Chapter 36: Loading the Saved Game
Introverted? Who? Me?
Zhu Zhixi widened both eyes and turned to stare at Fu Rangyi, using his gaze to convey his shock.
No, seriously, when are we going to fix this bad habit of not matching scripts before every act? Even an Oscar winner couldn’t carry this.
Fu Rangyi looked rather troubled too. He lowered his head, quickly typed a line, and handed his phone to Zhu Zhixi under the table.
[After they found out I was married, they kept being curious and tried every possible way to ask you out. I could only make excuses to put them off.]
So let them meet me. Am I that unpresentable?
Zhu Zhixi wished he could turn back time to the moment he entered the restaurant and redo the whole scene. He would absolutely not say a word. He would sit obediently beside Fu Rangyi, nodding and smiling like a quiet little accessory.
At this point, Zhu Zhixi could only force himself to try to patch things up. “Um, actually, I’m usually not like this. Mainly because I was so late today, I felt really embarrassed. Even an introverted person like me was forced into being lively…”
After he finished speaking, everyone froze for two seconds, then laughed even harder.
Fu Rangyi also looked helpless. With his head half lowered, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth, his left hand propped against the edge of the table rubbed lightly at his eyebrow.
You’re still laughing. This is all your fault. Zhu Zhixi was so embarrassed, but when he accidentally caught Fu Rangyi smiling like that, he could not help looking a few more times.
An iceberg face really did look good when it smiled.
Teacher Zhang, sitting diagonally across from them, stretched out a hand and pointed at Fu Rangyi several times. “See? What did I say? Back then I said Little Fu was hiding a beauty in his golden house. What introverted? Clearly, he just couldn’t bear to bring him out for us to see!”
“Exactly. Little Fu usually looks refined and scholarly, so solitary, with his whole mind buried in academics. Who would have thought that once he got married, he’d guard him so tightly?”
“Who said Little Fu didn’t seem like a top Alpha? Look at this possessiveness!”
“Oh, what do you know? It’s because he likes him too much!”
His colleagues chimed in one after another, one sentence piling over the next. Zhu Zhixi’s ears burned from hearing it. He thought Fu Rangyi would at least come out and refute them, but Fu Rangyi said nothing. He only lowered his head slightly, holding his chopsticks, trying to pick up a corn kernel that refused to be picked up.
See what happens when you don’t match the script beforehand? Got caught lying, didn’t you? It was Zhu Zhixi’s first time seeing Fu Rangyi this flustered. Thinking about it, Fu Rangyi was usually serious and rigorous at work, like a robot that never made mistakes. Now that such a big handle had been caught, how could he stand it?
Zhu Zhixi did not know what to say either. After all, he had been the one who made this huge mistake. So he copied Fu Rangyi, lowering his head halfway, took up his chopsticks, and reached over to help him pick it up. Who knew he would also fail for ages? Four chopstick tips bumped and clattered against one another, and not a single one was useful.
The two of them were being besieged. Every enemy present was older than them and they were all teachers. It made Zhu Zhixi feel like a high school student caught in the office for dating too early and forced to write a self-criticism. The one caught with him was even the cold top student with the best grades and the teachers’ favorite.
The corn kernel slipped back and forth under the two pairs of chopsticks. Finally, no one knew which pair used too much force, but the kernel shot straight out of the plate.
Fu Rangyi turned his head and stared at him.
What are you looking at me for? I was trying to help you. Zhu Zhixi did not dare open his mouth, afraid of destroying the already-collapsed persona, so he could only glare back.
Then Fu Rangyi picked up a spoon, scooped him a spoonful of cheesy corn, and placed it in his bowl.
“If you wanted to eat it, you didn’t have to fight me for mine,” he said quietly.
“Who was fighting you for it?” Zhu Zhixi felt extremely wronged.
Professor Wang, who was sitting opposite them, laughed loudly at the sight. “Little Fu is usually not like this. Why does he look like a child?”
Zhu Zhixi looked over. The old man speaking was seated in the middle. He looked kind and cheerful, his hair almost gone. He was old enough to have fathered someone Fu Rangyi’s age and looked at first glance like a major leader.
“Exactly. He’s always like this. Professor, you should discipline him.”
As soon as he said that, everyone laughed even harder, especially Professor Wang. Zhu Zhixi felt like he was performing a skit at the Spring Festival Gala. Whatever he said made everyone laugh. At this table, aside from Fu Rangyi, everyone seemed to be his planted audience.
