Though he understood in his heart, Wei Ran did not point it out.
Knowing full well how reserved Lin Shenzhi was in front of outsiders, Wei Ran stopped teasing him and quickly followed him into the car.
The supermarket was not far away. In the car, Wei Ran asked Lin Shenzhi about his work today and then brought up the matter with Fang Zheng, just as the car came to a stop in the parking lot beneath the supermarket.
Upon entering, Wei Ran pushed a shopping cart.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, there were hardly any people in the supermarket. Wei Ran bent down, hooked himself onto the handle of the cart, and slid forward for two meters.
Seeing this, a trace of faint helplessness crossed Lin Shenzhi’s brow.
Wei Ran still remembered that he was a married adult now, not a child. After stealing a moment of fun to satisfy his craving, he quickly climbed down from the cart.
“Do you want to buy groceries?” Wei Ran asked.
“Auntie already bought them.”
Wei Ran nodded, calculating what else they needed besides insecticide. “Then let’s buy some snacks and beer to celebrate tonight.”
When other people got married and drank, it was usually to escape the reality of stepping into the graveyard of marriage. But when they got married, he hadn’t even had time to drink; he was too busy being happy.
The morning after they went to get their marriage certificate yesterday, they went straight back home. Then, from downstairs to upstairs, from the sofa to the bed, from daytime until night, they kept going deep into the night.
It wasn’t until both of them were completely exhausted that they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Tonight, no matter what, they had to celebrate.
Recalling his marriage certificate, Wei Ran felt warm and happy inside.
He had been to this supermarket a few times and was quite familiar with it, so he took the lead and headed toward the beverage aisle.
When they arrived, Wei Ran took a casual look around and began loading canned beers into the cart. Contrary to Lin Shenzhi’s serious and cautious personality, he was quite casual most of the time.
Lin Shenzhi did not stop him, simply helping to push the cart from the side.
There were actually plenty of fine vintage red wines at home, but neither he nor Wei Ran liked them very much. Lin Shenzhi had grown up drinking them since childhood and was long since sick of them, while Wei Ran simply wasn’t used to the taste.
“That should be enough. Next…” After counting, Wei Ran marched with a murderous look toward the nearby insecticide section.
The supermarket shelves were arranged in two major rows: the left row was for food, and the right row was for various daily necessities. The insecticide happened to be in the same large row as the beverage section.
Lin Shenzhi looked at Wei Ran’s vengeful expression, his gaze darkening slightly. Instead of following him, he pushed the cart forward toward the snack aisle.
Wei Ran had been afraid of insects since childhood and knew the details of various insecticides by heart. He quickly found the few types he wanted, grabbed two large bottles of each, and added some insect-repellent powder before turning back to look for the others.
Not seeing Lin Shenzhi or the shopping cart behind him, Wei Ran was a little surprised. “Lin Shenzhi?”
There was no answer, so Wei Ran had to hold a pile of items and search between the rows of shelves.
Lin Shenzhi hadn’t gone far. He was just two aisles away, looking intently at the ingredient description on a bag of potato chips.
Lin Shenzhi was reading with absolute focus, as if he wanted to study every single word, while the shopping cart beside him already held more than a dozen kinds of snacks.
Lin Shenzhi almost never ate snacks; all of them were the ones Wei Ran liked.
Wei Ran put the insecticide into the shopping cart and didn’t disturb him, leaning against the cart to quietly watch Lin Shenzhi’s profile, which was filled with earnestness.
Whenever he used to hear people say that loving someone makes you want to give them all the good things in the world, he had only thought it was cheesy and unbearable.
Only after meeting Wei Ran did he realize those words were actually true. Falling in love with someone really did make you want to give them every good thing in the world, to the extent that you would even want to tear your heart out and hand it to them.
He figured Lin Shenzhi must feel the same way about him.
Otherwise, why would someone like Lin Shenzhi, who lived in a villa, possessed billions in assets, and owned countless companies, be willing to agree to marry him, someone who had just graduated from college without a settled job yet, after knowing each other for less than two months?
