A cool breeze blew, and coats grew thicker. The scorching summer had already passed, and only when they saw the falling leaves with their own eyes did everyone realize that late autumn had arrived.
Pei Xingzhi patted his cheeks to wake himself up, naturally sitting down in the seat Xie Nanyi had saved for him and taking the breakfast prepared in advance, eating it slowly.
The hair he had dyed before was starting to fade, but Pei Xingzhi still hadn’t given up on his idea of becoming a “yuppie.” After behaving himself for a few days, he dragged Zhuang Xiaoyue to get various piercings. Fortunately, under Zhuang Xiaoyue’s stern persuasion, he only got a tongue piercing and stopped there.
Though it wasn’t much better, at least it wouldn’t instantly strike fear into people’s hearts with its trendiness.
His tongue no longer hurt, but due to psychological effects, Pei Xingzhi always felt something was off with his tongue, a feeling especially noticeable when eating.
“Xiao Zhi, are you trying to seduce me?” Xie Nanyi propped his chin on one hand, gazing at Pei Xingzhi with affectionate eyes, a very ambiguous smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
Pei Xingzhi couldn’t help but roll his eyes at his exaggerated expression.
This was the downside: even just inadvertently sticking out his tongue while eating would get him sexually harassed.
Time in university always passed quickly. Before Pei Xingzhi even noticed, the two had already known each other for over three months.
Xie Nanyi still hadn’t given up pursuing him, and Pei Xingzhi had long grown accustomed to his daily pestering. Since he couldn’t shake him off, he might as well accept it with peace of mind.
Being harassed every day was enough to give him a psychological condition, so taking a little compensation from him wasn’t too much.
“How nice, someone brings you food every day. Unlike me, I’m just a poor little thing no one cares about or loves…” Zhuang Xiaoyue pulled a long face and sat down beside Pei Xingzhi miserably, the only one shivering through the lonely early morning class.
Both of them arrived right on time, yet their treatment was completely different. Pei Xingzhi and Xie Nanyi were the big names on campus, and as his “little sidekick,” he had inexplicably received a lot of attention too.
Though he didn’t particularly dislike it, his phone was bombarded with gossip messages every day, and after a while, it was getting a bit hard to handle.
“You could find a boyfriend to bring you food. By the way, is Gu Xiang still pestering you lately?” Pei Xingzhi took a bite of the greasy bun from the school cafeteria, a look of disgust appearing on his face.
This bun was probably a frozen leftover from last semester, two bites in and he still couldn’t reach the filling.
“Don’t mention that guy, he makes me sick.” Zhuang Xiaoyue shook his head with a grimace, feeling deeply repulsed by the person. Just hearing Pei Xingzhi say his name made him uncomfortable all over.
“Who’s Gu Xiang?” Xie Nanyi, having caught half the conversation, chimed in from the side.
Pei Xingzhi glanced at Zhuang Xiaoyue, who made an X sign with his fingers, begging Pei Xingzhi not to say anything.
“Nothing.”
Pei Xingzhi didn’t want to say, and Xie Nanyi smiled and nodded, not pressing further. If he wanted to know something, he didn’t need the person to tell him directly.
“Like today’s breakfast? They just got a new strawberry milk today, I thought you’d enjoy it, so I waited in line for a long time to buy it.” Xie Nanyi held up the milk with both hands, his eyes sparkling as he sought credit from Pei Xingzhi.
If one ignored Xie Nanyi’s earlier pestering and that inner monologue from that day, his current behavior was the perfect model of a twenty-four-karat good boyfriend.
But precisely because Pei Xingzhi understood his intentions, no matter how hard Xie Nanyi tried, he couldn’t shake Pei Xingzhi’s emotions in the slightest.
“In the morning, I’m more used to drinking coffee.” Pei Xingzhi commented without any trace of emotion.
He thought his preferences had been made obvious enough, but Xie Nanyi didn’t seem to have picked up on it.
Or rather, he simply didn’t care at all.
“Coffee is indeed better in the morning, it wakes you up more.” Xie Nanyi nodded and took out his phone to jot it down in his notes. This doting behavior made Zhuang Xiaoyue watch with envy written all over her face.
