A gust of wind blew. Autumn filled Ying Qiuman’s eyes, stinging them, and when he blinked, a mist of tears welled up.
He looked at Xu Shuyuan, who was waiting for him a short distance away, and in his daze he thought the man looked a bit like one of those male celebrities on the giant screens outside a shopping mall.
He wasn’t sure whether it was because Xu Shuyuan had taken off his suit jacket, but Ying Qiuman’s heart, which had been shivering with cold, suddenly warmed up.
The car’s heater was strong. After they drove away from Lanxi Road, Ying Qiuman felt his coat had become unnecessary, and the inner shirt clung to him, slightly damp with sweat.
“Can you turn the air conditioning down a bit?” he asked.
Xu Shuyuan didn’t respond right away. His fingertips tapped twice against the steering wheel, as if counting out a rhythm or mulling something over. In the end he said, in a tone that was hard to read, “No. You’ll get cold later.”
“Why would I get cold?” He was wearing so much he felt like he was about to die from the heat.
Ying Qiuman tilted his head and looked at him in confusion, only to catch the faint smile at the corner of Xu Shuyuan’s lips. Something clicked in his mind, and he abruptly grasped what the man meant. His neck grew even damper with sweat.
He turned his face toward the window, trying to arrange the words to refuse in his head.
But he was still too naive. Even though he understood what Xu Shuyuan meant, he didn’t realize that it was only deliberate teasing, never meant to go any further than that. After being nervous and on edge for so long, nothing happened even after they got home.
Ying Qiuman had been fooled again. After getting out of the car in the garage, he slipped away quickly, not giving Xu Shuyuan a chance to catch up.
He went back to his room and shut the door tight, silently vowing that no matter how Xu Shuyuan called for him, he would not open it.
From seven o’clock until nearly ten, Ying Qiuman, who hadn’t eaten dinner, was already getting hungry. Xu Shuyuan, as it turned out, didn’t come looking for him.
He couldn’t say where the sense of disappointment came from. The hunger was beginning to feel uncomfortable, but fortunately he had stocked up on food and didn’t need to go out.
When Ying Qiuman was young, he had once gone hungry. Because he envied his classmates’ snacks, he had secretly taken a little of the money meant for stationery. But his grandmother found out, and his punishment was being forbidden from eating dinner. He stayed hungry until the next day after school at noon, only to discover that his grandmother had gone into the city to restock the shop.
He didn’t know how long he waited, and he seemed to have even run a fever from it. His grandmother was displeased, and after that he never dared touch snacks again.
But children always crave things. The more they can’t have something, the more they want it. Once Ying Qiuman reached high school and then university and could earn his own money, he developed the habit of hoarding snacks.
No matter where he lived, there would always be a big box of food stuffed under his bed.
This time, though, when he pulled out that big box, he found the contents inside had changed.
There were even some packages he didn’t recognize, of the kind of brands he normally couldn’t bring himself to buy.
He squatted on the floor, forgetting even how to breathe, and pulled out his phone to look at the photos Xu Shuyuan had sent him a few days earlier.
On a pitch-black tabletop sat a spread of colorful snack packages. Xu Shuyuan had written: “Tell me what you want to eat. I’ll bring it back for you.”
He hadn’t asked for any of it, yet everything had still ended up in his snack box, the very box he’d hidden under his bed.
Ying Qiuman couldn’t describe how he felt in that moment. His secret had been discovered, and on top of that he hadn’t had dinner tonight.
But at the same time, he felt a little relieved. Even without dinner, he wouldn’t have to go hungry anymore.
He tore open a box of biscuits and ate more than half of it. Once the hunger had been beaten back, his stomach suddenly began to churn, leaving him terribly uncomfortable, until he had thrown up everything he’d eaten.
Ying Qiuman cupped warm water in his hands and washed his face. The corners of his eyes and the tip of his nose had turned red from the sudden stomach pain.
Just as he was searching for medicine, a knock came at the door.
Xu Shuyuan stood outside, wearing an apron. Seeing the brows that hadn’t unfurrowed from the pain and the faint tears in Ying Qiuman’s eyes, the imposing aura he’d carried a moment ago softened all at once into worry. “Are you feeling unwell?”
