Sitting in the back seat, Chu Kai felt as though all his strength had been drained away. He slowly tilted his head back and gently closed his eyes.
Outside the car window, the scenery flashed past like a fast-moving slide show. Light and shadow intertwined, yet those mottled lingering images seemed to carry some magical power, forcibly dragging his thoughts back to that year.
Back then, he merely regarded Yan Chi as a passerby. After finishing the door and walking stick at Chu Zili’s place, Yan Chi had even made a special trip to the village doctor to get some medicine for treating leg injuries.
He hoped Yan Chi’s leg injury would heal quickly and hoped Yan Chi would leave Luoshan Village soon.
Yet Yan Chi thoroughly enjoyed life here.
In the mornings, he would lean on his crutches and come out to bask in the sun. At noon, he would sit in the courtyard, waiting for Chu Kai to return from harvesting water chestnuts. In the evenings, he would lean against the head of the bed, writing in a notebook Chu Kai had found for him.
Worried that Chu Zili might discover Yan Chi’s existence, Chu Kai hadn’t let him come over to install the door.
That door, hauled over by cart, had been sitting in the courtyard for four or five days, its parts laid out to the side and reflecting a cold light under the sun, still not installed to this day.
Chu Kai had always hated the harsh creaking sound the door made when opening and closing. When living alone in the past, he could just carelessly leave the door wide open.
Now, with Yan Chi as an uninvited guest, Chu Kai had to find another way, buying two curtain cloths and hanging them at the doorways of the two bedrooms.
When the cool evening breeze blew, the curtains would roll up.
Whenever this happened, Yan Chi would see such a scene: Chu Kai, dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt and shorts, radiating a hint of youthful awkwardness, sitting quietly on the bed with his legs drawn up, gently holding a cattail fan and leaning leisurely by the window.
At times he gazed out the window, at times he half-closed his eyes, letting the moonlight and indoor light occupy his soft and warm face.
“What are you looking at?” Holding a notebook and leaning on his crutches, Yan Chi walked into his room.
Startled out of nowhere by the voice, Chu Kai shuddered violently and quickly turned his head.
His cheeks turned slightly red from the shock, and his voice carried a hint of reproach, “Why don’t you knock?”
“Is there a door?” Sitting rather laboriously on the wooden chair beside the bed, Yan Chi spoke with a grievance-laden tone, “I already said I would hide well, but you refused to let anyone come over and install the door.”
With that, he twitched his eyebrows slightly and intentionally slowed his speech, “Or are you afraid that your Zili-ge would hurt me?”
Chu Kai’s expression remained indifferent, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly into a faint smile.
He turned his head to continue looking out the window, his tone as calm as still water, “I just don’t trust you.”
After a pause, he raised his head slightly, his clear eyes reflecting the tranquil night scenery outside as he spoke slowly, “I don’t know what kind of person you are, I just hope you recover from your injuries and leave quickly.”
Yan Chi instantly felt wronged, cupping his face in his hands and gazing eagerly at Chu Kai, “Student Xiao Kai, I thought we were already very close.”
He narrowed his eyes slightly, his shoulders shrugging gently as he said, “Besides, I’ve already introduced myself to you. My name is Yan Chi, an Alpha, 23 years old this year, attended middle school abroad, returned for high school, graduated and debuted as a singer, and majored in college.”
“Stop.” Chu Kai interrupted mercilessly, his brow slightly furrowed, “You’ve already said that many times.”
A passerby didn’t need to leave any information, and Chu Kai had never possessed any curiosity to understand Yan Chi. On the contrary, Yan Chi tirelessly kept forcing this information into his head through repetition.
“Since you remember it all, how can you say you don’t know what kind of person I am?” Yan Chi’s voice grew increasingly clingy, “Alas, not only does my leg hurt, but my heart is starting to hurt too.”
Seeing that Chu Kai had no intention of paying attention to him, he put away the gesture of clutching his chest, his tone turning serious, “Chu Kai, what about you? You haven’t formally introduced yourself yet.”
“My name is Chu Kai.” In the end, Chu Kai couldn’t withstand Yan Chi’s pestering and replied sullenly.
“Gender?” Yan Chi’s deep brows and eyes curved slightly.
“Male.” Chu Kai’s gaze fixed on a willow tree in the distance flickered slightly, blinking as if whipped by a willow branch, unconsciously touching the back of his neck, “Secondary gender is Beta.”
Once upon a time, he too had glands and the possibility of differentiating into an Omega, but now he was just a Beta.
“Age?”
“20.”
“Where do you go to school?”
“Both middle and high school were in our village.”
“What about college? What major?”
“That’s enough, that’s all.” Chu Kai clenched his teeth, his cheeks puffing out slightly as he suppressed the surging irritability in his heart that grew like wild grass.
He decisively got off the bed and drove Yan Chi out along with the crutches that had already worn down after just a few days of use.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Unsteady on his feet, Yan Chi tipped toward Chu Kai when pushed, and could only grab hold of the curtain cloth desperately to steady himself.
Rip.
The entire curtain cloth was torn down, freezing the struggling pair in place.
The next second, the pinkish-purple cotton-linen cloth and the matching white mosquito-netting gauze fluttered down onto Chu Kai’s head.
