Chapter 24: The Swamp of Sobriety
When Fu Rangyi woke up, his head was heavy and muddled. His field of vision was pitch-black. A floral fragrance, so dense it was almost choking, surged up around him, strand by strand, like silk and satin, wrapping the entire space.
It was his pheromones.
And not only that—it was his pheromones from the arousal stage.
The scent of grapefruit blossoms overwhelmed every other smell, the richest and strongest of them all.
Opening his eyes, Fu Rangyi was somewhat dazed. It was as if he had had a long, chaotic dream. After waking, those scorching scenes gradually broke apart and dissolved, like a drop of pink ink melting into water and vanishing.
As sensation returned, his shoulders and wrists felt a little sore. Very soon, he sensed something was wrong. He turned his face and discovered that his left hand had actually been tied up, and the bracelet was once again fastened around his wrist.
“What the hell…”
The moment he raised his hand, he realized the other end was actually attached to something. Following the blue outdoor rope with his eyes, he saw that the rope had been wrapped twice around the leg of the bedside cabinet. And that was not all. It continued to extend farther.
The end of the other side was actually Zhu Zhixi, curled up asleep on a beanbag chair.
Wasn’t this beanbag from his room? How did it end up beside my bed?
Fu Rangyi lifted his hand a little higher. The rope tugged, pulling Zhu Zhixi’s left hand up with it.
What game was this?
Fu Rangyi tried to recall, but his mind was a mess, and his headache was splitting. The only memories he could barely trace back were that he had requested two days’ leave from the school, taken medicine, fallen asleep, and woken up feeling extremely unwell…
He had also gone to Zhu Zhixi’s room and entered his tent.
And then?
Some very blurry fragments flashed past quickly, then disappeared again.
Fu Rangyi tried to sit up, wanting to untie the knot around his wrist. This was even more difficult than he had imagined.
“What are you doing now…” A familiar sticky, drowsy voice floated up. “I only just fell asleep not long ago. Spare me, please.”
After Zhu Zhixi finished speaking, he hummed twice, wanting to roll over and continue sleeping, but the rope was pulling his hand very tightly. He took a deep breath, seeming somewhat helpless, then climbed up and pushed the eye mask onto the top of his head.
He raised his head, his hair sticking up in a complete mess, and stared blankly at Fu Rangyi for a while.
Fu Rangyi’s mind was completely blank. Perhaps because the susceptible period had not fully ended and was still affecting his emotions and mind, he suddenly felt an inexplicable worry that he might say the wrong thing.
He originally wanted to cautiously wait for Zhu Zhixi to speak first, but this fellow was sitting on the beanbag, yawning again and again, so sleepy that not a single word came out. Fu Rangyi could only ask first.
“Why are you here?” He lifted his hand slightly, doing his best to use a gentle, questioning tone. “And what is this?”
Zhu Zhixi blinked very slowly. Then, as if he had seen and heard nothing at all, he lay straight back down, wrapped himself in his blanket, and turned his back to him. His movements were not polite in the slightest, nearly dragging Fu Rangyi off the bed.
What now?
Did he really ask the wrong thing?
Fu Rangyi raised his own hand, and Zhu Zhixi’s hand was also lifted out of the blanket by the rope.
“Talk.”
This time, Zhu Zhixi sat up in one breath and suddenly launched into a rapid-fire attack. “Talk about what? What exactly is going on with you right now? Are you lying again? I’m telling you, I absolutely, absolutely will not be fooled a second time.”
As he spoke, he untied the rope around his own wrist and stood up with the help of the bedframe. Unexpectedly, his legs went weak for a moment, and he almost knelt in front of Fu Rangyi.
Why was he suddenly angry?
Almost subconsciously, Fu Rangyi reached out and supported his elbow, even though his own hand was still restrained.
“Lying? What did I lie to you about?” His head still hurt, and his brows furrowed. Only belatedly did he realize that he was still wearing a bite guard. “And this bite guard… where did it come from?”
