Author's Note: thanks to those who have left comments! It was really encouraging :)

Chapter 6

The next morning when Lin JunYi woke up, he found that his body was clean. It seemed that Xie Xian had cleaned him after he had fallen asleep. But next to him the bed was empty. Xie Xian hadn’t slept with him but had obviously returned to his own room to sleep during the night.

“729, come back online.” He spoke and 729’s presence immediately reappeared in his head. The little AI observed for less than a few seconds before it burst out in an explosion of music and confetti. In a screaming tone of disbelief it yelled: “Congratulations host!!! Host, I can’t believe it! Before, nobody else has ever managed to-”

The system suddenly went quiet again.

In the bed, Lin JunYi stretched his aching body and narrowed his eyes. “Nobody else?”

729 sent back only nervous laughter as a reply. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Lin JunYi’s voice was quite casual. “The fact that you’re system 729…. Does that mean there are at least 728 other hosts who have attempted this mission?”

729 was quiet for a few seconds. Then it whispered, “Host, you’re so smart.”

“They all failed?”

729 drew circles. “The world’s setting is difficult to bend.”

But that’s not how it felt at all? Lin JunYi frowned and then shared some of his observations from last night with the system.

729 thought about it. “Host, this is my first time doing the mission so I’m not sure either. However, from the information released to me, it should be possible for a transmigrator to bend the rules of the world because they are not subject to it. Using the same principle, once the characters from the world come into contact with the transmigrator long enough, they too should be affected by the butterfly effect and should also be able to break away from the world’s settings. That’s the principle at least.”

“But in reality, it hasn’t been like that?”

“According to the data from the other missions, the other hosts were also able to change some of the crucial events of the world. However in the end, the second male lead always had a tragic end.”

“I see…” Lin JunYi recalled the events of the previous night. It seemed to him that after they had shared a kiss, Xie Xian’s personality had undergone a drastic change. Could it be the kiss that caused it? As 729 said, coming into contact with the transmigrator would affect the world’s characters. Perhaps… the closer the contact, the more they would be affected?

It didn’t explain everything but it was a start.

It seemed 729 also didn’t have any further information so Lin JunYi could only put this aside for now. He looked at the clock, it was 7AM. Since he was Xie Xian’s personal secretary, he was familiar with the other person’s schedule. Right now the other person should be in the gym in the basement, doing his morning exercise.

When he took his aching body downstairs and heard the exercise machine whirring from the basement level, he knew he was right. It was clear that the protagonist shou, Chen Heng, hadn’t returned home last night which was also accurate to the original plot. According to the plot, Xie Xian should be going to pick up Chen Heng some time today from his mother’s home.

With an amused smile on his face, Lin JunYi approached the kitchen. At the same time he asked 729 to find some instructional videos on cooking for him…

In real life, Lin JunYi never really did any cooking. However, as someone who lived by himself most of the year, Zhou Yi knew how to cook basic dishes. Although these skills were a bit foreign to Lin JunYi, after reviewing the videos 729 sent him and also via muscle memory, he was able to make a simple breakfast.

This was the scene that Xie Xian saw when he came up the stairs with a towel over his shoulder. 

Last night he didn’t know what had come over him. Thinking about the fact that he had betrayed Chen Heng with his body and indulged his carnal desires with Zhou Yi of all people, filled him with both guilt and shame. Originally he intended to call Chen Heng, to ask how the other person was and to apologize again. But unexpectedly he didn’t know how to face him now or what to say to him. So he didn’t call but instead went to exercise, trying to drown his feelings of confusion and guilt by sweating it out.

But by the time he came upstairs he still hadn’t worked out how exactly he wanted to face either Chen Heng or Zhou Yi. 

That’s when he saw Lin JunYi standing behind the kitchen benchtop. He was lifting a frypan and a fried egg slid off and into a waiting plate. He transferred it onto the table and smiled at Xie Xian. “How was your exercise?”

After speaking, he held up a glass of orange juice and offered it to Xie Xian.

Xie Xian gazed at him. “This isn’t part of your responsibilities.” 

His cold tone made Lin JunYi sigh. It seemed after a crazy night of lovemaking, the world’s setting had resumed. 

Right now he really wasn’t trying to do anything. He’d made breakfast for a simple reason: because he wanted to eat something and there was no longer anybody around to make it for him. And, since he was in somebody else’s house, it seemed rude not to make it for them as well. Seeing that Xie Xian did not have any inclination to take the juice from his hand, Lin JunYi simply drank it himself.

Smacking his lips happily, he smiled at Xie Xian and teased, “President, if one day you sleep with Mr Chen, you should be the one making the breakfast okay? Particularly if you tire him out the way you did me.”

Xie Xian’s frown deepened. He didn’t know what he disliked more: the young man’s despicable words or the casual way he said it . However, judging by the calmness of his face and his words, it seemed he really didn’t expect anything from him after sleeping with him…

He recalled Lin JunYi’s face contorted with passion and lust last night… and then contrasted it with his flippant and teasing expression right now.