It looked a bit like one of his earlier illness episodes, but Ying Qiuman’s attitude toward him was different this time. He rubbed his eyes, sniffled a few times, and covered it up by saying, “Ate something bad.”
Xu Shuyuan looked at him and suddenly felt a twinge of guilt. He asked awkwardly, “I just finished cooking. Can you eat?”
Ying Qiuman looked up at him. It was unclear whether it was the light from the chandelier reflecting in his eyes, or the moisture in his eyes catching the light from somewhere else, but either way it made Xu Shuyuan feel as if those eyes had suddenly lit up.
“You cook?” Ying Qiuman felt the question sounded a bit silly. “Where’s Aunt Liang?”
His gaze fell away from Xu Shuyuan’s face, and only then did he notice that the shirt Xu Shuyuan wore underneath wasn’t his usual style. The collar was slightly oversized, with embroidery in a matching color, and the bow tie looked rather youthful.
Overall it looked like the uniform of an amusement park staff member, formal but not quite proper. Yet on Xu Shuyuan it looked unusually fitting, almost enough to make a person misunderstand the design itself.
“They’re on vacation,” Xu Shuyuan said, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows and exposing the muscles of his forearms.
Could cooking really make someone’s muscles look so pumped?
Ying Qiuman swallowed. Xu Shuyuan carried a faint smell of cooking on him. Having just thrown up everything he’d eaten, Ying Qiuman now somehow felt even hungrier than before.
He followed Xu Shuyuan to the dining room, expecting only a dish or two, but Xu Shuyuan carried out an entire table of food.
“Why did you make so much?” Never mind that it was already around ten at night, there were only the two of them. Making this much was really wasteful.
He frowned with concern, not knowing what else he could have done to provoke Xu Shuyuan, and was suddenly tapped on the forehead.
“I’m making it up to you,” Xu Shuyuan said, the words coming out of nowhere.
Make up for what?
“I can’t finish this much anyway,” he muttered softly, as if realizing something. “I… I wasn’t angry.”
Ying Qiuman sounded uncertain. His behavior all week really did look like he’d been sulking, but it wasn’t entirely anger at Xu Shuyuan. In fact, it was more anger at himself.
Xu Shuyuan didn’t pick up on his words. Instead, he first ladled him out a bowl of soup.
It was pork rib soup he’d had simmering before going out. The moment the lid was lifted, its aroma overwhelmed every other dish on the table.
For a businesslike man to prepare a whole table of food for him, and even to come and “apologize” because he’d been avoiding him, Ying Qiuman couldn’t possibly feel no guilt at all.
But once he realized his own habitual way of thinking, and saw how he was being managed into eating so much meat, Ying Qiuman truly began to feel annoyed.
“If I eat this much I won’t be able to sleep,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He turned his head and saw Xu Shuyuan watching him with a satisfied, faintly smug expression, so he closed his eyes and sighed helplessly.
Ying Qiuman paced around the living room with a glass of water to help his food go down. After clearing the table, Xu Shuyuan quietly came up behind him and seized him.
His stomach, which had finally stopped feeling uncomfortable, was suddenly rubbed twice, making it feel bloated all over again.
Xu Shuyuan seemed very pleased with how he’d “fattened him up,” sizing him up back and forth for a while. In the end Ying Qiuman got irritated and was about to push him away, but both his hands were caught at once.
“All right, you’ve accepted my apology,” Xu Shuyuan’s gentle tone suddenly shifted. “Now it’s your turn to apologize to me.”
“Huh?” Ying Qiuman couldn’t follow his logic at all.
Seeing his confusion, Xu Shuyuan lifted his hands above his head, turned him around to face him, and began listing Ying Qiuman’s “crimes” one by one:
“First, you went to work at Lanxi without your husband knowing.
“Second, you avoided me for a week and didn’t show up even once.
“Third, do you still remember what you promised me?”
Ying Qiuman couldn’t answer the first two, and only lowered his head and mumbled the last one:
“I said I’d go to your family’s place for dinner tomorrow.”
“Oh, so you do remember. Then if I hadn’t gone to pick you up today, were you planning to come back on your own?”
