But something wasn't right… As things stood, Handsome Guy seemed like a reasonable person—he needed to set him straight.
An Xiao frowned as he wrapped up the sugar cube, handed it to Handsome Guy, and lay back down—he was still dizzy and needed rest.
Handsome Guy's brows furrowed deeply. He set down the sugar packet and reached out to feel An Xiao's forehead and neck.
An Xiao let him check, closed his eyes, and drifted back to sleep.
He slept on and off, only waking when Handsome Guy roused him to drink porridge or take medicine. Otherwise, he slept continuously.
By the time he was fully awake, it was already the next morning—or at least it seemed like morning, because Handsome Guy brought him another bowl of porridge.
An Xiao drank the porridge, felt his condition was decent, and wanted to get out of bed and move around.
Handsome Guy was worried and insisted on supporting him.
An Xiao was still weak all over and didn't refuse. He slipped on his shoes and let Handsome Guy help him out the door.
But in just one day and one night of sleep, many changes had appeared in the home:
At the spot by the cliff where he'd asked for a pit to be dug for drainage, there was now a wooden structure—presumably the bathroom he'd wanted.
A trench had also been dug along the kitchen wall, running straight to the drainage channel of the water pool.
An Xiao first turned into the kitchen.
Handsome Guy had apparently referenced the pool outside and, without any instruction, dug a drainage ditch next to the water vat—now washing anything would be much more convenient.
The long table that had been in use before had been moved against the wall beside the stove, making food preparation more convenient.
On the other side, away from the stove, there was now a square table and stools—that would be their dining table from now on.
An Xiao nodded in satisfaction and went outside to check the bathroom, the biggest project.
Only when he got closer did he realize the bathroom was especially large. It was enclosed on all four sides with wooden planks, and even the ceiling had a wooden cover. It was square and sturdy-looking, and it even had a door fitted.
The water from the small pool split at the fault line, splashing into little ripples before rushing toward the wooden structure. Inside, it curved through a rectangular pit at the far end and surged out over the cliff.
The entire flow and design followed the diagram he'd drawn.
The only problem was… it was too big.
This wooden structure was large enough for the two of them to hold hands and dance a waltz inside, and the pit took up less than a quarter of the space.
An Xiao walked a full circle inside the wooden room and looked at Handsome Guy with confusion.
Handsome Guy seemed to know what he was thinking. He touched An Xiao's forehead, pointed at the ground, and said, "Here, it won't feel uncomfortable."
An Xiao froze.
His illness must have come from catching a chill while wiping himself down in the cold wind that night.
So, Handsome Guy had built him a windproof place to wash up?
…That counted as cutting-edge modern design, in a way.
An Xiao looked at Handsome Guy with complicated eyes.
Handsome Guy looked back at him, puzzled.
Suddenly remembering something, An Xiao's eyes lit up. He grabbed Handsome Guy and hurried him outside.
Handsome Guy: "?"
An Xiao dragged him all the way into the room, found the note the physician had written on the table, pointed at the characters, and said, "I want this."
Handsome Guy looked at the characters, then at him, his expression somewhat strange.
An Xiao thought he hadn't understood, so he repeated: "You know this, I don't. I want this."
Handsome Guy hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
An Xiao was overjoyed and immediately pulled him outside to learn the characters.
Heaven, earth, people—trees, flowers, grass.
Tables, chairs, stools—clothes, shoes, hats.
An Xiao brought out the same drive he'd had for the college entrance exam, following Handsome Guy from morning to night.
He was still sick, after all. His fever had broken, but he still coughed and had a stuffy nose.
The days that had felt warm before now felt chilly even in a single layer of clothing.
The Handsome Guy watched him put on an extra layer of clothing, his brow furrowed deeply, and he wouldn't even let him cook.
He made An Xiao a wooden board, fixed on all four sides with mortise and tenon joints, enclosing a low grid about half an inch high, filled with fine sand he had scrounged up.
He was in the kitchen stoking the fire and stewing meat, while An Xiao sat nearby, tracing characters on the wooden board to learn words.
By evening, An Xiao could say a few everyday sentences to the Handsome Guy, like "Time to eat," "I'm going out for a stroll," "I'm going to the bathroom," and so on.