Fortunately, the others did not keep dwelling on the “introverted” matter. Everyone laughed and joked, and soon moved on to new topics, though most of them were still centered around gossip about the two of them.
Fu Rangyi remained very quiet. Silently, he ordered quite a lot of meat, mostly rich and fatty cuts. When the dishes arrived, he quietly held the tongs, grilling the meat, flipping it over, cutting it into small pieces, and placing them onto Zhu Zhixi’s plate.
Before long, a little mountain of grilled meat had piled up on his plate.
Zhu Zhixi did not pay much attention. At home, whenever Fu Rangyi occasionally made fish or seafood, he would also remove the bones or crab meat and arrange everything neatly. Zhu Zhixi figured this was the joy of a compulsive person like Fu Rangyi.
Besides, he really was hungry now, so he chatted with Fu Rangyi’s colleagues while eating large mouthfuls of barbecue.
Whenever he ate something delicious, he would suddenly turn his head and point with his chopsticks. “This is so good!”
Fu Rangyi reminded him in a low voice, “Talk less. It’s getting cold.”
You still think I talk too much? I’ve already talked very little! Zhu Zhixi sulked inwardly and secretly decided to stay silent for three minutes. No matter who asked him a question or what they asked, he would not answer and would let Fu Rangyi handle it himself.
“By the way, how did you two meet? Introduced by friends? Or was it a blind date arranged by your elders?”
Fu Rangyi glanced at Zhu Zhixi and found him lifting his cup to drink, as if he had not heard. Clearly, he had been chatting warmly just now, refusing to let a single sentence fall to the ground.
Fu Rangyi had no way to stay silent, so he could only smile and answer, “We met on a blind date.”
“Then that was meeting your ideal type on a blind date!”
“Oh, now I’m curious. Was it love at first sight? Did you two get married without dating for long?”
“Do you have a more detailed love story? I’m so curious.”
Zhu Zhixi’s bright eyes darted around as he drank and secretly watched Fu Rangyi.
That’ll teach you to provoke me. Let’s see what you do now.
Fu Rangyi put down his chopsticks and lowered his hand too. He still looked composed, but under the table, his right hand was quietly turning the wedding ring on his left ring finger.
Facing an entire table of gossipy colleagues, he spoke gently. “Actually, there wasn’t anything particularly special. Our parents arranged for us to meet once at a cafe. At first, he even mistook someone else for me and sat at the wrong table.”
Everyone laughed. Only Zhu Zhixi was unusually quiet, though his heart pounded loudly.
Petty guy.
Yet in the next second, he froze.
“Later, we chatted and found that we were very similar in terms of interests and preferences. The conversation flowed so well that we completely forgot to eat. After leaving the cafe, we bought mulled wine and walked along the street while chatting. We didn’t part until it got dark.”
Zhu Zhixi’s breathing slowed. In Fu Rangyi’s unhurried “storytelling,” he seemed to hear his own voice. Every sentence, every word, overlapped with Fu Rangyi’s voice in a different time and space, crossing and merging at this very moment.
“That night, I couldn’t sleep at all. I immediately asked him out for a second meeting, then a third and a fourth. I told him about my previous archaeological work abroad, and he said he knew some Turkish, then spoke a bit for me to hear.”
Fu Rangyi even smiled a little and repeated the Turkish sentence he had said back then.
“He said in Turkish that he was Chinese and that he liked puppies and kittens very much. I lied to him and said I couldn’t understand. He said, ‘Good that you can’t understand. I was secretly scolding you.’” As he spoke, Fu Rangyi turned his head and gave him a faint smile.
Zhu Zhixi stared blankly at him, his mind going completely blank. His heart swelled so full that something was about to spill out.
The person who had once firmly said “impossible” was now retelling the “imagination” he had woven, yet adding truths even Zhu Zhixi himself had not known.
He felt as if he had turned into an animal that had lost the ability to think. Fu Rangyi had spread out a fluffy carpet for him, and he, mind blank, pounced onto it and rolled around.
What should I do?
How can there be someone like this?
Zhu Zhixi secretly glanced at Fu Rangyi’s profile, from his eyelashes to the bridge of his nose, then finally down to his slightly opening and closing lips.
“Then I don’t know what came over me. I suddenly asked him, ‘Would you consider marrying me?’”
Hearing this, the Omega colleague at the table covered her mouth and let out a small gasp.
Everyone began interrupting, teasing, and cheering. When Fu Rangyi could not quite handle it, he only narrowed his eyes, still smiling. After a while, he finished the lie.
