“Isn’t that so?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I was planning to do.”
Yu Lang hurriedly flung his hand away and pointed at Chi Jianqing in warning. “Don’t talk to me in the tone people use when they’re beating up a mistress.”
Chi Jianqing’s dead water like brows revealed a look of sudden realization once again. “You’re admitting they’re the third, fourth and fifth.”
“?”
A huge question mark appeared on Yu Lang’s face.
“So what if they are? I could be dating ten people at once outside, you can’t control that.”
“…………”
Chi Jianqing fell silent for a moment, then asked innocently, “Ten? Does that include me?”
Yu Lang felt like his head was about to explode. His hand wobbled as he raised it, pointing several times at Chi Jianqing’s face through the air.
He wanted to speak, stopped himself, wanted to speak again, he had no idea how to communicate with Chi Jianqing at all.
In the end, he could only shout as if venting his anger, chest heaving:
“What the hell does it have to do with you?! What identity are you using to kill them? What identity are you using to control who’s around me? What are you to me? My lover? Or my boyfriend?”
Yu Lang’s finger hung in midair, stabbing forward like a knife, convinced that this would completely sever the already thin connection between him and Chi Jianqing.
“We’re not even friends!”
The gemstone necklace around Yu Lang’s neck was still flashing with dazzling, piercing brilliance. Not long ago, he had cradled this necklace, kissing Chi Jianqing.
Less than three minutes after acting like trash, he turned his face and denied everything.
Chi Jianqing fell into a long silence.
At this moment, perhaps he was thinking that if he killed ten people in one night, the blade would be dull, so he’d need to prepare several knives.
Or perhaps he was thinking that Yu Lang was truly popular and that being his chosen target was an honor.
This silence turned into a strange kind of cold violence in Yu Lang’s eyes.
He cursed a few more times but Chi Jianqing still didn’t react. Yu Lang was completely enraged. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you so unreasonable?!”
Yu Lang grabbed Chi Jianqing by the collar and slammed him against the wall, gripping his throat and forcing him hard into the surface.
“I don’t fucking like you at all, you know that perfectly well!”
Chi Jianqing’s lowered hand quietly settled at Yu Lang’s waist, gripping and lifting slightly.
Yu Lang was too short. Standing on tiptoe, raising his arms and craning his neck to scold someone while holding them up made his body wobble unsteadily.
Chi Jianqing helped him scold himself more properly.
“I give you a good face and you should just accept it with gratitude!”
Yu Lang’s arms tightened fiercely around Chi Jianqing’s neck. From his upper arm to his forearm, every inch of muscle strained with desperate force. Veins bulged on the back of his hands; finger joints went rigid.
His fingers seemed ready to pierce straight through the skin of Chi Jianqing’s neck, crush his bones, rip his head off again and kick it like a ball.
That way, he’d never have to argue with this boring ghost thing about third wheels and fourth wheels ever again.
“You’re just something I use to kill time when I’m bored. Get your identity straight.”
“My identity?” Chi Jianqing’s lips barely moved, drifting out the question like a wisp of smoke.
“Yes. Your identity.”
Yu Lang stared at him, lifting himself with every part of his body, even his eyelids, trying to look superior before a giant nearly two meters tall.
Chi Jianqing calmly spoke one sentence from between his lips and teeth. “I’m your dead licking dog.”
Completely flat, utterly calm, as though there were nothing improper about saying it.
Yu Lang froze. His hair stood on end, his toes itching to dig a whole circle into the ground.
The word he’d secretly used to curse Chi Jianqing the day before, this damn thing had heard it and learned it!
Now Chi Jianqing was openly and unapologetically using it on himself.
Not only was there no trace of humiliation or pleading in it, there was even a faint sense of smugness.
Because in Yu Lang’s interrogation of identity, he had successfully found a place where he belonged.
This was his unique connection with Yu Lang. Among Yu Lang’s many admirers, only he had been personally certified by Yu Lang as a “dead licking dog.”
Not a dog, not just a licking dog, a dead licking dog.
A special title upgraded from an ordinary licking dog after being hacked to death by Yu Lang once.
This made Chi Jianqing pronounce the word “licking dog” with clear articulation and absolute confidence.
As if he were saying: I am Yu Lang’s lover.
A breath lodged in Yu Lang’s throat. He wanted to say something but nothing would come out for a long while.
Hitting him, he was afraid he’d enjoy it.
Cursing him, he was afraid he’d enjoy that too.
It felt like: he’s already like this, what else can you possibly do to him?
After thinking it over, Yu Lang squeezed out four words:
“Fine. You win.”
Yu Lang released the hand clamped around Chi Jianqing’s neck, shook his slightly sore wrist and turned, intending to walk out of Chi Jianqing’s line of sight.
He had just turned and taken a step when, click, he froze.
Yu Lang letting go of Chi Jianqing didn’t mean Chi Jianqing would let go of Yu Lang.
