After reaching an agreement with Ming Rao, Yan Yuchuan threw himself into his new life as a full-fledged member of the innovation camp with intense urgency.
Three days later, under the guidance of Professor Xu Pingxin, the five-person startup team was officially established. Yan Yuchuan named the team “Sina,” derived from the transliteration of the foreign word for “synapse.”
Yan Yuchuan served as the lead founder, with Lin Zhihao and Lin Zhimiao overseeing operations and finance respectively. Jiang Ge, a PhD candidate in brain-computer interfaces, and Pan Jing, a master’s student in algorithms, worked alongside Yan Yuchuan on laboratory research and development.
That day the sun was bright and clear, not a cloud in the sky. After the project initiation meeting concluded, Yan Yuchuan stepped out of the Cognitive Sciences building with a light gait, allowing himself to momentarily bask in the joy of success.
The team had arranged to celebrate with a seafood hotpot dinner near Platinum University. Still on the way there, he received a call from Ming Rao.
He glanced at his companions, who were deep in animated conversation, instinctively moved away from them, and lowered his voice to ask, “What’s up?”
An annoyed voice came through the phone: “Why aren’t you replying to my messages?”
Yan Yuchuan opened Ming Rao’s chat window and scrolled down it was an endless stream of shared posts from Little Sweet Potato.
He asked with genuine confusion: “Are those supposed to be replied to?”
“Why else would I send them to you?”
“I thought you were doing a sharing task,” Yan Yuchuan added after a moment’s thought, “like one of those ‘help me cut a deal’ things.”
“Even if it were that, did you help me cut it?” Ming Rao demanded sharply. “I also asked what you had for breakfast and told you to take a photo for me did you? Is that also a sharing task?”
“You sent too many messages. I didn’t see them.”
Ming Rao nearly choked on his anger: “Do you have absolutely no idea about the rules of being kept? Or do you need me to enroll you in a class for further training?”
Yan Yuchuan clenched his fist, gritting his teeth as he forced himself to stay patient: “Fine. I’ll reply to you from now on, alright? And if there are any other rules, please spell them all out at once.”
“…”
The other end of the line fell silent, only the sound of rapid breathing audible.
Yan Yuchuan rubbed his temples. Ming Rao’s call had come like a bucket of cold water dumped over his head, mercilessly shattering his pleasant reverie and forcing him to confront the fact that it was through such humiliation that he had bought this moment of success for himself and his team. Thus, in his agitation, his words inevitably turned sharp.
But once he regained his composure, he had to admit that Ming Rao was right.
Ming Rao was his sugar daddy. From the moment he agreed to this transaction, he no longer had the right to defy his benefactor’s wishes. It was just that he still couldn’t quite adjust to the reality that he had actually accepted such a deal.
When Ming Rao spoke again, his voice was muffled and trembling slightly: “Come over tonight.”
“Fine,” Yan Yuchuan said as pleasantly as he could manage, then thought of something and asked, “What do you want to do?”
“What else could it be? Fuck!”
That roar was earth-shaking, startling Yan Yuchuan into quickly covering the receiver. He struggled to steady his nerves and squeezed out a difficult response: “Your injuries haven’t healed yet.”
There was a brief silence on the other end, followed by an eruption like a volcano: “Are you trying to back out of the deal? I’m telling you, Yan Yuchuan, it’s not that easy!”
“I’m not trying to back out,” Yan Yuchuan said, realizing that reasoning with this spoiled, willful young master was futile. He gave up on explaining and pressed his forehead with his hand, asking, “What time?”
Ming Rao enunciated each word: “Right. Now!”
“It’s not even dark out yet and you want to?”
“I like doing it in broad daylight, so what? Get over here right now.”
“I have a dinner to attend,” Yan Yuchuan said, keeping his voice very low. “The team’s kickoff banquet. My advisor is there too. I can’t skip it.”
Silence fell on the other end of the line. Just then, noticing he had fallen behind, his companions stopped and turned back to call out to him.
Yan Yuchuan hurried to catch up, speaking into the phone: “I’ll come find you after dinner, alright?”
His only response was the dial tone of a hung-up call.
The kickoff banquet didn’t end until nearly ten o’clock, and his companions made plans to continue at a KTV. Yan Yuchuan made an excuse to decline and biked over to Ming Rao’s residential complex.
Standing at Ming Rao’s door entering the passcode, he took deep breaths, repeatedly reciting in his mind, “Don’t get angry, don’t get angry anger leaves room for the devil,” preparing himself to face a bristling, irritated Ming Rao.
But when he pushed the door open, the anticipated storm never came. Ming Rao was curled up on the living room sofa, the TV still playing, but he had unknowingly fallen fast asleep.
Asleep, Ming Rao looked docile and harmless. His two palms were folded together, neatly tucked beneath his head as a cushion. His fine, dense lashes hung over his eyelids like cicada wings, making him look like an overly delicate doll a world apart from the relentless, raging figure on the phone moments ago.
Yan Yuchuan stood frozen in front of the sofa, somewhat at a loss.
So should he just leave?
Or should he wake Ming Rao up?
