“I,” Jiang Yu’s hand slid down, his fingertips grazing Chen Zhiyan’s thigh before resting on his knee. “Does it hurt? How about applying some medicine?”
Chen Zhiyan pulled his leg back. “It does not hurt.”
My foot, it hurts for me!
“Apply some medicine; it will heal faster.”
Jiang Yu yanked the blanket back, wanting to see the actual condition of Chen Zhiyan’s leg, but the latter pulled the covers back over himself, refusing to let even a trace of bruising show.
“Jiang Yu, it is three o’clock in the morning. If you are not going to sleep, get the hell home.”
“I am showing concern for you! Why are you being so fierce?”
“I do not need your concern.”
Jiang Yu laughed out of spite. “Fine! I am sticking my nose where it does not belong. If I ever care about you again, I am a dog!”
He finished speaking and prepared to go sleep on the sofa, but since he was still angry, he turned around and yanked Chen Zhiyan’s blanket off one more time.
Just as he was about to fall fast asleep, Jiang Yu suddenly thought of something and snapped his eyes open. “Wait, where is Lin Jingyao? Did we leave him behind?”
He called Lin Jingyao, who said he was at the hospital. Fang Li had pushed him, causing a leg fracture, and he had just finished getting a cast.
Jiang Yu mocked him for being fragile. Lin Jingyao complained pitifully that it hurt. Jiang Yu said, “Why did it not just hurt you to death? You useless thing, you could not even stop a single woman. Forget it, I will visit you tomorrow. Do not you fucking cry; can you show a little masculinity?”
“Did you not cry the last time you had a fracture? You cried even harder than I am. You made Chen Zhiyan carry you up and down the stairs”
“Shut up.”
The next morning, 7:50 AM.
Mu Chuxia sat in the living room, glancing at Chen Zhiyan’s bedroom door several times. She said to Chen Ying’an, “Xiao Zhi is usually up by this time. What happened today?”
“I will go up and take a look.”
“No need, keep eating.” Mu Chuxia went up the stairs and knocked twice on Chen Zhiyan’s door. “Son?”
“Son?”
There was no response.
Mu Chuxia looked at Chen Ying’an and said with some worry, “Xiao Zhi could not be sick, could he?”
Just as she finished, Chen Zhiyan opened the door. Before Mu Chuxia could ask, he spoke first. “I went to sleep a bit late last night”
“Chen Zhiyan! What are you shouting about so early in the morning! Shut the hell up!”
“Why is Little Treasure here?” Mu Chuxia lowered her voice. “Have you washed up yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Then go to Little Treasure’s room; do not disturb him.”
“Okay.”
Chen Zhiyan closed the door and went to the room next door. Ten minutes later, he returned with Jiang Yu’s clothes, remade the bed, disinfected everything, and went downstairs for breakfast. As he was preparing to leave, Mu Chuxia asked, “Are you not waiting for Little Treasure?”
“No. He is like a pig; he will probably sleep until the afternoon.”
“What were you two doing last night?”
“We did not do anything.”
Sure enough, just as Chen Zhiyan said, Jiang Yu woke up at two o’clock in the afternoon. He crawled up from the sofa. The thin blanket covering him had long since fallen onto the carpet. He picked it up, patted it off, threw it onto Chen Zhiyan’s bed, and then rolled around on the bed a couple of times.
For some reason, Jiang Yu loved rolling around on the bed Chen Zhiyan had neatly made. Sometimes, Chen Zhiyan would just finish changing the bedding and Jiang Yu would jump on it immediately, almost like a kitten marking its territory.
Turning around, he saw the clothes he needed to change into sitting on the table next to the sofa. He was silent for a few seconds, then picked up the thin blanket and tossed it back to the sofa, smoothing out Chen Zhiyan’s bedsheets.
Thinking about how Chen Zhiyan told him to “get the hell home” last night, he plopped his butt back down on the bed, leaving two distinct butt prints. Seeing they were not quite symmetrical, he manually adjusted the indentations. He then went to wash up with a snicker. After eating, he headed to school. Halfway through the drive, Lin Jingyao’s phone call came in.
“Bro! You said you were coming to see me! Where are you!”
“Uh, that, I went to sleep a bit late last night.”
