Chapter 7
“I hang this on here because I like it!” Shi Ye gripped the little bear plush.
As for Shi Ye’s scheming little mentality, Song Yu humiliated him in every possible way.
With thunderous force, he launched a severe crackdown on all green-tea behavior.
“I like it too,” Song Yu said in a mocking tone. “I like people thinking I’m handsome and cute.”
Shi Ye was struck speechless.
“Why aren’t you talking now? I guessed right, didn’t I?”
Shi Ye bit down hard on his little tiger tooth. For a moment, he could not get a single word out, his ears burning red.
“So what if I want people to think I’m cute?!”
Song Yu jumped in fright.
Good lord, what are you doing?
Are you about to hit someone?
Terrified, Song Yu backed away again and again.
Even in his panic, he still remembered to add, “You’re getting mad.”
Brave indeed.
Shi Ye caught hold of Song Yu like a dog meddling with a rat. “You got a problem with what I hang on my backpack?”
Psychologically, Song Yu strongly condemned this kind of behavior. Physically, he shook his head and looked off into the distance.
“N… no.”
Song Yu mocking other people’s hobbies made Shi Ye start to doubt whether he was really Xia Fengsheng’s current boyfriend, like he claimed.
Xia Fengsheng liked upright, decent people.
Shi Ye frowned as he remembered something, and in any case, it was not a good memory.
But the person in front of him clearly was not that type.
Song Yu slipped out of his grasp.
He had not expected that in the amnesia-boyfriend lane, besides himself, there would be another contestant.
In a country with such a huge population, even niche tracks were crowded.
The first person he saw on the first day he reported for graduate school was Xia Fengsheng—standing beneath a lush green tree, lowering his head and revealing that pale neck, wearing a crisp, pleasant white shirt, his beautiful hand holding a pen as he wrote something for the new students.
His aura was too unique. His skin carried a cool pallor, his limbs were long, his shoulders and neck especially superior, and his neck itself was longer than most people’s. Clothes looked especially good on him, particularly suits and shirts.
He carried a deliberate fragrance on him. How deliberate? It was not that the perfume itself was overpowering—it smelled very good—but rather that it made people feel he had sprayed it specifically because he was going to see you.
That sense of mystery was enough to make people obsessed.
His aura was cold and detached, yet as a person he was gentle and considerate. His hair was black as though ink had been poured over it.
Their advisor often took him along to business gatherings, and every time he came back victorious. He was clever and capable, and opinions about him outside varied greatly. Some said he was gentlemanly, polite, and graceful. Others said there was nothing alive about him except his mouth.
In summary: beautiful man, wild methods.
Song Yu had observed Xia Fengsheng for a very long time. He did not know whether the other person could accept homosexuality, so he had never dared take the final step and confess. He was afraid Xia Fengsheng would not accept same-sex attraction and would start avoiding him afterward, ruining everything.
Now that Xia Fengsheng had lost his memory, who still cared about sexual orientation? He was completely panicked. Meeting someone from the same school and department who also claimed to be his boyfriend was like a drowning man seeing a lifesaving straw—he would only instinctively cling to it desperately to save himself.
A duck that had already reached his mouth absolutely could not be allowed to fly away. Song Yu was never going to lose to this Cheng Yaojin who had charged out halfway.
“Only someone with little education would want to be another person’s mistress.”
“Who told you I’m uneducated?”
The moment educational discrimination came out, Shi Ye became even more convinced of his guess.
“Fine, then tell me, what was your first degree?”
Before Shi Ye could answer, Song Yu added, “Mine’s from Jing University.”
Shi Ye, who had graduated from a 211 university for undergrad: ……
Jing University was one of the top schools in the country. Pull out any random student on campus and they were either a champion or a top scorer.
A 211 really was not enough to look at.
Song Yu struck with precision. “If you’d spent the time you used on dressing yourself up on studying instead, you’d already have gotten into neighboring Qing University. Then you wouldn’t be here now, unable to speak the same language as us.”
Shi Ye: “You…”
Xia Fengsheng cut in. “Are you two done arguing yet?”
He had already finished two peaches, and they were still arguing.
Song Yu said, “No matter how much is said, it’s useless. Better to let senior brother choose for himself.”
Round and round it went, and the starting point returned to him again.