“Then we got our certificate and got married. It was indeed a little rushed, so we haven’t held the wedding yet.”
“You’ll definitely have one later, right?”
“With you two being this sweet, how could you not?”
“Oh, summer would be nice. A beach wedding by the sea in summer would be so beautiful.”
“Summer is too hot. Autumn is better.”
Hearing his colleagues enthusiastically envisioning it as if it were something that would definitely happen, Fu Rangyi realized that the timeline had already extended beyond the six-month boundary.
The smile on his face gradually faded, and he walked out of this loaded save file of an imaginary game, ending this one-man performance.
“Come, come, let’s all raise a glass and wish the young couple a long and happy life together.”
His colleagues raised their cups one after another, so he also picked up his teacup and clinked glasses with everyone.
He noticed Zhu Zhixi was still unusually quiet and a little slow. After clinking glasses, Zhu Zhixi did not immediately pull his hand back, so Fu Rangyi lightly clinked his glass cup again on his own.
With a ding, Zhu Zhixi’s soul seemed to be summoned back. He immediately withdrew his hand, lowered his head, and drank hard, really emptying the cup.
Fu Rangyi was very bad at reading minds. He did not understand what Zhu Zhixi’s silence represented at that moment, nor did he quite dare to guess.
Listening to his colleagues’ lively voices, Fu Rangyi felt like a foolish butterfly specimen, pinned to the wall, accidentally catching sight of a brilliant, vibrant tropical rainforest in a movie. He had silently memorized it, then described it vividly to passersby, saying this was where he had once lived.
When telling lies, one really could not mix in too much sincerity.
He had nearly deceived even himself.
He did not participate in much of the conversation afterward and once again returned to his quiet, taciturn self. He listened as everyone chatted and occasionally echoed a sentence or two. Zhu Zhixi, on the other hand, regained his earlier liveliness, even more so than before, becoming the undisputed mascot of the table.
Several times, Fu Rangyi tried to stop him from drinking, but he could not stop him at all. He had no choice but to watch as Zhu Zhixi’s face grew redder and redder, and his eyes became watery and damp.
But he did not dislike it, because the drunk Zhu Zhixi became more dependent on him than before. He would hug Fu Rangyi’s arm, rest his chin on his shoulder, and ask him in a very small voice to buy ice cream.
“I want the kind I ate when I was little, the three-colored one in a box. Do you know it?”
“Nothing else will do?” Fu Rangyi asked.
Zhu Zhixi shook his head. “Only that one.”
Fu Rangyi could only get up, asking the Omega colleague sitting beside them to help look after him, while he put on Zhu Zhixi’s dirty white coat and went out to buy ice cream for him.
“Little Fu is way too considerate.”
“He wasn’t like this when he was studying before. So many Omegas chased him, but he never got close to any of them. His whole mind was buried in archaeology. We all thought he would never get married!”
“Studying?” Zhu Zhixi slowly raised his head. His muddled brain only intercepted a few fragments. “A lot of people chased him?”
“Of course. He even had long hair before, tied into a little ponytail at the back of his head. Hey, wasn’t Old Yang his senior?”
“Yes. Back then, fieldwork would last half a year at a time. He said he had no time and nowhere to get a haircut, so he simply grew it out. Those junior students were completely bewitched by him…”
Zhu Zhixi held his face in both hands, his head nearly unable to stay up.
Long hair, little ponytail… He tried to imagine it, but his imagination was restricted by alcohol and could not function properly.
If only I’d known him earlier.
I hate those people who circled around him. I hate everyone who saw Fu Rangyi with long hair.
Zhu Zhixi suddenly stood up, holding his wine glass, and swayed over to Professor Wang’s side. He clinked glasses with him and downed the cup in one go.
“I’ve never seen anyone this sincere. Little Zhu is really too fun.”
Fu Rangyi ran to four small supermarkets and finally bought the ice cream that matched Zhu Zhixi’s description. Bringing the chill with him, he returned to the restaurant. Unexpectedly, as soon as he approached their table, he saw that Zhu Zhixi had already moved to sit beside Old Wang, the head professor of the lab. Both of them were dead drunk, playing some strange finger-guessing game and drinking like brothers.
Fu Rangyi immediately felt a headache coming on and quickly pulled Zhu Zhixi up. Zhu Zhixi was like a little magnet, sticking to him with a plop.