“Oh right, you and Brother Chen were both drugged.” Lin Jingyao’s voice suddenly turned a bit wicked. “Then you two”
“You are at the Central Hospital, right?”
“Yeah.” Lin Jingyao thought Jiang Yu was coming to see him and hurried to give his room number. Instead, Jiang Yu said, “Wait until I get there. I will break your other leg and have the doctor peel back your scalp to see if your brain is truly as smooth as a marble.”
“Bro, I have some business to take care of so I am hanging up now you do not need to visit me just attend class and study hard to make sure you do not fail your finals bye!”
Jingbei University.
As soon as he reached the classroom, Li Heng approached and stared at Jiang Yu without saying a word.
Jiang Yu pushed him away and brushed off non-existent dust from his shoulder. “If you have something to say, say it. Do not just stand there like a statue.”
“The confession wall anonymously says the school hunk and the school bully are a couple.”
“Oh.” Jiang Yu looked indifferent. He took four boxes of fruit out of his crossbody bag. The largest box was his own, and the rest were for Li Heng, Xu Zhile, and Chen Zhiyan.
Xu Zhile placed Chen Zhiyan’s box on his desk.
Li Heng could not wait to open his and stuffed a piece of watermelon into his mouth. He asked indistinctly, “So, is what the confession wall says true?”
“What is true?”
“The school hunk and the school bully are a couple.”
“Who is the school hunk?”
“Chen Zhiyan.”
“Ha! He is the school hunk? He probably gave himself that title.”
“It was the result of a school wide vote.”
Jiang Yu said, “Everyone is fucking blind.”
“Who is the school bully?”
“You.”
“Who?” Jiang Yu almost choked. “Why the hell am I the school bully? And who says I am a couple with him? All of you people have lost your minds.”
The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. He directly contacted the hacker from last time to track the ID. Five minutes later, the hacker sent a message: it was Fang Li, and the post was made last night before she was taken away.
Jiang Yu’s eyes turned cold and dark like ink, and his jaw tightened. He looked down and organized the screenshots and chat records sent by the hacker. He posted them online along with the recording and paid for traffic promotion.
The fact that she was pregnant out of wedlock alone would be enough for people to flame Fang Li to death. But this was all her own doing. Just because someone is weak or sick does not mean they can be easily forgiven after bullying others; everyone has to pay a price. Except for him; who told Chen Zhiyan to be so annoying? He deserved it.
Looking up and seeing Chen Zhiyan entering through the back door, Jiang Yu rolled his eyes.
He had hired this hacker once before, wanting him to break into Chen Zhiyan’s computer to find something “not for minors” so he could blackmail him. Instead, Chen Zhiyan hacked the hacker’s computer and sent Jiang Yu screenshots of his own phone’s browsing history, making him behave for an entire week.
Hateful. It was such a humiliation. But from then on, the one thing Jiang Yu never forgot was to delete his history. It served as a reminder.
“Brother Jiang, are you two really not a couple? You have the strawberry tips, and he has the strawberry butts”
“Get lost! What tips and butts? I will punch you to death!”
Xu Zhile said thoughtfully, “I do not think I have ever seen Chen Zhiyan eat the tips of a strawberry.”
“You fucking get lost too! Are we that poor? We cannot afford two boxes of strawberries? You make it sound like I abuse and bully him every day!”
Hearing this, Li Heng and Xu Zhile both thought to themselves: Every time there is a fight, Jiang Yu starts it. Every time there is an argument, he picks it. Is it not obvious that he abuses and bullies Chen Zhiyan? Chen Zhiyan really has a high tolerance; he is a true man.
An hour had passed since the recording was posted. Now, aside from those calling Fang Li a psycho, the rest of the internet was “shipping” Jiang Yu and Chen Zhiyan.
Even when Jiang Yu posted a clarification, no one believed it. They even claimed he was an impostor and sent private messages calling him an idiot who would never find a girlfriend. Jiang Yu was so enraged that he spent the entire class battling people across three hundred comment threads. Finally, he slammed the table in anger, startling the professor on the podium. The professor opened his mouth to speak but did not dare to intervene.
Chen Zhiyan glanced sideways at Jiang Yu, his voice cold and indifferent. “If you want to have a mental breakdown, go outside.”