Pinching the back of the frizzy little cat’s neck. Zuo Xingyun, I’m going to tell…
“Let go, let go, you fucking…”
Hua Sheng was pulled so hard that he stumbled and almost fell. His mind was filled with the scene from the classroom just now, so many people stretching their necks to look at them, plus Cui Yu’s shocked expression. Those eyes, which usually squinted so much that it was hard to tell if they were even open, suddenly widened, their pupils full of astonishment.
Zuo Xingyun must have lost his mind. He and Cui Yu had been standing in punishment just fine when Zuo Xingyun suddenly bolted out from the back door of the classroom, staring straight at him as if Hua Sheng owed him eight million bucks.
Without a word and with a dark face, Hua Sheng was dragged away. Before he could even react, he was pulled along by a tremendous force, staggering a few steps just to keep from tripping over his own feet and hitting the ground.
He felt like crying. Everyone had seen it; he had embarrassed himself to the extreme.
He had deliberately tried to keep his distance from Zuo Xingyun, avoiding suspicion so thoroughly that even his mother wouldn’t recognize it. He had thought Zuo Xingyun was someone who wouldn’t stir up trouble either, but out of nowhere, the guy pulled a stunt like this, making a fool of him in front of everyone. What would other people think of him now? Looking this fiercely jealous, anyone who saw this would definitely misunderstand!
“Hey, hey, hey, let go, you fucking asshole!” Hua Sheng gritted his teeth, glaring at the back of Zuo Xingyun’s head, his angry eyes practically burning a hole through him. “Where are you taking me? Hey, are you sick in the head? Pulling and tugging in broad daylight, do you really have to make the whole class misunderstand before you’re satisfied?”
“Damn it, don’t grip so tight, it hurts, you asshole!”
“What kind of look is that on your face? What qualification do you have to drag me around? What, am I standing in punishment with someone else and you’re jealous?” Hua Sheng pouted to provoke him, every word striking right at the core of Zuo Xingyun’s heart. “Who are you anyway? At best you’re just a classmate, and the one I hate the most at that. What right do you have to police my friendships? Do you think you’re my wife?”
“Not to mention we have such a huge grudge between us, but even if we didn’t, a poor ghost like you still wants to dream of a swan eating tangseng meat? In the future, I’m going to marry a sweet, soft, cute girl. Who would ever look at a hypocritical, perverted, sleazy man like you?” While running off at the mouth, Hua Sheng faintly felt Zuo Xingyun’s fingers tightening, squeezing his bones together and hurting like hell. Instantly, he instinctively tried to pry Zuo Xingyun’s fingers away. “You, I’ll say it again, let go!”
Stung into drawing a sharp gasp of breath, he saw that Zuo Xingyun paid him no mind at all, dragging him with long strides toward some unknown place. Hua Sheng ground his teeth, wanting to plant a kick right on Zuo Xingyun’s backside, but just as he raised his foot, Zuo Xingyun, as if he had eyes on the back of his head, turned around without warning.
His expression was ice-cold, his gaze congealed into a thin layer of frost, and his eyelashes were long and straight like drooping willows by a lake. When he looked at Hua Sheng, he possessed an intensely intimidating presence, causing Hua Sheng to unconsciously tone it down.
His vision drifted, feeling a bit guilty inside. Why was he acting so fierce? Could it be that what he just said really triggered him?
“L-look, what are you looking at?” His voice dropped a good several octaves, and his tone wasn’t nearly as punchable as before. “I haven’t even kicked you yet, stop staring at me like that.”
The next instant, his right arm was yanked upward. He only felt a quick flash of pain in his arm that dissipated just as quickly. It turned out to be one of Zuo Xingyun’s fluid, practiced motions, pressing Hua Sheng’s arm behind his own back. At the same time, his body was bent sharply downward, and his eyes widened abruptly. The moment his body grew heavy and Zuo Xingyun pressed close to his ear, he realized with a shock that he was completely immobilized.
Hua Sheng rolled his eyes in disbelief, a hesitant “Huh?” slipping from his nasal passages.
Smooth as flowing water, executed in one go, it was the standard subdue-and-apprehend technique police used on criminal suspects.
Inappropriately, the phrase “What’s up, officer?” popped into his head.
“Z-Zuo Xingyun, how dare you pin me down?”
Zuo Xingyun pressed down on him with a dark face as they marched forward, his expression as serious as an investigator handling a case. His handsome brows were furrowed tightly, his sharp eyebrows and starry eyes making him look all the more righteous and imposing.
Hua Sheng felt like his arm was about to be dislocated from being pinned down like this. Brandishing his other hand in the air, he threw punches and kicks. Since he couldn’t reach Zuo Xingyun’s body, he let loose a string of dissatisfied curses. Acting completely by the book, Zuo Xingyun pressed on his shoulder with his right hand while supporting his waist, giving him a gentle push forward.
“You mother… Ah, shit!” The bustling Hua Sheng was shoved into a pitch-black room by him. Tripping his feet over some unknown object, just as he was about to collapse, he realized his hands were free again and reacted with lightning speed to brace himself against a nearby surface.
Almost fell to my death.
