Qu Yun and Yu Suizhen converted the empty space in their backyard into a vegetable garden. Behind the backyard wall was a small stream, making it very convenient to water the vegetables. The garden was planted entirely with seasonal greens; Qu Yun picked them from the front, while Yu Siling followed right behind eating them.
He picked and chose through a pile of leafy greens in the basket, grabbed a round, plump tomato, washed it, and began eating.
As he ate, he searched around the vegetable garden to see if there was anything else he could eat right away.
Aside from vegetables, Yu Suizhen had also planted quite a few potted fruits. The ones that had already borne fruit had all been picked and eaten by Yu Siling; the remaining ones were either too small for his liking or hadn’t grown enough yet to be eaten.
After looking around without finding anything, he heard someone calling his name from the neighboring yard. Recognizing his buddy’s voice, he immediately shouted back, “Wei Zijing, you’re back!”
“I brought you a gift. I’ll come over to find you in a bit!” Wei Zijing yelled back at the top of his lungs from the next yard.
“Okay! Hurry up and come over!” Yu Siling shouted back.
The two families lived right next to each other, sharing a courtyard wall. Normally, if you spoke at a normal volume in your own garden, the neighbors could hear you. However, the two of them hadn’t seen each other in nearly a month, so they were both excitedly shouting at the top of their lungs.
Qu Yun placed the two freshly picked cucumbers into the basket and said, “Go back inside and wash some fruit, and get some snacks out. Let Xiao Jing have some later.”
“Okay.” Yu Siling polished off the remaining half of the tomato in two or three bites, picked a few large ones from the basket to cradle in his arms, and turned to leave. After taking only two steps, he turned right back around and cajoled ingratiatingly, “Mom, can you give me my phone back?”
Hearing this, Qu Yun cast a side-eye at him and snapped ungraciously, “Take it.”
“Mom, I love you!” Yu Siling cheered, cradling the tomatoes as he sprinted quickly toward the front yard.
“Strate little brat.” Qu Yun glanced into the basket; all the large tomatoes she had just picked had been scooped up by Yu Siling.
Just two days prior, Yu Siling had been caught red-handed staying up late playing on his phone by Ms. Qu. Her response had been to confiscate the phone and lock it inside an iron box.
That iron box was one Qu Yun used at school to store her students’ phones. Locked inside and placed right beside the teacher’s podium in the classroom, it always made the students look on with burning envy, yet completely helpless.
Because the iron box worked exceptionally well, Qu Yun had bought a miniature version specifically for home use to lock up her own biological son’s phone, displaying it prominently in the living room.
Returning to the living room, Yu Siling dropped the tomatoes, ran into Qu Yun’s bedroom to retrieve the key from the bedside table, and hurried back to the living room to unlock the iron box. Finally, he clutched his long-awaited phone.
Qu Yun hadn’t turned the phone off when she confiscated it, so by now the battery was dead. He went back to his bedroom to plug the phone in to charge before remembering he still needed to wash fruit for his childhood friend.
Wei Zijing seemed to have timed it perfectly. The moment Yu Siling finished washing the fruit and taking out the snacks, Wei Zijing pushed open the living room door.
“How thoughtful, little Siling, you even prepared fruit for me.” Wei Zijing was only older than Yu Siling by a single month, but he frequently used that one-month seniority to tease him.
“Hmph, who said it was for you? I’m saving it for Xu Jiaheng to eat.” Yu Siling retorted out of habit.
“Don’t want your gift anymore?” Wei Zijing raised a hand and waved the box in it.
“Fine, for the sake of the gift, Xu Jiaheng doesn’t have to eat fruit today.” Yu Siling defected without a shred of conscience.
Wei Zijing handed him the gift box, then suddenly twitched his nose and sniffed, his eyes widening in shock. “You’ve gone through the transformation?!”
“Yup, just like you, I’m an Omega.” Yu Siling replied casually, leaning against the sofa to sit on the carpet while wholeheartedly unpacking his gift.
“It’s actually lychee-flavored.” Wei Zijing leaned closer to Yu Siling and remarked, “It actually smells pretty good.”
Yu Siling let out a couple of huffs. “Could my pheromones possibly not smell good?”
Wei Zijing: “…”
Thinking of how Xu Jiaheng had refused to smell his pheromones the day before, wouldn’t let him continue sleeping in the same bed, and still hadn’t come to apologize after two whole days, Yu Siling felt a heavy stuffiness in his chest, making the act of unwrapping his gift feel a lot less joyful.
