The Wealthy Family’s Adopted Son (15) – “Became a doll at the mercy of others…”
Pulled slightly by Zong Xian like this, the necklace tightened around Gu Wen’s neck, causing a faint pang of pain. Unable to hold back, Gu Wen furrowed his brows and stopped objecting to Zong Xian’s intent. “I know.”
Walking out of the school gates, Gu Wen instinctively glanced across the street, but the sedan was not parked there as it usually was.
Zong Xian accompanied him as they walked forward along the pavement. The two of them remained silent the entire way, and Gu Wen purposely shifted his attention to the streetscapes on either side to ease the uncalled-for awkwardness.
Summer was precisely the season prone to thunderstorms. Involuntarily, Gu Wen noticed the sky overhead, where dark clouds had silently gathered and the light had dimmed so much that not a shred of sunlight remained. Reaching back to feel his backpack, he realized that dragging Zong Xian away from the exhibition hall earlier had been far too rushed, leaving his umbrella behind in the hall.
He had no choice but to turn his face and ask Zong Xian, “Did you bring an umbrella?”
“It’s in the car,” Zong Xian answered calmly, as if he hadn’t noticed that it was about to pour.
“Ah, well.” Gu Wen practically didn’t know what to do with the man. “Then what should we do?”
“Come here.”
Looking baffled, Gu Wen edged closer to Zong Xian, who took off his suit jacket and held it open above Gu Wen’s head. Right at that moment, the rain fell heavily. Within moments, the suit jacket grew soaked, its edges dripping continuously, while Zong Xian’s outer shoulder was equally invaded by the rainwater.
Instinctively, Gu Wen tugged at Zong Xian’s wrist, wanting to let the other man squeeze completely under the jacket as well, but space was limited and it was ultimately impossible to fully accommodate two people.
“Zong Xian-ge, you’ll get sick like this,” Gu Wen couldn’t help focusing on the half of Zong Xian’s clothes that was drenched through.
Zong Xian replied with absolute calm, as if the person standing in the pouring rain wasn’t himself at all. “I won’t.”
The apartment was right near the school, just over a ten-minute walk away. Zong Xian escorted Gu Wen to the elevator doors, the dripping suit jacket draped over his arm while his shirt was dampened through as well.
He paused in place for half a moment, turning to leave.
Almost out of instinct, even Gu Wen himself couldn’t explain what kind of instinct this truly was, he simply reached out and grabbed Zong Xian’s hand. “Don’t go.”
Zong Xian’s movements visibly hitched for a second. “You’re not a child. Do you need me to accompany you upstairs?”
“Ge.” Seeing that Zong Xian didn’t seem easy to persuade, Gu Wen simply wrapped his arms around Zong Xian’s waist from behind. “It’s still raining heavily outside. Wait here at my place until the rain stops before you leave.”
Zong Xian didn’t move. After a long while, he finally pried Gu Wen’s hands apart and stepped into the elevator where the latter had just punched in the passcode.
Entering the apartment, Gu Wen took Zong Xian’s suit jacket. The white cat lay lazily on the sofa, not even stirring when it saw its owner return, merely letting out two meows in the direction of the two people.
More than half of Zong Xian’s shirt was already wet, and Gu Wen met the gaze of the person before him. “Zong Xian-ge, go take a shower. I have a set of clothes here that you left behind last time; I’ve washed them clean.”
“Is that so?” Leaving his entire outfit from head to toe behind in the apartment, Zong Xian inexplicably felt that such an action carried a strong sense of ambiguity. Someone you were never close to had no business leaving such traces in your home; either a person came to find the clothes, or the clothes came to find the person.
Would someone else’s garments be left behind here too? Zong Xian suddenly had this thought, instinctively averting his gaze.
As if to prove that his words were not empty, Gu Wen rummaged through his bedroom and fished out the outfit Zong Xian had left behind from his previous overnight stay. The top, pants, and even the underwear had all been washed and ironed flat.
