Zhengyi both called Yuan Rui one after another, exclaiming, “Hahahaha, that’s great!”
Fang Shiqing gossiped to him about things behind the scenes for some other shows, then also expressed, “Hahahaha, that’s great!”
Even when Zheng Qiuyang came home from work——Yuan Rui showed him all the hate comments from disappointed fans beneath that Weibo post——the other expressed, “Hahahaha, that’s absolutely great!”
Yuan Rui didn’t really agree with their way of laughing at others’ misery, but then knowing that they reacted like that in hope of his show to have a better rate, he could only comply, “Haha, it’s pretty great.”
At eight that evening, Yuan Rui and Zheng Qiuyang took down the local antenna, abandoning the extremely cheesy idol drama that was filled with dog blood. They sat in front of the TV together, waiting for The Sparkling Friends broadcast.
Li Lingling told Yuan Rui before that the first editing of the first episode made him seem really bad. Although they made some more changes in the end, Yuan Rui was still on the edge. He felt like just himself watching wouldn’t give him a good enough audience point of view, so he kept observing Zheng Qiuyang.
Zheng Qiuyang repeatedly cycled through “Hahahaha, hahaha, hahahahaha, hahaha”.
Finally, when the first commercial break came in, Yuan Rui asked him, “Was it good?”
Zheng Qiuyang laughed so much that he was about to cry. He replied, “Of course! It’s even better than the last two shows you were on! How can you be so funny? Hahaha! Everyone else knew to hide in a safe spot, why did you hide behind that table? Couldn’t you tell that there was no way the table could block you?”
“I didn’t bring a ruler, how would I know it’s so short, it looked pretty long…”
Zheng Qiuyang rubbed his face, “Oh man, hahaha! My face hurts from laughing, literally half of your leg was out in the open. So did you get caught by the red team or not in the end?”
Yuan Rui fished out his phone, he dialed a call as he said, “Not telling you, you’ll know after the commercial break.”
He called Fang Shiqing to ask, “Did you watch my show? Was it good?”
Fang Shiqing burst from the other side, “Hahaha! You idiot! Couldn’t you tell that the table isn’t as long as you?”
He hung up and called his sister, Suo Yue. The moment Suo Yue picked up, she went, “Ge, I even want to saw your legs off for you, how can you be so dumb? Hahahaha!”
He hung up again to call Li Lingling. Li Lingling said, “I was helping my son with his homework so I haven’t had the chance to watch it. Though the big boss complimented you in the WeChat group earlier, saying that your legs were really long, along with a bunch of laughing emojis. What did you do? Did you do a runaway walk to show off your legs?”
Yuan Rui, “…”
He was too embarrassed to explain at that point.
Zheng Qiuyang watched him dial one number after another, he couldn’t help but question him, “Can’t you just look on Weibo to see what people thought of it?”
Yuan Rui expressed troublingly, “I don’t want to, I’m scared that a lot of people would say it was bad.”
Zheng Qiuyang was confused, “It’s not your first time doing this, you were never this nervous before, what’s with it this time?”
“This is the first time I’m being paid a million per episode. If my performance wasn’t good, just imagine how thorny the one million would be.”
Zheng Qiuyang, “……”
Yuan Rui continued, “If I performed too poorly, no TV stations will ever hire me again in the future. Sigh, I should’ve stopped Lingling-Jie when she asked for one million per episode.”
Zheng Qiuyang grabbed his phone. “I’ll take a look at Weibo for you.”
Yuan Rui blinked. He let out a sigh then said, “I’ll look it at myself. You wouldn’t be happy to see them insulting me either.”
He took a few deep breaths before clicking on the Weibo app icon. Around seven, Li Lingling ordered him to make a Weibo post, reminding everyone to tune in for The Sparkling Friends at eight o’clock. After that, for two hours, he didn’t dare to open Weibo again.
Zheng Qiuyang took a peek as well. He had almost sixty thousand notifications, his follower count had increased by eleven thousand. Yuan Rui looked on the trending page and The Sparkling Friends held first place.
Zheng Qiuyang said, “It’s probably not bad.”
But Yuan Rui disagreed, “The TV station wants the rating to be high, they definitely bought the views, we can’t use this as a credible source.”
He inserted his name into the search bar, scrolled for a few minutes, the corner of his lips curved up gradually. He tossed his phone aside to hug Zheng Qiuyang in joy, “There were only some who said I was too stupid, most people found it funny.”
Zheng Qiuyang held him back with his eyes glued to the TV. The commercial break was over, without a doubt, Yuan Rui who hid behind the table was the first to be caught by the red team. Then, the female guest from Taiwan who was on his team also got caught. She rolled her eyes as she yelled exaggeratedly, “Yuan Rui, this is all because of your long legs, why don’t you saw them off?”
Yuan Rui obviously didn’t get the joke as he replied awkwardly in a soft voice, “But it was because the table was too short.”
The female guest’s over the top comedy added with his cold retort somehow made for a great comedic effect.
Zheng Qiuyang was laughing his brains out as he fell over.
Yuan Rui only came to the realization after seeing the subtitles. “So she was joking with me, I thought she actually didn’t like me because of my height.”
Zheng Qiuyang didn’t know what to say.
Yuan Rui said jokingly, “Because of that, I didn’t dare to stand too close to her for so many episodes later on. I was scared she might come to dislike me even more. I’ll have to treat her to milk tea next week when I see her again.”
Zheng Qiuyang patted his head as he thought, I’ll just let others keep thinking of Yuan Xiao Rui as a dummy, it’d be the best if I was the only one knowing how cute he was after all.