Besides learning characters, An Xiao also had the Handsome Guy make a large wooden tub.
He didn't know how the man had fitted the planks together or what material he'd used to seal the boards tight, but the tub was very sturdy—carrying a full bucket of water, it didn't leak a single drop and stayed perfectly steady.
With a bathroom and a wooden tub available, An Xiao wanted to bathe.
But he'd only gone down the mountain for a stroll yesterday and had seen clearly: this era was probably close to ancient Chinese civilization, with no high technology, which meant there should be no antibiotics or anti-inflammatory drugs either.
A fever or cold could be minor or serious—he couldn't take the risk. Anyway, he hadn't done any work for two days, so he wouldn't stink.
But the Handsome Guy needed to wash.
An Xiao directed the Handsome Guy to hammer a row of hooks in the bathroom, then had him boil a pot of water and carry it in. He instructed him: "You bathe, change clothes."
The Handsome Guy froze for a moment, staring at the bucket of hot water with a somewhat dazed expression.
An Xiao thought he didn't want to wash, so he emphasized: "Must be clean, must bathe."
The Handsome Guy scratched his cheek and hesitated before asking again: "**Need to use hot water?"
An Xiao, whose vocabulary was still limited, sensed something was off.
He asked: "You don't like hot water?"
The Handsome Guy answered honestly: "Will **, you won't like it."
An Xiao: "?"
He wouldn't like what?
Puzzled, he said: "I don't. I like bathing."
The Handsome Guy: "…"
An Xiao thought for a moment and asked: "Will you get sick from washing in cold water?"
He'd just been sick himself, so he'd recently learned that word.
The Handsome Guy said firmly: "No."
An Xiao: "…"
Recalling the Handsome Guy's formidable strength, he guessed his constitution was probably just as formidable.
"Then you wash in cold water, and I'll use the hot water."
The Handsome Guy frowned: "You're sick."
An Xiao shot him a look: "I'll use it to wash my face—and my feet." It was really for soaking his feet, but he didn't know how to say "soak."
Only then did the Handsome Guy relent, and he even helped carry the water back into the room. Then he turned to look at the bamboo curtain and said to him: "****the door."
An Xiao didn't understand, just smiled and pushed him off to bathe.
Only after watching the Handsome Guy enter the bathroom did he take out the dried colored cloth, dip it in the water, and rub it, then began wiping his face and hands. After that, he sat by the table, soaking his feet while reviewing the words and phrases he'd learned that day.
He was still soaking when the Handsome Guy lifted the curtain and poked his head in.
An Xiao noticed and turned around: "Done washing?"
The Handsome Guy nodded, let the curtain fall, and went back out.
An Xiao: "??"
After a moment, the sound of water came from outside.
It dawned on An Xiao. The Handsome Guy had gone to wash the clothes.
He finished reviewing all the words and phrases from today, and by then the water had cooled considerably.
He wrung out the cloth, dried his feet, slipped on his cloth shoes, stood up, and carried the bucket out to dump the water.
The bucket with water in it was a bit heavy for someone who'd been lying down for two days, so he walked a little slowly.
Only a little.
But the moment he stepped out the door, the bucket was taken from him anyway.
An Xiao: "…"
The Handsome Guy was really treating him like an invalid.
Helplessly, he directed: "Dump it out."
"Yeah." The Handsome Guy went to dump the water.
The sky had gone completely dark. Only the room had a torch burning; outside was pitch black and impossible to see clearly.
An Xiao heard a splash of water. He waited for a moment, but the Handsome Guy didn't come back—only the faint sound of water drifting from the pool area.
He shook his head and turned back into the room.
A breeze swept through the bamboo curtain, causing the torch inside to flicker.
An Xiao instinctively looked up at the torch.
The torches he'd placed two days ago had burned out quickly. Why was today's torch still not even halfway burned after all this time?
Had the Handsome Guy switched to a different type of wood?
An Xiao decided to go ask. He lifted the curtain and called out, "**——"
Huh?
He'd been learning characters—why hadn't he asked what the Handsome Guy's name meant?
His distraction lasted only a moment before the Handsome Guy appeared before him. "What's wrong?"
