Chapter 19
“Bullying the weak must feel great for a disgusting bug like you, huh?”
“Who the hell are you?!” The boy twisted up his face and stepped forward, slamming his shoulder into Xia Fengsheng’s.
His frame was so slender that, if not for the foul language just now, his long limbs would have made him look like a mature, refined, delicate gentleman. Completely opposite to that air, however, was his shrewd and sinister face, those eyes hiding schemes no one knew about.
Xia Fengsheng staggered back a step from the impact, lowered his head, and let out a soft, mocking laugh. Then he raised his eyes and looked at the boy with a dark, eerie gaze.
Shi Ye’s face turned black on the spot, and he stepped forward to shield him.
Who would have thought Xia Fengsheng would shove him aside.
The next second, Xia Fengsheng stepped up and rammed into the boy with his shoulder too, sending him crashing flat onto the ground.
“Wow!!!!”
The crowd instantly gasped.
Before the boy could react, the world spun around, and he was already sprawled on his back like an overturned turtle, all four limbs in the air.
The onlookers burst into stifled laughter at how ridiculous he looked. He hurriedly scrambled back up on all fours.
The moment he steadied himself, he was knocked down again.
“Feel good?”
Xia Fengsheng asked him.
The boy stood up once more. Xia Fengsheng stepped forward again and smashed him back to the ground with his shoulder.
“I asked if it felt good.”
His skin was frighteningly pale. Standing in the darkening evening like that, he looked like a vampire out hunting, fangs hidden beneath blood-red lips.
The boy slammed hard onto the ground and felt like his tailbone was about to split open.
Shakily, he forced himself up again. Less than two seconds later, he was hit and sent crashing down a third time.
Only when he became too scared to stand up again and could do nothing but sit on the ground talking to Xia Fengsheng in a lost, humble way did Xia Fengsheng finally stop.
The boy was terrified stupid.
Those two who looked like they might throw punches had tried reasoning with him. The one who looked like he ought to reason with him had instead thrown hands.
When Shi Ye and Ding Qizhen had blocked him earlier, the boy really had been scared, panicked and uneasy, afraid of getting beaten.
The reason he had dared shoulder-check Xia Fengsheng was because the other man looked like an educated intellectual, the sort who would argue politely. Who knew his strength would be so great, flipping him straight over the instant he came up.
Xia Fengsheng crouched down, his long legs eye-catching. “That shoulder check just now felt pretty good, didn’t it?”
The boy was so frightened he could not speak. Up close, Xia Fengsheng looked even more ghostly.
Pitch-black hair, blood-red lips, and skin as white as a dead man’s.
“Apologize.” Xia Fengsheng tilted his head slightly.
The boy swallowed. “S-sorry.”
Xia Fengsheng was dissatisfied. “Who are you apologizing to?”
Hatred crawled into the boy’s eyes.
Xia Fengsheng raised his voice. “Speak!”
The boy jumped in fright and trembled on the ground. “I—I… this idiot is apologizing to you.”
Hearing that, Xia Fengsheng felt physically and mentally pleased. His deathly pale finger lifted and pointed toward the mother and daughter beside them.
“And?”
The boy clenched his teeth tight, feeling Xia Fengsheng had gone too far.
“Don’t push it.”
Xia Fengsheng said, “I’m bullying you on purpose. So what?”
The boy could not believe it. He flushed red with anger, then began clutching his shoulder and wailing on the ground.
“He hit me! Somebody come here!”
“Call the police!”
Xia Fengsheng looked down at him coldly, his distinct knuckles twisting open a bottle of water, then pouring the whole thing straight into his wide-open mouth.
“Ahhhh! Cough cough!!!! Ptooey!”
The boy jerked his head aside at once, feeling like water had flooded all five of his senses.
“You!” he pointed at Xia Fengsheng in humiliation and fury. “You’re going way too far!”
“So what if I am?” Xia Fengsheng tossed the bottle away. “Didn’t it feel good?”
“……”
The boy sat there dumbstruck. It was the first time in his life he had encountered someone whose logic was this internally consistent.
He changed targets and demanded of Shi Ye and Ding Qizhen, “Weren’t you two all about justice just now? He’s bullying me now, so why aren’t you coming to uphold justice?”