But what would he wake him up for? To say, “Wake up, we should have sex”?
That didn’t feel right either.
He stood there, racking his brain for a long while, only to realize he had absolutely no experience handling this kind of situation. After an internal struggle, he extended both arms toward Ming Rao.
He had just wrapped an arm around Ming Rao’s shoulder when Ming Rao’s eyes snapped open.
“What are you doing?!” Ming Rao’s eyes went wide in an instant, like a startled fawn.
Yan Yuchuan was speechless at his overreaction and said impatiently, “I saw you were asleep, so I was carrying you to bed.”
“Who said you could carry me…” Ming Rao shoved him off as if avoiding a plague, his feet fumbling on the floor before finally slipping into his slippers. He stumbled off the couch and tossed out a command with an air of authority, “Go take a shower. After that, we’re having sex.”
After Yan Yuchuan finished showering and came out, he saw Ming Rao sitting at the head of the bed playing on his phone. Hearing the noise, Ming Rao lifted his eyes slightly, then tossed the phone aside, turned over on his own, and grabbed a pillow to press over his head.
Yan Yuchuan couldn’t help but let out a laugh. Ming Rao twisted his head to look at him from between the two pillows, and snapped in irritation, “What’s so funny?”
Yan Yuchuan thought to himself, You look like a meatball sandwich, but he held back from saying it, quietly opening the drawer to find what he needed.
After pulling off his pants, Yan Yuchuan gave a quick glance and said flatly, “You can’t do it right now.”
Ming Rao whipped his head around. “Why?”
“Your wound hasn’t healed yet,” Yan Yuchuan explained as patiently as he could. “Wait a few more days.”
Ming Rao struggled for a moment, then threw a childish tantrum. “I don’t care. I want to do it.”
“Do you even know what you look like down there and you still want to go?” Yan Yuchuan raised an eyebrow. “Want me to take a picture so you can see?”
“Fine, go ahead if you’ve got the guts.”
“…”
Yan Yuchuan admitted that his sense of shame really wouldn’t allow him to do something like that.
Fine, if he wanted to do it, then do it wasn’t his ass on the line anyway. With that thought, he ripped open the cap of the lubricant.
That said, he really didn’t want to make Ming Rao’s tear worse, since that wound was his own doing. Until it healed, his conscience wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace.
So he squeezed half the bottle of lube onto his hand, spread it over his fingers, and made a point of reminding him, “Tell me if it hurts.”
Ming Rao’s head was buried deep in the pillow, and Yan Yuchuan had no idea if he’d heard him or not. When he asked, “Does it feel okay yet?” Ming Rao still didn’t make a sound.
Holding the mindset of might as well get it over with, Yan Yuchuan went ahead and pushed himself in.
Still afraid of tearing his old wound, he moved extremely slowly. Being stuck in that limbo was, in its own way, a torment for him too.
After more than ten minutes, Ming Rao still hadn’t made a sound. Yan Yuchuan had to wonder if he’d fallen asleep, or maybe passed out from being smothered by the pillow.
He called out to him twice, got no response, then pulled out and forcibly moved the pillow aside, turning Ming Rao’s face toward him. He shouted impatiently, “Are you deaf”
He stopped mid-sentence, his throat catching as if something had lodged in it.
Ming Rao wasn’t asleep. His eyes were open, but there was no sign of blinking. His gaze was hollow and vacant, staring off into the distance, the corners of his eyes tinged with a faint red.
Yan Yuchuan patted him several times before Ming Rao snapped out of his daze, asking in a confused tone, “Are we done?”
Yan Yuchuan was caught off guard by the question, then put on an air of “I told you so.” “It hurt a lot, didn’t it? I said you couldn’t do it now, but you had to keep fighting me.”
Ming Rao didn’t defend himself, or maybe he hadn’t even heard what Yan Yuchuan said.
That caught Yan Yuchuan a bit off guard. His tone softened, and he let out a sigh. “Where’s the medicine we bought last time?”
Ming Rao didn’t answer. In the silent room, only the sound of Yan Yuchuan rummaging through drawers could be heard.
After a long while, Ming Rao spoke weakly, “You should go.”
Yan Yuchuan was still searching for things. At the words, his hands paused mid-motion, thinking he’d misheard. “What?”
Ming Rao repeated mechanically, “I said, you should go.”
Yan Yuchuan couldn’t believe it. “You’re telling me to leave now?”
“What else?” Ming Rao looked at him with confusion. “You’re not planning to spend the night here, are you?”
Yan Yuchuan was stunned at first, then let out a cold, incredulous laugh.
Right. His relationship with Ming Rao wasn’t one of equals anyway. Ming Rao was the one footing the bill, so it was only natural for him to toss Yan Yuchuan aside once he was done with him.
That was fine too. Yan Yuchuan had thought he’d miss the night shift, so he’d even asked for the night off. Now it looked like he only needed to stay here for a bit before heading off to work that was even better.
He tossed out a “Fine,” changed clothes quickly, and walked out the door.