He remembered that he had not been wearing a bite guard before. Because there was none at home, he had not dared to let Zhu Zhixi come back and had tried every possible way to send him away.
Why did he come home anyway?
Zhu Zhixi pulled his hand away and stood firm on his own. His eyes widened, his expression full of disbelief.
“Now you’re starting to pretend you lost your memory? No, why don’t we just get straight to it? Stop with all this unnecessary stuff. Anyway, everything that should’ve been done and shouldn’t have been done has already been done.”
Fu Rangyi found this inexplicable.
“What are you talking about? Untie me first.”
Zhu Zhixi stared at him for a long while, then crouched down and rummaged around on the beanbag chair for ages before finding his phone. With his back to Fu Rangyi, he opened a certain app.
But he seemed to have forgotten that from this angle, Fu Rangyi could see even more easily.
Fu Rangyi rather immorally stole a glance.
The interface looked very familiar.
“Why do you have access to my bracelet?”
Hearing this question, Zhu Zhixi was just about to retort, but when he saw the latest data load, he froze.
Without receiving an answer, Fu Rangyi glanced at it too. The data that had previously been a sea of red had actually stabilized for the most part.
What happened?
He suddenly felt a little uneasy.
Zhu Zhixi put down the phone and suddenly ran to the master bathroom. Not long after, he came out holding a piece of paper that looked very much like instructions, walking out angrily.
“That damn Li Qiao…”
He crumpled the paper into a ball, lowered his head, and began typing furiously on his phone.
Fu Rangyi frowned. “Li Qiao?”
Zhu Zhixi was busy sending messages and had no time to answer him.
“You met him privately?” Fu Rangyi failed to control his tone.
Only then did Zhu Zhixi turn around. “Why are you being so fierce?”
Fu Rangyi paused. After adjusting his breathing, he said, “Untie the rope.”
After saying that, he glanced at the phone in Zhu Zhixi’s hand. The screen lit up because of a WeChat message, and the sender really was Li Qiao.
“You even added him? He isn’t a good person.” Fu Rangyi’s face darkened.
Zhu Zhixi hummed twice. “I already know that.”
Fu Rangyi’s hand clenched tight. “What did you two do?”
All of a sudden, he noticed Zhu Zhixi’s expression turning somewhat strange, as if he had thought of something and almost blurted it out, only to stop himself. He choked for a long while before finally throwing down an exasperated sentence.
“He nearly tortured me to death!”
“He? Tortured?”
A prickling numbness spread through Fu Rangyi’s arm, and a faint electric current transmitted through it. The bracelet began glowing again.
“Yes, him! That damned source of all evil.” After cursing, Zhu Zhixi let out a long breath and approached the bedside. “Forget it. I’ll untie this for you first.”
But for some reason, he suddenly paused, as if something had fixed him in place. Losing his balance, he dropped one knee onto the edge of the bed.
“Fu Rangyi, did you secretly…” Zhu Zhixi could barely move. “…release suppressive pheromones again?”
Fu Rangyi had drifted away in thought. Only upon hearing this did he belatedly realize something.
“Can you rein it in a little, please?” Zhu Zhixi said slowly. “Although Betas can’t smell it, your level is too high. If you release pheromones this suppressive, I’ll feel uncomfortable too.”
Fu Rangyi stared at Zhu Zhixi and noticed that his ears had suddenly turned red, while a faint flush had also surfaced on his cheeks. He did not look at all like a Beta who could not be induced by pheromones.
As if afraid of a misunderstanding, Zhu Zhixi added softly, “…It feels like carrying a mountain on my back.”
“Sorry.” Fu Rangyi’s voice was very low, and he casually made up a reason. “I… haven’t fully recovered yet. My pheromones aren’t very controlled.”
“All right, I forgive you.” Zhu Zhixi answered very generously.
Before long, he recovered and could raise his hand again.
“Give me your hand.” He stretched out his hand toward Fu Rangyi and said.
This feeling was very strange, and also somewhat familiar.
Fu Rangyi almost placed his own hand in Zhu Zhixi’s palm. It was completely his first reaction.