“Can you two stop showing off your love in front of me? It’s really annoying!” With his own situation being chased by a scumbag, and his friend having a model boyfriend yet not cherishing him, Zhuang Xiaoyue let out a bitter laugh, lamenting his own ill-fated life.
“Where exactly are we showing off our love? Can’t you tell I really dislike him?” Pei Xingzhi raised an eyebrow. Did his honest words look like lovey-dovey behavior to Zhuang Xiaoyue? Xie Nanyi didn’t seem to be showing much affection toward him at all.
“Wow, I really can’t tell at all.” Zhuang Xiaoyue curled his lips in disdain. He was about to say more when the phone by his hand suddenly rang. Zhuang Xiaoyue picked it up and glanced at it, and his expression instantly turned sour.
Pei Xingzhi was a bit curious about what he had seen, but before he could even ask, Zhuang Xiaoyue turned his head and buried it in his arms, ignoring Pei Xingzhi completely.
Zhuang Xiaoyue had been acting strange lately, throwing little tantrums at the drop of a hat. Pei Xingzhi looked it up online and guessed he was probably entering his Omega heat cycle.
Zhuang Xiaoyue was the first Omega friend he’d had any real contact with.
Society’s division of ABO genders was fairly pronounced, most Alphas and Omegas went to specialized schools, and few would lower themselves to attend regular schools and live among Betas.
As a Beta, Pei Xingzhi naturally had no privileges either. From elementary school through high school, he’d lived among mostly Beta peers, and aside from teachers, he rarely encountered other gender groups at school. It wasn’t until university that he entered a truly multi-gender society.
His parents had never spent their ruts or heats around him, so even now, his understanding of Alpha ruts and Omega heats was still zero.
He wasn’t sure what kind of behavior people exhibited during heat, but emotional volatility was probably one of the affected aspects.
Pei Xingzhi considered himself fairly gentlemanly. He’d silently endured Zhuang Xiaoyue’s recent moodiness, doing his best not to provoke him and risk worsening his state.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Can you just leave me alone?!”
Pei Xingzhi tried to strike up a conversation, but Zhuang Xiaoyue slapped his hand away forcefully, and the fair skin on the back of his hand quickly turned red.
Xie Nanyi’s gaze suddenly turned cold, and he instinctively released his pheromones as a warning to Zhuang Xiaoyue. Pei Xingzhi’s breath hitched sharply, and he shot Xie Nanyi a warning glare. Xie Nanyi immediately switched back to a gentle smile and withdrew the pheromones he’d just released.
Before the 8 a.m. class, quite a few people were catching up on sleep. The commotion between the two of them wasn’t exactly small, and the students in the front rows had clearly been affected by Xie Nanyi’s pheromones as well. Several people had already turned around repeatedly, their eyes expressing impatience, and some had even pulled out their phones and quietly opened the camera.
Zhuang Xiaoyue noticed this too, feigned a yawn, and quietly explained that he had just been dazed from sleep.
His excuse was flimsy, but since an explanation was given, no one wanted to stir up more trouble. After all, they had a high-quality Alpha on their side, if a real fight broke out, they definitely wouldn’t come out on top.
Too lazy to bother with their business, everyone rolled their eyes and slumped back down to catch up on sleep.
Pei Xingzhi gently nudged Zhuang Xiaoyue’s shoulder and handed him the extra carton of milk he’d brought. Zhuang Xiaoyue pressed his lips together, took the milk, and his expression softened a bit.
This class was one of Pei Xingzhi’s major courses. Xie Nanyi wasn’t a student in this major, so as soon as the bell rang, he sprawled over the desk to catch up on sleep.
Pei Xingzhi couldn’t help but glance at him.
Xie Nanyi’s sleeping posture was much the same as the day they first met, his arm covering the lower half of his face, leaving only his handsome brows and eyes visible. He was still wearing a long-sleeved shirt that covered him completely. If you ignored the insincerity lurking in his eyes, he almost looked like a devoted lover at this moment.
Xie Nanyi’s maternal grandfather was Western, giving him a quarter Caucasian heritage. His looks perfectly blended the strengths of both Eastern and Western features: superior bone structure, gentle skin. His natural appearance meant he could just sit there and automatically draw everyone’s gaze.
