Something inside Ying Qiuman’s mind seemed to detonate. The hot shower had indeed cleared his head somewhat, but…
Even if he now knew that Xu Shuyuan was conscious during his susceptibility periods, that didn’t mean Ying Qiuman could accept intimacy outside of one.
But his reason had split in two: part of him was being dragged toward Xu Shuyuan by his skin-contact craving, while another clear thread of thought pulled the opposite way, making him bow his head shyly.
Xu Shuyuan noticed his discomfort. He bent down to meet his eyes at the same level and, frowning slightly, put on a small pout. “That suppressant was really awful. I still feel terrible right now.”
Ying Qiuman was not someone who could easily refuse others, especially when his own willpower was already shaky.
By the second half of the night, the pain at the corner of his mouth had faded into a dull numbness, like an itch that kept him awake.
Before sleep, Xu Shuyuan applied ointment to him again, then held him very tightly, giving him the illusion that there was no escape.
When light finally filtered through the gap in the curtains, Ying Qiuman reluctantly got up.
He framed it to himself as a special case of being cared for during illness, and dutifully obeyed Xu Shuyuan’s earlier warning, carefully trying to slip away now that he was awake.
He was rounding the bed toward the door when Xu Shuyuan’s lazy, slightly hoarse voice came from behind him: “What’s wrong?”
Before Ying Qiuman could respond, Xu Shuyuan got up too, walked over, and without fully opening his eyes, reached out and pulled him into a hug.
“I… want some water,” Ying Qiuman made up an excuse. The alpha stood beside him for a moment as if waking up, then pushed him back toward the bed. “I’ll get it. Don’t catch a chill.”
Xu Shuyuan brought the water and held it to his lips. Ying Qiuman wasn’t even thirsty, but he drank half the cup anyway. Then Xu Shuyuan finished the rest in one go and gathered him tightly into his arms again.
By the time morning came, even after Xu Shuyuan woke up, Ying Qiuman still couldn’t find a chance to leave.
When they went downstairs to eat together, Aunt Liang looked at him with pleasant surprise. “Xiao Ying is back too?”
They’d come home late last night, Aunt Liang and Uncle Liu had already turned in early. The villa was well soundproofed, too, so naturally they had no idea when the two had returned or what they’d done afterward.
Hearing the greeting, Ying Qiuman’s cheeks warmed slightly, but he quickly regained his composure. Aunt Liang didn’t know about their contract marriage, she only thought they were an arranged couple with an ordinary relationship.
So to ordinary people, his presence here at home didn’t seem strange at all. Only Ying Qiuman himself felt awkward.
What embarrassed him even more was that Xu Shuyuan insisted on driving him back to school.
“Your company must be busy. I can go back on my own,” he’d just started to say, when Xu Shuyuan cut him off at once: “I’m not busy.”
No one would believe that. It was year-end, how could anyone not be busy? Even Ying Qiuman had heard that Li Tian was so swamped he didn’t even have time to come to school to see Ye Li. For a company as large as Xu Corporation, how could the investment department director possibly be free?
On Christmas Eve, Tian Ji had worked overtime, and he’d even gotten to the office early this morning. At this moment, drawing a salary three times his usual pay from Xu Shuyuan, he was both suffering and somewhat pleased.
By the time they reached school, it was around ten o’clock. Ying Qiuman went straight to the lab.
His lips, exposed to the cold wind, were faintly moist and red, that was from being kissed by Xu Shuyuan before he got out of the car.
Ying Qiuman lowered his head and tucked his mouth into his collar. After walking a while, he seemed to remember something and pulled it back out, letting the cold wind cool him down.
When he reached the lab, maybe because of the holiday, only a second-year graduate senior was there, for whatever reason.
After greeting him, he sat down at his workstation and finally relaxed a little.
He hadn’t been found out.
The project’s prototype was already finalized, and with the holiday approaching, the tasks Wei Boju had assigned were mostly routine checks and maintenance. Everyone was fairly at ease, Wei Boju himself included.
Near noon, Wei Boju finally came by to make his rounds. When he reached Ying Qiuman’s side, he suddenly paused in confusion, looking him over from every angle before leaning in to sniff him.
“Huh? Why do you have the smell of pheromones on you?”
Ying Qiuman had already been a bit uncomfortable at being approached so closely, and now, sniffed out by his supervisor, he startled even more.
He didn’t expect Xu Shuyuan to leave pheromones on him. In the past, he would go back to his own room when everything was done, shower and change clothes, and by the time he reached school the scent would be basically gone.
But today was different. He’d been careless.
“From your partner, I’d guess,” the senior nearby said with a smile. Although he was also a beta, people who lived in an ABO world tended to be more sensitive to such things.
Wei Boju laughed at this and patted Ying Qiuman on the shoulder. He’d always thought Ying Qiuman wasn’t interested in much beyond coding, but unexpectedly the kid had quietly started dating someone. The lingering pheromones even suggested the relationship was going quite well. He smiled so broadly that wrinkles gathered at the corners of his eyes.
“Oh, oh, oh!” After leaving the lab, Wei Boju sent a voice message to his wife: “The kid’s got a partner! No need to worry about him anymore!”
And just like that, Ying Qiuman was suddenly outed, well, not exactly outed, more like suddenly and forcibly “made official”, but he still felt his ears burn, a strange, hard-to-describe swelling rising in his chest.
After lunch, he wanted to go back to the dorm to change clothes, praying that after being outside so long, the pheromones would have faded.
He lived in a mixed BO dormitory, and among his roommates—Ye Li included, there were two omegas.
