Sanhua sat in Jiang Lu’s lap, meowing in agreement as she raised her little head to lick Jiang Lu’s chin.
Tickled by the licking, Jiang Lu tried to dodge backward, his cheeks flushed with laughter. “All right, all right. Stop licking, be a good cat.”
Knowing that Lin Xuan’s last remark was just a joke, he didn’t take it to heart and looked at him with smiling, crescent eyes. “Fine, then I will be intruding on your hospitality tonight.”
“It is nothing,” Lin Xuan said with a soft smile, his eyelashes drooping slightly to cast pretty shadows. “It is just that the guest bathroom does not have a shower, so you might have to bear with using the one outside tonight. Though, I rarely use that one myself.”
Jiang Lu’s eyes curved as he minded little of such trifles. “It is no problem.”
“That is good,” Lin Xuan murmured, his eyelashes fluttering.
Jiang Lu played with Bubu for a while. The kitten was very affectionate, sitting in his lap and meowing endlessly, so Lin Xuan handed him two cat strips.
Jiang Lu glanced sideways at him and tore open a cat strip to feed Bubu. Lin Xuan’s gaze lingered on Jiang Lu’s gorgeous and moving profile, a darker shade in his eyes.
The current outcome was the joint result of a series of accidents and coincidences.
Through their brief interaction that afternoon, he had already seen that Jiang Lu got along well with his three roommates. As a class officer, he was popular within the class, so his phone could not possibly stay quiet all evening after class let out.
Jiang Lu would definitely put his phone on silent during class, and he had just finished class right around that time, hurrying over to see him.
Lin Xuan easily guessed that Jiang Lu had not had time to turn off his silent mode yet.
Every step after accidentally knocking over the water pitcher was the result of his careful calculation. Even if it had not rained, he could have kept Jiang Lu here; the rain simply made his excuse look more reasonable.
Resting his chin in his hand, Lin Xuan watched with curved eyelashes as Jiang Lu’s fair, slender fingers squeezed the cat strip to feed the kitten.
When Jiang Lu finished feeding Bubu, Lin Xuan spoke up, “Would you like to take a shower now?”
“Yes.” Jiang Lu nodded obediently. It was getting late, and according to his biological clock, he was already sleepy.
So Lin Xuan stood up, led him to the shared bathroom, and showed him how to use the water heater.
Water heaters nowadays came in all sorts of varieties. Having crossed over only a few months ago, Jiang Lu had not seen these yet, so driven by a sense of novelty, he watched Lin Xuan teach him with an earnest expression.
“Give it a try,” Lin Xuan stepped aside to let him operate it.
Curiously, Jiang Lu took the showerhead. The moment he tried it, a splash sounded overhead, and hot water gushed out from the nozzles, instantly drenching Jiang Lu, who was standing right underneath. Lin Xuan, standing to the side, was also caught in the crossfire.
Both of them were soaked to the skin.
Jiang Lu: “Oh.”
He flurried to turn off the overhead showerhead, but Lin Xuan had already reached out a step ahead.
The rushing sound of water finally stopped. Looking dejected and drenched, Jiang Lu awkwardly glanced at Lin Xuan, whose clothes were equally wet, and whispered, “I am so sorry, it is my first time using this.”
Lin Xuan good-naturedly said it was fine, then looked troubledly at his soaked clothes, furrowing his brow. “I only have pajamas that I have worn. Do you mind?”
“I do not mind.” Jiang Lu shook his head, raising a hand to wipe the water droplets from his cheeks. The soaked fabric clung uncomfortably to his skin.
The situation did not allow him to be picky anyway. Besides, no matter how careful he had been earlier, the hems of his trousers had inevitably gotten stained with muddy water. How could he sleep in Lin Xuan’s bed without changing clothes? Yet, going bare-legged was something he truly could not bring himself to do either.
So he had intended to ask Lin Xuan for pajamas in the first place.
Jiang Lu said, “Anything that is wearable is fine.”
Hearing this, Lin Xuan’s brow relaxed. “Then you wash up first. I will place them on the sink for you in a moment.”
The bathroom glass was frosted, so no one outside could see inside. After considering it for just two seconds, Jiang Lu nodded.
With a smile curving his lips, Lin Xuan walked out. Shortly after, he placed a set of pajamas on the sink, glanced at the misty, fog-filled bathroom, and left. He returned to his bedroom to shower and change into pajamas. The moment he sat down on the living room sofa, Bubu jumped onto his lap.
Touching its wet little nose with his fingertip, Lin Xuan murmured, “Such a dummy.”
The kitten rubbed against him coquettishly.
Lin Xuan cast his gaze toward the coffee table, leaned down, and picked up the tablet and sketchpad lying there.
No one had touched the tablet; it was still on yesterday’s split-screen, with the surveillance video playing halfway through.
The first page of the sketchpad used pencil strokes to outline a frail, beautiful body contour, portraying a stark-naked young person maintaining a sitting posture with knees together and calves apart, but lacking arms. Even the face was outlined only up to the chin, lifted slightly as if gazing upward at someone standing in front of them with a dependent, tender posture.
With deep eyes, Lin Xuan flipped past the first page. Every page after that featured the same youth, but regardless of whether it conveyed allure or innocence, satiation or yearning, the postures were invariably submissive, affectionate, and pliable to anyone’s molding.
To be precise, the youth was displaying dependence and obedience toward an invisible man right in front of him, letting himself be manipulated at will.
There was an invisible master in front of him.
Lin Xuan’s fingertip brushed over the fine, rough texture of the sketch paper, pausing slightly over the youth’s thin chest.
He flipped back to the first page but did not close the sketchpad. It was casually left on the coffee table alongside the tablet.