But he held back and merely handed his wrist over with great propriety.
Zhu Zhixi moved a little closer, lowered his head, and untied the rope very seriously. His mouth did not stop either. “You’re not even honest when sleeping. You pulled at it again, didn’t you? It’s so tight…”
The susceptible period had not fully passed, and the fluctuations in his pheromones were still ongoing. During this period, an Alpha’s five senses were especially acute. At this overly close distance, his headache worsened. He frowned slightly, his Adam’s apple rolling up and down.
He easily smelled the scent of shower gel on Zhu Zhixi.
The shower gel he had lent him before—Zhu Zhixi had stopped using it last week and changed to a fruity one.
But now, the fragrance coming from Zhu Zhixi was still woody. It was the one placed in Fu Rangyi’s bathroom, the one he had used for many years.
Zhu Zhixi pulled the rope out little by little, muttering softly, “So tight.” After a while, he finally said to him, “Don’t misunderstand. Li Qiao and I didn’t meet privately. He came here to look for you and asked me to help take care of you. The bite guard was brought by him too.”
Actually, he no longer needed to explain.
Fu Rangyi knew very clearly.
Because aside from the same shower gel scent, at this moment, there was not even the slightest bit of Li Qiao’s pheromones on Zhu Zhixi. On the contrary, every part of him, from head to toe, was covered in Fu Rangyi’s own pheromone scent. Even his hair was soaked through with it.
This was not normal.
He was a Beta. It was very difficult for him to retain pheromones, and they would not last long either. Even if they had slept in the same room, it should not have reached the point where the scent of Fu Rangyi’s pheromones seemed to seep from his skin.
The funniest thing was that Zhu Zhixi seemed completely unaware of this.
He seemed to be trying to hide something.
Fu Rangyi lowered his head and glanced at his clothes. The white Henley from before had been changed into dark gray pajamas, the buttons done all the way to the top.
He always started buttoning from the second button.
“All right, it’s untied.” After undoing the knot, Zhu Zhixi efficiently gathered the outdoor rope, rolled it up, tied it into a bundle, turned around, and threw it onto the beanbag chair.
Driven by instinct, Fu Rangyi stared like a beast at the back of his neck.
There was a bandage stuck there.
Too many unreasonable details piled up in his mind. Fu Rangyi frowned and tugged at the bite guard.
When Zhu Zhixi turned back, he happened to see this scene and thought Fu Rangyi was uncomfortable from wearing it too long.
Since the numbers were all stable, could it be removed?
No, no. Better be cautious.
He lowered his head and opened the bite guard management app on his phone, flipping through it. He thought there might be some data monitoring, but there was none.
However, he unexpectedly discovered a function: unlock attempt records.
He casually tapped it open. There were actually two records. The first attempt had failed, and the second had succeeded. The time was yesterday, and the difference between the two unlock attempts was less than half a minute.
This was an entirely new bite guard, with no previous usage history. If Li Qiao had not lied and had not unlocked it remotely, then the only person left was Fu Rangyi.
So yesterday, when he pretended to borrow the phone, he had actually been looking for this app to unlock the bite guard?
But how could he have guessed the password in two tries?
How did Fu Rangyi remember my birthday?
When did he remember it? I’ve never mentioned it.
“When did you come back?” Fu Rangyi suddenly spoke, interrupting his thoughts.
Zhu Zhixi raised his head and stared at him, his gaze strange.
“Yesterday noon. I sent you a message. You ignored me.”
Silence.
What a strange atmosphere.
After doing things that should not have been done, Zhu Zhixi had worried about how they would face each other after waking up, not daring to imagine how awkward it would be. But he had not expected it to be like this.
That memory had vanished into thin air.
He no longer needed to feel embarrassed about it.
But.
“There seems to be something wrong with my memory. That’s the truth.” Fu Rangyi spoke first, breaking the silence.
“I know.” Zhu Zhixi nodded.