Shi Ye and Ding Qizhen stood in the back like two complete fools, gripping each other’s hands tightly and trembling there like little wives while watching Xia Fengsheng operate.
Truthfully, they were pretty surprised too.
Ding Qizhen thought the boy was simply baffling.
Leaving aside the fact that the three of them were on the same side, what Xia Fengsheng was doing was clearly just giving him a taste of his own medicine. There was not a single thing wrong with it.
And besides…
If the two of them had actually been able to control Xia Fengsheng, then the ones sitting at the Western restaurant covering their faces while eating would not have been them back then.
The boy on the ground was shrieking like a pig before slaughter.
Compared to the two of them, who had tried talking things through, Xia Fengsheng was practically war-god level.
Too much had changed in seven years. Ding Qizhen had nearly forgotten that back in high school, Xia Fengsheng was the one who locked people in bathrooms and fought group battles.
Ding Qizhen swallowed and whispered to Shi Ye, “Maybe don’t break up after all.”
Mind you, he was always the kind to advise breaking up, never reconciling.
But plans could not keep up with change. If he stirred trouble and urged a breakup now, then once Xia Fengsheng found out, there would be no good fruit left for him to eat.
Shi Ye: ……
The boy flew into a rage. “Just you wait, I’m calling the police right now!”
He started frantically searching for his phone.
People in the surrounding crowd had already begun stepping out to criticize him.
“Come on, enough already. Leave yourself a little dignity and get lost.”
“What’s the use of calling the police? You were the one who splashed the little girl first. We’re all witnesses.”
“Hurry up and go. Stop making a fool of yourself.”
The man roared helplessly, “All of you shut up!”
He swiped open his phone and was just about to dial when he saw something, paused, and switched to another screen.
Xia Fengsheng, like a ghost perched on his shoulder, said, “Replying to your goddess’s messages?”
In the chill of the cooling night, the man suddenly shuddered violently, his breathing stopping for several seconds.
His voice carried pure fear. “H-how did you know?”
The phone screen was turned away from Xia Fengsheng. He could not possibly see what was on it, so how did he know?
It was too eerie.
Did the man know some kind of sorcery?
At this point, the boy wanted nothing more than to go bathe in banana leaves, terrified Xia Fengsheng had put some curse on him.
What was there not to know?
Xia Fengsheng only needed one glance.
At such a critical moment, while fighting with someone and about to call the police, the fact that he could still spare attention to answer messages and chat—if it was not the goddess he had always been chasing, then who else would it be?
A person like him was easy to see through. Someone with such an arrogant personality naturally would not think much about his parents’ feelings. His parents’ indulgence was one small cause of that arrogance. When replying to his parents’ messages, he would do it depending on his mood.
Since he had no sympathy and liked bullying the weak, naturally he would not have many friends either. The way he rushed to answer the message, along with the desire and delight in his eyes, showed that the person on the other side was someone important to him.
And the messages from that person definitely came only once in a while, with long gaps in between.
Getting a single reply only after waiting so long meant the emotional investment was not equal. That was why, when he saw the message, the man reacted with such delight.
As though he had received a gift from heaven itself.
The answer was obvious.
The boy was a simp.
The corners of Xia Fengsheng’s lips lifted, his eyes growing even darker. “We know everything.”
Then he continued, “I advise you not to keep bothering her and pestering her. She only replies because she feels sorry for you. It’s just one scrap of pity tossed your way.”
The boy had been stabbed right in his sore spot. Every cell in his body screamed that his defenses had shattered. “You’re talking nonsense! We talk all the time!!!”
He turned the phone screen around and shoved it in front of Xia Fengsheng’s face, as though every line of chat history on it proved how close they were, proof that he was not the only one putting in effort.
The contents were basically one long essay from him and a single “oh okay” from the other side.
Idiot.
“What’s the point of talking so much?” Xia Fengsheng delivered the killing blow. “She only likes the one who doesn’t reply.”
The air instantly became too hot to swallow. A collective hiss rippled through the crowd.
Some people felt as though an arrow had been driven right into their hearts. Others felt like they had been walking alone at night and suddenly gotten smashed in the back of the head.
A direct blow.
Why? Why was the public being hit by friendly fire?
They had only come over to watch the fun!!!
Shi Ye was looking at Xia Fengsheng’s back when muttering suddenly broke out beside him. Turning his head, he saw Ding Qizhen clutching his own head in pain, his pupils shaking, mumbling to himself.
