"Lu Yi, let's talk."
Lin Jinshen looked at her and saw her pale shoulders exposed. He added, "Wear a jacket."
"?"
Lu Yi looked down. Although it was a camisole nightgown, the cut was not exaggerated. It wasn't a deep V, and the hem barely reached her thighs. It was a bandeau top that barely covered her collarbone, and the length reached her knees, not revealing much.
His recollection was that she was being indecent at the moment.
Wear a jacket?
It's summer!
"Wait a minute," Lu Yi gritted her teeth.
"I'll wait for you in the study," Lin Jinshen left the bedroom.
Lu Yi was unlikely to find a jacket to put on, so she found another t-shirt and shorts to change into. Puff was a little scared and stayed on her feet. She stroked her little head and said, "Don't worry, Mommy will fight for you to get a place."
"Meow meow,"
She can soften the heart.
As she walked by, Lin Jinshen stood with his back to her, his shirt tucked into his pants, making his legs look longer. He stood there like an immovable mountain.
When Lu Yi walked in, Lin Jinshen turned around and their eyes met, like a formal meeting between a subordinate and his superior.
No wonder she always calls him Lin Zong. Anyone in this situation would subconsciously do the same.
"Would you like to sit down?" Lin Jinshen asked.
"No," Lu Yi shook her head.
Lin Jinshen said, "I know it's been less than a month since we met and got married, and we don't really know much about each other, and our lifestyles are quite different."
"Since we are going to live together in the future, it would be better to be clear from the beginning."
Lu Yi nodded, yes, it would be better to be clear from the beginning than to accumulate conflicts later.
"You go first and I go second?"
"You go first."
Lin Jinshen's life is very simple. He gets up every morning at 6, goes for a run and eats breakfast, goes to work at 7:30, and goes to bed at 11. He doesn't want to be disturbed during his 7 hours of sleep.
He is slightly obsessive-compulsive and likes things to be orderly. He hates clutter, even if it's just a pair of slippers.
He can't stand eating in bed or other creatures climbing into bed. By other creatures, he means puffs.
...
"No problem, I can try to do all those things you mentioned."
Especially going to bed at 11 o'clock. She included the young people she knew who didn't go to bed that early. Since going to bed early was good for the body, she could try it. As for the rest, all she had to do was pay a little attention. She wasn't in the habit of eating in bed either.
Lin Jinshen leaned against the desk, his long legs bent. Still, he was the same height as Lu Yi. He nodded, "What about you?"
"I only have one request, I want Puff to stay." Lu Yi looked into his eyes and said, "Puff's mother was a stray cat, and she died shortly after giving birth. I brought her home, so I should be responsible for her."
Perhaps because it was a stray, Puff was especially dependent on her, and if she abandoned it, it would definitely be very sad.
Lin Jinshen's gaze was cold, and after a moment, he relented: "Fine, she can stay, but she can't stay in the bedroom. Take her downstairs. I'll try to get along with her."
"Really?"
Lu Yi's tone was full of surprise, and unlike her usual polite, superficial smile, this time her smile was genuine, reaching to the bottom of her eyes as she said, "Thank you."
"I said I'd try, I can't guarantee I'll be able to accept them in the future."
"No problem. Spend a few more days with her and you'll see, she's a really good cat, she never barks or runs around." It was the dream cat!
Lin Jinshen couldn't say whether he agreed or not.
"There's one more thing," he said slowly. "Regarding the question of a marriage of convenience you mentioned earlier, I can give you a precise answer now. No, what I wanted from the beginning was a normal man-woman relationship."
Lu Yi listened, holding her breath and concentrating.
"So we'll do what normal couples do."
"Okay, that's fine with me." Lu Yi thought for a moment and asked, "Can I ask how often?"
Since they were making rules, it would be better to make the standards clear from the beginning to avoid future arguments.
I am not interested in such things," Lin Jinshen said, raising her long eyelashes. "Three times a week is supposed to be a normal and healthy frequency for adults."
Although he didn't know who said that, Lu Yi could accept the frequency of three times a week.
"Couple life is one thing, but there's also time to spend together. How many hours a week do you think is reasonable?" Lin Jinshen asked, his deep eyes seeming to focus on whatever he was looking at.
"..."
Do we need to set KPIs for this as well? If we don't finish, do we have to do something as punishment?
