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Became a National Couple with My Ex Side Story · Ye Cheng CP (Part 7): How to Resist This Kind of Flirting

This was just way too hard to handle.

Cheng Nuo stared at Duan Ye for a long time without saying a word, suddenly remembering the part from the voice meeting where her script got criticized, about the interaction between the male and female leads.

This was a new project she picked up toward the end of the reality show: a modern romance about a younger brother–older sister relationship.

The male and female leads were neighbors across the hall in the same apartment building. There was one scene where the female lead sees the female supporting character enter the male lead’s apartment through her peephole, and she doesn’t come out for a long time. The female lead imagines what might be happening inside and uses the excuse of borrowing soy sauce to ring the neighbor’s doorbell. Once inside, she finds the female supporting character in the male lead’s study, borrowing his high-end computer to work on animation design.

The jealous female lead follows the male lead into the kitchen to get soy sauce, then launches an "older sister (Jiejie)" style flirtation, completely captivating the younger brother.

Of course, Cheng Nuo didn’t write the scene like that.

Because she simply didn’t know how to flirt with a younger guy. She only knew how to get flustered herself in front of one.

Back when she first got the script, she had even asked Lin Xiao Sheng, the younger guy from the reality show, what kind of older sister he liked, what kind of older sister was the most attractive.

Lin Xiao Sheng had seriously answered many questions, but now it seemed totally useless.

She wasn’t sure if she’d picked the wrong younger guy, or if learning from books just wasn’t enough. The project editor said that the way she wrote the older sister flirting with the younger brother probably wouldn’t excite the younger brother, but would just make his fists clench.

After spacing out for a while, when Cheng Nuo snapped back and was about to say something, Duan Ye suddenly grabbed her wrist.

"Hey, hey, hey," Cheng Nuo pulled her hand back hard, "I never said I wanted to use you for…"

"Touch it," Duan Ye held her hand to his forehead, "Do you think I have a fever again?"

"…"

*

Whether Duan Ye had a fever or not, Cheng Nuo knew if she didn’t leave soon, she’d get a fever herself. She raised her hands in surrender, said "Whatever," and hurried back to the living room to rewrite her script.

Duan Ye, as if afraid she might change her mind when she calmed down, didn’t waste a second and left the apartment to get his luggage from the repair shop.

While Cheng Nuo was staring blankly at the computer, he had already come and gone with lightning speed.

When the doorbell rang, Cheng Nuo glanced at the clock in the corner of her screen and realized it had been almost an hour—and she hadn’t written a single word.

That troublemaker.

Cheng Nuo closed her eyes, got up, and went to open the door. She immediately saw Duan Ye standing there with his suitcase.

"I thought about it," she took a deep breath and clenched her fists, "Maybe you should just…"

"Jiejie," Duan Ye put his hands behind his back, then magically pulled out a cup of milk tea, "Want some?"

"…"

Cheng Nuo swallowed hard.

The sentence "Maybe you should just stay at a hotel, I can lend you some money" got swallowed back down.

*

The words were out, and she’d drunk his milk tea so Cheng Nuo thought, it was just a few days. Might as well do a good deed and build some karma. She didn’t back out.

But she did insist on changing the terms of letting him stay.

If she really hired a full-time, 24-hour live-in nanny, that person’s presence would be way too overwhelming.

She imagined if Duan Ye kept calling her "Jiejie," offering milk tea, and wandering around her all day long asking if she wanted to "use him for experiments," how could she get any work done?

So Cheng Nuo made her condition clear, no special demands, just one rule: he had to lower his presence.

She didn’t need him on call all day or making a mess doing tons of chores. He could go to the repair shop like a normal person, keeping a good routine of leaving early and coming home late. His only duties were to bring her one dinner meal and take care of the cleaning at night.

He could eat breakfast from the fridge, have dinner with her, but lunch had to be on his own at the repair shop.

With this setup, Cheng Nuo found that having someone stay over really wasn’t a big deal.

Every morning when she woke up, Duan Ye had already left the apartment. She spent the day alone like usual. At dinner time, Duan Ye brought the meal she ordered, and they ate together just like they did on the reality show—without any awkwardness or discomfort.

The only thing giving Cheng Nuo a headache was those few hours at night.

With the deadline getting closer and closer, and her script still not making progress, she had no choice but to work late into the night.

While she was burning the midnight oil, Duan Ye saw her scratching her head and sighing, and several times came over to ask if he could help.

Help her with the scene where the older sister flirts with the younger brother? What could he possibly do?

