After the two men left, Ming Zhifei closed the door and went back to packing. He rarely lied, let alone performed. This bit of acting was purely the result of the authoritative presence he had polished over years as a doctor. Seeing him look like a typical office worker, the men looked a bit annoyed but didn’t think he was lying, so they left.
Having avoided the pursuit of a patient’s family himself and seeing Yang Jianzhen’s battered state, Ming Zhifei instinctively felt that he must not let Yang Jianzhen be exposed—at this rate, the man really might be beaten to death. However, he wasn’t sure if those people would return. If they did, Yang Jianzhen truly couldn’t step outside for a while.
Despite suffering through such an ordeal, Yang Jianzhen was still worried about his “Tenga.” Looking for the item, Ming Zhifei found the man utterly absurd.
So such products exist. If his libido weren’t nearly zero, Ming Zhifei might have been curious. He found the item in the nightstand drawer, along with various colorful rubber rods of different shapes—some opened, some not—and round spheres that looked like “Gashapon” eggs. They appeared to be electronic, somewhat resembling the facial massagers his ex-wife used. There were also five or six boxes of extra-large condoms scattered about.
He finally saw something he recognized… but the size of these condoms was enormous. Yang Jianzhen was tall, but he didn’t look particularly bulky. And what on earth were all those vibrating rods and spheres for?
Ming Zhifei tried to maintain a serious professional attitude while searching for the cable, ignoring the strange objects. After finally finding the pink-headed charging cable, he packed everything into the box and carried it back to his own home.
When he returned, he found Yang Jianzhen had made himself quite comfortable on the sofa, looking at him with a grin.
Ming Zhifei placed his phone on the table and set the box next to the sofa. He turned around only to see Yang Jianzhen already picking up his phone to browse through it. Ming Zhifei was stunned—how could this man have so little sense of boundaries?
“Don’t look at my phone. Give it back.”
“There’s nothing in here anyway.” Yang Jianzhen seemed oblivious to Ming Zhifei’s slight irritation, still speaking with a smile as he handed the phone back. “Fei-ge, what do you do at home all day? Do you just lie around? You don’t even have TikTok on your phone.”
“I don’t watch those things.”
He then said, “See for yourself if this is everything,” Yang Jianzhen sat up and asked, “Someone knocked on my door just now. Who was it?”
“Two young thugs in tank tops with tattoos on their arms.”
“They found me after all. If I’d stayed a bit longer, I probably would have been dragged away.” Yang Jianzhen spoke casually, looking completely calm and showing no sign of fear. “So, what did you say to them?”
“They asked if I lived there, I said yes. They asked when I moved in, I said yesterday.”
“Wow, great acting.” Yang Jianzhen clapped his hands, then suddenly leaned his face close to Ming Zhifei, who was pulling out one of Yang Jianzhen’s bowls to wash it. Ming Zhifei instinctively avoided his gaze and stepped back.
“Fei-ge, are you actually quite young? You wear those ugly glasses and old-fashioned clothes—is that why you look so old?”
“How can one person have so much nonsense to say?” The words slipped out before Ming Zhifei could stop them. His face flushed at his own rare emotional outburst—he really didn’t talk like that.
Yang Jianzhen laughed loudly, watching him walk into the kitchen. Ming Zhifei’s clothes were indeed very old-fashioned—a navy blue striped Polo shirt paired with grey dress pants made him look like a middle-aged man in his late forties or fifties. However, his hair was quite thick; it was just cut in a common “dad” style—a short buzz cut close to the scalp.
But his physique was definitely not bad. His proportions—head-to-shoulder, neck, torso, and limbs—were all very good. If he weren’t weighed down by those messy clothes, perhaps his body was unexpectedly fit?
As for his face, because he always wore those heavy black-framed glasses and constantly avoided or ignored others’ gazes, Yang Jianzhen still wasn’t sure exactly what he looked like. But observing his skin, he noticed it was very smooth with almost no wrinkles. He sensed the man wasn’t as old as his first impression suggested. To be honest, Yang Jianzhen had a strong urge to snatch those glasses off and see his true face.
Ming Zhifei silently served two bowls of noodles, placing one on the coffee table in front of Yang Jianzhen and the other at the corner. Since there were no chairs, he brought out a very low footstool from the bedroom and sat down to eat.
“Ah, I was planning to buy a dining table and a sofa after moving in, but then this happened and I didn’t get anything done,” Yang Jianzhen complained, though his tone was light, as if he were simply sharing a funny story.
“Did the doctor say whether the wound needs dressing changes or when the stitches should come out? Or when you need a follow-up?” Ming Zhifei looked at the man’s left hand.
“Fei-ge, the things you worry about are so strange. I’m still talking about the dining table,” Yang Jianzhen laughed. “Of course they told me, but I forgot. The reason I got caught that day was because I went back to the shack; I originally wanted to reason with those pieces of trash, but I didn’t expect them to sell me out.”