“Huh? You’re back…”
“Ice cream.” He half-held, half-supported Zhu Zhixi back, looked at the table full of colleagues whom Zhu Zhixi had drunk under the table, sighed, and called over a server, deciding to end the meal.
When it was time to pay, Zhu Zhixi bounced like a shrimp, except he was a soft-legged shrimp. Using Fu Rangyi’s support, he sprang over to the cashier counter and fought Professor Wang for the bill. The two drunkards fought and even pushed each other.
“How much? I’ll scan it!” Zhu Zhixi shouted heroically, taking out his black-screened phone that had long become a brick and “scanning” the QR code for ages. Of course, a phone with no battery gave no reaction. He was so anxious he ruffled his hair into a mess.
Professor Wang immediately seized the opening and squeezed him aside, slurring, “Little Zhu, look at you. You can’t do it. I’ll do it!”
Zhu Zhixi’s competitive spirit was ignited. After being pushed, he instead spread his legs wide and clung tightly to the counter, his chin almost poking into it. “No, no, I’ll scan it. It’ll definitely work this time!”
Fu Rangyi really could not understand how one person in his twenties and one person in his fifties could both move the decimal point in their age forward by one place at the same time.
He gave the smiling server behind the counter a look, took the QR code stand to Zhu Zhixi, and encouraged him gently. “It’s fine. Try one more time. Maybe you were too far away just now.”
At the same time, with his other hand, he lifted his own phone high and scanned the code through the gap over Zhu Zhixi’s shoulder, paid the bill, and showed it to the server.
“All right, sir.” The server immediately understood, bent slightly, and said loudly to Zhu Zhixi, “Sir? Your payment has gone through. Thank you.”
“It worked? That’s great.” Zhu Zhixi raised his head in a daze and smiled happily. Then he turned to Professor Wang, who was also drunk and dazed beside him, and said loudly, “Brother Wang, don’t stand on ceremony… Please, please look after our Little Fu more.”
“Of course, Little Zhu. Little, Little Fu is a very good kid. You two live well together.”
Little Fu stood beside them, utterly helpless, half holding Zhu Zhixi as they followed the group out. It was very cold outside. He wrapped Zhu Zhixi’s coat tightly around himself and watched as Zhu Zhixi enthusiastically said goodbye to every colleague one by one.
After everyone left, Fu Rangyi could not help teasing, “Anyone who didn’t know better would think they were all your connections.”
Zhu Zhixi vaguely heard it. It was unclear whether he understood, but he laughed foolishly and collapsed crookedly into Fu Rangyi’s arms.
“So dizzy.”
“Are you cold?” Fu Rangyi touched his cheek with the back of his hand. It was shockingly hot.
“Hot…” Zhu Zhixi pressed his face against Fu Rangyi’s chest and leaned there for a while. People came and went by the roadside, many of them in pairs.
Fu Rangyi rather enjoyed this moment, as though they were also a couple in passionate love. So he did not leave immediately.
After a while, Zhu Zhixi suddenly raised his head and looked at him with those damp eyes without saying a word.
“What’s wrong?” Fu Rangyi lowered his head to look at him, one hand resting lightly at the small of his back.
Zhu Zhixi blinked slowly. In the flickering night, something almost seductive suddenly appeared in his wet pupils. It flashed by in an instant, like wind, impossible to touch or catch.
His full, rosy lips parted slightly.
He said, “Kiss me.”
Fu Rangyi froze, his entire body stiffening for a second.
“You’re drunk.” He let go of the hand around Zhu Zhixi.
Zhu Zhixi refused to let it go and even stood on tiptoe, trying hard to reach upward. “Little Fu, kiss.”
Passersby could not help looking over. Fu Rangyi had his back to them but could still feel it. He pressed Zhu Zhixi’s shoulders and said quietly, “There are so many people.”
“What are you afraid of?” Zhu Zhixi frowned, turned his face toward the passersby watching the show, and said in a soft, drunken slur, “What are you looking at? We’re married.”
He even displayed his wedding ring, but he lifted the wrong hand.
The passerby quickly walked away.
Zhu Zhixi slowly turned back again, looked at Fu Rangyi, stared at him unwillingly for a few seconds, then suddenly cupped his face.
“What… what’s wrong with you?”
With difficulty, he stretched his index finger upward, passed it through the glasses frame, and pressed Fu Rangyi’s temple. “Is there network lag? I said…”
Standing on tiptoe again, Zhu Zhixi leaned close to his ear. His breath was intimate and ambiguous.
“Kiss me…”
