Ruan Yan forced himself to calm down.
A few hundred yuan wouldn’t have covered a single afternoon tea for him before. But it was different now. This money had been carried out one brick at a time by Jiang Tingnan, saved up from sweat striking the ground while he wouldn’t even buy himself a bottle of mineral water.
Ruan Yan felt his hands shaking.
There were only four people in the dormitory. The top student hadn’t come back at all and had been at the library the whole time, and Han Qiu had been with him throughout, which left only Jia Cheng.
While he was out eating, then?
Ruan Yan was furious with himself. How could he have been so careless? Money Jiang Tingnan had earned through that kind of labor, and he’d gone and lost it.
He drew a deep breath and, without a minute’s hesitation, walked straight up to Jia Cheng and looked at him quietly. “Give me back my money.”
Jia Cheng shot upright in bed. “Has being poor driven you mad?”
“My money is gone, and you were the only one in the dorm at the time.”
Ruan Yan’s tone sounded perfectly level. “Term has only just started. Do you want this to get ugly?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. What has your money got to do with me!”
Ruan Yan nodded, and wasted no further words. “Then I’ll call the police.”
He pulled out his phone right there in front of him. Jia Cheng had presumably never imagined anyone would call the police over a few hundred yuan, and lunged to snatch it away. “Are you sick in the head?”
Ruan Yan laughed coldly. “So you admit you stole it?”
Jia Cheng exploded. “I did not!!”
“Then what’s the harm in calling the police? Let them check for fingerprints. It’s been such a short time, the money can’t have been spent yet. In your bag, is it?”
Jia Cheng’s face cycled through several shades of green and white.
He gritted his teeth and refused absolutely to admit anything.
Ruan Yan couldn’t be bothered to argue any further and simply made the call.
The first day of term, and a commotion on this scale.
The university counselor hurried over after the phone call, by which point the dormitory was packed with people.
In the end, several folded hundred yuan notes were found in Jia Cheng’s bag.
But Jia Cheng insisted he had no idea how the money had got there. There were no cameras in the dormitory anyway, and for all anyone knew Ruan Yan had planted it himself.
“He’s had it in for me since the moment he arrived,” Jia Cheng shouted. “He’s deliberately trying to frame me. Officers, you can check my bank card, I get more than ten thousand a month in pocket money alone. Would I steal his few hundred? Pauper.”
“I’m a pauper, and you took a pauper’s money. What does that make you?”
Whatever else could be said, even with Jia Cheng refusing to admit it, the money had been found in his bag. Ruan Yan insisted the counselor discipline him, that a demerit go on his record at the very least.
But by now the counselor’s expression had turned thoroughly sour.
Dragged out to work late at night, a student calling the police on the very first day of term, and the department head would certainly be wanting a word with him tomorrow.
He looked at Ruan Yan without a trace of goodwill, exactly the way one looks at a troublemaker.
“That’s quite enough from you. The money’s been found, hasn’t it?”
Ruan Yan laughed in sheer anger. “And so, teacher? Does finding the money erase the fact that he stole it?”
The counselor was impatient. “What more do you want?”
“Put a demerit on his record!”
Ruan Yan held up his phone, his tone mild. “I’ve recorded all of it anyway, audio and video. Otherwise I’ll put it online and we can all see whether stealing is worth a demerit or not.”
The counselor’s face was very ugly indeed. He stared at Ruan Yan for a full several minutes before stiffly pulling his mouth into the shape of a smile. “Very well. I’ve noted Student Ruan’s suggestion. It’s very late now. I’ll report to the relevant leadership tomorrow.”
Ruan Yan put his phone away and produced a smile. “Thank you for your trouble, teacher.”
It was nearly midnight before the farce came to an end.
Jia Cheng said not a word, packed up his bag and walked out. Once he was gone, Han Qiu came over and tugged carefully at Ruan Yan’s sleeve. “Are you all right?”
Ruan Yan gripped the money tightly, shook his head and smiled at Han Qiu. “What could be wrong? He’s the one bullying people.”
He waved a hand. “My temper’s mellowed these days. Otherwise I’d have my husband bring a vanload of people over to beat him to death!”
That said, Ruan Yan had no intention whatsoever of telling Jiang Tingnan any of it.
Ever since marrying Jiang Tingnan, Ruan Yan had grown used to telling him about every single thing that happened. Even if he’d merely turned an ankle at home, his first instinct wasn’t to call a doctor but to pull out his phone, call Jiang Tingnan, and shed two aggrieved tears at his husband.