With his mouth stuffed full of cherry tomatoes, Wei Zijing noticed Yu Siling’s suddenly gloomy expression, swallowed hastily, and asked, “Why do you look like that unwrapping a gift?”
“Xu Jiaheng won’t let me sleep in the same bed with him anymore,” Yu Siling said indignantly. “Xu Jiaheng is the absolute worst.”
Wei Zijing: “Huh?”
He, Yu Siling, and Xu Jiaheng had essentially grown up together. Because Xu Jiaheng had usually kept a cold, silent face since childhood, Wei Zijing was a bit intimidated by him and stayed a bit more distant in their relationship.
Unlike him and Yu Siling, who had pulled countless bad deeds together since childhood, being chased by dogs and cornered by geese, that was a bond forged through life and death.
Hearing Yu Siling say this, although he couldn’t understand why a 15-year-old, almost 16, childhood friend would get angry over Xu Jiaheng refusing to sleep with him, Wei Zijing stood firmly by his buddy’s side and immediately chimed in, “Exactly! How could Xu… Jiaheng-ge not sleep with you?! He really doesn’t know what’s good for him!”
Yu Siling nodded repeatedly with a series of mm-hmms, looking thoroughly agreeable. “I’m going to sever ties with Xu Jiaheng for three days! No, five days!”
Wei Zijing immediately took out his phone to check the date. “Alright, alright! Starting from today, the fifth day happens to be the day school starts. I’ve got your back!”
Yu Siling didn’t reply to Wei Zijing anymore because he had torn open the outer packaging and discovered that the gift Wei Zijing gave him was a gaming console. He instantly forgot all about Xu Jiaheng in pleasant surprise. “You actually bought me a gaming console?”
Wei Zijing said proudly, “I’m your childhood friend, aren’t I? Do you think I wouldn’t know what you wanted?”
Yu Siling’s old gaming console had broken, and his recent allowance had all gone toward feeding cats and dogs, leaving him with no spare money to buy a new one.
Xu Jiaheng had indeed brought it up once, setting the condition that Yu Siling rank in the top ten of his grade on the final exams. Facing such an utterly impossible task, Yu Siling had naturally rejected it without a moment’s hesitation.
Having secured both his phone and the gaming console, Yu Siling spent three days playing games in a dark room at home, not even seeking out Xu Jiaheng once during that time.
On the evening of the third day, Qu Yun returned from playing mahjong and dragged Yu Siling out of his bedroom to get some fresh air, warning him that if he kept playing games day and night like this, she would lock both his phone and his gaming console inside the iron box.
The evening sky was a deep orange-red, and the light cut across the alleyways in sharp shafts. Yu Siling squinted his eyes, squatting right at the courtyard entrance to brazenly pet the cats.
Since Qu Yun was the one who told him to go outside and play, and since he was still in the middle of a severed-ties phase with Xu Jiaheng, he could only play with the cats and dogs.
Even if he hadn’t broken ties with Xu Jiaheng, he would have played with these cats and dogs first anyway, only going to find Xu Jiaheng once he’d had his fill of playing with them.
This clowder of cats and pack of dogs were all the offspring of local strays. The few that Yu Siling had managed to find were the ones that survived; several others had already perished before Yu Siling ever found them.
Consequently, Yu Siling cared deeply for these little creatures, terrified that if he took his eyes off them even for a second, one might vanish.
Yu Siling picked up a little cow-patterned kitten, flipped it onto its back to rub its belly, and muttered, “Have you been getting fatter lately?” It seemed Xu Jiaheng hadn’t been shortchanging these little fellows.
The little cow-cat let out a couple of squeaks, whether it was acting spoiled or scolding its master for hurting a dog’s heart was anyone’s guess.
Yu Siling didn’t speak dog, and ended up getting dust all over his fingers from patting the kitten’s paws, leaving several grey-white plum blossom prints on his black trousers.
He set the little cow-cat down and stood up, getting ready to go home to wash his hands, but the kitten bit onto his pants cuff and tugged him toward the end of the alley.
That was the direction of Xu Jiaheng’s house.
Using every ounce of its nursing strength, the little cow-cat bit and pulled at Yu Siling’s trouser leg, entirely determined to drag him over to Xu Jiaheng’s place.