Xia Fengsheng: ……
If he did not choose, these two definitely would not let the matter drop.
Song Yu was confident he would be chosen. There were too many ways in which he was better than Shi Ye—same school, same major. Xia Fengsheng studied finance; he understood best how to weigh pros and cons. Song Yu could help him a great deal.
Xia Fengsheng stretched out a finger and drew it back again, several times over. At last, with great reluctance, he pointed at Shi Ye.
“You then.”
Shi Ye: 😀
Song Yu was the first to object. “Why?!”
“Senior brother, you’re confused! Did you pick him just because he dresses well? All of this was specially designed by him.”
“So long as he’s willing to put thought into me, that’s enough,” Xia Fengsheng said.
“……”
Song Yu could not accept it. “Senior brother, then what were we before? What about our beautiful memories? Who’s going to heal the scars those memories left me?”
Xia Fengsheng raised a brow. “The evening breeze.”
He took out his phone and tapped to play music.
Smack—
The evening breeze lifts the white hair at your temples~~ smoothing over the scars left by memories~~
After playing two lines, Xia Fengsheng stopped his losses in time.
Could not let it keep playing.
If it kept playing, he would have to pay copyright fees.
Song Yu bit his teeth and looked at Shi Ye.
Shi Ye: >vO
Shi Ye: So what if I’m a little scheming?
After Xia Fengsheng made his choice, he no longer stayed to fool around with them. Rather than watching them argue, he might as well finish the article he had not completed yet.
He opened the computer, and the first step was changing Song Yu’s nickname.
Song Yu, unwilling to accept it, came over to beg him to change his mind.
Who knew that the moment Xia Fengsheng clicked into Song Yu’s chat box, their previous chat records popped out.
Song Yu: ……
It was over. He had deleted the chat records, but the computer had not synced.
At once, cold sweat poured down Song Yu.
Xia Fengsheng turned his head to look at him.
Song Yu hurriedly said, “Don’t call the police, I’ll get out right now.”
The moment the words fell, he did not dare delay for even a second.
He packed up his things at lightning speed and rolled out.
Watching Song Yu flee in defeat, Shi Ye knew it—there was no way Song Yu was Xia Fengsheng’s current boyfriend.
Good thing he had kept insisting and never gave way.
Still, a knot remained in his heart, and he asked,
“Did you choose me because of my appearance?”
His voice had changed back again, with a little extra breath mixed into the words.
“Huh?” Xia Fengsheng said, “No.”
A smile appeared on Shi Ye’s face.
Xia Fengsheng added, “He’s too smart. I prefer people who are a bit dumber.”
Shi Ye: ……
So in the end, he was also benefiting from educational inequality.
One was dealt with. One remained.
Xia Fengsheng said, “Since we used to be in a relationship, then let’s break up now.”
Shi Ye refused. “No.”
“Why not? I don’t have feelings for you. Do you have feelings for me?”
Shi Ye did not answer directly. “Whether I do or not, we still can’t break up. You losing your memory can’t be a reason to break up. That’s not fair to me.”
Xia Fengsheng narrowed his eyes. He made it sound real enough.
Breaking up with Shi Ye was much harder than dealing with Song Yu.
Just as Xia Fengsheng was thinking of a solution, Shi Ye’s phone rang.
“Where are you? Hurry back! Your house got robbed!”
The tremendous noise blasting from the receiver stabbed painfully at his ears, and Shi Ye frowned, holding the phone farther away.
When he left home this morning, everything had been fine. How could it have been robbed?
“Hurry back!”
Shi Ye hung up. “I need to go back first. If anything comes up, contact me on VX.”
As he spoke, he added warily, “Don’t even think about deleting my contact info. I already saved your number.”
Xia Fengsheng gave him a fake smile. He could not understand what exactly Shi Ye was planning, so he simply stopped bothering with him.
He sat at the desk and continued fiddling with the computer. The line of stitches behind his ear was shocking to look at.
When he fell from upstairs, he had gotten six stitches. Just seeing the wound made the pain feel real; ordinary people would bare their teeth involuntarily at the sight of it.
Shi Ye stood behind him. “Don’t you have anything to say to me?”
Say what?
Xia Fengsheng did not understand.
Seven years without seeing each other—he was a stranger to Shi Ye, and Shi Ye was a stranger to him.