Ming Zhifei listened while he ate. He figured that as long as he didn’t show he was unwilling to listen, the other man would keep talking.
“Ah, let’s not talk about that. Fei-ge, you ask a good question—when exactly do I need to get the dressing changed?” Yang Jianzhen finally sounded a bit troubled.
“Were you seen in the outpatient clinic or the inpatient department?”
“Where would I get the money for a hospital stay? I was handled in the ER.”
“What day did you get the stitches?”
“Hmm, the afternoon of three days ago. They gave me a beating, snatched my phone, and then found my car through the app and drove it away.”
“How did they drive it without the keys?”
“Because my phone had the car app, they just used the phone to open it,” Yang Jianzhen said between mouthfuls, his speech slightly slurred.
Ming Zhifei thought to himself that he’d have to head out in a bit to buy some antiseptic, gauze, and the like to change the dressing for him, and take a look at the state of the wound while he was at it.
He said he’s staying here, but where is he going to sleep? The springs in that sofa were broken; it dipped in the middle and bulged in other spots. It was impossible to sleep on.
“Where do you plan on sleeping?” Ming Zhifei asked directly.
“Fei-ge, are you inviting me to sleep with you after dinner?” Yang Jianzhen put on an expression of being overwhelmed by the favor. “But my mouth is injured right now, so I might not be able to ‘help’ you.” Yang Jianzhen curved his right hand into a “C” shape in front of his mouth and moved it up and down.
Completely failing to understand the gesture, Ming Zhifei frowned. “Help me with what? I’m the one helping you right now. You probably can’t sleep on the sofa; would you be willing to sleep on the floor? I’ll go out and buy a mat in a bit.”
Yang Jianzhen gave an enigmatic smile. “Wow, the floor? That’s not great, is it? With my hands and feet injured like this, a surface that’s too hard will definitely slow down the healing. Don’t you think?”
“Then I’ll buy a soft mattress pad too,” Ming Zhifei said, sticking to the facts.
“Fei-ge, no, I mean… your bed is pretty big. I saw it—it’s a 1.8-meter king bed. It’s meant for a couple. I think we could both fit.”
“…” Ming Zhifei had never seen such a brazen person. After a brief moment of shock, he saw the man’s slightly pleading smile. With his face all bruised and swollen, he looked truly pitiful. Ming Zhifei began to consider that maybe the guy was just stating a practical solution. It wasn’t entirely without logic.
“Then I’ll sleep on the floor, and you take the bed.” Despite his reasoning, the thought of sleeping with a near-stranger was more painful to Ming Zhifei than being killed. Back when he got married, he and his ex-wife had to sleep together. On their wedding night, he barely slept at all, unable to feel comfortable. He endured it for a month, suffering from severe insomnia, until he finally used the excuse of needing to work on his computer late into the night and not wanting to wake her as a reason to move to another room.
How did Yang Jianzhen manage to suggest sleeping in the same bed to someone he had only met once before?
After dinner, Ming Zhifei left the house. Before heading out, he turned back, intending to tell Yang Jianzhen not to open the door if someone knocked, but he figured Yang Jianzhen didn’t seem like a brainless person, so he swallowed the words. Yang Jianzhen watched him with a grin and asked, “Fei-ge, what is it? Can’t bear to leave me and go out?”
His frivolous comments were all filtered out by Ming Zhifei as white noise. He asked, “Is there anything you need me to buy?”
“Lubricant. I’m out of lube. If you could find lubricant for a Tenga, that would be great,” Yang Jianzhen continued with a beaming smile.
“They don’t have that kind of thing in supermarkets.” Anyone with even a little common sense knew a supermarket wouldn’t stock that.
Yang Jianzhen couldn’t stop laughing, laughing until tears came to his eyes, which then pulled at the wound in his mouth, making him hiss in a breath of cold air. Seeing his expression and realizing he was likely being teased again, Ming Zhifei stopped talking. He opened the door, stepped out, and closed it behind him.
The small shops and mini-marts near the rental didn’t sell straw mats or mattresses. The nearest supermarket was on the B1 level of a shopping mall two blocks away—the owner of the mini-mart had told him that.
Not having a car was indeed inconvenient. This middle-distance was a twenty-minute walk if he took a shortcut; by car, even taking the main road, it would only be three to five minutes. Estimating the distance and thinking that a walk wouldn’t hurt after dinner—and given his tight finances—taking a taxi for such a short distance was out of the question.
Outside his building was an eight-lane highway with a two-to-three-meter wide green belt in the middle. He stood at the end of a zebra crossing as cars roared past, none of them stopping to yield to the pedestrian at the roadside.
The sun had already dipped behind the tall buildings opposite. In the patches of sky peeking through the towers, the clouds were stained red-gold by the setting sun, and the sky had turned a transparent blue tinged with golden light. A horizon he had never noticed before suddenly caught his eye, oddly stirring his heart. Only—that gold looked like the color of Yang Jianzhen’s hair when he was lying on the ground that day.