Before long, Jiang Lu came out of the bathroom, wiping his damp hair.
“May I borrow your washing machine?” Jiang Lu asked.
“Of course,” Lin Xuan nodded lightly. “The washing machine is on the balcony.”
So Jiang Lu turned back to the bathroom and took his dirty clothes out to the balcony.
Lin Xuan’s freshly changed clothes were already inside the washing machine. As Jiang Lu placed his own clothes in and stood staring blankly at the confusing buttons, a hand reached out from beside him and pressed the start button for him.
Turning his head to see Lin Xuan, Jiang Lu smiled and said, “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” A faint smile graced Lin Xuan’s face as he looked down at him slightly. “The washing machine has a drying function, so Classmate Jiang Lu can go straight to sleep whenever you are tired.”
Jiang Lu nodded to show he understood, helped Lin Xuan over to sit on the sofa, and asked, “Did you shower? Let me change your gauze before you go to sleep.”
“I did,” Lin Xuan replied. “You do not have to trouble yourself.”
“It is fine, it will only take a few minutes,” Jiang Lu said, taking out the medicine he had bought that afternoon.
Lin Xuan lowered his eyelashes, watching Jiang Lu crouch down in front of him to change his gauze.
Unpeeling the gauze to look at the wound, Jiang Lu still could not help drawing a sharp breath and instinctively lightened his movements.
Lin Xuan had a first-aid kit at home. Jiang Lu applied the medicine for him before replacing it with fresh gauze.
“Since Classmate Jiang Lu is such a nice person, you must have a lot of people who like you, right?” Lin Xuan suddenly asked in a soft voice.
Subconsciously looking down at his fingertips, Jiang Lu paused. Without raising his head, he gave an ambiguous mumble, “Yes, I suppose so.”
Actually, it was all for himself.
So that he would not turn into a transparent person whom nobody noticed.
Pursing his lips, Jiang Lu silently finished changing Lin Xuan’s gauze. He stood up, just intending to say goodbye to Lin Xuan and head off to bed, when he heard him say, “Oh, by the way.”
Seeing Lin Xuan pick up the tablet to reveal the sketchpad underneath, Jiang Lu heard him say, “There is something I think I ought to let you know.”
There were drawings on the sketchpad, but abiding by boundaries, Jiang Lu did not look too closely. “What is it?”
“A while ago, I wanted to bring Bubu back, but I had not run into you yet and was away from school for a few days, worrying something might happen to Bubu, so I installed a micro-camera there.” Lin Xuan pulled up the previous surveillance footage right in front of Jiang Lu and raised his head with an apologetic look. “It caught you.”
“I figured you might mind, and I wanted to prevent any misunderstandings if you ever found out from someone else later on, so I wanted to tell you myself.”
Jiang Lu took the tablet and watched for a few minutes. In his heart, he did not feel much about it; after all, Lin Xuan had just been checking on his cat and accidentally caught him on camera.
The surveillance footage was silent.
Seeing himself babbling away at the cat with no sound coming out, Jiang Lu let out a small laugh and said, “It is fine, I do not mind.”
“That is good.” Lin Xuan smiled faintly and casually picked up the sketchpad from the coffee table.
Following his movement, Jiang Lu caught sight of the youth drawn upon it and could not help taking a couple of extra looks.
Noticing his gaze, Lin Xuan handed the sketchpad forward. “Care to take a look?”
Jiang Lu hesitated. “Is that okay?”
“Of course,” Lin Xuan chuckled. “I do not mind.”
So Jiang Lu took the sketchpad. But the moment he clearly saw the youth’s posture, his cheeks flared red, as this drawing was truly a bit too explicit.
Even the details were intricate.
Daring not to look closely, Jiang Lu hurried to flip the page, only to see the same unclothed youth again.
The youth’s waist was slender, as if an invisible, massive hand had seized his legs, forcing them to stretch wide and his waist and abdomen to arch high.
Lin Xuan had even captured the plump flesh overflowing between the fingers when that leg was grasped in a man’s hand.
The entire drawing oozed with lasciviousness and eroticism.
With a flushed face, Jiang Lu snapped the sketchpad shut with a loud thud.
He had never imagined that Lin Xuan drew such improper things.
It was completely different from the little bird Lin Xuan had drawn for him.
Resting his cheek in his hand, Lin Xuan could not help laughing out loud at the sight of him. He pulled the sketchpad from Jiang Lu’s grip and said, “My apologies, I thought you would be interested, since the first one was what you saw first.”
He trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.
With a crimson face, burning with shame and embarrassment, Jiang Lu stammered and could not get a word out.
Watching his flushed earlobes, Lin Xuan softened his voice and said, “I do not want to keep anything from you. I am gay. Would you mind, Classmate Jiang Lu?”
Startled by this sudden honesty, Jiang Lu managed to steady himself. “It is fine, I do not mind.”
Though he had traveled through time from seventeen years in the past, his good upbringing kept him from displaying any discriminatory behavior toward homosexuality. Besides, he knew the probability of people in the arts being gay was quite high.
Furthermore, he had even been confessed to by people of the same sex himself.
Rubbing his burning ears, Jiang Lu found that whatever sleepiness he initially had was completely scared away.
Feeling extremely awkward, he stood up as if sitting on pins and needles. Just as he was about to bolt into the guest room, he heard Lin Xuan say with a troubled tone, “These drawings are not actually finished yet, because I have not decided what kind of reactions they should have. I suppose I might need someone else’s opinion.”
“Classmate Jiang Lu,” Lin Xuan called out to him softly.
“In your opinion, should they be excited about receiving attention and affection, or ashamed at being molested and violated?”
Curving his lips, he asked, “Tell me, would you mind helping me out, Classmate Jiang Lu?”