He hung the clean clothes on the rack inside the bathroom and, just like before, filled the bathtub with hot water ahead of time for Zong Xian, adding the bath salts the other man preferred.
Right in front of him, Zong Xian shed his soaked garments without the slightest bit of concealment.
Repetition was a very subtle state; only the same person and the same things allowed for repetition. Apart from occasional casual forms of address, he and Zong Xian were brother-like in name only, hardly friends, and certainly not lovers, yet they repeated the exact same daily routines in a private space like a home.
Gu Wen pushed open the bathroom door, intending to leave, but Zong Xian called out to him at that moment. “Didn’t you tell me to stay? Yet you’re the one running off first.”
“I’m just going outside,” Gu Wen explained with a straight face, but Zong Xian clearly had no intention of listening, sliding his palm out from beneath the water into the air.
“Come here.”
Gu Wen stopped by the edge of the tub.
Zong Xian soaked in the bathtub without making any further moves, while Gu Wen simply kept his head lowered, not daring to lift his eyes to look at Zong Xian.
Suddenly, Gu Wen felt like a small pet that had escaped its cage. Zong Xian had snatched him back from outside the cage into his own palm, and just when he thought he was about to be locked away in prison once more, he realized the master was simply locking eyes with it for a long, unbroken stretch of time.
Whether he wanted to let it go or grip it tightly in his palm forever, no one knew the answer.
“Zong Xian-ge,” Gu Wen kindly reminded the other, “don’t soak for too long, your skin will wrinkle.”
For once, Zong Xian couldn’t help letting out a chuckle. “Has your skin ever wrinkled from soaking?”
“Ah, well.” Gu Wen abruptly decided that ordinary human beings had every right to get wrinkled skin from water, and he couldn’t be bothered to manage Zong Xian anymore.
As if taking his advice to heart, Zong Xian got out of the bathtub, dried his body, and put on his clothes. The sound of rain had vanished outside the window, and knowing the storm had cleared, Gu Wen still dug out an umbrella and handed it to Zong Xian, worried it might start raining again midway.
“I’m leaving.” Zong Xian took the umbrella and pushed open the apartment door, where the white cat exceptionally got up to see him off at the threshold.
Gu Wen stood in place, watching Zong Xian’s silhouette vanish as the white cat kept him company by his ankles. After waiting for quite a long time, he pulled out his phone and asked Zong Xian if he had caught a cold.
Zong Xian’s reply was concise. “No.”
The chat window returned to silence.
Zong Xian insisted on dropping Gu Wen off and picking him up from school, sometimes driving the sedan over and other times accompanying Gu Wen on foot all the way to the apartment building.
Even when seated inside the same vehicle, Gu Wen and the other person frequently sat in silence. The system notification sound popped up in his mind at irregular intervals. It wasn’t that Gu Wen lacked things to do, but he simply hadn’t been in the mood lately, unable to find a reason even for himself.
Stepping down from Zong Xian’s car, Gu Wen noticed that Lu Yuteng seemed to have been waiting near the parking spot for quite a while. The moment he spotted Gu Wen, he abruptly backed up several paces, as if Gu Wen were some sort of ferocious beast.
“Yuteng?” Gu Wen instinctively approached him, but the other continued to retreat step by step.
“I have things to do.”
“Lu Yuteng,” Zong Xian beckoned to the person holding textbooks outside the car, “come here.”
Lu Yuteng hopped into the car very quickly. The door shut, and Gu Wen suddenly found himself the one isolated on the outside.
His fingers gripped tightly onto his backpack straps, his gaze lingering for a long time on the car windows whose interior was impossible to see through, before he finally walked into the school gates on his own.
The first period was Professor Yu’s class. By the time Gu Wen finished organizing his painting tools, Lu Yuteng was already seated inside the classroom.
Professor Yu concluded his lecture, leaving the rest of the time for practice. Gu Wen basically relied entirely on the system for his coursework and didn’t care much for his studies anyway, causing him to space out completely while practicing his drawing.
So much so that he didn’t even notice when Professor Yu stopped right beside him.
