That night, Tao Mu and the bigwigs played until after midnight.
Boss Li from their family came to pick him up.
Although the relationship between Tao Mu and Li Xiaoheng was not reported by the media, it was still a tacit knowledge among the upper class in Hong Kong. The relationship between the entertainment industry and the upper class was not deep but also not shallow, and everyone had heard about such relatively explosive gossip news, especially as it happened under the nose.
When Li Xiaoheng came over, he didn’t think too much. He was just worried that Tao Mu had drunk too much and couldn’t get a taxi. So he drove over to pick him up in person.
When entering the private room, he greeted everyone warmly, and then sat next to Tao Mu.
Tao Mu keenly noticed a box of takeaway that Li Xiaoheng was carrying, and sniffed: “What’s that?”
“Hot grass jelly. When you posted on FlyNews earlier, didn’t you say you wanted to eat it?” Li Xiaoheng handed the hot grass jelly to Tao Mu. He nodded at the others, and explained with a smile, “I asked my assistant to buy a few more shares, and they will be delivered in a while.”
Probably not having expected the capital boss with a net worth of nearly 100 billion dollars to be so approachable and down-to-earth, all the entertainment industry bosses nodded in an overwhelmed manner. Fang Ruoti smiled and said, “Mr. Li is too considerate.”
Li Xiaoheng chuckled and said, “Naturally.”
All the celebrities suddenly had the illusion that they were being fed with something.
The door of the private room was knocked on again, this time Assistant Jiang came in with a dozen boxes of hot grass jelly. And even distributed it to everyone with a special spirit of service.
Zhou Yanqing took the takeout, looked at the colorful ingredients inside, and said with a smile, “I didn’t expect Tao Mu to actually like sweets.”
In fact, there were also many male stars who love sweets. However, most people had to strictly control their weight management and did not dare to eat. And if a man liked eating sweets, it didn’t sound very manly. So many male stars clearly loved sweets, but they didn’t voice it. Just having a taste secretly in private. It was really rare for a male artist like Tao Mu who was particular about his food and could eat sweets in front of everyone without any scruples.
But thinking about it carefully, Tao Mu was not purely a male artist. In terms of career achievements, Tao Mu was more like a domineering CEO who enjoyed acting. If the entertainment industry rated its most unprofessional male artist in any year, it was estimated that Tao Mu would definitely be on the list.
Zhou Yanqing pondered to himself, but Li Xiaoheng nodded very seriously, and solemnly agreed: “Our CEO Tao is quite a picky eater. He even complained that the cake I made was not very delicious.”
When Tao Mu was celebrating his birthday, Li Xiaoheng not only communicated with the crew about the celebration process, but also brought Tao Mu’s family to Hong Kong for a birthday reunion, selected birthday gifts for Tao Mu, and personally made a birthday cake and brought it to the crew.
As a result, it turned out that too much cream was put, the cake was too sweet, and as CEO Li was making a birthday cake for the first time, the cake art was particularly ugly. But CEO Tao didn’t dislike it at all. So he felt the need to clear his name: “I said it was delicious. You were the one who thought it was unpalatable yourself.”
“But your expression doesn’t say that.” Li Xiaoheng pointed out in a small voice, “Your expression that day was clearly saying that the cake was too sweet.”
“I was smiling the whole day, okay?” As a professional actor, Tao Mu felt that his expression management was very good. And he was really happy that day, and he had smiled like crazy the whole time.
“You were very happy that day. But you were indeed forcing your face to smile when you were eating the cake.” Li Xiaoheng was also very straightforward. He said directly: “I don’t like how you coaxed me by saying it was delicious even though you thought it was not delicious. If you always fool me like this, how could my cooking skills improve? If my cooking skills don’t improve, won’t you be the unlucky one in the end?”
“Now this is you being irresponsible to yourself.”
“Mr. Tao, I think the most crucial point for both parties to maintain a long-term cooperative relationship is that they must meet each other frankly. The cultivation of tacit understanding is not blindly tolerating the shortcomings of the other party. It is to directly point out the shortcomings of the other party at the right time and help the other party correct themselves as soon as possible. Mutual tolerance and mutual familiarizing does not mean to torture each other. When clearly just a few words could clarify things to be corrected, there is no need to consume our patience. Our tolerance should be reserved for more core aspects.”
After a pause, Li Xiaoheng added: “For example, one day I accidentally made you angry. You have to think that we have been living very happily before, so you tolerate my little mistakes. Instead of thinking of how in order to be with me, you tolerated so many trivial things, and then become even more angry and aggrieved.”
Li Xiaoheng believed that a person’s energy and tolerance were limited. Like the law of conservation of energy. Consuming a little on trivial things meant a little more accumulation of negative feelings. If you let negative emotions continue to accumulate, in the case that it overwhelmed and exploded out one day, it was very likely to cause qualitative changes.
So tolerance must not be consumed in daily life.
In Li Xiaoheng’s vision, his and Tao Mu’s daily life should be a piggy bank. Because they get along well, they accumulate a little bit of happiness every day. When there was a real quarrel, they could take a little of the happiness stored in the piggy bank to offset the negative emotions caused by the quarrel. After the negative emotions were offset in this way, the remaining happiness balance was enough to support them for the rest of their lives.
But Tao Mu’s habit was to treat everyday life as a seasoning jar. Even when encountering the slightest disharmony, Tao Mu always habitually chose to make concessions on his own. Tao Mu wouldn’t even say something as small as how the cake was too sweet and instead lie to him that the cake was delicious.
