The weather these past few days had been strangely unpredictable. Early in the morning, before the sun had risen, the cold made people shiver, as if winter were already approaching.
By noon, however, the heat returned with stubborn persistence, making people sweat as though a fragment of summer still refused to leave yet by evening, once the sun had set, the chill crept back again, cold enough that one needed to put on a jacket.
When Ruan Chen arrived outside the bar to pick up Jiang Tingting, the first thing he did was take off his own coat and drape it over her shoulders.
She was completely drunk.
Her appearance tonight was somewhat different from usual. She looked a little more dressed up, even slightly sexy. Without caring about her image at all, she slumped by the roadside, her face flushed red from the alcohol, as though she had also been crying.
In truth, Ruan Chen didn’t particularly like seeing his junior sister like this. It didn’t match the simple, pure image of her that he had always carried in his mind. He had always assumed she didn’t smoke, didn’t drink and certainly didn’t go to nightclubs.
But things had already reached this point. There was no way he could simply abandon her here.
Ruan Chen helped her to her feet and asked, “Should I take you back to your dorm?”
His junior sister giggled drunkenly. “You’re silly, Senior Brother. At this hour the dorm is already locked for curfew. There’s no way to get in.”
Ruan Chen said, “Then I’ll find a nearby hotel and let you stay there for the night.”
She couldn’t stand steadily and leaned bonelessly against him, clinging to his body. The heavy smell of alcohol mixed with a sweet perfume drifted toward him.
“Thank you, Senior Brother.”
Ruan Chen supported her as they walked toward the roadside, looking for a place where they could catch a taxi.
She kept muttering drunkenly the whole way.
“Thank you, Senior Brother. You’re really so kind to me. Everyone else has abandoned me.”
“You even help me write my assignments. I’m so willful and troublesome but you never scold me. Actually it’s not like I can’t write them myself… I just don’t want to. My heart feels so annoyed.”
“You treat me even better than my dad. After my dad remarried, he stopped caring about me.”
“Senior Brother, are all men like this? Once they’ve gotten what they want, they stop cherishing it.”
Ruan Chen felt his heart pounding in alarm as he listened.
The more he listened, the more something seemed wrong.
Could it be that because of him, Mu Xinghai had gone to Jiang Tingting and insisted on breaking up? Was that why she had come out tonight to drown her sorrows in alcohol and ended up drinking herself into this state?
The weight of guilt pressed heavily on Ruan Chen’s chest, almost making it difficult for him to breathe.
Feeling uneasy, he couldn’t help but speak cautiously, half concealing what he meant.
“You shouldn’t take a man like that too seriously,” he said. “He’s not a very good person… Mu Xinghai is very fickle…”
Jiang Tingting replied in a strange tone, “What Mu Xinghai? I don’t like him anymore.”
It sounded almost like the opposite of what she meant.
Suddenly she leaned closer to Ruan Chen, as if she were about to kiss him but stopped when their faces were only inches apart.
The smell of alcohol made Ruan Chen frown slightly yet the moment still left his face burning red.
Jiang Tingting rested her head on his shoulder and said softly, “Senior Brother, I really like you.”
Ruan Chen’s heartbeat shot up instantly, racing so fast it felt as though it might burst out of his chest.
The very next second, Jiang Tingting gave a foolish giggle and added, “Because at a time like this, if I ask you to take me to a hotel, you definitely won’t sleep with me. You’re really a good person.”
Ruan Chen stood there in silence.
A good person.
A good person.
Every woman he had ever met said he was a good person but not a single one of them liked him in the way they liked men.
His heart sank back into the mud once again.
As they continued walking along the road, a male voice suddenly called out behind them.
“Senior Brother Ruan?”
Ruan Chen instinctively panicked and turned around. He saw a young man who looked vaguely familiar. The boy had a fashionable appearance, his hair shaved short on the sides with the top slicked back. When he spoke, a small tiger tooth showed in his smile, charmingly placed.
Ruan Chen couldn’t remember exactly who he was but he knew that the current situation could easily lead to misunderstanding, so he pretended that he recognized him.
“She’s drunk,” Ruan Chen explained. “I’m taking her to a hotel.”
After saying it, he realized the explanation didn’t seem to help at all.
Ruan Chen grew even more embarrassed and awkwardly added, “I’m her senior brother.”
