Chapter 493: One Like Summer, One Like Autumn

Because it was summer and she was still at home, Cheng Hao wasn't wearing shirts or small blazers; instead, she simply wore a brown T-shirt paired with denim hot pants.

Her soft long hair was tied into a ponytail at the back of her head, swaying wildly as she descended.

Her pale white toes stumbled on the mat, nearly twisting an ankle; facing the man so close, it almost looked like she was driving into him.

"Huff..."

With her heart racing, Cheng Hao pretended to sigh in relief and patted her chest, only to seemingly forget to push away the man's hands still resting on her waist and sides—his slightly rough palms rubbing against her tender skin created a somewhat strange tingling sensation.

"Excuse me? Trying to harass me?"

Unable to bear watching, Sun Yanzi, driven by the thought that protecting her best friend was her duty, stepped forward and directly broke the quiet atmosphere, though her rolling eyes gave away some of her inner thoughts—

"Cheng Hao, he's taking advantage of you!"

"What else can I do? I can only let him have his way, after all, he saved me." Cheng Hao smiled sweetly, adding a slight emphasis on the last three words, her tone carrying a hint of teasing.

"This isn't my fault; who else could it be but that Wan Ren Mi?"

Zhou Yi raised both hands level with his forehead in a French military salute, looking utterly innocent: "You know, I'm Li Bai from the lakeside of the Ming Dynasty."

This sentence seemed to remind Cheng Hao of her days on the film set, causing her to burst out laughing: "Was Xia Yu He kicked into Poyang Lake?"

"Or maybe she was kidnapped by a fishing enthusiast and used as bait."

Cheng Hao laughed even louder.

Sun Yanzi, who didn't understand, looked left and right, her eyeballs spinning wildly; her furrowed brows, filled with confusion, even squished her eyes into different sizes—

?

She suspected the two were speaking some slang she didn't understand, but she had no evidence.

"If Qiong Yao knew you were privately slandering her works like this, she'd probably jump up and scold you for being inhumane."

Overjoyed, Cheng Hao waved at Sun Yanzi, who instantly perked up, kicked her legs, and zipped over to her best friend's side to listen to the somewhat impolite dark jokes—

Type '1' to resurrect Xia Yu He and have a rematch with Qianlong.

Having known Zhou Yi for so long, Cheng Hao had heard no shortage of strange-sounding dark jokes from him.

Obviously, Sun Yanzi, who rarely encountered this type of joke, gave Zhou Yi a changed look afterward—as if meeting him for the first time, her gaze traveled up and down, scrutinizing him for quite a while.

"What kind of look is that?"

"Tsk, I never thought you were the type." Sun Yanzi, adopting a posture of pitying the world, kept making 'tsk' sounds.

"If you have the guts, come say that to my face."

"No, no, no, nyah nyah nyah."

The next second, Sun Yanzi, who spoke the toughest words in the most cowardly tone, still hid behind Cheng Hao out of cowardice, sticking half her head out sideways to stick her tongue out at him.

The moment Zhou Yi moved, she immediately shrank back behind Cheng Hao; only after realizing there was no 'danger' did she tilt her head out again to provoke Zhou Yi.

Held by her, Cheng Hao could only stand in place, a helpless smile on her face: "Alright, stop messing around, I need to prepare dinner. If you plan on just eating instant noodles to fill your stomachs tonight, I have no objection."

"I'll help."

Upon hearing that cooking was about to start, Sun Yanzi's eyes lit up, and she immediately volunteered to go learn.

"Give it up. What help could you possibly be? You'd just burn the kitchen down."

Sitting on the ground, Zhou Yi leaned against the lathe frame and couldn't hold back his laughter.

As a famous cooking idiot, Sun Yanzi had been a Young Lady since childhood who never touched spring water with her ten fingers; after debuting, she had even less time to learn cooking, and when she was too busy, she just ate instant food.

So although she now genuinely wanted to learn some cooking, the result could only be described as 'won't kill anyone.'

Leaving aside other things, just these past two months at home, doing nothing but learning to cook with Cheng Hao, she had only managed to learn the bare basics—making dumplings.

And the ones she made were crooked and ugly as hell.

"You talk too much." Sun Yanzi, whose old secrets had been exposed, felt no anger or shame; instead, she became even more self-righteous: "Someday I will graduate."

"Then you won't have that chance. Another day I'll talk to Li Sisong about your new album and torture you to death." Zhou Yi flashed a smile that made women shudder.

Sun Yanzi's new album this year, 'Unfinished,' had, up to now, already collected songs to about seventy or eighty percent completion.