An Xiao snapped back to attention and asked, "What does ** mean? How do you write it?"
Handsome Guy: "…"
He guided An Xiao back into the room, pulled over his wooden sandbox, and wrote three characters in it.
Pointing at the first one: "A place with many trees."
The second: "To burn with fire, **, also meaning bright."
The third: "Very deep water."
An Xiao blinked.
The writing in this place was also pictographic, so some characters bore strong resemblance to the Chinese characters he'd learned.
For instance, the character meaning "many trees" looked very similar to the character for "lin"—both were two identical structures placed side by side.
The difference was that this character had two tree branches on top and a vertical trunk below, looking even more like two trees standing together than "lin" did.
So this should be the character "lin."
By extension, the second character should be "zhuo," and the third "yuan."
And the name the Handsome Guy had asked him to use was the second and third characters: Zhuoyuan.
An Xiao murmured it a few times, then looked up with curved eyes. "Lin Zhuoyuan… that sounds very nice."
The Handsome Guy's gaze burned bright.
He lowered his head.
Smooch.
An Xiao: "…"
Just as he was about to scold him, the Handsome Guy asked—
"What about [An Xiao]? What does it mean?"
An Xiao shot him a glare before answering. "[An] means…" He stalled.
After thinking for a long while, he said, "[An]—I can't explain it yet. I'll tell you later. [Xiao] means morning, when the sun first comes out."
He casually wrote "An Xiao" in the sandbox.
The Handsome Guy—Lin Zhuoyuan—stared at the sandbox for a while, then said, "They also call you the morning sun."
An Xiao: "!"
"How do you write it?"
Lin Zhuoyuan wrote two characters beside it. "This is the name they call you. The first character is the surname, and the one after is 'morning sun.'"
An Xiao read it twice before asking what the first character meant.
Lin Zhuoyuan drew and wrote in the sandbox, finally explaining the surname—it meant peace.
An Xiao froze. "What a coincidence? My name means the same thing."
Lin Zhuoyuan stared at him.
"…Wait." A sudden thought struck An Xiao, and he looked up, glaring. "What do you mean, 'the name they call you'?"
Lin Zhuoyuan said honestly, "I ** not you."
What? An Xiao frowned. "I ask, you answer."
Lin Zhuoyuan nodded.
An Xiao pointed at the ground beneath his feet. "How long have I been here?"
Lin Zhuoyuan: "4 days."
…Right, the furniture here had all been made in the past few days.
An Xiao tried to ask more clearly. "We…"
How did you say "have known each other"?
"12 days," Lin Zhuoyuan said.
An Xiao: "?"
Lin Zhuoyuan: "Since they *you here, it's been 12 days."
An Xiao: "??"
Lin Zhuoyuan thought he hadn't understood, so he wrote in the sandbox: 12 days.
"Day" was a character he'd learned today, and he'd also learned numbers up to 20, so An Xiao understood that.
What he didn't understand was—
"What do they mean by coming over here?" he asked.
Lin Zhuoyuan: "It means letting you be my ***."
An Xiao: "??"
"What does that word mean again?"
Lin Zhuoyuan lowered his head and gave him a quick peck on the lips, then said, "***, my ***."
An Xiao: "…"
Still clinging to a sliver of hope, he asked cautiously, "What does *** refer to?"
Lin Zhuoyuan thought for a moment, wiped away the words on the sand table, and drew the stick figures An Xiao had taught him over the past two days—two figures lying on top of each other on a bed.
He even drew two lines connecting them in the middle.
…A stick-figure version of a dirty picture!!
And both men were showing that—!!
Ew!!
No wonder that area felt weird when he first woke up!!
An Xiao's face flushed red, and he quickly wiped it away!!
Lin Zhuoyuan frowned, staring at him, and emphasized: "You are my ***."
An Xiao held his forehead: "It wasn't me, I woke up—"
"It was you." Lin Zhuoyuan interrupted him, speaking with certainty, "I know it was you. I ***ed your ****."
An Xiao: "…"
Even more confused now.
But… the Handsome Guy had known him from the very beginning, hadn't he…
What to do, he felt a little happy about that.