Nervously, Ying Qiuman walked in. The moment he stepped inside, one of the omega roommates came straight over, took a long sniff, and asked with great exaggeration:
“Xiao Man, what did you put in the air? I feel so hot!”
This roommate, Liu Huaxin, was even more outgoing than Ye Li, you could even call him bold and open-minded.
Ye Li rolled his chair over and smacked him on the backside. “Baby, that’s alpha pheromones.”
“What!” Liu Huaxin shared the same article of faith as Ye Li: alphas are dogs.
So once he learned that the scent on Ying Qiuman was pheromones, he narrowed his eyes, leaned in toward Ye Li, grabbed his chin, and interrogated him: “You know something, don’t you?”
Ye Li had covered for Ying Qiuman before, but now that the man had come back reeking of pheromones himself, he scoffed in disdain.
“No wonder he’s such a tea [1] calling someone “green tea”, sweet and innocent on the surface, scheming underneath jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2564682_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2564682_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. Pheromones all smell like tea,” Ye Li said, pinching his nose and stepping back.
Another roommate came out of the bathroom at the commotion, eyes lighting up with excitement, and blurted in shock: “What—Xiao Man is actually the first one in our dorm to get into a relationship?!”
Ying Qiuman closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and slowly let it out.
“Sorry, I’ll go shower right now.”
The others were only joking, but they also knew Ying Qiuman didn’t take teasing well. They tried to stop him with a few “hey, hey, hey”s, but he insisted on showering anyway. The group exchanged glances and finally all turned to Ye Li.
Ye Li, who knew a bit more about the situation, looked away guiltily. Once Ying Qiuman had gone into the bathroom, he quietly explained to the others: “You all know how rich families are, right? It’s an arranged marriage.”
Liu Huaxin’s face lit up with sudden understanding, and he was about to go on when Ying Qiuman’s phone rang on the desk. Ye Li glanced at the caller ID and ignored it, but Liu Huaxin, always eager to help, picked it up directly.
“Hello, Xiao Man’s in the shower right now. Please call back later.”
The omega’s voice was clear and pleasant, but the person on the other end immediately turned irritable: “Where’s he showering?”
Hit with such a deep, stern voice, Liu Huaxin fired right back: “Hey, mister, do you really need to ask exactly where someone’s showering?”
Ye Li snorted with laughter and gave him a thumbs-up. The person on the other end paused for a moment, but his tone stayed just as unfriendly: “Tell him to answer the phone.”
Liu Huaxin rolled his eyes and walked over to knock on the bathroom door. “Darling, someone’s looking for you.”
Ying Qiuman had used too much body wash, the hot water was making his mind clearer and clearer. He couldn’t keep going like this.
Before, he’d thought that getting close like this and letting himself rely on Xu Shuyuan might cure his condition. But after this incident, he felt that going on this way was like drinking poison to quench his thirst [2] a short-term fix that only makes things worse jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2564682_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2564682_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. It would only get worse, and by the time the contract expired, he might not even be able to live a normal life anymore.
Hearing Liu Huaxin’s voice, Ying Qiuman gave a small shiver, opened the door, and took the phone. “Hello?”
Xu Shuyuan could ask such a thing so openly. The voice carried over the line was a little distorted, and some of the slightly aggrieved note in it didn’t come through, making it sound almost like an interrogation.
“Because you released pheromones on me.” Ying Qiuman had no strength to argue back. From the other end came a very disdainful soft laugh: “Isn’t it perfectly normal for me to release pheromones on you?”
“There are omegas in my dorm.” Ying Qiuman didn’t have the courage to say that he was actually resistant to this kind of attention, or rather, that because he’d never received this kind of attention before, he didn’t know how to face or deal with it. In situations like this, all he could do was avoid them.
“Then move out,” Xu Shuyuan said casually.
Ying Qiuman thought he was being unreasonable. Couldn’t he just stop releasing pheromones?
But the other man wasn’t joking: “I happened to look at a few apartments near your school. Can you come out now to take a look?”
“No.” Ying Qiuman answered immediately, then felt he hadn’t made himself clear: “Don’t waste your money.”
He felt it wasn’t necessary. Not to mention that he’d still be doing his graduate studies, and the apartment might even come in handy for the whole length of the contract, but they weren’t the kind of couple who needed to stay together all the time.
In Xu Shuyuan’s ears, though, the words only made his heart itch faintly. When a sheep refuses the sheepdog’s guidance, does the sheepdog give up on leading it back to the right path?
“Every time you run back home, having a place here would be more convenient.”
Had it ever been inconvenient before?
Ying Qiuman couldn’t figure out what Xu Shuyuan was trying to do, and could only keep refusing: “It’s convenient for me to go home. You should hurry back to the company.”
With that, he hung up, giving Xu Shuyuan no room to keep discussing it.
The dorm bathroom wasn’t as warm as the one at home. In that short stretch without hot water, all the heat had already dissipated. Ying Qiuman’s body was cold, but because of it his thoughts only grew more rational.
……
After being hung up on, Xu Shuyuan received several messages from another contact on his phone.
Doctor Xiao: “Psychological issues caused by alpha degradation generally fall into two types. If it’s simple pheromone degradation, it may just be pheromone dependence. But if it fully degrades into a beta, it may be degradation anxiety. The latter is more complex.”
“That said, depending on the cause of the degradation, there could be other conditions too. I’d suggest bringing him to the hospital for a check-up.”
The doctor Xu Shuyuan had consulted was a psychiatrist friend. In his dreams, Ying Qiuman had kept a kind of push-and-pull distance from him, in reality, it was even more fragmented. The other man seemed unable to refuse him, yet once they parted, he turned decisively distant.
Just moments ago, he could even simply stop listening and hang up the phone.
References[+]