Chapter 4
Bang—
Xia Fengsheng shut the door.
He was living every day like he had eaten poisonous mushrooms.
How could some stranger come looking for him first thing in the morning?
He picked up the instant noodle cup of chicken stewed with mushrooms he had eaten yesterday from the table and began studying the ingredient list.
Poisonous mushrooms. One lawsuit filed in court and he could get tens of thousands in compensation.
“Why’d you close the door?” The trendy guy outside opened it and walked in.
His “tens of thousands” were mercilessly kicked away.
Xia Fengsheng had just crawled out of bed, his clothes in disarray. His shrewd, calculating face paired with crimson lips made him look like the kind of beautiful serpent from Roman mythology that rises from the water only to bite your head off at any moment—cold, slick, ominous.
The black mole by the corner of his lips made his whole air even more striking.
He had only just gotten up, and somehow he had already lost tens of thousands.
The trendy guy had not expected to be met with such blazing anger right off the bat. “What’s wrong?”
“Who are you?”
The trendy guy looked at him, pursed his lips, then bent down and leaned closer, his eyes fixed on him. That devilishly handsome face carried a bad-boy grin. “You really don’t remember?”
The trendy guy was wearing a red heavy-work biker jacket, one shoulder hooked with the strap of a backpack, limited-edition sneakers on his feet, both hands tucked into the loose jacket pockets. His skin leaned pale, but the veins and muscle visible beneath the collar as he bent down showed that the body under his clothes was anything but slender. There was the toned vitality of someone who worked out regularly. His hairstyle was neat, his neck clean-cut, his build tall and broad, and the depth of his features was striking enough to be almost frightening.
The type he would normally detour around if he saw him on the street.
If any lane on the road got blocked, all this man had to do was stand at the intersection.
No need for a signboard, no need for caution tape. He worked better than a roadblock.
Once the groggy aftertaste of waking up wore off, Xia Fengsheng’s mind gradually cleared.
He did not immediately recognize who the man in front of him was.
The other man’s frame was much taller and more solid than before. In his memory, back in high school the other had been a dance student, with wrists falling past the crotch and body proportions rare for Asians. In the few years since then, the boyish slenderness had vanished without a trace.
Staring at the trendy guy’s face, the more he looked, the more familiar it seemed.
A little like…
“No, wait!”
Xia Fengsheng was the first to deny it himself.
The trendy guy looked puzzled. “What do you mean, no?”
Xia Fengsheng took another careful look at the other’s build.
How could this possibly be his ex-boyfriend?
He was just scaring himself~
The trendy guy narrowed his peach-blossom eyes, sweeping away his fantasies and casting a grand memory-restoration spell on him.
“My name is Shi Ye. I’m your boyfriend.”
The octopus of memory wrapped its tentacles around Xia Fengsheng and hauled him splashing toward the deep sea of recollection.
No matter how hard he struggled at the tail end, it was useless.
The day they broke up had been a snowy night, with goose-feather snow falling thick and heavy.
That year Shi Ye was eighteen, and he was eighteen too. The temperature outside was the negative of their age.
Also in the capital, Xia Fengsheng had taken a full day’s high-speed rail ride from Shenzhen just to ask Shi Ye out in the middle of the night to meet him.
At the time, Shi Ye came to the appointment on crutches with one leg broken. Under the streetlamp, Xia Fengsheng stood waiting at the agreed spot in his down jacket.
It was his first time experiencing the cold of a northern snowy night. The knife-like wind scraped at him until his hands and feet went numb.
The tip of his nose, his ears, and the point of his chin had all been stained pink by the cold. In those younger days, Xia Fengsheng had not yet grown into his features. He looked like an unripe green tangerine—young, raw, unworldly. His eyes had not yet opened into the easy stretch they would have in adulthood, and every bit of him gave off an air of innocence untouched by the world.
Because of certain circumstances, they had not seen each other for several months back then. They had only stayed in touch through their phones.
When they finally met again, Shi Ye was so excited he could not get the words out.
Xia Fengsheng spoke first. “Shi Ye, I have something to tell you.”
“Go ahead.”
They had not seen each other in so long; Xia Fengsheng must have had all kinds of things in his heart he wanted to say to him.