Should he stand there and flirt for her?

Every time he asked, Cheng Nuo’s brain would freeze, and she’d end up writing even less.

It really felt like he was just making things harder.

The deadline for this episode was set for December 25th—Christmas Day.

Cheng Nuo didn’t want to spend the holiday working miserably, so she gave herself a strict deadline to submit the script before Christmas Eve.

On the evening of the 23rd, Cheng Nuo assigned Duan Ye the task of cleaning the living room, then went early to the bedroom, set up a desk on the bed, and started her "battle."

Time ticked away second by second. From the other side of the door came the sounds of moving furniture and the vacuum running—busy and noisy—while Cheng Nuo’s side was as quiet as a still pond. By the time all sounds stopped outside, she had only managed to write three lines.

After ten o’clock, someone knocked on the door three times, a signal they had agreed on that meant Duan Ye was done.

Cheng Nuo replied through the door that she knew and told him to go sleep.

The footsteps faded away, and Cheng Nuo patted her face, grabbed the moisturizing spray on her bedside table, spritzed it on her face, and gathered her energy again.

Late at night, the only sound in the room was the tapping of her keyboard.

Two more hours passed. She deleted and rewrote, focused then gradually lost concentration. When she finally looked up, it was past midnight, and she collapsed in despair.

With that, her stomach started growling.

Staying up late didn’t seem to be helping her finish her work, but it was definitely making her gain weight.

Cheng Nuo resisted the urge to get up and eat. She reminded herself not to fall into Duan Ye’s lazy habits and forced herself to sit up and keep writing.

The cursor in her document moved forward little by little—

Nothing major, just a message asking to borrow some soy sauce to cook braised pork ribs, sweet and sour pork, steamed crab, scallion beef tripe, Kung Pao chicken, cola chicken wings, fish-flavored shredded pork, salt-baked shrimp, carp tofu soup, lobster rice porridge...

Cheng Nuo swallowed, stared at the words on the screen, quietly closed her laptop, pulled back the covers, got out of bed, and opened the door.

The living room was pitch dark. The light from her room spilled out, just enough to see Duan Ye fast asleep on the sofa.

Cheng Nuo thought for a moment and decided not to wake her male housekeeper. She remembered there were some leftovers from dinner, so she turned on the phone flashlight and quietly tiptoed into the kitchen.

As soon as she turned on the kitchen light, she noticed a sticky note on the fridge with an arrow pointing left.

She paused, looked to the left of the fridge, and saw on the counter a bowl, a pair of chopsticks, a spoon, and a soup ladle. Further left, on the stove, sat an insulated pot.

She opened the lid and found a pot of steaming hot mixed seafood porridge.

The ingredients looked very familiar, leftover salted shrimp from tonight, baby cabbage in broth, and a package of mushrooms she had forgotten about in the fridge.

Cheng Nuo sniffed it and her stomach growled even louder.

Before she could wonder how Duan Ye had planned all this, her hand had already grabbed the ladle and scooped a perfect bowlful.

She took a sip of the broth, the fresh taste hit her tongue, and she breathed in deeply, touched by the effort.

She carefully carried the bowl back toward the bedroom, but then heard the shuffle of slippers.

Turning around, she saw Duan Ye in pajamas, yawning and half-awake, walking over.

Cheng Nuo licked her lips and said, "Did I wake you up?"

"I wasn’t really asleep," Duan Ye came closer and poured himself a glass of warm water.

"I thought you went to bed early?"

"How can I sleep when your room light is still on?"

"Hey," Cheng Nuo glanced at him. Seeing he wasn’t asleep, she left the kitchen, turned on the living room ceiling light, and sat down at the dining table. "People who stay over are pretty hard to handle. I saw you sleeping soundly with the light on at the repair shop?"

"I never said it was because of the light."

"Then what is it?" Cheng Nuo asked with a laugh. "Could the light be making noise too?"

"You’re not asleep, so I have to watch when you get up to eat your midnight snack, see if it needs reheating."

"..."

"Oh."

So it was her biting the hand that was helping her, not recognizing a good deed.

Cheng Nuo cleared her throat and quietly looked down to eat her porridge.

Duan Ye rummaged around the kitchen for a bit, grabbed a cup of yogurt from the fridge to fill his stomach, and when Cheng Nuo finished her snack and came in, he reached out to take her bowl and chopsticks.

"Isn’t it borrowing soy sauce?" Duan Ye opened the cabinet and crouched down to look for the soy sauce bottle, giving her instructions, "When he’s looking for the soy sauce, you crouch down too."

