It was easier to be colder to Shen Qingyu because Shen Jianing was weaker and because the people prefer the person who knows how to lower his eyes at the right time.

A faint light flickered around Shen Jianing — almost invisible, the kind ordinary people would never notice. But if Shen Qingyu had been standing there, he would have recognised it immediately: that soft, unreasonable, nauseating glow that had protected Shen Jianing for years, bending every coincidence in his favour and forcing Shen Qingyu back onto the same stage again and again no matter how far he ran.

The protagonist halo.

Back in the Lu family villa, Shen Qingyu suddenly looked up. For one brief second the air seemed to tighten, the back of his neck prickling faintly where Lu Jingheng's temporary mark rested warm beneath his skin.

Lu Jingheng noticed immediately. "What's wrong?"

Shen Qingyu looked toward the window. Outside, the sky was clear and nothing had changed — and yet he felt it. That familiar pressure, like an invisible hand turning the page of a book. His expression cooled.

Lu Jingheng walked over, wiping his hands on a towel. "Qingyu."

Shen Qingyu lowered his eyes and smiled. "It's nothing."

Lu Jingheng did not believe him, and Shen Qingyu knew it — but he did not explain. Not yet. Some things were too absurd to say aloud. Even after four years of marriage, even after Lu Jingheng had held him through pheromone fevers and nightmares and helped raise two children beside him, Shen Qingyu still did not know how to explain that the world had once treated him like a character whose ending had already been written.

He only reached out. Lu Jingheng came closer without hesitation.

Shen Qingyu caught the front of his apron and pulled him down. Lu Jingheng bent, one hand braced on the armrest beside him, and their eyes met in the quiet morning light. Shen Qingyu looked at this man who had appeared beside him when the sea wind was cold and the whole world had tilted — and then he kissed him. It was not a deep kiss, only a brief press of lips, warm and familiar, carrying a faint trace of comfort.

Lu Jingheng froze for half a second. Then his eyes darkened.

Before he could deepen it, two small voices sounded simultaneously.

"Dad kissed Father," Xiao Nian announced.

"This is a normal emotional exchange between legal partners," Xiao Heng added.

Shen Qingyu pushed Lu Jingheng away with a blank face. Lu Jingheng turned to regard the twins with the expression of a man who had been interrupted at a board meeting.

"But from a child development perspective," Xiao Heng continued calmly, "prolonged observation may be inappropriate. Brother, we should look away."

Xiao Nian immediately covered his eyes — with his fingers spread wide open.

"You are still watching," Xiao Heng observed.

"I'm learning emotional expression," Xiao Nian whispered.

Shen Qingyu: "…"

Lu Jingheng: "Good."

Shen Qingyu turned slowly. "Lu. Jing. Heng."

Without another word, Lu Jingheng picked up Xiao Nian with one hand and Xiao Heng with the other and carried both children toward the dining table. "Breakfast," he said, as though nothing had happened at all.

Shen Qingyu watched the three of them leave. After a while he lowered his eyes and laughed softly — the sound very light, almost swallowed by the morning, but real.

The next morning, the livestream for The Daily Lives of Married Couples officially began.

At 7:55 a.m., millions of viewers poured into the room, and Shen Qingyu's channel drew the highest traffic of them all. The screen was still black, but the bullet comments were already moving so fast they blurred into a wall of noise.

【Here for the drama.】

【Will Lu Jingheng even appear? I bet he won't.】

【Maybe Shen Qingyu will perform a fake loving marriage for the camera. Don't forget — this is the man who bullied Shen Jianing for years.】

【Honestly, I just want to see what kind of house the Lu family lives in. Hate him, but I am curious.】

At exactly eight o'clock, the black screen flickered and the camera connected. There was no gloomy mansion, no cold hall, no miserable children, no arrogant omega throwing a tantrum. Instead, the first thing the entire internet saw was a spacious, sunlit kitchen — and standing in it was Lu Jingheng.

The Lu Jingheng. The empire's richest man, the SSS+ Enigma whose face rarely appeared outside financial magazines and official business reports. He was wearing a dark shirt with his sleeves rolled to the forearms and a black apron tied around his waist with the same gravity one might use to sign a billion-yuan contract. In one hand he held a spatula. In front of him, eggs were frying quietly in a pan.

For three full seconds, the bullet comments disappeared entirely. Then the livestream room went insane.

【Is that Lu Jingheng???? Why is he wearing an apron?】

【Did I enter the wrong livestream? Didn't they say Shen Qingyu was abandoned in a cold mansion? This is not a cold mansion. This is breakfast.】

【President Lu, blink twice if you were kidnapped by marriage.】

At that moment a lazy voice drifted in from outside the frame. "Lu Jingheng, Xiao Heng said the prince in Sleeping Beauty should be reported."

Lu Jingheng did not even lift his head. "He is not wrong."

The camera panned slowly, and there on the sofa in the morning light sat Shen Qingyu with a fairy-tale book open in his hand, two small and extremely serious alpha children standing at his sides. His brows were cold, his lips naturally red, his beauty almost aggressive in the clear morning light. He looked up at the camera and smiled faintly.

"Good morning."

The bullet comments froze — and then erupted.

【He's beautiful. Why does he not look vicious?】

【He looks like he just woke up and decided to destroy my worldview.】

【I suddenly understand why Lu Jingheng is cooking.】

Shen Qingyu lowered his eyes, turned a page, and said calmly, "Xiao Nian, Xiao Heng, continue."

Xiao Nian raised his hand. "The first lesson from Sleeping Beauty is not to touch sharp objects casually."

"The second lesson," Xiao Heng added, "is that if someone is unconscious, kissing them without permission is inappropriate."

【……】

From the kitchen, Lu Jingheng placed breakfast onto a plate. "Correct," he said.

Shen Qingyu closed the book. His expression did not change — but somehow, through the screen, every viewer could sense the exhaustion sitting quietly beneath his stillness. The camera had been open for three minutes, and already the internet had begun to feel that something was wrong.

Not with Shen Qingyu.

With the rumours.