Chapter 19

Yun Zhi had no memory of anyone called Ma Zijun.

When he had transmigrated into this novel, he hadn't inherited the original host's memories. Everything he knew about the original host's former life had been pieced together from traces left in the bedroom and from scattered fragments offered by his brother and the housekeeper.

He had always assumed the original host's family situation was simple — after his parents died, he had grown up in the care and affection of his older brother.

But from Ma Zijun's messages, the original host and his brother weren't blood relatives at all. The original host had met his brother at an orphanage, and when his brother was later taken and adopted by his parents, the original host came along too — and it was only then that they had called each other brothers.

Moreover, according to Ma Zijun, his brother's desire to control Yun Zhi was intense — to the point of stripping him of even the freedom to choose his own friends.

Yet from Yun Zhi's own experience of Jin Zeli, while his brother was sometimes strict with him about certain things, it was nowhere near as unhinged as what Ma Zijun had described. His brother never asked about who he was friends with, and never pried into his privacy.

Yun Zhi was skeptical of what Ma Zijun had said.

Could it be that someone who knew both him and his brother had learned about his memory loss and was trying to use it to drive a wedge between them?

Not impossible.

His brother operated in a world of wealth and power — he would inevitably have enemies who resented him, and perhaps someone was trying to get to him through Yun Zhi. If Yun Zhi didn't believe it, nothing would be lost. If he did believe it, that would be playing right into their hands.

Yun Zhi arrived at this thought in the span of a few seconds, and his spiked heartbeat gradually settled.

"Mm?" Jin Zeli closed the report in his hands and turned his head to look at him.

"Nothing — I just wanted to say your name." Yun Zhi smiled sweetly. The dimples at the corners of his mouth seemed to have the power to lift someone's mood, because even the thin line of Jin Zeli's lips curved slightly.

"Is there anything you want to eat when we get home? I'll have the kitchen start now." Jin Zeli ruffled his hair and asked.

"Anything is fine. I'm not picky." Yun Zhi rubbed contentedly against his palm, then hesitated for two seconds before holding out his phone, smiling with his eyes curving warmly. "Brother, do you want to look at my phone?"

The hand on his head paused noticeably.

Jin Zeli lowered his hand. An unnaturally shaped smile appeared at the corner of his mouth, and his voice softened. "Why would I look at your phone? Why are you offering to show me?"

Yun Zhi's eyes darted about for a moment and he pressed his lips into a smile. "I don't know, haha — just an unconscious reflex. Can I keep playing on it then?"

"Mm." Jin Zeli gave an assent, but his gaze lingered on Yun Zhi's face as he bowed his head back to his phone — staying there for quite a while before it moved away.

The cook had prepared custard pudding cakes for Yun Zhi. Jin Zeli stayed with Yun Zhi until he had eaten and drunk his fill, then went off to work. The company had several projects in preparation right now, and even the weekend offered him no rest.

With Yun Zhi home today, he simply chose to work from home as well.

The production team had given the trainees two days off, but Yun Zhi had no intention of wasting them. He hadn't even finished high school yet — he had no right to idle away his time.

Being an excellent idol meant that nothing could drag you down. Studies, as hard and difficult as they were, had to be kept up until he could test into university.

Yun Zhi dug a senior high school required textbook out from the corner of the bookshelf, took a deep breath, and opened a brand-new Year 3 mathematics book.

Half an hour later, he closed the book — having only gotten through ten pages — and quietly retrieved the Year 2 mathematics textbook.

It wasn't that he was hopeless; it was that so much of this world's high school mathematics was different from what he'd studied before. Without a teacher to walk him through it, the material was very hard going.

It took him ten minutes to work through a single theory. He gave himself an encouraging pep talk and turned to the next page.

What met his eyes was a page covered in blue ballpoint pen scrawls — chaotic lines filling the entire surface. The force used had been so heavy that the paper had been torn through in several places, leaving an unmistakable sense of the intense emotion the original host had been venting.

In the lower left corner of the page were some unsteady, wavering characters, seemingly written as an afterthought and then half-buried under the frantic blue scrawl.

Yun Zhi leaned in to read carefully, mouthing the words silently: He came into my room again last night. Even with the lock on he still gets in. I'm too scared to sleep now.

Yun Zhi flipped to the notes in the language arts textbook to cross-reference. He confirmed it was the original host's handwriting — just written with a somewhat trembling hand.