“Shi Ye.”
“Mm?”
Xia Fengsheng’s words swept past with a gust of wind. “Let’s break up.”
Shi Ye’s smile froze.
As if he had made up his mind about something, Xia Fengsheng repeated, “Let’s break up.”
“What?” Shi Ye’s mind went blank.
Before this, they had already been together for almost three years, ever since the first year of high school. Though the beginning of their relationship had been somewhat absurd and bumpy, it had always been stable. He had never once imagined breaking up with Xia Fengsheng.
Shi Ye panicked at once. The day before yesterday, Xia Fengsheng had still been saying on the phone that he missed him, and now he was talking about breaking up.
“Why? Don’t you like me anymore?”
The breakup had come too fast, like a tornado.
Faced with his confusion, Xia Fengsheng gave his reason.
“I don’t like people who step through the door with their right leg first.”
Shi Ye, standing there on crutches with his left leg fractured: …
For a moment, it was hard to tell whether Xia Fengsheng had come to break up or just to pick a fight.
Shi Ye tried to keep him. “Can we not break up? Weren’t we fine the day before yesterday? I don’t want to break up.”
Xia Fengsheng shook his head. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to.”
“Why?” He could not possibly accept being dumped over such a garbage excuse.
“Because the legs are attached to my body.”
The moment the words fell, Xia Fengsheng turned around and bolted.
Everything had happened too suddenly. On Shi Ye’s prince-like teenage face, shock exploded outright. His eyes shook like a magnitude-ten earthquake, his lips trembling as he shouted:
“Xia… Xia Fengsheng!!!”
“Xia Fengsheng! Can we not break up?! I don’t want to break up!”
“Come back! Come back here!”
“Why don’t you like me anymore? Didn’t you say you’d like me for a lifetime?!”
Xia Fengsheng left without a shred of hesitation, and in that instant the reality of the breakup settled hard in Shi Ye’s heart.
Everything happening now was real.
“If you wanted to break up from the beginning, then why did you steal my face kiss in the first place?!”
His precious face kiss.
As Shi Ye spoke, tears slipped from the corners of his eyes. With his injured leg, he could not catch up to Xia Fengsheng at all, and he nearly broke down completely.
He loudly accused Xia Fengsheng of being irresponsible.
“Xia Fengsheng, back at the oath-taking rally, right before I went onstage to give my speech, I kissed you behind the curtain behind the teachers’ backs, behind the principal’s back, behind the entire school’s back—how can you do this to me?!”
“Didn’t you say you’d love me for a lifetime? I haven’t even finished my lifetime yet!”
Whether it was the sincerity of a young boy overcome with feeling or simply the slippery road beneath his feet, Xia Fengsheng suddenly went thump and plunged into a snowbank by the roadside.
He was bundled up thickly in his puffy down jacket, and as he clumsily scrambled back up, he was covered head to toe in a thick layer of snow, turned into a snowman.
Then the snowman turned back and looked at Shi Ye.
Shi Ye lit up with joy, thinking Xia Fengsheng had had a change of heart and no longer wanted to break up.
The very next second, Xia Fengsheng ran even faster.
The snowman could be seen sprinting in great strides through the snowstorm.
Shi Ye: …
Shi Ye: !!!
No one knew how many times Shi Ye fell while chasing after Xia Fengsheng. He fell, then got back up; fell again, then got up again—persistent to the bitter end.
In the end, he did not even have time to pick up his crutches. Looking at the figure ahead running so fast it seemed to leave afterimages, the boy sat in the snow and howled in tears.
“Xia Fengsheng, you’d better pray I never catch you! If I catch you, I’ll fucking screw you so hard you’ll be staying in proctology for a month!!!”
The face in his memory overlapped with the one in front of him now.
What could be more terrifying than the ex-boyfriend he had not seen in seven years suddenly appearing before his eyes—except the fact that he was pretending to have amnesia?
Xia Fengsheng’s vision went black.
He had still underestimated Wednesday.
And also…
December! What did I tell you on the first?!
Rustle, rustle.
The sound of plastic rubbing together.
Following the sound, Xia Fengsheng finally noticed that hanging from Shi Ye’s right wrist, the hand tucked in his pocket, was a transparent plastic bag.