After Yan Yuchuan left, the room suddenly felt very empty. Ming Rao lay still on the bed for a while, his body growing weaker and weaker, before he slowly pulled his pants back on.
He’d thought that forcing Yan Yuchuan to sleep with him would disgust him, and if Yan Yuchuan was disgusted by him, then he’d at least won a round.
So he turned himself into a banana peel, deliberately lying in the middle of the road, just to trip Yan Yuchuan up.
He had indeed succeeded Yan Yuchuan’s fall was painless, and he got up, dusted himself off, and walked away. But Ming Rao had been crushed to pieces, never to return to his original form.
What was this called? Injuring the enemy by a hair while losing a thousand of your own?
Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.
Wasn’t it said that sex was something beautiful? Why did it feel so miserable for him? His body ached, his stomach hurt, his heart ached too there wasn’t a single comfortable spot on him.
Ming Rao opened Little Sweet Potato and started scrolling through videos of that gray curly-haired cat named “Baa Baa” again. His chilled heart gradually regained a bit of warmth.
Cats were better, he thought.
If only he could love cats instead. Ming Rao decided that from now on, he would be a cat-sexual.
After slamming the door on Ming Rao’s room, Yan Yuchuan didn’t leave right away.
Friction was bound to spark fire he’d been holding back for too long, and he hurried to the living room bathroom to take care of himself.
After washing his hands and stepping out, he spotted plates still sitting on the dining table across the living room. Assuming Ming Rao had left his dinner dishes unwashed, he felt a rare surge of kindness and decided to put the leftovers in the fridge.
But as he got closer, he froze.
The induction cooker was still plugged in, and the plates held neatly arranged mushrooms, vegetables, and meatballs. The beef rolls had been sitting out so long that the ice had melted into water pooling at the bottom of the plate.
Two sets of bowls and chopsticks sat pristine and untouched. A pair of tulip-shaped glass cups stood side by side, and the champagne hadn’t even been opened.
In the center of the table was a cake small, just enough for two. A chocolate plaque bore four characters: “Great Start to Work.”
Beside the words was a little figure piped in white cream, giving a thumbs-up with a brilliant smile on its face. It inexplicably reminded him of Ming Rao.
Not the Ming Rao from today, but the one from three days ago, the first time they’d slept together. At some moment, he remembered Ming Rao smiling at him just like that revealing a row of neat white teeth, eyes curved into crescents, bright and sparkling.
Yan Yuchuan stared at the untouched hotpot spread, and a complicated, indescribable feeling rose in his chest.
So when Ming Rao had called him that afternoon, he’d already ordered a full table of hotpot ingredients, bought a cake and champagne, and planned to celebrate together?
Then had he even eaten?
Or had he just sat on the sofa waiting for him to come back, until he’d fallen asleep?
Yan Yuchuan rubbed the back of his head, pacing back and forth in front of the dining table, his agitation growing with every step.
If that was really the case, then Ming Rao was pretty foolish preparing all that food without even telling him.
Besides, he’d already made plans with his colleagues. He couldn’t just ditch his proper work celebration dinner to come back and keep him company, could he?
Yan Yuchuan wandered around the living room for what felt like an eternity before finally summoning the courage to knock on Ming Rao’s door, thinking that no matter what, he should at least ask if he’d eaten.
No response came. He carefully pushed the door open and saw that Ming Rao had already fallen asleep.
Yan Yuchuan stood in the darkness, illuminated by the faint slivers of light from the living room, watching him silently for a while. Then, without a word, he turned and left.
The long-promised trip to Qingshi Village finally came to pass two weeks later.
To be fair, after a weekend of getting to know each other, Yan Yuchuan discovered that Ming Rao wasn’t the good-for-nothing he’d imagined. He had many unique insights into photography.
He also wasn’t as pampered as he usually seemed he chatted warmly with the local villagers and stepped into the mud without a single complaint.
That night at the hotel, Ming Rao brought up having sex again. Yan Yuchuan, having confirmed his wound had fully healed, didn’t refuse this time.
The previous two times had been clouded by hatred or hampered by restraint, but this time he actually savored a pure sense of pleasure. After it was over, Yan Yuchuan realized belatedly that he’d been satisfied, and still couldn’t quite believe it.
It was Ming Rao who spoke first. His gaze was still dazed, as if he’d just endured an extreme ordeal and hadn’t yet recovered from the shock. “Are you done?”
Yan Yuchuan gave a distracted “Mm.” Ming Rao gritted his teeth and sat up, casually glancing at the transparent rubber stained with white. Yan Yuchuan’s heart immediately grew uneasy, as if he’d been caught red-handed doing something shameful.
Fortunately, Ming Rao said nothing, just climbed out of bed.
As he stood, Ming Rao’s steps were unsteady. Yan Yuchuan instinctively reached out to steady him. “Where are you going?”
“To shower,” Ming Rao said, shaking off his hand, head lowered. “You go sleep in the next room. The key card’s on the table. Head over once you’re done.”
With that, he limped into the bathroom.
Driven by some inexplicable impulse, Yan Yuchuan stole a glance at that part of him and couldn’t help but frown.
Calm as still water. Not a hint of reaction.