Li Xiaoheng felt that this approach was Tao Mu sacrificing his senses to accommodate him. Li Xiaoheng was very worried that if things went on like this, he would be spoiled by Tao Mu, and he was accustomed to thinking that Tao Mu should accommodate him and forbear more for this relationship. At that time, Tao Mu’s seasoning jar would keep pouring seasonings out to adjust this relationship. When Tao Mu’s seasoning jar was finally empty, it might truly be the end of their relationship.
“There is no way to manage emotional matters like one manages financial affairs, nor is there a way to short it. We can only use the most primitive means to increase our savings. I also think this kind of investment will be very hard. But fortunately, if my partner is you, it doesn’t matter how slow it is. As long as you work hard with me.”
Li Xiaoheng’s mouth was a little dry, and he couldn’t help taking another sip of wine. He felt that the most urgent task was to reverse Tao Mu’s thinking. Let Tao Mu change the business philosophy of this relationship from a loss-type to a savings-type. After all, the matter of dating was always like the early days of starting a business, where you couldn’t buy suitable love insurance, and you couldn’t find a claim of equal value. If you really messed up, former lovers would really have to go their separate ways.
Li Xiaoheng could take the risk of any project merger and reorganization, but he could never accept the consequences of parting ways with Tao Mu.
“What’s gotten into you today?” Tao Mu looked at Li Xiaoheng suspiciously while eating the hot grass jelly. He felt that their boss Li was more talkative than usual today.
“I saw the FlyNews you sent.” Li Xiaoheng paused and added, “The one about Shen Yu.”
Tao Mu raised his eyebrows: So?
“You never paid attention to him before. Now you don’t want to restrain yourself anymore.” Speaking to here, Li Xiaoheng slightly approached Tao Mu, but still maintained a normal distance, and said in a voice that only the two could hear: “I think our CEO Tao’s demeanor when dissing people was very handsome and sexy. So I really want to see if our CEO Tao is also as flexible when he smack talks me, is his tongue just as clever?”
The last part, Li Xiaoheng was almost speaking in a whisper. The hot and humid breath sprayed on Tao Mu’s ears, Tao Mu subconsciously looked at the other people in the room, and said in a somewhat restrained whisper, “Don’t make trouble, there are so many people.”
“Oh.” Li Xiaoheng sat upright in an orderly manner. He concluded with a wave of a big bushy wolf tail: “In short, I hope we can meet each other frankly, understand each other as deeply as possible, and tolerate each other, instead of staying on such superficial politeness.”
Tao Mu raised his eyebrows and squinted at Li Xiaoheng: “Please excuse me for asking, by candid meeting and in-depth understanding, does Mr. Li mean it as a noun or a verb?”
What kind of feeling was it to be stared at by perfect phoenix eyes with a smile that was not a smile?
Those slender eyes were hooked inward and curved outward, and the ends of the eyes were slanted upwards, the light and brilliance they gave off was so compelling and captivating. It caused Mr. Li’s heart to beat faster and his temperature to heat up. He changed from a normal sitting posture to one with his legs crossed and did not forget to pretend to be a big-tailed wolf: “This, of course, I have to listen to you.”
“In our family, don’t we listen to you no matter if it’s a big or small matter? From the investment standard of the company’s investment direction, to what to eat in the evening, when did I ever have a say!”
My ass!
Tao Mu rolled his eyes. Anyway, he never won when he quarreled with Li Xiaoheng. Now it was almost impossible to even out flirt the man.
Seeing Tao Mu’s annoyed look, Li Xiaoheng couldn’t help twitching up the corners of his mouth. He opened the spoon included with the takeout wrapped in plastic and handed it to Tao Mu: “Eat something?”
Acting coquettish again!
Tao Mu turned his head to look at Li Xiaoheng. Li Xiaoheng held a spoon in one hand and the hot grass jelly in the other hand, and showed off: “I know you like to eat taro, so I added an extra portion. Try it, is it good?”
Although the light in the room was very dim, and someone had been singing the whole time, and later the two had also deliberately lowered their voices when they spoke, it was not likely that the others would have noticed their quarrel. However, Tao Mu still quickly took over the hot grass jelly.
He was not used to being very intimate in front of people. But even so, Tao Mu responded candidly: “It’s delicious.”
“Really?” Li Xiaoheng played with the beer bottle and smiled slightly: “I made the bowl of hot grass jelly you are eating now.”
Tao Mu turned to look at Li Xiaoheng.
In the dim light, Li Xiaoheng’s silhouette appeared even more handsome: “So you see, sometimes being more honest could help me get to know you better.”
After Mr. Li said this, he picked up the beer and took two sips. It had not been easy to finally find his first love at the age of twenty-six years old. In fact, CEO Li really wanted to show his affection in front of everyone and engage in PDA. But he also knew that Tao Mu was thin-skinned and didn’t like to be lovey-dovey in front of people. So he could only quit while he was ahead.
However low-key they might be, occasionally it was necessary to display his rights and possessiveness as a lover.
At least he must let everyone know. I am yours.
The group of celebrities exchanged looks and winks in the dim room. Although the sound in the private room made it impossible for them to hear the conversation between Tao Mu and Li Xiaoheng clearly, the two of them sitting in the corner, even if they didn’t have any intimate contact, the aura they exuded was still cotton candy sweet.
Just like the hot grass jelly brought over by Mr. Li.
AN: Small skit——
Li Xiaoheng with a satisfied face: Was this wave of conjugal love really relayed to everyone??
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