He told Fu Rangyi, “It should be because of the inhibitor Li Qiao brought. I used it on you. I didn’t expect there would be so many side effects…”
As he spoke, his tone suddenly changed, carrying a bit of reproach. He rarely spoke like this.
“From now on, stop testing medicine every day like a lab rat. It’s too dangerous. Isn’t it better to live a few more days?”
Fu Rangyi said nothing.
A few seconds later, he spoke again as if to himself. “I remember telling you not to come back.”
Hearing this, Zhu Zhixi instantly became angry. He rolled up his sleeves and was ready to curse.
But Fu Rangyi quickly asked again, “What did I do to you?”
The anger that had almost shot straight to the sky suddenly scattered. It was like punching cotton.
His gaze shifted, and he caught sight of Fu Rangyi gripping the blanket tightly. Red marks still remained on his wrists.
His eyes were lowered. His complexion was worse than Zhu Zhixi had ever seen, his lips pale, his breath weak, his face written with exhaustion and bewilderment. It was as if he was the one in this room who was truly on the verge of death.
Many times, Zhu Zhixi was very satisfied with his brilliant imagination, but at this moment, he hated it very much. Once again, he thought of Fu Rangyi crying, of him begging for touch, kisses, and hugs. Those suppressed longings had accumulated for who knew how long, and during the susceptible period, when he had lost his reason, they had been vomited out in a miserable mess mixed with blood.
A new round of accumulation.
A new round of self-loathing.
What exactly happened to you?
“Something very excessive? Was it?” Fu Rangyi spoke again, looking at him, his gaze appearing extremely calm.
He was practically leading Zhu Zhixi to say “yes.”
The room fell quiet again, the light dim and obscure. The scented candle on the bedside table had burned halfway down, its dripping wax congealing in an unsightly mess, the candle flame wavering slightly.
The moment Zhu Zhixi fell silent, Fu Rangyi’s mood began to worsen.
In the end, he had still been like a lowly animal, controlled by pheromones, losing his reason, doing the thing he least wanted and most hated: forcing someone unwilling, using every method to satisfy the reproductive desire rooted in his genes.
Disgusting.
And that person was still…
“Fu Rangyi.”
At the edge of near-collapse, he suddenly heard Zhu Zhixi call his name. He came back to himself and looked at him.
At some point, Zhu Zhixi had already sat down by the bed. He was very close, and the eyes looking over were brighter than the candlelight.
“You guessed right. Some things did happen. But…” Zhu Zhixi’s face was red, and his tone was very casual, but after meeting Fu Rangyi’s gaze, he turned his eyes away again. “It wasn’t what you did to me. It was what the two of us did together.”
Fu Rangyi froze.
“Don’t look down on people. I’m not an Omega who goes weak in the knees and gets wet and passively enters heat the moment I smell pheromones. Yes, your pheromones are very strong, but they still can’t control my will. Even if you wanted to force yourself on me, if I didn’t give you the chance, I could still resist.”
As he spoke, he shook the rope in his hand and hummed smugly twice. “So what if you’re a top Alpha? If I say I’ll tie you up, then I’ll tie you up.”
But after saying all this, Zhu Zhixi did feel somewhat guilty.
He knew very well how terrifying the explosive strength of a top Alpha in his susceptible period could be, and he had personally witnessed how a certain Alpha could still scam people with his intelligence even during that period.
But what happened later truly had not been one person’s responsibility. He could not lie to himself. There had indeed been many chances to refuse.
Originally, it was fine. Fu Rangyi had forgotten, and Zhu Zhixi wanted to pretend it had never happened too, so everyone could return to their normal track. But he did not want Fu Rangyi to overthink and sink into a swamp.
“What happened?” Fu Rangyi came back to himself, his voice very hoarse.
“Is that very important? I don’t mind.”
This was not Zhu Zhixi pretending to be carefree. He truly felt that way. Wasn’t the important thing that Fu Rangyi had returned to normal now?
However, perhaps because the fear still lingered, he suddenly seemed to hallucinate a sound.
Creak, creak.
That sound had appeared from time to time yesterday.