Lu Yi weighed the situation over and over again, and hesitantly said, "It's not convenient to accumulate the time for a week. How about this? Let's set aside half a day on the weekend and have dinner together?"
"Okay," Lin Jinshen agreed without hesitation.
He was so determined in his agreement that Lu Yi regretted it. Why was it only one meal a week? Wouldn't one meal a month be better?
"Anything else?"
"To be added."
"..."
The first family meeting was over.
It was serious, but the atmosphere at work was more relaxed than this at meetings of any size.
Lu Yi breathed a sigh of relief that Puff would be able to stay. She said, "Shall we end it now? You go take a shower and I'll take Puff downstairs."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Lin Jinshen stood up and walked past her.
Lu Yi followed behind. She took Puff's litter box and cat bed down to the cat, rewarding her for spending the night alone for the first time and feeding her cat treats as an exception.
She crouched down and saw the suitcase that Lin Jinshen had brought back from the door.
She forgot to ask at the meeting earlier if they needed to have sex tonight.
-
In the bathroom.
Lin Jinshen had lathered up his cheeks and was tilting his face in the mirror to shave.
There was a mist of condensed hot air on the mirror, indicating that someone had used it before him. Their things were arranged on the counter on either side. On one side, there were bottles and jars of various colors, while on the other side, which was dominated by black, white, and gray, everything was neatly separated and did not overlap.
Lu Yi was obviously not the type to put things away haphazardly. Her skin care products and towels were all neatly arranged.
This business trip to Shanghai to negotiate the acquisition of KS did not go smoothly. They are not the only ones interested, and there is no way to predict when it will end.
Jiang Xun said that his things have already been moved to Chengxiyuan, and that Lu Yi asked him when he could go back, his tone very worried. He hopes you can finish your business trip early, it is urgent.
Urgent?
I don't see it.
One person, one cat, in harmony and at ease.
He seems to be superfluous.
Lin Jinshen came out of the bedroom after washing up, but there was still no one there. Lu Yi was still cowering downstairs with his arms around his knees, teasing the cat.
It was almost eleven o'clock.
"Lu Yi,"
The voice upstairs sounded like a subwoofer.
Lu Yi looked up sharply and locked eyes with Lin Jinshen on the second floor. He had just finished showering and was wearing pajamas that surprisingly had long sleeves and were buttoned up to the neck. At first glance, they looked like the same pair of pajamas her father wore, but her father wasn't such a stick-in-the-mud that he buttoned up all the buttons.
She thought about how he had just asked her to wear a jacket, and she couldn't help but laugh at the incongruity.
He looked like the kind of person who would be more worried about whether or not they would make it tonight than she would.
"I'm up," Lu Yi stood. Her legs were numb from crouching for so long, so she took her time getting up. When she returned to the bedroom, Lin Jinshen was already in bed, taking the left side of the bed and leaving the right side for her.
She lifted the blanket and lay down.
Lin Jinshen looked at the time, 10:50, turned off the light, and lay down.
Lu Yi grabbed the quilt and asked, "Are we doing this tonight?"
"It's late today, let's rest early." There was a rare pause in his voice.
Lu Yi breathed a sigh of relief, but then wondered if this was Lin Jinshen's delaying tactic. He couldn't actually do it, but he could act like he could, and he could actually delay things.
How about three times a week? In reality, he couldn't do it even once.
Thinking like that helped her relax.
Lu Yi is used to sleeping alone, and with an unexpected extra person around, an unknown man at that, she was bound to suffer from insomnia.
As she tossed and turned, unable to sleep, the person next to her had already closed his eyes and emitted the even, shallow sound of breathing, clearly already asleep.
Lu Yi looked at her phone.
It was eleven o'clock, precise enough to be curious.
She wondered if there was a switch in his body that turned on and off at the right time.
The only good thing about insomnia is that she sleeps so soundly in the morning that she doesn't feel when Lin Jinshen gets up. When she wakes up, he's already gone and the blanket on his side is flattened, as if he didn't come back last night and she was just dreaming.
After washing up, Lu Yi goes downstairs to put out some cat food for Puff.
Puff meows at the sight of her, as if complaining in a low voice that he has been wronged. She scratches his chin and says, "Be good, Mommy will earn food for you when she goes to work.