“So that’s how it is?”
“She likes the one who doesn’t reply.”
Shi Ye: ……
The goddess and the male god say they like puppies, but are simps not dogs too?
Woof woof.
That mouth was way too sharp, practically a controlled weapon.
Ding Qizhen said, “Later, if you two ever kiss, remember to put band-aids on first.”
“……” Shi Ye frowned. “I’m not kissing him.”
Xia Fengsheng’s words were like a blade that killed the boy’s love on the spot. Unable to endure the humiliation any longer, he hurriedly apologized to the mother and daughter, scrambled to his feet clutching his phone, shoved through the crowd, and fled in a stumbling run.
The little girl’s mother then thanked Xia Fengsheng and the others on behalf of herself and her daughter.
With the farce over, the crowd slowly dispersed. Within just a few minutes, the street had returned to its usual state.
Xia Fengsheng turned around to look for his snack. He had bought walnut cakes. Seeing that Shi Ye’s hands were empty, he asked, “Where’s my walnut cake?”
Shi Ye opened his coat slightly and took out the walnut cake he had been warming against his chest. It was still hot.
Neither of the two of them found Shi Ye’s action surprising.
Only Ding Qizhen, standing beside them, did.
Xia Fengsheng rustled open the bag and started eating the walnut cake. Ding Qizhen lowered his voice and asked, “Why were you warming that up for him?”
“What do you mean, why?” Shi Ye’s handsome face was full of confusion. “If it got cold, he couldn’t eat it. It tastes bad cold.”
Ding Qizhen: ……
What he had wanted to say was that there was no need to take the act this far. Who knew Shi Ye had not caught that layer of meaning at all.
Then again, that made sense. Treat Xia Fengsheng better now, and later, when they broke up, it would hurt him more.
The three set off toward the restaurant, a rib place. The ribs were stewed until soft and tender, and the three grown young men swept through the place like a plague of locusts. By the time they came back out, full and satisfied, it was only seven in the evening.
Going back to the hotel at this hour felt a little too wasteful. Since it was Xia Fengsheng’s first time abroad, he wanted to wander around.
Each of the three suggested a place, and in the end they settled on one together, deciding to go blow some wind by the sea as a post-dinner leisure activity.
It would take an hour to drive there. Shi Ye drove. Sitting in the passenger seat, Xia Fengsheng looked at the scenery while scrolling through short videos on his phone.
On the surface he looked perfectly normal. In reality, his brain was twisting itself into knots figuring out how to disgust Shi Ye.
Then, right at that moment, he came across a video of a mixed-race child independently putting on a sweater on a winter morning.
Because the child was so innocent and adorable, the likes were sky-high, and the comments were flooded with the word cute.
At a red light, Xia Fengsheng held up the phone for Shi Ye and Ding Qizhen to see.
Shi Ye did not see what the point was. “What about it?”
He was not especially into children, but he still responded to everything. “Is it because him dressing himself is impressive?”
Ding Qizhen, however, had his own unique take, first lesson in friendship sharing.
Xia Fengsheng wanted to be friends with him.
And then Xia Fengsheng opened his mouth and struck like thunder: “When I wear a sweater in winter, I’m just as cute as he is.”
“……”
“……”
Do all finance students save their gold like this?
After that little interlude, the three of them arrived at the seaside. The weather was warm today, and the sea breeze blowing across their faces carried a soft gentleness.
Their noses filled with the damp, salty smell of seawater. The vast ocean stretched as far as the eye could see.
Since he had grown up in a coastal city, Xia Fengsheng’s feelings toward the sea had always been fairly ordinary. Things you could have without effort were very easy not to cherish.
Back then, whenever he wanted to, he could go see the sea. But after the college entrance exams, he never saw it again, and never even thought about it.
Now, seeing it again, he suddenly realized the sea really was an exceptionally good thing.
You could look at it when happy. You could jump into it when sad. And when you had no money, you could go into it then too.
Just as Xia Fengsheng closed his eyes and let himself fully feel the warmth carried by the sea breeze, a sudden moan floated over from not far away.
“Ah~~”
Xia Fengsheng frowned. It was not only him who heard it—Shi Ye and Ding Qizhen heard it too.
All three turned their heads at once.
What the hell kind of noise was that?