Thinking the matter had come to an end, he bent down and grabbed one corner of the beanbag chair, preparing to drag it back to his own room like a corpse and catch up on sleep.
Unexpectedly, something fell from the chair with a tap and hit the floor.
A little duck.
Then Fu Rangyi suddenly called out to him. “Wait.”
Zhu Zhixi really did wait, but he did not look back or turn around. After waiting for quite a while, with no follow-up, he lifted his foot and started walking out again.
This time, Fu Rangyi spoke, his tone faintly irritated, as if he were angry at himself.
“So… what exactly did I do?”
Zhu Zhixi took a deep breath and let go. The beanbag chair fell back to the ground. He turned around, approached, and climbed onto the bed he had slept on intermittently last night. Leaning forward, he braced both hands against the headboard with a thud, his arms caging Fu Rangyi in.
The distance between them was suddenly pulled extremely close.
He raised his brows and said, word by word, “You kissed me.”
Watching Fu Rangyi’s eyes widen slightly in shock, Zhu Zhixi actually felt somewhat pleased and could not help curving his lips.
“You turned me this way and that and kissed me. You kissed me especially hard, especially fiercely, and even ground me with those sharp Alpha teeth of yours. See? My lips are swollen. You nearly kissed them raw! Oh right, you even used tongue. You weren’t gentle at all. You shoved it straight toward my throat. You…”
“Shut up.” Those two words seemed to be squeezed out through clenched teeth.
“Shut up?”
Zhu Zhixi tilted his head. “Why? Weren’t you the one who asked me to say it? I swear to heaven, I didn’t exaggerate even a tiny bit. Every word is true. If I’m lying, may I die a horrible death.”
Mm. This oath did not seem all that intimidating.
Fu Rangyi’s brows furrowed. “Why say that?”
“I already said you were the one who asked me to!” Zhu Zhixi felt terribly wronged.
Fu Rangyi choked for a moment, then said in a muffled voice, “…I meant the last sentence.”
Zhu Zhixi froze too.
Their faces were too close. Fu Rangyi shifted his gaze away, looking toward the slightly swaying edge of the curtain.
“That’s all?” he asked.
“You bit my hand too. You made me bleed.”
He stretched out his hand, but found that the wound on it had become so tiny it could no longer be found. So while Fu Rangyi was not paying attention, he quietly drew his hand back and pinched it closed.
“Only your hand?”
Why ask so many questions? Like interrogating a criminal…
Since he did not say anything, Fu Rangyi instead asked on his own, “I marked you, didn’t I?”
“Marked?” Zhu Zhixi pretended to be magnanimous and laughed twice. “It doesn’t count. I can’t be marked anyway. You just bit me once. It’ll heal in two days. Not even the slightest effect.”
Fu Rangyi fell silent.
Creak, creak.
That sound appeared again. This time, Zhu Zhixi confirmed it was Fu Rangyi grinding his teeth.
“What’s wrong with you now?” He kind of wanted to open his phone and check Fu Rangyi’s data, afraid he was relapsing. But now was not a good time.
Fu Rangyi frowned slightly and turned his face aside, no longer looking at him.
Zhu Zhixi stared at him for a while and felt that he was actually rather cute like this.
His arms were getting a little tired from bracing himself up, so he quietly lowered them and shook them out. He really did not know why those domineering CEOs in dramas liked kabedon-ing people so much. Were their muscles all trained very well? Like Fu Rangyi’s?
He smiled, then said lightly, “Those things just now were what you did. Do you want to know what I did?”
“What?” Fu Rangyi turned his face back to look at him.
“I touched your face, your hands, your neck, your gland.” His clear eyes darted around, his red, full lips opening and closing. “Oh right, I also hugged you.”
“Hugged. You.” He raised his brows.
The light in Fu Rangyi’s eyes trembled the entire time. He took a deep breath. “Zhu Zhixi…”
Before he could finish speaking, Zhu Zhixi reached out.