The young man smiled.
“Alright, alright. You don’t look very free right now. Do you want me to help you?”
Ruan Chen thought that since the situation had already been seen by someone, having another person present would at least serve as proof. He was completely innocent and had absolutely no improper intentions.
“Oh… thank you, thank you.”
The three of them began walking together along the roadside.
Gradually, Ruan Chen remembered who the young man was.
Lin Mu.
He wasn’t from their department yet for some reason they seemed to run into each other quite often.
Lin Mu secretly observed the way Ruan Chen was supporting the drunk girl. Ruan Chen’s hands looked awkward, as though he didn’t even know where to place them, clearly trying not to touch her body unnecessarily.
Lin Mu thought to himself: So he really is gay. They must be like girlfriends to each other… Senior Brother Ruan is really a good person.
Lin Mu himself felt a little awkward now.
The reason he had been walking down this road tonight was because he had arranged to meet a man but the moment he saw Ruan Chen, he had simply abandoned the man he had originally planned to spend the night with.
“Do you want me to help hold her up?” Lin Mu asked.
Ruan Chen replied, “No… it might not be very appropriate…”
Lin Mu looked at him for a moment and then said frankly, “I’m gay.”
Jiang Tingting, leaning against Ruan Chen, suddenly lifted her head and looked at him. She raised her thumb in approval.
“Classmate… you’re pretty brave.”
Lin Mu shrugged casually. “It’s not illegal.”
Ruan Chen’s expression shifted slightly.
He thought to himself that lately he must have been cursed somehow. First he encountered bisexual people and now he kept running into gay people.
Finally, they managed to hail a taxi.
The driver rolled down the window and asked, “Where to?”
Ruan Chen replied, “A hotel.”
The driver asked, “Which hotel?”
Ruan Chen searched online and found several budget chain hotels nearby. However, about two kilometers away there was a five star hotel. After thinking it over for a moment, he still named the five star hotel.
While sitting in the car, he carefully checked the prices. Even the cheapest room cost more than seven hundred yuan for one night. The thought made Ruan Chen’s heart ache a little; that amount was basically more than a month of his food expenses.
But he truly didn’t want to be seen by the girl he liked as poor and stingy. After all, a man could be frugal with himself but he couldn’t be stingy with the person he liked.
Lin Xi glanced sideways at him. Did Senior Brother Ruan only look like he wasn’t well off? Was he actually quite rich? Or was this girl going to pay for the room herself?
The two of them arrived at the hotel.
At the front desk, they paid and checked in. Ruan Chen handled the payment at the counter. He only used cash. Taking out his wallet, he counted the bills. Lin Mu happened to notice that tucked into the inner slot of the wallet were two movie tickets.
Unfortunately, the cheapest standard king room was already gone. Only the deluxe king room remained, which cost one thousand yuan for a night.
Ruan Chen still paid for it.
The two men escorted her to the room.
Jiang Tingting didn’t care at all that there were still two men in the room. The moment she entered, she collapsed onto the bed and prepared to sleep.
Ruan Chen stood beside the head of the bed for half a minute. Finally, with some difficulty, he said, “Junior Sister… could you… return my coat to me?”
Of course he didn’t mind that single coat.
But he was very afraid that this coat or rather, this whole incident, might somehow be discovered by Mu Xinghai. Because of that, he absolutely couldn’t leave the coat behind.
Jiang Tingting looked at him gloomily. Sitting up, she took off the coat and handed it back to him.
Lin Mu finally felt completely reassured. It seemed they were simply friends or classmates. If Ruan Chen truly liked girls, there was no way he would behave like this. Even the most rigidly straight man wouldn’t do such a thing.
Ruan Chen held the coat Jiang Tingting had worn in his hand but he didn’t put it back on.
Lin Mu thought to himself, see? He doesn’t even want to wear a coat that a woman has worn.
Meanwhile, Ruan Chen was thinking something entirely different.
The smell of alcohol was far too strong… he didn’t want to put on such a smelly coat.
Ruan Chen wasn’t very familiar with Lin Mu. When they went downstairs and left the hotel, the two of them had nothing to say to each other.
At that moment Ruan Chen felt extremely awkward. He hoped Lin Mu would leave quickly so that he could ride a shared bicycle home. After thinking for a moment, he took the initiative and asked, “The undergraduate dorms… already have curfew, right?”