He focused his eyes and looked closely.
It was packed full of little-kid-go-bye-bye sleeves—every kind of pattern, every kind of flavor.
“……”
Xia Fengsheng, you’d better pray I never catch you. If I catch you, I’ll fucking screw you so hard you’ll be staying in proctology for a month.
The echo of Shi Ye’s words from their breakup rang through his mind.
This guy was serious.
Xia Fengsheng’s back door clenched tight.
A… specialist appointment!
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Shi Ye looked down at him from above, those sharply sculpted features able to carry scrutiny from any angle.
The bright, sunny grin from earlier and those affectionate peach-blossom eyes had softened the aggressive possessiveness about him.
Now all of it was laid bare.
Even if a mountain collapsed in front of Xia Fengsheng, his expression would not change.
He grabbed a random excuse.
“I’ve been busy all day today. It’s not a good time for me to see anyone. You should head back first.” He pressed a hand to his forehead, looking exhausted.
“But today has only just started.” Shi Ye pulled out his phone and showed it to him.
The screen lit up.
8:10
Xia Fengsheng: …
The next second, a long, good-looking finger hooked the plastic bag and held it out in front of him.
“Here. They’re all your favorites.”
Xia Fengsheng looked over and discovered that besides the condoms, there was also a thermos cup about five centimeters in diameter inside the bag.
Instantly, cold sweat poured down his back.
As for what the thermos was supposed to be used for—he did not dare think about it, absolutely did not dare think about it.
If he really ended up in the hospital later, how was he supposed to explain it to the doctor?
Like those crafty patients, was he supposed to say he had not seen the thermos while taking a bath and had accidentally sat on it?
Shi Ye observed every move Xia Fengsheng made.
Xia Fengsheng pretended not to recognize the things inside.
Amnesia could make a person forget many things.
Condoms were one of them.
“What is this?”
Shi Ye frowned slightly.
“Is it edible?” Xia Fengsheng picked one up between his pale fingers.
“No.”
The whole bag of items was dumped onto the table, and the thermos rolled out.
“This one I remember. This is for drinking water.”
Xia Fengsheng quickly picked it up and began explaining the correct use of a thermos.
Even if the Jade Emperor himself came down, a thermos was still for drinking water.
“You like it?” Shi Ye asked.
Xia Fengsheng nodded. “I happened to need a cup for water.”
A trace of surprise crossed Shi Ye’s face. He had not expected him to really like the thermos.
The thermos had been bought together with everything else at the adult-products shop.
At the time, because he had bought so much, his reward points had piled up all at once.
The shop assistant had said enthusiastically, “Sir, your points are enough to redeem a gift! Come pick something!”
She pulled up the redemption items on a tablet for him to choose from.
All kinds of sex toys appeared on the screen at once, and his ears immediately turned red.
Holding the tablet, he had not known what to do with himself.
“N-never mind,” Shi Ye had said, his gaze darting away. “It’s not like I need it that much.”
He looked down and fussed with his clothes, then looked up at the ceiling.
When people were embarrassed, they always got very busy.
The salesgirl thought: I didn’t expect him to be this innocent.
An innocent puppy buying that many condoms!
With that build, he was practically a miner.
The salesgirl said, “Just pick one! They’re all limited and not for sale. Miss this chance and it won’t come again!!”
She had been far too enthusiastic.
Shi Ye brushed it off. “Whatever. Just give me any one.”
The salesgirl asked, “Is the person you’re giving it to a man or a woman?”
“A man.”
“Then we’ll switch it to this thermos cup for you. Thermos cups are really popular right now—they’re very well liked.”
Backpack: Thermos ×1
Xia Fengsheng washed the thermos and filled it with hot water.
As for the proper use of a thermos—
Shi Ye watched him fondle it so much he could not put it down. From the moment he got the thermos, he had not let go of it even once, holding it in one hand the whole time.
That made Shi Ye remember the way the salesgirl had demonstrated the thermos for him.
“Oh, right. It has another function too,” Shi Ye said.
Xia Fengsheng smiled and asked, “What function?”
Shi Ye walked over and pressed the bottom of the thermos with a strong finger.
The next second—
The thermos lit up.
Xia Fengsheng: …