A chill crept down his back. Yun Zhi quickly flipped through the book and found another line of small characters tucked into the spine: I found out he's been watching me every day. Every single day.

Twenty-some pages further: This isn't a home. It's a cage. I'm scared. I'd rather die outside than stay here.

In the language arts textbook: Caught and brought back. Can't escape.

The last one Yun Zhi found: He's clearly a demon, yet I have to call him brother, haha...

When he'd seen Ma Zijun's message, Yun Zhi had only felt stunned and uncertain. Now, having found the original host's diary entries, he felt a cold spreading through his entire body.

Those unsteady, wavering characters had been written by the original host with trembling hands.

The original host had discovered that his brother was trying to imprison him — so he had tried to escape, only to be captured and brought back.

But what was the reason his brother was imprisoning him?

Yun Zhi could feel how well his brother treated him — attending to every detail of his life, thinking of him at every moment. That kind of care.

"Yun Zhi?"

A familiar voice came from behind him. Yun Zhi startled, instinctively snapped the book shut, and turned to stare blankly at Jin Zeli.

The pallor on his face was visible to the naked eye, and fine, cold sweat had broken out at his temple.

Jin Zeli strode over quickly, raised the back of his hand and tested Yun Zhi's forehead temperature. "Are you feeling unwell?"

Yun Zhi swallowed nervously, staring at him without a word, a part of him half-expecting the person in front of him to reach for his throat in the next second.

"My head hurts," Yun Zhi said. He didn't dare look at him any longer and bowed his head, pretending to rub his temples. His voice was thin and hesitant as he asked, "Brother — was I in the Sunshine Orphanage? I think I might be remembering something. I keep seeing flashes in my head of fragments from when I was little. Why would I have been in an orphanage, brother? Did our parents not want me?"

Jin Zeli's sharp gaze bore into him for several seconds. He asked in a light, floating voice, "And? What else do you remember?"

That voice made Yun Zhi clutch his head in apparent anguish, fist thumping at the back of his skull. "That's all I can get — why can't I remember anything more..."

At that, Jin Zeli's eyes softened. He crouched down and took Yun Zhi's hands, soothing him gently. "If you can't remember, then leave it. Don't torture yourself. Come with me — I'll tell you everything."

He took Yun Zhi by the wrist and brought him to the study, then retrieved from the bookshelves a thick photo album and opened it. Every photo inside was of Yun Zhi — and the only other person who appeared in any of them was Jin Zeli.

Jin Zeli settled Yun Zhi on the sofa and sat beside him, pointing to the image of a beautiful child. "This is when you were five. I had just arrived at the Sunshine Orphanage. You smiled at me and gave me candy. When one of the older kids tried to bully me, you ran over and punched him, but got beaten up yourself in the end — and I was the one who had to rescue you."

When speaking of memories, Jin Zeli's voice became remarkably warm.

"Here you're seven. My father came to take me home — and adopted you as well."

"This one — I was leaving for university. You grabbed onto my legs and wouldn't let me go."

"And this one I took for you. We'd just moved into the new house, and you loved your room so much you insisted on decorating it yourself."

"Yun Zhi — even though we're not blood brothers, we're very close to each other, aren't we?" He raised Yun Zhi's chin with a slight smile, his gaze as soft and gentle as still water, as if lost in beautiful memories.

He looked at Yun Zhi. "You went through a little rebellious phase these past two years — stopped listening to me quite so much. But brother still loves you very much. You're my only family. I can't be without you. Will you stay by brother's side always?"

Yun Zhi saw vulnerability in his eyes, and something inside his chest quietly crumbled.

Perhaps before, his brother simply hadn't known how to keep the original host close, and had used the wrong approach — inadvertently causing the original host to become frightened of him.

But his brother truly loved him.

Yun Zhi thought he could gradually change his brother's obsessive tendencies, guide him away from those wrong behaviors.

"Of course I will. Brother is so good to me — how could I bear to leave." Yun Zhi bowed his head and wrapped his arms around Jin Zeli's waist, patting him gently on the back.

After the two of them had talked things through, the warmth between them deepened considerably.

That evening, after dinner, the two of them sat together on the living room sofa to watch the premiere of 101 Days: Omega Idol Cultivation Plan.

Ten minutes before the show started, he sent Fang Yixing a reminder to tune in. The reply came back instantly — an OK.