There was nothing for strangers to talk about.
Seeing that he really had nothing to say, Shi Ye did not linger.
But as he opened the door to leave, he was suddenly called back.
“Oh, right.”
Shi Ye turned around.
Xia Fengsheng said, “Be careful. The jacket you’re wearing can talk.”
“……”
*
The sports car pulled into the underground parking garage, and the elevator slowly rose.
Ding—
The eighteenth floor had arrived.
Dusty from the road, Shi Ye came back, unlocked the door with fingerprint and password, and strode inside without even bothering to change shoes.
“Bubai!”
He pulled out his phone and called Ding Qizhen while bending down to search every crack and crevice for Bubai’s shadow.
He pulled open the curtains. “Bubai!”
He opened the washing machine. “Bubai!”
He lay on the floor and shouted into the gap under the sofa. “Bubai!”
He even rummaged through the trash can. “Bubai!”
Nowhere.
If he had known the house would be broken into, he should have sent Bubai to kitty kindergarten before leaving this morning.
Just as Shi Ye was leaping all over the house, the innermost bedroom door opened.
Ding Qizhen came out carrying an entirely black half-grown cat in a pagoda-like hold.
Looking at Shi Ye, who was in all sorts of bizarre shapes around the house, he asked, “What are you doing?”
Shi Ye, who had been digging through the trash can, lifted his head. The moment he saw the half-grown cat, the heart hanging in midair inside his chest opened a parachute and landed safely.
Ding Qizhen said, “Bubai’s fine. The thief didn’t take a liking to it.”
The half-grown cat, as if it understood, let out an indignant meow in the manner of a shameless snake. “Meow!”
Ding Qizhen hurriedly flattered it. “That’s because they don’t know how to appreciate you.”
Ding Qizhen and Shi Ye were childhood friends. Right now, he was studying abroad in Beautiful Country.
Recently, with Halloween and Christmas happening one after another over there, he had only managed to squeeze out time to come back.
Shi Ye took Bubai from him. Bubai could hardly be called a kitten anymore—it was already nine years old this year, with an extremely healthy body.
“Come in and check whether any valuables are missing.”
Ding Qizhen knew the password to Shi Ye’s house. He had come by earlier looking for him, and when he did not find anyone in the living room, he went to look in the bedroom.
The moment he opened the door, it was a complete mess.
Someone came to clean Shi Ye’s house every day during a fixed time slot.
Shi Ye himself also had a habit of tidying his room. No matter how tired he was, he would never leave clothes tossed all over the floor.
And yet the room was full of clothes that had been rummaged through and thrown everywhere. In the walk-in closet, the watch case and jewelry boxes were even more of a chaotic disaster.
A thief had broken in!
Completely unlike Ding Qizhen’s expression, Shi Ye did not even blink at the messy bedroom.
“I did it myself.”
Ding Qizhen was shocked. “You did it yourself?”
What did you make it like this for?
He asked tentatively, “Did you get some mental illness?”
“You’re the one with mental illness.” Shi Ye put Bubai down. It was the cat’s mealtime now, so he let it go eat. “I did this this morning.”
And right now it was still only late morning. When Ding Qizhen came over, it had been eight in the morning, and Shi Ye was already gone.
Ding Qizhen had wandered around the large flat with a baseball bat again and again, making sure there was no thief before calling Shi Ye.
Pointing at the mess covering the floor, Ding Qizhen asked, “What time did you get up and do all this?”
“Five.”
“……”
This disciplined trendy man had gotten up at five in the morning just to wash up and dress himself.
Ding Qizhen clicked his tongue. Too exaggerated. Who was worth going through so much effort to meet?
“Who did you go see?”
“Xia Fengsheng.”
Like a clap of thunder on level ground, Ding Qizhen suspected his ears.
“Who?!”
Shi Ye’s ears hurt from the shout. “Xia Fengsheng.”
Between the two of them, they could not even make up one decent pair of ears.
Ding Qizhen was dumbfounded. He had not heard that name in years, and hearing it again now was no less shocking than before. “Why did you suddenly go see him?!”
“Did you forget how he forced you back then?”
He did not know the exact details either. Shi Ye had never wanted to say, and it was not convenient for him to ask too much.