As a light breeze passed by, the edges of the white gauze lifted slightly, brushing against the chest of the Alpha whose heart had stopped beating, separated only by a thin layer of fabric.
The anger in Chu Kai’s heart surged up again with a swoosh.
He wanted to reach out and pull it off, but a low and irresistible “Don’t move” abruptly halted his motion.
Under the warm yellow light, the joints in Yan Chi’s fingers were trembling.
With one hand, he gently lifted the curtain cloth. The emotional stirring in his eyes and the beating frequency of his heart increased sharply with the youthful face revealed beneath the curtain.
The lips pouting in anger, the jelly-moist peak of the lips, the flushed and warm cheeks, the twitching nose tip, the high bridge of the nose, the clear yet angry eyes, the dense eyelashes, the violently twitching space between his brows.
He completely engraved this person’s appearance into his eyes, branded it in his heart, and let it surge into his blood, instantly sending boiling waves through him.
“You.” Chu Kai’s anger vanished because of a flash of bright red in his eyes.
“Nice to meet you, Chu Kai.” Yan Chi suddenly pulled Chu Kai into a one-armed embrace, his movement carrying a hint of eagerness yet also a touch of careful hesitation, his tone so earnest it was nearly pious, as if this truly were their first meeting.
Chu Kai looked tense, his brows knitted tightly into a knot, his eyes full of panic.
He felt that Yan Chi really needed to leave quickly, go to the hospital to check his leg injury, and then visit the psychiatry department to check if his brain had been damaged.
Chu Kai pried Yan Chi’s hands apart with both hands, turned around and hurried back to his bedroom to grab a roll of tissue, then rushed back like a blazing fire, shoving it straight into Yan Chi’s hand to make him sit on the living room stool and hold the tissue against his nose.
“Don’t tilt your head back! Sit up straight, lean forward a bit.” Chu Kai brought over a basin of water, soaked his hands, and gently patted Yan Chi’s forehead back and forth.
Only after Yan Chi’s nosebleed had completely stopped did Chu Kai heave a sigh of relief, raising a hand to wipe the fine beads of sweat from his forehead as he muttered, “Looks like I need to buy some cooling medicine.”
It was one thing for this guy to eat off him, live off him, and wear his clothes, but the real headache was how he constantly needed medicine for his leg one moment and got nosebleeds the next, driving people crazy.
Herbs couldn’t be used randomly, and treating him still required finding the village doctor.
Everyone in the village knew each other, chatting back and forth, so his buying medicine would bound to reach his family’s ears.
Last time he bought medicine, he had barely managed to find an excuse and asked the village doctor not to tell his family.
So what excuse should he use this time?
“Xiao Kai.”
With tissue paper stuffed up his nostrils, Yan Chi spoke with a nasal twinge.
When he turned to tug at the corner of Chu Kai’s clothes, his body looked quite stiff.
Fretting over how to lie to the village doctor tomorrow, Chu Kai asked coldly, “What is it?”
Yan Chi lowered his gaze slightly, keeping his head in position while stretching out his arm to pick up the notebook that had fallen to the floor during their tussle.
He flipped through a few pages, carefully tore out a complete sheet, and handed it to Chu Kai, “For you.”
It was a pencil sketch:
The youth in the drawing was bathed in the sunset glow, the afterglow stretching his figure long. He held tender water chestnuts in his hands, his face brimming with a bright and sunny smile. That smile was even more dazzling and brilliant than the morning sun, shining straight into the depths of one’s heart.
Then, he received another drawing handed over by Yan Chi:
Still that same youth, propping his chin in deep thought amidst the quiet night. Moonlight spilled over him, outlining a soft halo of light as if the entire world had quieted down, leaving only him immersed in an ocean of thoughts.
“Which one looks more like you?” Yan Chi said softly, “Or rather, which one do you like better?”
Chu Kai pinched the paper with both hands, his fingertips lightly stroking the texture of the paper.
This exercise book was leftover from his school days; the paper had turned slightly yellowish, and what covered the drawings were vertical lines separating various horizontal bars.
He had never imagined that this exercise book, which had almost been thrown away as junk, could regain its splendor and carry another kind of value beyond words, a value that stirred ripples deep within his heart.
“I like both of you”
“I like both of you”
“I like both of you”
…
The darkness spun around the dim, flickering light, tumbling back and forth as it ruthlessly shattered that short and beautiful memory.
“I’ll sing it for you”
“Xiao Kai, Student Xiao Kai, Chu Kai, I like you”
“Chu Kai, leave with me”
“No matter what kind of Chu Kai you are, I like you! I don’t care about anything else, I only care about you!”
“Chu Kai, I just want one answer from you. You love me. Right?”
“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! If you don’t like me, why keep the drawings? If you don’t like me, why…”
“You can’t tear it! Don’t tear it!”
Screech, a sudden, sharp screech of brakes pierced his ears.
Accompanied by the intense backward G-force, it collided with his waist as if piercing through his abdomen, jolting Chu Kai, who was covered in cold sweat, awake from that memory that he could never forget no matter how hard he tried, and could never hide no matter how hard he tried.