His fingertip slipped into the gap of the bite guard, curled, hooked around a metal bar, and pulled Fu Rangyi toward him little by little.
The distance grew even closer.
“No sarcasm allowed. You asked for it.”
He read Fu Rangyi’s disbelief and felt a little smug, and also a little panicked.
Why was he panicking?
Ah. It was the suspension bridge effect, right?
A person with a hereditary terminal illness who was about to die, and a life-saving straw suffering from a periodic malignant illness. Both were on the verge of collapse, and both hoped to be saved.
He can help me pause this damn countdown, but I can’t release even a trace of pheromones to soothe him. I can only brace myself and barely help. Thinking about it this way, the one losing out is still Fu Rangyi.
Little Zhu, isn’t this posture and action a little too ambiguous? The little person in his mind popped up again.
He came back to himself and let go of the bite guard.
He thought Fu Rangyi would lean back against the headboard as quickly as if avoiding the plague, but he did not.
“This counts as sexual harassment.” Fu Rangyi’s expression was serious. “I was the active party. It was my fault. You have the right to pursue—”
“No need.”
Fu Rangyi adjusted his breathing and continued, “I understand that you don’t want to pursue it right now. Then I’ll compensate you according to the terms in the contract. If one day you suddenly want to pursue it, I won’t stop you in any way. You can rest assured.”
For some reason, his calm tone at this moment made Zhu Zhixi a little irritated.
Is it that serious? I only picked the mildest things to say. I didn’t even mention the things that were actually sexual…
Fu Rangyi.
Bad thing.
He was simply the most suitable candidate to revive and enforce the Ten Great Tortures of the Qing dynasty.
Forget it.
Zhu Zhixi quickly took that sentence back in his heart and even spat twice.
Because he knew Fu Rangyi was a masochist. Every one of those punishments would only be used on himself.
“I said this wasn’t something you did one-sidedly. We did it together. If it counts as a breach, then both of us breached it.” He also began to throw a tantrum, using the words Fu Rangyi had once said to retort. “I don’t need your little bit of money.”
Fu Rangyi went still for a second, observing his expression.
His tone was not quite right.
Had he spoken like this before? He clearly smiled every day as if he had no worries at all.
“Then…” Fu Rangyi subconsciously softened his tone, making himself sound more apologetic. “What kind of compensation do you want? Or do you want to end things early—”
“I don’t want compensation.”
“Why?”
Zhu Zhixi was about to go crazy.
You insist on shoving it into someone’s mouth, don’t you? Then I really will make a huge demand.
He raised his head. “Fu Rangyi, yesterday you said something. I know it may not have been sincere, and you were probably talking nonsense, but I heard it.”
Fu Rangyi frowned slightly. “What did I say?”
“You said I was different from everyone else.”
He looked at Fu Rangyi. Perhaps because he had not slept enough, his eyes were a little red, but they were still bright enough to be almost aggressive.
“So what I want is different too.”
Fu Rangyi quietly looked at him. After a long while, he nodded. “Say it. What do you want?”
“For the whole day today, you have to listen to me. Whatever I tell you to do, you have to do. Every request I make, you must satisfy unconditionally.”
Zhu Zhixi hummed twice, smiling very wickedly, yet his gaze was light and bright.
“Can you do that, Little Student Fu?”
Author’s Note:
Mini-Theater: Drug Side Effects
Fu Rangyi saw the little duck. His brain went quack, and suddenly many very erotic fragments flashed back. He thought his susceptible period had not passed yet and that he was hallucinating.
Li Qiao: Actually, no. Wags finger.
Li Qiao: The side effects of this medicine are limited. It doesn’t cause complete amnesia. It only causes short-term memory loss and confusion. That’s right—“short-term.” As the drug metabolizes, the memories will slowly flash back and recover, so…
Little Zhu: You still dare show up! Damn you, I—gets dragged away by husband.
Li Qiao: Fu Rangyi, your person really loves message-bombing. Every time I open WeChat, I get startled. Hurry up and manage him.
Fu Rangyi: Just delete him, then. Cold face.