Those hands were like chains locked around his waist, gripping tightly. The hollows pressed inward were already ringed red.
“So painful.”
Chi Jianqing murmured softly.
This time, having learned from the failure of his previous attempt at acting cute, there was finally a tiny hint of it.
But more than that, it was still a pale, heavy command.
“Let go of me!”
Yu Lang dug his fingers hard into Chi Jianqing’s hands, baring his teeth as he pinched out several crescent shaped nail marks. When Chi Jianqing still didn’t release him, Yu Lang puffed up angrily and shouted, “I didn’t even use force! What are you pretending for?! And you’re the one who said you don’t feel pain!”
Chi Jianqing visibly froze for a moment. In that instant, the hatred on his face was unmistakable.
Not regret, hatred.
Hatred so deep he wished he could go back to the previous day and kill the version of himself who had said that.
“Let go!”
Yu Lang pushed fiercely at Chi Jianqing’s shoulder. The other man didn’t budge an inch.
Suddenly, Chi Jianqing lowered his head, lightly touching his forehead to Yu Lang’s, still repeating only those two words:
“So painful.”
In Yu Lang’s eyes, Chi Jianqing, huge, pallid, carrying a deathly aura, suddenly closing in was no different from the Sword of Damocles hanging overhead plunging downward, bringing with it an overwhelming sense of terror and oppression.
“So painful.”
“So painful.”
“So painful.”
“So painful.”
“So painful.”
Chi Jianqing was like a machine gone bad, spilling disorder and chaos outward.
There was an air of reckless madness, like someone smashing a cracked pot completely.
Yu Lang angrily questioned him, “Why are you so unreasonable?!”
Chi Jianqing pretended not to hear or not to understand, repeating again: “So painful.”
“Let go of me!”
Yu Lang swung his fist, beating him until bruises bloomed in patches of blue and purple yet the restraint didn’t loosen in the slightest. Instead, the resistance earned him an even tighter grip.
“So painful.”
“Can you please listen to what I’m saying?”
“So painful.”
“Where does it hurt?”
“Face.”
Yu Lang opened his mouth and bit down.
“You clearly hear everything I say!”
A ring of bloody teeth marks appeared on Chi Jianqing’s cheek. The pure silver lip ring pressed a thin red line slightly below the bite.
The lip ring looked almost like a seal stamp left in the corner of an ink painting.
Biting wasn’t enough. Yu Lang grabbed the flesh on both sides of Chi Jianqing’s cheeks, then spread his arms wide in a full, wing like stretch, forcing his shoulder joints outward with vicious strength, as if he wanted to tear this dead thing’s skin apart, rip it open completely.
Through his actions, Chi Jianqing proved that he truly had no sense of pain.
He bore Yu Lang’s emotions with a blank expression, enduring it until Yu Lang grew tired from pulling, until his palms went numb and he shook his hands while panting heavily.
Only then did Chi Jianqing speak quietly: “I like it so much.”
Yu Lang surrendered completely, giving up all resistance.
Unexpectedly, Chi Jianqing let him go.
The two of them stood there, one leaning against the wall, the other leaning against a person.
They were very close, so close there was barely enough space to light a cigarette.
They were silent.
Watching each other.
By now, the sky outside the window had grown completely dark.
“I’m going out,” Yu Lang said firmly, then added, “Not to see a third party.”
“Will you come back?”
Yu Lang frowned, instinctively wanting to snap, what business is it of yours but he quickly bit his tongue and changed his words, coaxing him with a promise instead.
“I’ll come back. You wait for me at home.”
“Okay.”
Chi Jianqing quietly turned the word “home” over in his mind. The trace of anxious insecurity between his brows was easily soothed by Yu Lang’s single sentence.
One sweet lie outweighed the many times he had been deceived before.
In the blink of an eye, Yu Lang disappeared from in front of Chi Jianqing.
Chi Jianqing sat blankly in the living room of this home, from three in the afternoon all the way until three in the morning.
The notification chimes from bank card transactions on his phone rattled nonstop like a machine gun, rattatatat, sounding from afternoon until deep into the night.
Yu Lang was at luxury boutiques, at black pearl restaurants, moving through every refined and extravagant place imaginable.
There was even a casino.
But in the end, the trail stopped at a bar.
Chi Jianqing sat motionless in the darkness.
The curtains were stirred by a cold wind, blowing in a lonely west breeze mixed with an icy chill.
The jet black fringe on Chi Jianqing’s forehead blended into the night, so the wind could no longer tell whether this was a person or darkness itself and kept burrowing insistently into the black.
Chi Jianqing sat expressionless for the entire night.
His mind wasn’t completely empty, he just couldn’t understand why Yu Lang had once again abandoned him.
And then, helplessly, he dug out from his own eyes the memories they once held, every movement, every gesture of Yu Lang, to keep himself company through this unbearably lonely, frigid night.
Another two hours passed. A pale fish belly white spread across the horizon; dawn was close.