Of course, it wasn’t to help the two masters make up; it was for the canned food it hadn’t eaten in days.
All the cat food, dog food, freeze-dried snacks, canned food, toys, and every other bit of cat-and-dog paraphernalia that Yu Siling bought were kept at Xu Jiaheng’s house.
Qu Yun disliked shedding animals and certainly wouldn’t allow him to keep these pet supplies inside their own home.
Normally, Yu Siling would feed these little fellows snacks every few days. Ever since he entered his transformation period, he hadn’t had the energy to look after them, so Xu Jiaheng mostly fed them, or they simply wandered over to various households on their own to beg for food.
Xu Jiaheng didn’t like these little creatures either, finding them troublesome. When he fed them, he would just line up their cat bowls, dog bowls, and water bowls in a row, letting whoever could reach them get fat; he certainly wouldn’t patiently feed them snacks one by one.
The little cow-cat was already a circle plumper than before, but it remained the greediest of the lot, stubbornly clamping onto Yu Siling’s pant leg and pulling him forward.
Along the way, it squeaked and grunted to call its friends over, summoning a whole cluster of cats and dogs that swarmed around the front, back, left, and right of Yu Siling, bumping against him and tugging at his trousers as they walked forward.
And so, half-dragged and half-pulled, Yu Siling arrived right at the entrance of Xu Jiaheng’s house.
The Xu family’s courtyard gate was half-open, and little Huang, tiny as it was, expertly squeezed through the gap. Then, Yu Siling heard Grandma Xu’s voice.
“Little Huang is here, come to Grandma.” Grandma Xu was a typical southerner; her voice was always gentle, soft, and filled with affection.
Standing outside the door, Yu Siling hesitated over whether to go in. He was still in the middle of a cold war with Xu Jiaheng, after all.
Perhaps sensing Yu Siling’s hesitation, the little cow-cat let out a squeak, its short, chubby paws clawing at the threshold while its head pushed the door open wider.
“Who’s outside?” Grandma Xu’s inquiring voice rang out.
The little cow-cat kept squeaking while the rest of the cats and dogs filed in single-file through the gap in the door, barking and meawing in a lively chorus.
Yu Siling had no choice but to push the door open and step inside. The moment his right foot crossed the threshold, he saw Xu Jiaheng standing on the second-floor bedroom balcony, looking down at him.
He let out a heavy huff, pulled his foot back, and turned to leave. Before he could take a step away, Grandma Xu’s voice stopped him: “Little Siling is here, why aren’t you coming in? Aren’t you going to feed your little cats and dogs?”
Yu Siling had no choice but to push the door open. Ignoring the gaze looking down from the second-floor balcony, he walked straight to the storage room to fetch the cat and dog canned food, then sat down next to Grandma Xu. The group of cats and dogs sat shoulder-to-shoulder in a neat row before him, wagging their tails as they waited to be fed.
“How come you haven’t come over to play with Jiaheng lately?” Grandma Xu knew nothing about Yu Siling and Xu Jiaheng’s falling out, simply assuming Yu Siling just hadn’t dropped by.
“Jiaheng-ge is hateful.” Yu Siling popped open a can of dog food, poured it into a bowl for the cluster of puppies, and moved on to open a can of cat food.
Grandma Xu lay back in her rocking chair, which swayed gently. Seeing her own grandson step out of the living room and linger by the porch without coming closer, she asked Yu Siling, “How did Jiaheng upset you? Tell Grandma, and I’ll deal with him.”
“Jiaheng-ge won’t let me eat ice cream.” While Yu Siling could mention to his own mother without restraint that Xu Jiaheng wouldn’t sleep with him, he couldn’t bring himself to say it to Grandma Xu, feeling a bit embarrassed that someone as old as him still needed someone else to sleep with him.
“That’s Jiaheng’s fault,” Grandma Xu said, putting on a pretense of sternness. “Did you hear that? Why aren’t you hurrying up and getting our little Siling an ice cream?”
Yu Siling jerked his head around to look, only to see Xu Jiaheng standing right there in the porchway. Their gazes met unexpectedly, and as Yu Siling stood up intending to leave, he had barely taken two steps when his collar was caught by Xu Jiaheng.
He turned his head, casting a sidelong glance at Xu Jiaheng with a pair of bright, attractive eyes, and let out a heavy huff.