Lin Xi nodded. “Mm.”
Ruan Chen asked, “Then where are you staying tonight?”
Lin Mu replied, “I’ll probably find a hotel in a bit. I’ll walk you back first.”
Ruan Chen certainly hadn’t forgotten that Lin Mu had just said he was gay.
“There’s no need,” he said.
Just as he was speaking, Ruan Chen noticed a car passing by. He glanced at the license plate and froze for a moment. For some reason… it looked like his advisor’s car.
And it seemed to be heading toward the hotel.
Or maybe he had seen it wrong?
Ruan Chen suddenly forgot whatever he had been about to say to Lin Mu.
Lin Mu assumed that his earlier confession had frightened Ruan Chen. Then he thought of the movie tickets he had glimpsed in Ruan Chen’s wallet. “Senior Brother,” he said, “do you like watching movies?”
Ruan Chen wasn’t used to people initiating conversations with him. He didn’t want to answer but he still let out a quiet sound. “Mm.”
His mood was in complete disarray. He was still thinking about what had happened with his junior sister earlier. In the depths of his mind, a vague but unpleasant guess was rising and sinking like something beneath the surface, making him even less inclined to pay attention to Lin Mu beside him.
Seeing Ruan Chen’s distracted expression and the way he deliberately avoided engagement, Lin Mu felt a familiar trace of frustration well up inside him. After all this time, he still didn’t even know where the door to Ruan Chen’s world was, let alone how to step inside.
So he said, “Are you deliberately being cold to me because I’m gay?”
A probing remark.
Ruan Chen immediately responded, “Ah, no, that’s not it. I have no problem with gay people…”
He just wasn’t interested, that was all.
Not interested and yet somehow he had inexplicably ended up sleeping with a man.
With a kind of reckless determination, Lin Mu asked, “Then… can I be friends with you?”
If it still didn’t work this time, he would give up completely on chasing someone who was impossible to catch.
Ruan Chen had always relied on avoidance and silence to refuse people but when someone asked so directly, he became completely at a loss. If he said no, wouldn’t that make it seem like he was discriminating against gay people?
Lin Mu brightened instantly, as if he had survived a desperate situation. “Thank you, Senior Brother Ruan. Then next time I’ll invite you to watch a movie. I like watching movies too.”
Ruan Chen hesitated for a moment, then finally nodded.
“Mm.”
At last, Lin Mu’s pursuit of Ruan Chen had made some progress.
He was happy for several days afterward. He even broke things off with his other casual partners, deciding that from now on he would focus seriously on pursuing Ruan Chen alone.
He bought movie tickets, planning to invite Ruan Chen to watch a film.
By coincidence, that day he ran into Mu Xinghai.
Mu Xinghai happened to be the only person who knew about the situation. Unable to help himself, Lin Mu spoke with a hint of pride as he told Mu Xinghai everything.
A dim, gray flicker of something dark flashed through Mu Xinghai’s eyes.
Then he smiled.
“That’s great,” he said lightly. “Go ahead and invite him. He might just agree.”
✦ ✧ ✦
Fleurveil
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
✧ Your mission, should you choose to accept it: FEED THE TRANSLATOR. ✧
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · Rear WindowChapter 2 · Kahlil Gibran, “I Have Spit My Soul Seven Times”Chapter 3 · His ToyChapter 4 · Star GazingChapter 5 · Just a dreamChapter 6 · ColdChapter 7 · Yearning for LoveChapter 8 · A Good PersonChapter 9 · Such a good boyChapter 10 · Delivered to your doorChapter 11 · Not familiar with itChapter 12 · First loveChapter 13 · Giving giftsChapter 14 · HeartstringsChapter 15 · Chinese New YearChapter 16 · TruthChapter 17 · SeparateChapter 18 · Planting minesChapter 19 · ChoiceChapter 20 · More hereChapter 21 · Could things have gotten any worse?Chapter 22 · Not because you like me?Chapter 23 · Not because you like me?Chapter 24 · It’s a tangled mess, impossible to unravelChapter 25 · The truth has been revealedChapter 26 · Extra: 1Chapter 27 · Extra: 2Chapter 28 · Extra: 3Chapter 29 · Extra: 4Chapter 30 · Extra: 5Chapter 31 · Extra: 6Chapter 32 · Extra: 7