WITH LOVE / XIAOVEN

four.

authors note: super sorry for not updating last week !! i went on a trip and came back and then i got sick (not covid thankfully!!) and i had such bad headaches that i couldnt even write and i'm still recovering so most of this was rushed so i'm sorry about that but nonetheless i hope you all enjoy this chapter anyways. :)

---------

sunlight shined in his eyes the minute xiao woke up which was not great to say the least. xiao groaned as he covered his eyes with his hands and turned away from the light. 

"no! get up, xiao!" venti whined, grabbing xiao's arms and attempted to drag him up which actually worked seeing as they were very close in both height and weight. 

"why? it's like five AM and we don't have a schedule or anything, let me sleep." xiao mumbled into his pillows, slowly closing his eyes again. xiao heard venti sigh and the sound of his socked feet walking away. xiao sighed in happiness as he did not hear anything for a minute or so. that is before he heard the sound of high heels clacking against the hardwood floor and xiao's eyes nearly shot out of his face.

"hey." jean's stern voice greeted him. god he hated when she used that tone on him, it made him feel like a child and his mom was mad at him. jean was practically his mother at this point. 

xiao mumbled something into his pillow that sounded jumbled as if he wasn't even speaking a real language. jean sighed before she removed xiao's blankets and lifted him out of bed to the living room. jean was so glad she was taller and stronger than all of them otherwise this would have been a pain to do. 

jean set him down on the couch in the living room where he was greeted at the sight of a camera crew only a few feet away. 

"why are there cameras?" xiao asks venti as he lays his head on his shoulder. 

jean sighs as she flashes the white envelope in her hands, "the CEO has some very exciting news that he wanted to share with you all so he wanted to capture it when i say what it is." 

"oh okay." xiao says, before asking, "how long have they been filming?" 

"since venti woke up so, thirty minutes or so." jean answers. she also decided to not tell xiao that they were in fact live streaming, not filming that would later be edited like he initially thought. jean didn’t want to tell him at that very moment, risking the chance that xiao might kill her right then and there. 

"alright, drumroll please!" jean says and venti drums on his thighs for special effect. venti grins as he does it excitedly. 

jean stops him with the movement of her hand. venti abruptly stops and watches as she carefully pulls out a letter out of the envelope. little did they know that the letter had no words or images on it, it was blank and that she had already memorized the message. 

before she (pretended to) read the words on the paper, she closed it and put it in her back pocket. she clasped her hands together and sighed happily.

"what's wrong?" xiao asks, furrowing his eyebrows. 

jean smiles, "you're all aware of how great your debut was, right? i mean come on, you all got sixteen million views on your debut within just twenty four hours."

the three of them slowly nodded in confusion, they had no idea what jean was doing. maybe it was because the cameras were on but she was acting more peppy and upbeat like this was an advertisement.