Proposing to Lin Shenzhi was something that had suddenly popped into Wei Ran’s head on a whim; at that time, he didn’t even have flowers or a ring in his hands.
Wei Ran still remembered the look of slight astonishment in Lin Shenzhi’s eyes.
At the exact moment he saw Lin Shenzhi nod, Wei Ran felt as though all the blood in his body rushed to his head at once, leaving his ears ringing and making it impossible for him to think.
“What is it?” Lin Shenzhi asked, turning around with the chosen bag of chips to find Wei Ran staring blankly at him.
“Lin Shenzhi, I love you,” Wei Ran blurted out.
His voice wasn’t low, and an employee organizing goods in the opposite aisle heard him, turning their head to look.
Lin Shenzhi froze for a moment. He placed the chips into the shopping cart, and when he raised his eyes again, the earlobes that had finally returned to their normal color turned pink once more. “Mm, I love you too.”
He wasn’t good at expressing his feelings in front of outsiders, and his limbs were stiff as he spoke these words. Yet his eyes remained fixed straight on Wei Ran, filled with such deep affection that it made Wei Ran want to pounce on him right then and there and have his way with him.
Wei Ran quickly grabbed a few more random snacks from the adjacent shelf, tossed them into the cart, and immediately pushed the cart with one hand while pulling Lin Shenzhi with the other toward the checkout area.
They could save the beer for tomorrow. Since Lin Shenzhi had managed to get off work early today, he certainly couldn’t waste such a wonderful time.
There weren’t many people waiting in line, and their turn came quickly.
Lin Shenzhi walked up to the counter and placed the items from the cart onto the table one by one, while Wei Ran’s gaze was drawn to the shelves next to the checkout counter.
As Lin Shenzhi finished placing everything on the counter, Wei Ran stealthily slipped five boxes into the pile.
Noticing this, Lin Shenzhi looked over in confusion. When he clearly saw the five boxes marked with the prominent words of long-lasting performance, his breath caught, and his entire body froze.
A few minutes later, Wei Ran finished scanning and paying for the items, and impatiently pulled the still-frozen Lin Shenzhi downstairs.
They stepped out of the elevator, returned to the parking lot, and got into the car.
When the two of them returned home from the supermarket, it was only a little past four-forty.
The sunlight hung slantwise on the roofs of the distant high-rises, and the villa was draped in the sunset, radiating a cozy warmth.
Entering the door and putting down their things, Wei Ran’s very first action was to turn around and kiss Lin Shenzhi’s lips.
Tracing the shape of Lin Shenzhi’s lips, feeling his breath, and listening to his heartbeat, Wei Ran’s hand involuntarily reached toward Lin Shenzhi’s collar.
He grabbed Lin Shenzhi’s tie and pulled it open roughly, revealing the collar and collarbones that rarely saw the sun. He had wanted to do this for a long time.
While his hands were busy, Wei Ran’s peripheral vision caught sight of a swarm of butterflies dancing in the sunset outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
For some unknown reason, Lin Shenzhi’s yard was exceptionally attractive to these creatures; it was clearly rare to see them in the city nowadays.
The kiss ended. Wei Ran looked with an expression of agony at Lin Shenzhi, whose lips were flushed from the kiss, and then back outside the window.
Torn and hesitant, fear ultimately triumphed over impulse.
He hurriedly dashed to the drawer, fished out a mask and gloves to arm himself fully, grabbed the insecticide and insect-repellent powder, crouched down, opened the floor-to-ceiling window, and squeezed outside to thoroughly disinfect the entire circle of the garden near the window.
His movements were practiced and professional, rivaling an exterminator.
Inside the house, seeing this scene, Lin Shenzhi panted slightly as his brows furrowed together, a faint trace of worry lingering in the depths of his eyes.
Wei Ran’s movements were very fast, finishing the job in less than five minutes.