Chi Jianqing finally couldn’t sit still any longer. He stood up and left.
Following the phone’s spending records, it was easy to locate Yu Lang.
Or rather, Yu Lang hadn’t intended to hide.
He didn’t care about Chi Jianqing’s feelings. He even anticipated seeing Chi Jianqing disappointed in him, as proof of what he’d said before: that he wasn’t needed.
The bar’s spotlights swept rapidly across the pitch black dance floor overhead. The lights flickered on and off like swaying tree shadows, particle lights drifting up and down within one’s vision like dust in the air.
Huge speakers were set up at all four corners. Decorative speakers on the DJ booth hummed and vibrated. Sweet, greasy fragrance and alcohol dominated every hollow of the air.
Yu Lang was very easy to find. Wherever the crowd was the most lively, Yu Lang would certainly be there and always at the center.
He sat in the middle of a booth, a slender women’s cigarette held between his lips. Judging by the color, it was probably mint flavored.
Before he could even light it, lighters were offered from all directions. With a series of clicks, several flames flared up at once.
The blazing fire forcibly pulled Yu Lang’s face, beautiful to the point of being almost impossible to look away, from the darkness, bringing it fully into view.
Like the sun itself, hanging high, radiating heat as it gazed down at everyone.
Yu Lang straightened up, held the cigarette and casually flicked it twice through the air, then lifted a glass of alcohol with the same hand, randomly clinked it with a lucky someone and calmly declared:
“I don’t smoke. Just decoration.”
The glasses clinked, crisp and clear. The liquid inside reflected the man’s image.
The next second, Yu Lang lifted his gaze and saw Chi Jianqing’s figure.
For an instant, when the lights cut out, Yu Lang’s expression turned cold. He clicked his tongue and cursed under his breath, “Won’t go away.”
But as soon as the lights came back on, everything returned to normal.
Yu Lang smiled, meeting the gaze of the pale, resentful ghost across the crowd.
He leaned back, lifted his chin, raised his glass high and issued an arrogant command:
“Come here.”
✦ ✧ ✦
Cresvynia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
This chapter was powered by questionable decisions. The next one may require coffee.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · Dead HusbandChapter 2 · Ghost ChaseChapter 3 · I’ve been fooled againChapter 4 · I need lots and lots of loveChapter 5 · I’ll kill you!^^Chapter 6 · Haha, really!Chapter 7 · This is what it means to be love-struck.Chapter 8 · We meet again, my loveChapter 9 · The little snakeChapter 10 · I’ve been fooled againChapter 11 · The daily routine of sasaeng fans following othersChapter 12 · Inferiority complexChapter 13 · It hurtsChapter 14 · Want to go out? Sure!Chapter 15 · Damn it!Chapter 16 · My wife hitting me is a reward for meChapter 17 · Licking sweatChapter 18 · The vinegar was friedChapter 19 · What a clever tactic, Chi Jianqing!Chapter 20 · Loving me is a very painful thing.Chapter 21 · The words may be rough, but the principle is soundChapter 22 · It wasn’t just two hitsChapter 23 · Turns out I’m not 3, I’m 1!Chapter 24 · Easy To CoaxChapter 25 · Confessing loveChapter 26 · DearChapter 27 · Honey, it felt so good when you scolded me.Chapter 28 · Let’s go after tearing off the human skinChapter 29 Part 1 · Honey, I caught you!Chapter 29 Part 2 · Honey, I caught you!Chapter 30 · Little Blind CrippleChapter 31 · How could I give up? I’ve given you my heart.Chapter 32 · The gloomy CEOChapter 33 · X-harassmentChapter 34 · Little third wheelChapter 35 · I am Chi JianqingChapter 36 · I am his husband, and you are?Chapter 37 · CarChapter 38 · Broken carChapter 39 · I want to kiss youChapter 40 · Silly babyChapter 41 · Chop off hands and feetChapter 42 · Ships and DeathChapter 43 · Chi Jianqing participated in the battle royale and finally obtained a ticket to meet Yu Lang.Chapter 44 · You bastard, get out of here!Chapter 45 · Bad cats can only be forced to love.Chapter 46 · Circle the fox’s tail and rub it back and forthChapter 47 · It hurts so muchChapter 48 · The Second World EndedChapter 49 · Brainless and grumpyChapter 50 · I don’t like you anymoreChapter 51 · I haven’t thought of a title yetChapter 52 · You smell so good, let me hug you and pet youChapter 53 · A big dog bit a kitten’s muzzleChapter 54 · Captive canariesChapter 55 · Male Ghost StrikesChapter 56 · I told you to be quiet!Chapter 57 · I have decided to bestow upon you the title of my wife.Chapter 58 · We’re talking about loveChapter 59 · I really, really like you!Chapter 60 · I want to eat your noodlesChapter 61 · Don’t abandon your puppy!Chapter 62 · What a blissful ending!Chapter 63 · Extra 1Chapter 64 · Extra 2Chapter 65 · Extra 3