Naturally offering a few words of guidance, Professor Yu watched as Gu Wen nodded with a feigned appearance of focus before continuing with the creation beneath his brush.
When class ended, Professor Yu called out to Gu Wen once more, inviting him to visit another exhibition hall in the art academy to view some paintings.
Unlike the previous time, the pieces in this exhibition hall belonged to the instructors, appearing much more mature than the student works seen before.
“Are there instructor pieces here?” Gu Wen asked casually.
“I haven’t been at the school very long, and my creations still need time,” Professor Yu smiled kindly. “However, I happen to have a half-finished piece on hand. I wonder if Yan-classmate might be interested?”
“Is that alright?” Unwilling to rebuff the teacher’s face, Gu Wen played along.
Professor Yu expressed that he was more than welcome to come see his work, but since the half-finished piece was still back at his faculty apartment, he asked if Gu Wen would mind accompanying him over there.
Knowing the faculty apartments weren’t far away, Gu Wen agreed to the suggestion without giving it a second thought.
Professor Yu lived on a high floor, and waiting for the elevator to descend to the ground floor took some time.
After heading upstairs, Gu Wen followed Professor Yu into the apartment. The interior was kept very tidy, with paintings whose meanings he couldn’t decipher hanging on the walls.
“It’s in the inner room, Yan-classmate,” Professor Yu beckoned to him in front of one of the doorways. “Come this way.”
Walking toward Professor Yu’s direction, Gu Wen followed him into the room. A sketch was fixed onto an easel, and after studying it intently for a good while, he realized it seemed to be a drawing of his own back.
A photograph of himself that Professor Yu had snapped in the exhibition hall.
“Teacher, what is this?” Gu Wen couldn’t help freezing in surprise.
“You are very beautiful, Yan-classmate,” Professor Yu stepped a few paces closer to him. “My paintbrush is always willing to record beautiful things.”
For a moment, Gu Wen didn’t know how to respond. Seeing this, Professor Yu let out a soft chuckle to break the awkwardness of the present moment. “Don’t be nervous, I’m simply admiring you.”
“Ah, thank you.” Gu Wen managed to relax slightly.
“Are you thirsty?” Professor Yu opened the room’s door and stepped outside. “I’ll go pour you a glass of water.”
Gu Wen stopped looking at the painting and shifted his attention elsewhere. A double bed sat inside the room with sheer curtains draped down to the floor, accompanied by a bedside table with drawers, leaving no excess items in sight.
“Have some water.” When Professor Yu returned, he held a disposable paper cup filled to the brim with warm water.
Gu Wen really was feeling parched, so he drank the water without a second thought.
Gradually, his concentration grew harder and harder to maintain; he couldn’t even clearly distinguish what Professor Yu was saying, feeling a dizzy sensation arise for no reason. “I…”
“Are you feeling unwell?” Professor Yu pulled aside the sheer curtains by the side of the bed, motioning for Gu Wen to lie down and rest.
Even though Gu Wen had no desire to stay, his body grew increasingly heavy, making it impossible to control himself as he tipped backward onto the bed, quickly closing his eyes and losing consciousness.
“Truly beautiful.” Professor Yu removed Gu Wen’s hair tie, letting the hair of the person on the bed cascade open and rest against his fair cheeks.
He lowered his head, right about to kiss Gu Wen’s hair, when an unknown burst of strength from behind jerked him away from the bedside.
“Who is it?” Professor Yu snapped his head back, recalling that he had crossed paths with this face once in the exhibition hall.
It seemed to be Yan Guanbai’s elder brother.
“How did you get in?”
Zong Xian tossed a piece of iron wire aside, entirely uninterested in answering the question. Without another word, he heavily smashed a painting from the living room right over Professor Yu’s head, knocking the man completely unconscious before dragging him off and tossing him into the living room.
Locking the bedroom door behind him, he pulled back the sheer curtains of the double bed.
The exquisite face remained fast asleep, and his pretty younger brother had now become a doll at the mercy of others.