This person… was really two-faced.

For some reason his heart felt uncomfortable. Trying to mask it, Xie Xian sat down at the table like a lord. He commanded, “I want a coffee. Black.”

Lin JunYi laughed softly. His figure disappeared and Xie Xian couldn’t help turning his head to follow his secretary’s figure as he fiddled over the coffee machine. Thinking about it now… it was really the first time he’d seen anyone other than himself in the kitchen. Xie Xian often cooked gourmet meals for Chen Heng but he’d forbidden the other person from going into the kitchen, not wanting to run the risk of him damaging his precious, piano playing fingers.

Warm morning sunlight poured in through the windows and framed Lin JunYi’s face. Right now Lin JunYi wasn’t wearing his glasses and his devilish and seductive looking features were exposed, but the sunlight changed his features slightly and made them look more gentle and warm…

Xie Xian’s heart thumped. His eyes followed the youth’s slender body - Lin JunYi was wearing a light dressing gown - and then landed on the soles of his bare feet…

He dragged his eyes away. What was he doing?! He must be going crazy.

Lin JunYi brought the coffee over and placed it in front of Xie Xian. Then he sat across from him and the two ate the simple breakfast of egg, toast and orange juice quietly. After they were done, Lin JunYi loaded the dishwasher, ran it and then went upstairs to dress. Once he was dressed appropriately, he came back downstairs to find that Xie Xian was waiting for him by the door.

“Ready to go to work, President?” Lin JunYi smiled at him.

“Zhou Yi…” Xie Xian said. “What happened last night, it was a mistake. Not yours but my mistake. I love Chen Heng so we can’t do something like that again.”

Lin JunYi raised his eyebrow. “President, did you forget what we discussed last night? Our sleeping together and you being in love with Mr. Chen don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

“If you love someone, you shouldn’t betray them like that.”

“Maybe not but that’s provided that you are indeed in a mutually loving relationship. If President and Mr Chen become like that one day, then of course I will gracefully withdraw. Because then I will have fulfilled my goal, to see the boss truly happy.” Lin JunYi winked at Xie Xian. “But until then, let me help you. You can use me both to suppress your lust so you can continue treating Mr Chen gently. And slowly, with my help, I’m sure you and Mr Chen can one day become true lovers.”

Xie Xian stared at him with dark eyes. Lin JunYi’s words… angered him. He couldn’t really put his finger on why but… they were really infuriating. So he lifted the corner of his lips and said contemptuously, “You? What do you think you can do to help my relationship? If there’s something that can be done to win Chen Heng over, you really think I haven’t done it already?” Other than plucking the moon out of the sky and handing it to Chen Heng on a platter, what else hadn’t he tried?

“Well for example,” Lin JunYi raised his eyebrow. “Has the boss ever tried to… make Mr Chen jealous?”

As Xie Xian stared at Lin JunYi with an inexplicable and intense expression, 729 realized for the first time that something was wrong.

“Host, what are you trying to do?!” He asked in shock. “Are you being serious? You can’t help the second male lead and the protagonist shou get together!”

“Why not? If he loves Chen Heng then his true happiness should be to get together with the person he loves, right?”

“But… but the protagonist shou doesn’t love him! He won’t treat him well!”

“That remains to be seen,” Lin JunYi narrowed his eyes.

In his opinion, Chen Heng was truly an ignorant fool who didn’t know the difference between good and bad, much less what love was. Rather than what was written in the ‘script’ of the world, he much rather believed the evidence of his own eyes. And in his opinion, Sun YuZhu was really just an impetuous child. There wasn’t anything about him that was better than a mature man like Xie Xian who had loved and supported Chen Heng through the most difficult time in his life. Yes, perhaps his methods were wrong but his motivation was pure. Chen Heng simply didn’t understand and mistook Sun YuZhu’s aggressive chasing as ‘honest true love’ and Xie Xian’s subtle and silent support as ‘false feelings’. If Lin JunYi could help him wake up, then he didn’t believe that Chen Heng would really prefer Sun YuZhu to Xie Xian. And then if Chen Heng truly fell in love with Xie Xian, then wasn’t it a guaranteed happy ending for the second male lead?

“But…. but….” 729 felt the host’s reasoning was unexpectedly logical so he couldn’t argue with it but at the same time it didn’t sit right with him. “But what about getting together with the second male lead yourself? Didn’t you say you liked him and haven’t you already made a lot of progress in this regard?! No other host has gotten this far and you actually don’t intend to see it to the end? Rather than relying on an unreliable third party, isn’t it better to make sure he has a happy ending yourself?”

Lin JunYi shook his head internally and even wanted to pat the naive little system on the head.

“No,” He said. It was never his intention to end up with the second male lead himself because….  “If he ends up with me, he definitely won’t be happy.”

729 was filled with question marks but Lin JunYi was firm in his belief. He knew it for a fact. Because not a single person who had ever fallen in love with him had ever ended up happy.