Once class started, everyone had nothing better to do, and curious looks kept drifting over from around the room. Pei Xingzhi lowered his eyes to his textbook, fingers fidgeting with the pages, inexplicably irritated.
He hated that kind of staring.
Staring with the intent to pry, turning his pride into a joke.
The teacher’s droning theories on the podium made Pei Xingzhi drowsy. Xie Nanyi shifted positions, revealing the right side of his face to Pei Xingzhi.
The dark circles around his eyes were very obvious, probably from not sleeping well recently.
He hadn’t had class this morning, yet to curry favor with Pei Xingzhi, he’d still gotten up early to accompany him to the classroom.
Xie Nanyi had picked up this courting method from somewhere, taking it upon himself to handle everything for Pei Xingzhi. Even when Pei Xingzhi repeatedly refused, it couldn’t stop his enthusiasm.
Pei Xingzhi deliberately tried to make things difficult for him, foisting all sorts of trivial tasks onto him. Package pickups, food deliveries, volunteer activities, anything someone else could do, he dumped on Xie Nanyi. He’d assumed Xie Nanyi would back off when things got tough, but instead he completed everything seriously, and the results were flawless.
Xie Nanyi’s goal was simply to use him to satisfy his father’s demands. Every action he took had its own purpose, there was no need for Pei Xingzhi to pity him.
Pei Xingzhi stared at Xie Nanyi’s face, unconsciously lost in thought.
Sunlight streamed through the glass onto the desk. The morning light wasn’t harsh, but Xie Nanyi still furrowed his brow. Pei Xingzhi turned his head away, reluctantly grabbing a notebook to block the light in front of him.
“Xie Nanyi, do you really have to go this far?”
Even if it was to chase after him, there was no need to waste his own rest time on these meaningless things.
The angle of the sunlight was tricky, just as Pei Xingzhi blocked the light from above, the sun shifted and came in from the other side.
Pei Xingzhi gave up on being kind and silently withdrew his hand. Xie Nanyi stirred, reaching his right hand forward to grab Pei Xingzhi’s.
Pei Xingzhi’s captured hand trembled slightly, but in the end, he didn’t pull it back.
Xie Nanyi wasn’t actually asleep. Insomnia had become a constant in his daily life, ever since the mark had appeared, he hadn’t had a single good night’s rest.
The other members of the Xie family weren’t idle either; the problems Pei Xingzhi was dealing with didn’t require him to solve them personally.
But since Pei Xingzhi had misunderstood, there was no need to clarify. Taking credit for someone else’s efforts to leave a good impression didn’t feel half bad.
As for his poor state these past few days, it was probably because he’d tasted Pei Xingzhi’s treatment and found it addictive. The injections he’d relied on before could no longer ease his pain.
Pei Xingzhi had a soft temperament, and his hands were soft too, feeling as if they had no bones at all.
Xie Nanyi shifted his position, and their hands intertwined beneath the desk, fingers laced together. The warmth in his palm stiffened for a moment, as if hesitating whether to refuse the touch, but then it yielded, letting him have his way.
Xie Nanyi had only meant to take the opportunity to grow closer to Pei Xingzhi, but to his surprise, he actually fell asleep.
The new assistant, Qin, patted his shoulder to wake him. Having finally gotten a good night’s sleep, Xie Nanyi’s mind was foggy, and when he looked up, he wore a rare, childlike daze. He glanced around, Pei Xingzhi was already gone.
“Master Pei has already left,” Assistant Qin said, noticing his confusion and kindly offering an explanation.
“Alright.” Xie Nanyi rubbed his palm, where the warmth of Pei Xingzhi’s touch seemed to linger.
For the first time, he thought that having a marked one by his side wasn’t so bad after all.
There was only one morning class at eight. When the bell rang, Xie Nanyi was still fast asleep.
Pei Xingzhi looked at the slumbering Xie Nanyi, hesitating over whether to wake him. While he deliberated, Zhuang Xiaoyue packed up his things and walked out without even saying goodbye to him.
Seeing Zhuang Xiaoyue leave directly, Pei Xingzhi set aside his concern for Xie Nanyi and immediately got up to follow him.