The pinned message box displayed a message that had just arrived:
[Butler Grandpa: Young Master, the family head has learned about your injury and instructed you to return to the old residence tonight.]
He tightened his grip on the screen and thought it over carefully, then Liu Duanhe’s brow relaxed again.
No matter who had been running their mouth in front of his grandfather, he would make sure they learned the price of loose lips.
Liu Duanhe returned to the dormitory with Feng Xingyun. The other two roommates were still eating in the cafeteria and hadn’t come back yet.
Feng Xingyun took out a small table and set it up in the hallway.
They sat down in a makeshift arrangement. Liu Duanhe ate with great refinement, every dish had been divided into two portions in advance. After finishing one dish, before moving on to the next, he would dip his chopsticks in a small bowl of water to rinse them.
The afternoon class was the first period, so Liu Duanhe ate quickly this time. The household aunt had packed the portions according to his appetite, so finishing his share left him just comfortably full. He pulled out a tissue to wipe his lips, then rinsed his mouth.
He glanced at the time on his phone on the table and said unhurriedly, “Take your time eating. I’m going to wash up.”
Though showering right after a meal wasn’t great for his health, spending the whole morning outside and then going straight to bed for a nap was even harder for him to bear.
As soon as he left, Feng Xingyun sped up, wolfing down the food in a whirlwind and cleaning everything up.
Inside the door, Liu Duanhe was rinsing his mouth and brushing his teeth. Hearing the commotion, he poked his head out from behind the door and reminded him, “Just throw all the bowls and chopsticks away directly.”
The cleaning motion paused. Feng Xingyun looked down at the items carefully and realized he had underestimated his cleanliness obsession. The bowls and chopsticks, likely used only once, looked to be of quite fine quality, exquisite and flawless, yet in Liu Duanhe’s eyes, they were still single-use and disposable.
Indeed, a young master’s constitution required a massive family fortune to support his expenses.
The northern climate was dry, and Liu Duanhe had to shower every day, which easily damaged his skin. So he always kept moisturizing body lotion on his bed.
He took an extremely quick shower. When he came out, Feng Xingyun, who had gone downstairs to throw out the trash, happened to run into the other two roommates at the door and came in together.
Liu Duanhe turned his head to look. His fair face was flushed pink from the steam of the hot water, his slightly longer hair hung damply over his forehead, and his sky-blue pajamas made him look like a delicate piece of blue-and-white porcelain, gentle, beautiful, and exuding a languid nobility.
Without any need for adornment, he was like a lotus emerging from clear water, pure beauty untouched by artificial embellishment.
His striking, richly defined features were sculpted like a model’s, and even in pajamas, he showed no sign of fatigue or dishevelment.
Roommate Zhou Ren’s eyes were full of admiration as he teased, “Xiao Liu and I just got back, and you’re already getting into bed. You’re really fast.”
After entering the dorm, Liu Fen closed the door and clicked his tongue in praise. No wonder you’re the school’s recognized campus heartthrob. Even in pajamas, you look like you’re about to walk a runway.”
“I, a rock-solid straight guy, almost bent for a second.”
Liu Duanhe smiled helplessly. “Don’t exaggerate so much.”
He took out his hairdryer from the cabinet, and the whirring noise blurred Liu Fen’s rebuttals and Zhou Ren’s teasing.
By the time he finished drying his hair, five minutes had passed. They had already finished chatting and were changing clothes to get into bed. When all of them were in the dorm, they mostly didn’t talk, everyone just did their own thing.
Liu Duanhe’s impression of them was mediocre. His cleanliness obsession and sensitive sleep made it impossible for him to warm up to them, even though he could tell his roommates weren’t bad-natured people.
However, Feng Xingyun seemed to be an exception. He acknowledged that his cleanliness obsession wasn’t extremely severe, toward specific people, like his grandfather, Butler Grandpa, and Aunt Zhao who cooked, Liu Duanhe didn’t resist their proximity.
Feng Xingyun was also walking along the path of desensitization, and the progress so far was decent.
As soon as the balcony curtain was drawn, the room immediately darkened. The curtains in their dormitory building were specially made blackout curtains, very thick.
Liu Duanhe went to wash his hands, then carefully wiped his phone inside and out with alcohol before bringing it up to bed with him.
Seeing Liu Duanhe get into bed, Feng Xingyun unconsciously immediately softened his movements.
He followed right after. This time, he didn’t think about games at all, he hadn’t opened one all day. Other things had completely taken over his mind.
Zhou Ren and Liu Fen had no urge to keep chatting in that environment either. The only thing that puzzled them was Feng Xingyun’s unusual behavior. Normally, he wouldn’t go to bed this early, he rarely even took afternoon naps, usually just playing games at his desk through lunch.
After all, he was a young master. It was already impressive that he attended every class without skipping. Even if he was completely useless academically, his massive family fortune could be managed by hiring professional managers. Living like Liu Shan, enjoying life to the fullest, would be a perfectly good option.
After all, not everyone could be Liu Duanhe, whose social grace left people astounded, and whose academics and personal abilities were so outstanding they left others in the dust.
At the beginning of the university semester, there were still plenty of people who refused to accept him, but without exception, all of them eventually became his friends. Word had it they even started a company together, and Liu Duanhe invested in their project, apparently they were already preparing for their first round of funding.
Once the two of them had tidied up and the dorm fell quiet, Liu Duanhe let his mind go blank and finally felt sleep creeping in.