That was completely unreasonable. Ying Qiuman was not someone who would break his word.
“I was going to come back. I’d just gotten off work then,” he argued.
But Xu Shuyuan suddenly wore a triumphant smile. Then Ying Qiuman heard him go on: “Mm, so that means you’re admitting the first point. So I’m not worthy of knowing where you’re working?”
Too petty. And he was meddling far too much.
“Xu Shuyuan, we’re just in an agreement—”
“Even an agreement marriage is still a marriage. So what, does our marriage have no legal standing? Am I not your husband? Shouldn’t I know where you’re working, even just to be told?”
Xu Shuyuan’s string of questions completely scrambled Ying Qiuman’s thoughts, shattering his reasoning to pieces.
He looked like a little lamb with its limbs bound, about to be sent off to slaughter, angry yet also a little pitiful as it stared at the butcher.
But a lamb would not go willingly to the knife, and Ying Qiuman was no soft persimmon [1] pushover jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2638886_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2638886_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); either. With both hands he wrenched free of Xu Shuyuan’s grip and took a large step back.
Xu Shuyuan didn’t chase after him. Ying Qiuman stayed within what he considered a safe distance, rotating the wrist that ached from being squeezed as his mood gradually settled.
“I didn’t go to work at Lanxi,” he said, glancing up to gauge Xu Shuyuan’s reaction before continuing his explanation. “Professor Wei sold a patent to Lanxi. I just went to help out.”
Help out, and come away with dark circles like those under his eyes?
But seeing Ying Qiuman explain himself, Xu Shuyuan’s anger had already cooled. Now it vanished entirely.
He took two steps closer. Ying Qiuman didn’t back away again.
“The important thing is, you didn’t tell me.”
Ying Qiuman didn’t think this kind of thing needed to be reported to Xu Shuyuan. He hadn’t agreed with the earlier interrogation, so he found Xu Shuyuan’s behavior unreasonable.
But he didn’t want to keep arguing over this kind of misunderstanding, so he simply gave in and apologized.
“Sorry.”
Xu Shuyuan, however, pressed further, tilting his head to look at him. “I apologized with a whole table of food. And you only give me one word?”
Got it. This was just being unreasonable.
Ying Qiuman was worn out.
“I can’t cook,” he said. After speaking, he glanced at Xu Shuyuan. The other man nodded, crossed his arms, and smiled at him, clearly up to something mischievous.
“Just as I thought,” Ying Qiuman watched him raise his eyebrows and plant himself squarely in front of him. “I’ll give you a chance. Tell me what’s different about me today.”
Ying Qiuman clenched his fist, his thumb pressing against his index finger to make a crisp pop. He looked Xu Shuyuan up and down once.
“Your clothes are different.”
“I wear different clothes every day,” Xu Shuyuan said, unsatisfied. “Be more specific. What exactly is different?”
Another “pop” rang out as he pressed the other hand until it cracked too.
“A different style. A bit childish.”
He’d originally thought this outfit made Xu Shuyuan look handsome and energetic, but at this moment he couldn’t bring himself to praise it.
Hearing this, Xu Shuyuan sucked in a breath through his teeth, as if he cared about the verdict, and gritted his teeth, urging Ying Qiuman to continue.
Ying Qiuman won a point back and looked a little smug. “You’re wearing cologne.”
Normally he could only catch Xu Shuyuan’s scent when he got close, and that shouldn’t even be cologne, it was more likely the smell of laundry detergent or aftershave. But today the fragrance was especially noticeable, so Ying Qiuman guessed he’d put on cologne.
“Mm. Come closer and smell it?” Xu Shuyuan said as he leaned in. Mixed with the kitchen smells, the fragrance had already grown quite faint.
When Ying Qiuman leaned in, all he could smell was food. He also felt his stomach was overly full, so he recalled the scent he’d caught in the car earlier: “Tea notes, a little bitter in the dry-down. I can’t pick out anything else.”
He still wanted to chase that faint fragrance on Xu Shuyuan a bit longer, but he was suddenly pulled into an embrace, pressed close to the alpha’s gland, where the scent was much stronger.
“Do you like it?”
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