Back in high school, Shi Ye had been forced into dating a boy named Xia Fengsheng. They dated for nearly three years.
And in the final winter of senior year, Xia Fengsheng played him.
“He lost his memory.”
“Lost his memory?” Ding Qizhen muttered, “Then that’s karmic payback.”
“No, wait. If he lost his memory, why did you go see him?”
“To get back together and settle things.”
“……” Ding Qizhen’s eyes rolled white, and he nearly fainted. “You! You still like him? You want to rekindle your old relationship with him!”
“Did you forget how he treated you before?!”
Poor Shi Ye, played in Xia Fengsheng’s palm.jpg
Shi Ye frowned. “How could I?”
He remembered everything.
“Then why are you getting back together with him?” Ding Qizhen suddenly understood. “You want revenge?”
Shi Ye did not deny it.
Revenge was one thing, but dragging himself into it too—wasn’t the price a bit too high?
“To what extent has he lost his memory? He remembers nothing at all? Not even his parents, the most important people?”
Shi Ye recalled Xia Fengsheng’s behavior. “Mm.”
Rubbing his chin, Ding Qizhen analyzed,
“He’s got amnesia now. You show up and stay close to him—everyone around him is a stranger, so he’ll definitely depend on you. Then once he can’t leave you anymore, you throw him away ruthlessly.” Ding Qizhen slapped his hand. “Shi Ye, you really aren’t human!”
“……”
Shi Ye took a bottle of juice out of the fridge. Ding Qizhen crowded over and asked, “How did you feel seeing him? How’s he doing now?”
“So-so.”
“What do you mean so-so?” In what sense?
Shi Ye said, “All of it is so-so.”
Back when he was dumped, he had cried so bitterly that he thought seeing Xia Fengsheng again someday would be earthshaking.
But when he actually saw Xia Fengsheng again, he felt nothing at all. The feelings he had in his youth had already gone up in smoke over the seven years they had been apart.
*
After what happened that morning, Xia Fengsheng ordered fried chicken to soothe himself.
Fried chicken: rich in all the nutrients the human body does not need.
After eating his fill, he lay on the bed with nothing to do.
In the past, Mondays had him spinning like a top. Now that he was suddenly free and had nothing to do, Xia Fengsheng felt a little unaccustomed to it.
He opened his contact list and started calling the roll for the King of Hell.
Who should he harass?
In the end, his eyes stopped on his advisor Yang Liwan’s number.
Yang Liwan, out of all these people, I still hate you the most.
Xia Fengsheng got out of bed and dressed himself beautifully.
Might as well go harass him a bit.
That afternoon, Yang Liwan pushed open the office door and saw Xia Fengsheng sitting on the sofa inside.
Xia Fengsheng’s eyes were like lightbulbs. The moment he saw him, they lit up with a flash, and he said eagerly, “Teacher, you’re here!”
Holding a notebook in his hands, he looked at him with shining eyes.
So eager to learn.
Yang Liwan’s scalp went numb. Right now, he did not want to see Xia Fengsheng at all.
Because of the confession wall incident earlier, he had already been summoned by higher-ups and still bore a grudge.
Not to mention that Xia Fengsheng had forgotten everything he had learned. If he had to teach him all over again from the beginning, how long would that take? There was no way he was going to do that.
The office was large, shared by four teachers.
A teacher who did not get along with Yang Liwan said with schadenfreude, “Little Xia’s been here a long time. Said he wants to study hard with you.”
“If he learns it all, he can help you organize materials and write things too. Didn’t he often help you before?”
The other teacher’s words were dripping with sarcasm, aimed straight at Yang Liwan’s face.
Teachers had also heard a little about Xia Fengsheng’s confession wall help post, and behind the scenes they had mocked Yang Liwan plenty.
What kind of person was he, really.
Yang Liwan gritted his teeth to himself. It was not enough that Xia Fengsheng annoyed him over the phone—now he had come to annoy him in the office too.
Because memory-loss Xia Fengsheng, once a beast of burden, was no longer useful, many of the papers for awards now had to be written by Yang Liwan himself.
He ignored Xia Fengsheng, sat down at his desk, and turned on the computer. On it was an economics article half-written.
“Teacher, let me have a look too.”
Xia Fengsheng came over, his whole body radiating eagerness to study, wanting to stick a hand into everything.