Appearing on a show for the first time, Yun Zhi was so excited he was screaming internally. He kept shifting around on the sofa, unable to sit still.

He had actually been slightly worried before about his brother seeing Fang Yixing on the show — but then he reconsidered. He couldn't keep his girl-friend hidden forever. Going into the entertainment industry to chase his dream meant looking forward to being seen by more people.

As long as Fang Yixing didn't release pheromones in front of his brother, his brother wouldn't become obsessed with him.

At eight o'clock, the show started on time. To catch the viewer reaction, Yun Zhi turned the barrage comments on at twenty percent density.

Apart from a handful of trainees with prior public profiles, most were complete unknowns — and what viewers noticed first was their looks. Yes, exactly that shallow.

When the clip of Yun Zhi and Fang Yixing walking in played, the barrage comments visibly thickened, the top of the screen nearly consumed by marmot-screaming emojis.

Yun Zhi contentedly read comments praising his and Fang Yixing's "legendary beauty," and felt the taro ball mochi he was chewing taste even better somehow.

The camera zoomed in on the two of them for a close-up lasting a full three seconds. The contrast between their looks was striking while each had their own distinct charm — his lashes long and curling, Fang Yixing's long and straight, sweeping down together in the same moment when their eyes met, the visual impact stunning.

One soft and adorably cute, one cool and quietly warm — beauty-obsessed viewers couldn't possibly pass this up!

A viewer in the barrage had already lost their mind: [Two people this beautiful not getting together is literally a waste of resources! Get the "Divine Faces CP" going!!]

Someone immediately shot back.

[Go away — your brain is so fried from shipping you forgot they're BOTH Omegas??]

[Please remember OO relationships are illegal, and the fine is worth an entire apartment]

Yun Zhi saw this scroll past and felt a small jolt of surprise. He pulled out his phone and looked up the fine amount for OO relationships, confirming it was indeed a number he could not afford.

With Omegas already so scarce in this day and age — internal consumption between them was simply not viable.

So the viewers didn't take the shipping barrage comments seriously either. No matter how much CP energy they gave off — obviously nothing would come of it.

That was, until the segment where Fang Yixing fed Yun Zhi the candy played. That casual gesture, the barely-perceptible panic that flickered in his eyes, the careful way he clutched the candy wrapper — all of it had been caught by the camera.

Even Fang Yixing's throat bobbing as he watched Yun Zhi suck on the candy he'd fed him got a close-up!

And they weren't supposed to ship this?!

The production team was shipping it themselves!

Shippers could no longer contain their excitement, flooding the barrage with "Divine Faces CP is so real!!"

Yun Zhi was gobsmacked. It was just a perfectly ordinary interaction — how were viewers managing to extract so many bizarre implications from it?

Jin Zeli, watching this clip on the television, felt an indescribable unease stir in him. Even knowing that person was also an Omega and couldn't possibly steal his Yun Zhi, he still intensely disliked the idea of anyone touching Yun Zhi.

Yun Zhi could only be close to him.

The phone beside him buzzed. Yun Zhi picked it up and tapped the Weibo link Fang Yixing had sent — the Divine Faces CP fan super-topic.

The CP fan super-topic had just been established, and Yun Zhi watched fans pour in with his own eyes, posts refreshing one after another.

The newest post: Yun Zhi being Fangfang's wife — anyone object? #DivineeFacesCP #JinYunzhi #FangYixing, the comments a unanimous cascade of "seconded."

Yun Zhi grumbled unhappily, "These fans have already decided I'm the wife? Didn't anyone think to ask my opinion?!"

Jin Zeli caught a glance at the phone screen. His brow furrowed tight. After a long moment, having finally suppressed the impulse to lock Yun Zhi inside the house, his deep eyes turned toward Yun Zhi. "I'll have someone report these baseless claims. You're going to marry me in the future."

Yun Zhi was struck as though by lightning. He sat with his mouth hanging open speechlessly for quite a while before managing to ask, "What do you mean?"

Jin Zeli explained patiently, "When you were little, you said you wanted me to marry you when you grew up."

So don't go forgetting that again.

Yun Zhi felt a wave of helpless despair.

The original host's childhood embarrassments — and his brother had remembered it all this time? And was now bringing it up in all seriousness as if it were a joke?!

Yun Zhi laughed awkwardly and shook his head like a rattle drum. "A child talking nonsense who didn't know any better. We're on the same household register, brother — that's absolutely not happening!"