This was the first time Ruan Yan had handled something entirely on his own.
At the thought, he quickly dug out a notebook, sat down at the desk and set about writing something with great seriousness.
Han Qiu marveled. “You’re studying at a time like this?”
“No. I have to write down what happened today so I can tell on him to my husband later.” Ruan Yan wrote in earnest. “He’s far too busy right now. I’ll tell him after a while, but I’m afraid I’ll forget by then.”
Han Qiu, “……”
.
Jiang Tingnan was indeed very busy lately.
He’d got in touch with a small company that was very interested in the software he’d built, and they had arranged to meet and discuss the details.
He reckoned a small company couldn’t put up much money, but Jiang Tingnan had no reputation yet and wasn’t counting on turning everything around in one stroke. He needed cash urgently, and a smaller sum made no difference.
He mentioned the business meeting to Ruan Yan in passing over the phone, and the next day Ruan Yan hurried into his dormitory.
Jiang Tingnan happened to be out, at the counselor’s office requesting leave.
Ruan Yan had no choice but to wait for him there.
They were all men, so there was nothing to be shy about.
Ruan Yan thought of how Jiang Tingnan had bustled about in his own dormitory, and wanting to leave a good impression on Jiang Tingnan’s roommates himself, decided he’d make the bed for him.
But climbing up onto Jiang Tingnan’s bunk, he found it already perfectly squared away, the quilt folded into a neat tofu block.
Like a kitten, Ruan Yan rubbed his face against the quilt.
Mm. It seemed to smell of his husband.
Ruan Yan buried his whole face in it and sniffed.
The scent Jiang Tingnan carried was a curious thing, something like mint, with a trace of something else running through it.
Ruan Yan had assumed at first that it was his body wash, and had forced Jiang Tingnan to use the peach scented one with him for a while, but the scent on Jiang Tingnan hadn’t altered in the slightest.
There had been a period when Ruan Yan was thoroughly absorbed in novels, and he’d declared to Jiang Tingnan with total conviction that the two of them must be ABOs who’d accidentally wandered into the normal world.
Jiang Tingnan set down the tablet in his hand. He wore a pair of gold rimmed plain glasses when he worked, though because he was lying in bed at the moment, he seemed less sharp, and when he looked at Ruan Yan his eyes were full of softness.
“Baby, what does that mean?”
Jiang Tingnan scooped him into his arms. He seemed to suffer from a kind of skin hunger, wanting to be kissing and holding his wife at every moment of the day.
Ruan Yan gave him a very serious explanation of the worldview.
“So the scent I keep smelling on you is pheromones. Understand?”
Jiang Tingnan was silent a moment, then asked, “So you can bear a baby?”
Ruan Yan, “……”
Why did Jiang Tingnan always focus on such strange things!!
Jiang Tingnan’s hand wandered to his wife’s lower abdomen, his voice dropping low, as though he were earnestly examining an academic question. “Will it swell up here, when the time comes?”
Ruan Yan gritted his teeth and slapped his hand away.
“Nobody was talking about that.”
With one hand Jiang Tingnan took off his glasses and tossed them aside, and with the other he locked Ruan Yan’s waist so he couldn’t get away, leaning in to deepen the kiss by degrees.
He seemed to find the ABO business fascinating, and kept changing positions as he asked Ruan Yan whether he’d gotten pregnant yet.
Ruan Yan couldn’t get a word out, and in the end shakily gave him the middle finger.
Jiang Tingnan laughed with pleasure, took Ruan Yan’s hand and kissed it. “All right. Once more, then.”
Ruan Yan: deceased.
Every time he thought about any of this, Ruan Yan couldn’t help punching Jiang Tingnan twice inside his own head, bang bang.
He rolled over on Jiang Tingnan’s bed, feeling himself wrapped entirely in Jiang Tingnan’s scent. It had been several days since he’d slept beside his husband, and Ruan Yan, greedy for that smell, was soon fast asleep.
Meanwhile, Jiang Tingnan came out of the office and only then saw the messages Ruan Yan had sent him.
【Husband, I’m waiting for you in your dorm.】
【Husband! I’m making your bed! I’m a super virtuous wife!!】
Jiang Tingnan hurried to reply.
【You don’t need to do any chores, baby.】
【I’m coming back right now.】
He ran almost the entire way back. Pushing open the dormitory door, he found it quiet inside. His roommates must have already left.
Jiang Tingnan walked to the bed, where he found no trace of the legendary super virtuous wife, and instead found a Yan Yan asleep with flushed cheeks and thoroughly rumpled hair.