Lu Yi was looking for a suitable venue, since she was at work all day.
This time, they had high requirements for the venue, as they had to choose an appropriately sized exhibition hall with a limited budget, and also consider issues such as transportation of exhibits.
In the afternoon, Yu Yin sent her an invitation to a small literary and artistic cafe and asked her to explore the place with her. After the venue was chosen, she looked up the address and went there.
Yu Yin brought a few things with her, a tripod and two cameras, one for taking photos and one for vlogging, to collect daily material. Lu Yi acted as a temporary photographer, and the few photos they took were used to post on the platform's dynamic content.
The two of them left the cafe and went to a Xitu Lanya restaurant for dinner.
The Xitu Lanya Restaurant also had a literary and artistic tone, but it was not good for eating. The two of them didn't eat much.
Yu Yin didn't feel the need to record the rest, so she turned off the camera and started chatting normally. The conversation inevitably turned to Lu Yi's married life.
She knew that Lin Jinshen had come back.
She also knew that Xiao Bao Fu had been left behind on the condition that she live downstairs.
What she was more curious about was, "You didn't even have sex on the first night?"
Yu Yin and Lu Yi had grown up together since childhood, and Yu Yin had always had a visceral sense of Lu Yi's beauty. She had been the school beauty queen since childhood, and there was no dispute about it. She was attracted to every woman, and yet he could remain indifferent to such a beautiful woman by his side.
Either he was in a sham marriage and was gay, or he had a sexual disorder!
The voice was too loud. After all, they were in the Xitu Lanya Restaurant, and Lu Yi was embarrassed to raise her head even as she lowered it: "Can you speak a little lower?"
Yu Yin raised her leg and leaned forward to lower her voice, asking, "No, don't you feel anything wrong?"
There is a little, but Lu Yi explained for him, "Because it was late last night, eleven o'clock, his bedtime, and he just got back from a business trip, he's tired too.
Yu Yin raised her eyebrows, her look indicating that she should continue to cover it up.
Lu Yi couldn't continue.
"Whether to do it or not is the same as whether to want it or not." With a beauty on her side, she should at least get a few kisses, right?
"Just wait and see, I'll say he can't do it, sooner or later he'll reveal himself."
"..."
Lu Yi drank tea to relieve the greasy feeling in her mouth and didn't say anything else. Compared to the question of whether he could do it or not, what she needed to get used to more was sleeping in the same bed with him. If she continued to lose sleep like this, she would go crazy sooner or later.
At 9 o'clock, Auntie Fang sent a message saying that she would go home first and feed Puffs cat food before going to work.
Lu Yi arrived home to find the house dark. She turned on the lights and found Puffs waiting at the door. Lin Jinshen had not returned.
She breathed a sigh of relief and responded to Puffs' barking by calling it a good boy.
She had just changed a shoe when she heard the sound of a fingerprint unlocking behind her. Her movement to take off her slippers froze. She turned around to see Lin Jinshen open the door and walk in. The two of them looked at each other.
"Just got back?"
"Just got back from work?"
They asked at the same time and nodded at the same time, making the situation even more awkward.
Lu Yi gave him some space inside and calmly continued to change her shoes. The entrance was obviously not crowded, but when Lin Jinshen came over, her heart tightened and the air was suddenly compressed.
Her shoulder touched his.
His suddenly constricted heart lifted.
Puff had just been at her side, but as soon as Lin Jinshen returned, it was like a mouse seeing a cat, and it immediately scurried back to its own little nest, only its eyes showing, watching him intently.
Their slippers were a pair, one pink and one blue, and they didn't know who had prepared them.
After changing his shoes, Lin Jinshen crouched down and straightened the shoes he had taken off. Glancing at her from the corner of his eye, he raised his hand in half a second and straightened the thin strap of the high heel she had folded.
"..." A bit OCD.
Lin Jinshen stood up and asked, "Have you had dinner yet?"
"I have, have you?"
"Mm."
The good thing was that the polite greetings were over, but the bad thing was that what else could they say?
And how would they get through the night in the same bed?
Lin Jinshen walks forward as he takes off his jacket, grabs the Windsor knot in one hand, and pulls it twice before turning back as he thinks of something. Lu Yi is dazed and almost bumps into him.
His dark gaze falls on her face and he asks, "Will you wash first today or will I?"