Yang Liwan had just been about to tell him to go cool off somewhere else.
But Xia Fengsheng raised a hand to his forehead. “This feels so familiar. I think I know how to write the rest.”
Yang Liwan’s hand, which had been about to push his away, withdrew in an instant. Some delight appeared on his face. “Really?”
“I suddenly feel a huge energy in both my hands.”
The doctor had said Xia Fengsheng’s memory could return at any time. It was normal for him to remember things when he saw something familiar.
He remembered already?!
Yang Liwan stood up from his chair. “Then you write it.”
Xia Fengsheng did not refuse. He dropped himself right into the leather chair.
“Teacher, I’m starting.”
“Fine, go ahead.”
Yang Liwan looked toward the teacher who had just mocked him, unbearably pleased, and took his teacup over to the water dispenser to fill it.
When he came back, he saw all the text on the screen bathed in a layer of blue light.
Yang Liwan: ?
The next second, Xia Fengsheng pressed Delete.
Whoosh—
Yang Liwan: !
White. Vast. Blank.
Xia Fengsheng’s head paused in front of the screen. He turned back to look at him. “Teacher, all the words on the screen suddenly disappeared.”
You deleted them all! Of course they disappeared!!!!!!
Yang Liwan wanted nothing more than to throw Xia Fengsheng out the window.
“What are you doing?!”
He had worked so hard to write that!
He quickly snatched the mouse out of Xia Fengsheng’s hand to try to recover it, only to discover that this little brat had even emptied the recycle bin.
Ten thousand words. Now not one was left.
Yang Liwan felt his heart seize. “If you don’t know how to use a computer, why didn’t you say so earlier?!”
Xia Fengsheng was driven out of the seat. “I didn’t know this time. Next time I’ll be better.”
He was very good at comforting himself.
“Teacher, practice makes perfect. Next time I’ll definitely do it.”
Next time? There was absolutely not going to be a next time!
Yang Liwan now fully understood that the current Xia Fengsheng was completely different from the old one.
He could not count on him for anything.
“Teacher, let me try one more time.”
Yang Liwan guarded against him. “I’ll write it myself.”
He would not even let him touch the keyboard or mouse.
Xia Fengsheng said, “But that teacher just said you used to ask me to help write things for you all the time. I can still help write now.”
“No need.” Yang Liwan’s face was dark with disgust. “Quit that habit.”
Writing things was already annoying enough, and Xia Fengsheng still refused to leave his side.
“Do you really have nothing to do?” Yang Liwan asked.
Xia Fengsheng looked at him for a while. “Mm.”
Yang Liwan closed his eyes and impatiently pointed at a whole wall of bookshelves over there.
“If you’ve got nothing to do, then go take a book from over there and read.”
“Fine.”
Xia Fengsheng did not bother him again. He went over to the bookshelf to choose a book.
After picking out Gorky’s In the World, he sat down on the sofa.
Finally, quiet.
The next second—
“Teacher, if there are words I don’t know and sentences I can’t understand, can I ask you?” Xia Fengsheng asked, eager to learn.
Yang Liwan nearly let the curse words fly out of his mouth, but because there were other people present, he swallowed them back down.
Through clenched teeth, he squeezed out one word. “Fine.”
Having received his answer, Xia Fengsheng started reading.
Very soon, he came across a word he did not recognize.
“Teacher, there’s a word I don’t know.”
Annoyed beyond measure, Yang Liwan pretended not to hear and ignored him.
But Xia Fengsheng was relentless. “Teacher, there’s a word I don’t know! I’ve lost my memory—I don’t remember lots of characters.”
Not only had he fallen into amnesia, he had even fallen into illiteracy.
Yang Liwan played deaf.
He did not have that much time to care about him.
Xia Fengsheng raised the stakes. “Teacher, is this how you act as a teacher?”
“……”
Left with no choice, Yang Liwan got up and walked over to Xia Fengsheng’s side. “What word don’t you know?”
“Just four.”
Xia Fengsheng pointed at them one by one.
Yang Liwan read them one by one along with his finger.
“I.”
Xia Fengsheng moved to the next word.
“Am.”
The next one again.
“Stupid.”
Xia Fengsheng pointed at the last character.
Yang Liwan looked at him in silence.
What exactly are you trying to do?