Feng Xingyun didn’t even know when he’d dozed off. In his last second of consciousness, he was still thinking about how he’d introduce Liu Duanhe at this afternoon’s basketball game, after all, everyone on the team knew about their mutual disdain before. If he brought Liu Duanhe along now, wouldn’t that be slapping his own face?
When he woke up again, the first thing he saw when he turned his head was a pair of phoenix eyes shimmering with light, gentle and warm, looking like they belonged to someone with an easygoing temperament.
Of course, that was only if you didn’t notice the unfathomable depths beneath the spring water.
“Get up quickly, there’s only fifteen minutes until class. You overslept.”
Feng Xingyun let out a heavy breath, like he’d just learned how to breathe, squeezing every last bit of air from his lungs.
Liu Duanhe looked up at his expression, dazed. The wolf-like fierce coldness in his eyes was now filled with barely concealed infatuation, as if he were still dreaming.
He raised an eyebrow, and only then did Feng Xingyun snap out of it like he’d just woken from a dream. He hastily squeezed his eyes shut, sat up abruptly, and threw off the covers to get out of bed.
Feng Xingyun didn’t have a bed curtain, so even in the darkness, Liu Duanhe could clearly see every change in his expression. Liu Duanhe was lost in thought, he’d seen plenty of people look at him with infatuation, but this was Feng Xingyun’s first time.
His boyfriend, of course, should be utterly devoted to him. Liu Duanhe thought this was only natural, that felt right. Otherwise, if it were someone he didn’t like and who didn’t like him back, there’d be no reason for Liu Duanhe to maintain the relationship.
Even though he was a patient person, Liu Duanhe already had the awareness of a qualified businessman, sunk costs didn’t factor into his major decisions.
Fortunately, Feng Xingyun had delivered the response and expression that satisfied him before Liu Duanhe decided to end things.
Feng Xingyun quickly stripped off his pajamas, and the moment his solid, muscular arms were exposed, Liu Duanhe turned and walked toward the balcony. Hearing the sound of him entering the bathroom, he pulled open the curtain at just the right moment, and the brilliant sunlight flooded the south-facing dorm room, revealing every corner.
Objectively speaking, by Liu Duanhe’s standards, Feng Xingyun could only be considered ordinarily handsome. Even though he had the most sexually charged kind of attractiveness among men, it was too aggressive, usually expressionless and fierce, cold and lacking in patience.
He responded to neither softness nor hardness, he was exactly the type Liu Duanhe disliked the most. In his view, everyone was like a problem with a specific set of solutions or just one, but he was a businessman with a conservative investment tendency who valued data. Feng Xingyun was difficult and troublesome, high cost, high return, but also high risk. Liu Duanhe should have kept his distance after seeing through him.
For the sake of speed, Feng Xingyun cupped water in his hands and splashed it over his face a few times, then hurried out of the bathroom. Fine droplets of water clung to his black hair. He grabbed his phone first, the time had already reached 1:47. He’d forgotten to set an alarm for the afternoon.
Liu Duanhe was in a decent mood. He raised his hand to check his watch, pulled a clean face towel from the desk, pinched it by one corner, and wiped it across Feng Xingyun’s face a few times, roughly drying the wet skin and the hair at his temples.
The motion was so natural that Feng Xingyun didn’t even react. Liu Duanhe went back into the bathroom to wash his hands again and reminded him, “It’s 1:48 now. Ten minutes to get to class is just right.”
His attitude was so calm that Feng Xingyun’s inexplicable tension eased considerably.
Sure enough, just as Liu Duanhe had said, they caught the last shuttle bus and arrived at the classroom just as the bell rang. Because of the staircase in the middle of the building, they entered through the back door. The back rows were almost entirely full, this was a specialized course with only two sections, so most faces were familiar. Under everyone’s silent gaze, they walked together to the front row and sat down.
The professor for this specialized course seemed to have a good relationship with Liu Duanhe and even asked, “Did you sleep in during your lunch break? First time I’ve seen you arrive this late.”
Feng Xingyun glanced at Liu Duanhe, feeling a bit uneasy inside, after all, it was him who had overslept today.
Liu Duanhe’s warm, magnetic voice rang out, “Something came up at noon that delayed me.”
The professor nodded and, since class was about to start, didn’t ask further.
Liu Duanhe’s reaction was completely calm, but Feng Xingyun couldn’t help stealing glance after glance at him.
Until Liu Duanhe’s slender, well-defined fingers pushed a sticky note over to him, his dark eyes still fixed on the blackboard.
Feng Xingyun looked down. On the paper was written: [Stop looking at me. Pay attention in class, and I’ll give you a reward after class.]
He tucked the sticky note into his textbook, and for that class, Feng Xingyun listened more attentively than he ever had, more attentively than in any class before. He silently scoffed a warning to himself: it wasn’t because he cared about the reward Liu Duanhe mentioned. He was just a little curious about what Liu Duanhe would give him.
They were considered friends now, and it was perfectly normal for friends to exchange gifts.
Liu Duanhe finally managed to escape from that scorching gaze. If Feng Xingyun kept staring at him like that, either he’d twist his own neck or the teacher would start giving them sidelong glances.
He really didn’t want to become the subject of campus gossip, singled out in class like that, how embarrassing.
It wasn’t until the very last second, when the bell rang, that Feng Xingyun began packing his bag. Liu Duanhe was even faster than him.
He stood up and said, “Let’s go, to the gym.”
Feng Xingyun froze for a moment, remembering this afternoon’s basketball game, a friendly match arranged with the neighboring department. But at the same time, he just recalled something: Zhao Yi was also on their department’s basketball team!