Cheng Nuo, confused, followed and crouched beside him.

"Lean in close, say something to him."

"What do I say?" Cheng Nuo hesitated, then moved her head close to Duan Ye’s shoulder—and suddenly he turned his head.

Caught off guard, their eyes met, and Cheng Nuo felt her head spin. She quietly steadied herself by resting a hand on the floor.

"Got it?" Duan Ye asked.

Cheng Nuo came to her senses and understood.

When the guy is busy looking down for the soy sauce, silently crouching next to him and whispering something in his ear will surprise him with how close you are and he’ll instinctively turn to look.

That sudden close eye contact she just felt was exactly what the guy would experience.

Cheng Nuo slowly gave Duan Ye a thumbs up. "Brilliant. Anything else? What happens after getting the soy sauce?"

Duan Ye stood up holding the soy sauce bottle, looking down at her. "When he stands up, you keep crouching. Chat with his kitchen cabinet, say a few words, anything."

"Oh," Cheng Nuo squatted like a little mushroom, peeking into the cabinet. "I can compliment how many spices he has, say he knows how to live well, men like to hear that."

"Yeah."

"And after that?"

"Stand up slowly."

As Cheng Nuo followed his instructions and started to rise, she heard him say, "Let your leg go numb."

Easy.

Cheng Nuo often got numb legs from squatting too long, so she naturally let her left leg go weak.

Without the soy sauce bottle, Duan Ye grabbed her wrist firmly and steadied her.

"But wouldn’t the one feeling ‘heart flutter’ be the woman?" Cheng Nuo looked up and asked.

"The next step’s for the man."

"Huh?"

"When he supports you, you can’t stand steady and bump into him."

Cheng Nuo tried gently bumping into him. "Like this?"

Duan Ye looked down at her, his Adam’s apple moving. "Yeah."

Cheng Nuo gave another thumbs up with her free hand. "And after bumping?"

"Step back immediately, pull your hand away."

Cheng Nuo stepped back, pulling her hand away too. "Not hang on a little longer?"

"For a guy, the impact is stronger when you pull away right then."

"Amazing..." Cheng Nuo sincerely clapped three times, staring at Duan Ye in disbelief. "How do you know all this? Have you flirted with guys before?"

"..." Duan Ye was a little speechless as he looked at her for a moment. "Jiejie, normal people wouldn’t ask this at a time like this. Have you ever been flirted with by a woman?"

"Oh right," Cheng Nuo nodded. "Have you ever been flirted with by a woman?"

"Don’t know."

"Don’t know?"

"Who knows if she did it on purpose."

"Could it be otherwise?" Cheng Nuo said firmly. "This whole series of events—if it wasn’t intentional, that would be one crazy coincidence."

Duan Ye sniffed, turned off the kitchen light, and walked out, muttering to himself, "Really?"

Cheng Nuo suddenly remembered she was still holding the soy sauce bottle, so she followed him out, curious. "Who was it? Your ex?"

"Don’t know."

"Don’t know?"

"Who knows if it counts," Duan Ye said, snatching the soy sauce bottle from her hands. "Jiejie, mind your own business and get back to writing."

"Oh..." Cheng Nuo saw he was avoiding the question, so she didn’t press further. She went into the bedroom, closed the door, but her mind kept turning over the matter.

Judging by how deep an impression it made on Duan Ye, it probably happened not long ago.

But before moving in with her, he stayed at the repair shop and a budget hotel—neither place had a kitchen.

Before that was when he was on the variety show.

Liang Yixuan was ruled out first.

Zhao Meng’en was totally focused on the idol, so she was ruled out too.

Pan Yu might have done something like that, but Duan Ye wouldn’t be interested in Pan Yu—otherwise, he wouldn’t have helped Cheng Nuo confront Pan Yu before.

So...

Cheng Nuo thought it through, then a sudden flash came to her mind. She pulled out her phone and searched for the video clip from the show where she and Duan Ye appeared, then scrubbed through the timeline.

In the video, Duan Ye was crouching by the kitchen cabinet looking for seasoning bottles. She watched him fuss around, waited a bit, then crouched down beside him, impatiently asking, "Found it yet?"

Duan Ye immediately turned his head.

"..."

Then Duan Ye found a bottle of black pepper and stood up, saying they could just use that.

She said black pepper wouldn’t do, it had to be white pepper then kept digging through the cabinet. When she finally found it and stood up, her left leg went numb and went weak.

Duan Ye caught her.

She stumbled and bumped into him.

"..."