He crouched and squeezed back into the house through the narrow opening of the door, discarded his mask and gloves, and immediately turned his attention to organizing the items they had brought back.
Approaching the bags, Wei Ran discovered they were already empty. Lin Shenzhi had already placed everything they bought in its proper place, and his treasures were nowhere to be found.
Wei Ran poked the bottom-up bag and hurried upstairs, where Lin Shenzhi had already gone.
In the bedroom, Lin Shenzhi was showering in the bathroom, and the five boxes of treasures he had taken were nowhere to be seen on the desk.
Wei Ran pounced onto the bed and secretly pulled open the bedside table drawer. The items were safely resting inside the drawer on his side of the bed.
Stripping off his clothes, Wei Ran knocked on the bathroom door.
The sound of water inside stopped, and a moment later, the door was opened from within.
Lin Shenzhi stood slightly sideways behind the door, his hair soaked, water droplets clinging to his body. Underneath his suit, his muscle lines were well-proportioned and temporarily exposed, and the mermaid lines on his waist and abdomen were clearly visible.
Wei Ran squeezed into the room through the gap, wrapped his arms around Lin Shenzhi’s waist, and kissed him.
As the kiss ended, Lin Shenzhi leaned his back against the door, his head tilted slightly as he caught his breath. With one hand he grabbed Wei Ran’s arm, and with the other, he caught Wei Ran’s mischievous hands, looking at him with mild disgust. “You smell like medicine.”
Wei Ran, who was busy trying to provoke and tease him, laughed aloud at this. “You aren’t a bug, what are you afraid of? Insecticide kills bugs.”
Lin Shenzhi wanted to say something more, but the words right on the tip of his tongue turned into a gasp that was half-painful, half-pleasurable.
From the bathroom to the bed, tossing and turning from dusk deep into the night, Wei Ran finally went downstairs to whip up some food once they were both thoroughly exhausted.
Sitting on the bed, the two of them finished eating off a single plate. Before they even had time to clear it away, they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.
Wei Ran slept very deeply, waking up only after some movement had been stirring beside him for a while.
Drowsily, Wei Ran felt around the bed beside him.
Finding no one there, Wei Ran sat up in bed. “Lin Shenzhi?”
There was light in the room, coming from the bathroom, accompanied by the sounds of vomiting and flushing.
Hearing the sound of vomiting, Wei Ran instantly woke up. He sprang up from the bed, not even bothering to put on his shoes as he rushed into the bathroom.
Inside, Lin Shenzhi was hunched over the toilet bowl, vomiting.
Wei Ran’s pupils constricted sharply as he stepped forward to gently rub his back. “What’s wrong with you? I’m taking you to the hospital!”
Just as Lin Shenzhi was about to say something, another wave of nausea hit him, and he immediately retched again.
After the dry heaving subsided, Lin Shenzhi finally spoke. “No need, I just feel a bit nauseous.”
“How could you suddenly feel nauseous out of nowhere?” Wei Ran’s brows knitted together.
“I feel much better now.” After vomiting, Lin Shenzhi felt a lot more comfortable overall.
He pushed himself up from the floor.
Seeing this, Wei Ran quickly stepped forward to support him.
Helping him over to sit on the edge of the bed, Wei Ran hurried off to fetch a cup of water.
Watching Lin Shenzhi rinse his mouth and drink some water, and confirming that he didn’t seem to be in distress anymore after finishing vomiting, Wei Ran finally let out a sigh of relief. “You scared me to death.”
Lin Shenzhi looked up to find Wei Ran’s face filled with lingering worry in the dim glow. He wrapped his arms around Wei Ran’s waist, resting against Wei Ran’s stomach. “Wei Ran.”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t leave me,” Lin Shenzhi murmured. He couldn’t imagine how heartbroken he would be if Wei Ran ever discovered his secret and decided he didn’t want him anymore; he would surely die.
Just the mere thought of this possibility sent a suffocating, clutching pain straight to his chest.