Since she didn't plan to release a greatest hits album this year, the god-tier song 'Meeting,' which should have been placed in the greatest hits album, instead entered 'Unfinished,' along with various other concepts.

With Li Sisong and his brothers taking full responsibility, the number of tracks on this album could be said to be the highest in Sun Yanzi's history, including a song she would sing as a duet with Mai Kuraki.

Warner had already arranged it: on June 15, regardless of whether the SARS lockdown was lifted by then, Sun Yanzi would head to Japan to film the MV and sing the duet with Mai Kuraki.

Even so, Li Sisong had still reserved two song slots for Zhou Yi.

Besides one Chinese-style song designated by Chen Ze Shan and Qian Jiang, the other had no specific requirements.

"Afraid of you?"

Sun Yanzi, clearly already feeling guilty, was still being stubborn; to avoid having her lack of confidence exposed, she directly grabbed Cheng Hao and ran briskly out of the fitness area: "We're having dumplings tonight, and I'll roll the dumpling skins!"

Watching the two women leave, Zhou Yi rested one hand on his bent right knee, his eyes full of amusement.

To be fair, Chinese-style songs were easy to copy. Considering Sun Yanzi's vocal range, this time he intended to steal 'Hair Like Snow.'

As one of the flagship works of the Chinese style, it was indeed very effective for establishing the definition of the genre.

This song was also one of the representative works of the most popular singer of 2023, AI Sun Yanzi.

As for the other song...

Whose should I steal?

He hadn't thought of it yet.

As song titles like 'Red High Heels' and 'In My Song' flashed through his mind—songs he should copy because not copying them would be a waste—Zhou Yi fell into deep thought—

But until he finished the preliminary arrangement work for 'Gray Avatar' and was called down by Cheng Hao on the phone to eat dinner, he still hadn't figured anything out.

Sometimes, knowing too many songs was quite a troublesome thing.

"If you don't want to eat dumplings, there's still rice cooked in the rice cooker."

When Zhou Yi came down, Cheng Hao, who was opening the pressure cooker and constantly serving ribs onto a plate, wore a blue-and-white checkered apron around her waist and called out to him.

"My suggestion is that you can scoop out a few dumplings to taste; these are dumpling skins I rolled with my own hands, absolutely chewy."

Sun Yanzi, with white powder still clinging to her face and body, looked like a mischievous kitten; the rolling pin in her hand waved with vigorous momentum, and her grin revealed an expression of supreme satisfaction.

Zhou Yi's focus, however, was not on the dumplings: "Why aren't you wearing an apron?"

"I forgot at first, and once I remembered, I was too lazy to put it on. Besides, it's already dirty; I'll just take a shower after we finish eating."

Sun Yanzi, sticking out her tongue in a wink, paid it no mind at all; instead, she kept brandishing the rolling pin in her hand as if it were a weapon, muttering incantations under her breath.

"Are you scratching a fly over there?" Zhou Yi asked with a look of utter disgust.

"Nonsense! This is kung fu! Kung fu! Watch closely, ah-dah!"

Unable to bear anyone defiling her kung fu, Sun Yanzi gripped one end of the rolling pin with both hands and executed a move... a baseball fast-spinning cleave?

First, she twirled the rolling pin around her head three or four times while her body spun a full 360 degrees; then she crouched low into a half horse stance, assuming a wind-up pose for a swing; finally, she took a small hop forward and swung the rolling pin ahead—

"Hmph!"

This was clearly a baseball motion, yet paired with Sun Yanzi's determined gaze and the self-generated sound effects from her mouth, it appeared especially comical.

At the very least, Zhou Yi couldn't hold back his laughter.

Especially when he saw Sun Yanzi spin the rolling pin in her hand another half turn and then, treating it like an axe, slash down sideways—"Ha!"

After shouting, Sun Yanzi, unable to suppress her own laughter, casually slung the rolling pin, which had just spun once, over her right shoulder; gripping both ends with her hands, she bent her body into a C-shape toward the dining table, her eyes squinting into slits from laughter, the corners of her mouth turning upward—

Just as she was about to bare her teeth in a grin, her body stumbled forward, having failed to maintain her balance.

To avoid losing face to the extreme, the quick-reacting Sun Yanzi took a few stumbling steps, executed a full 360-degree turn, placed both hands on the rolling pin slung over her shoulder, and walked toward the kitchen with feigned nonchalance, acting as if nothing had happened: "Cheng Hao, I'm coming to serve you some dishes."

Zhou Yi: "..."

Cheng Hao, who had just finished serving the ribs, noticed this scene; as she raised her gaze, her eyebrows curved gently, and in her gentle and tranquil demeanor, the peace of the times was fully revealed.

(End of this chapter)