He steadied his posture, taking heavy pants of breath as he turned his gaze to scan the surrounding furnishings.
Dilapidated desks and chairs, unclaimed bookcases, a rectangular object draped in white cloth, easels smeared with various colors, and a few school uniforms piled off to the side.
No. 3 High School’s famous garbage dump.
The so-called garbage dump was the place where all kinds of miscellaneous items were stored: broken desks and chairs from the classrooms, brooms with worn-out bristles, snapped mop handles, broken pianos from the music room, abandoned easels from the art room, and so on.
“Are you out of your mind? Why’d you bring me here? Couldn’t you at least pick somewhere clean? It’s filthy!” He immediately snatched his hand off the piano, disgustedly pulling out a tissue to wipe his hand while cursing away. “Not saying a word, think you’re so cool… You, why are you locking the door?”
To Hua Sheng’s astonishment, Zuo Xingyun neatly and decisively shut the door, sliding the latch into place.
Hua Sheng remembered it now; there was a ghost story associated with this room.
It was the classic campus urban legend found in every school. This wasn’t an ordinary classroom; it was an imitation antique building with red walls, green tiles, a hip-and-gable roof, and several red pillars outside the door that looked remarkably like a temple.
Initially, the school planned to designate this place as an exhibition center for school history or something similar. But due to insufficient budget, a location that was too remote, poor Feng Shui, and various other reasons, construction was halted just as the basic frame was put up, leaving the inside completely unfurnished.
Since they had already built it, they couldn’t just let it go to waste. The school invited a famous local Feng Shui master for guidance, and densely planted trees meant to ward off evil spirits and suppress bad luck all around the building. Using it for anything else didn’t make much sense, so this room deep in the woods ended up being used to store miscellaneous items, and conveniently, school leaders never came here during inspections.
Having been shoved and jostled all the way here by Zuo Xingyun, Hua Sheng hadn’t realized they had walked to such a remote place. Remembering the widely circulated campus horror story now, a chill ran straight down his spine.
Deep in the woods, inside a bizarre building, the sound of a piano would often drift out in the middle of the night. A few brave souls went in to explore, only to pull back the white cloth covering something to find it was actually a coffin!
Just as they were frightened out of their wits, trembling in every limb, and trying to escape, the door suddenly slammed shut by the wind. Huddled together in cold terror, they heard a loud thud from inside the coffin.
Nobody knew what happened that night; they only knew that when those students came out the next day, they looked like their souls had been stripped away. They wouldn’t say a word when asked, just shook their heads, and dropped out of school a few days later.
Hua Sheng shivered violently, shuffling his body closer to Zuo Xingyun. Even though he didn’t believe in such utter nonsense of a ghost story, still…
He turned his eyes stiffly, secretly sizing up that object covered by the white cloth.
It didn’t look like a coffin; it was probably a piano.
Thinking that he had been leaning against it just moments ago made his heart skip a beat and filled him with lingering fear.
Suddenly, his shoulder was tapped.
“Ah!” Reacting violently, Hua Sheng let out a shriek, springing up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
The leap landed him straight into Zuo Xingyun’s arms, and Zuo Xingyun smoothly leaned down, embracing him from behind.
One of his arms wrapped around Hua Sheng’s shoulders and neck, while the other secured his waist and abdomen, locking him firmly in his embrace.
Hua Sheng’s entire body jerked in shock. Zuo Xingyun buried his face in the crook of Hua Sheng’s neck, his soft strands of hair brushing against sensitive, bare skin as his burning lips pressed against his scent gland.
“Mmph…” Hua Sheng’s heart stopped cold with tension, terrified that Zuo Xingyun would bite down, and he didn’t dare breathe a single loud breath.
He heard his scorching breath and caught the scent of white tea growing more intense.
“D-don’t try anything funny…”
Even though it was broad daylight, this building was nestled within a grove of trees, and dense foliage blocked out a portion of the light. What little illumination managed to filter through the dust-filmed glass windows reached even less of the interior.
In the chaotic space, Zuo Xingyun’s breathing and his own heartbeat were tightly intertwined. Despite the dead silence, Hua Sheng felt that his surroundings were deafeningly noisy.
Zuo Xingyun rubbed twice against the side of his neck, speaking in a raspy voice.
“Hua Sheng, I’m jealous.”
Hua Sheng started, keeping his neck frozen while shifting his eyeballs to look at him. “Jealous? Are you out of your mind?”
“You’ve been so cold to me these past few days. Even when we run into each other, you won’t look me in the eye. Why?” Zuo Xingyun’s voice carried a grievance. “You don’t like me, and you laugh and play with others without holding back at all. I was standing right beside you, and your eyes didn’t have me in them.”
“Is today the first day you found out I don’t like you… Ow!” A sharp pain flared at Hua Sheng’s neck as Zuo Xingyun took a bite right into his collarbone.
“Ah-ah…” Reflexively shrinking downward, Hua Sheng found that Zuo Xingyun had anticipated it, the arm wrapped around his waist pulling him in tighter.
“I have no right to manage your affairs, I’m just an irrelevant person.” While speaking words of heartbreak, his hands weren’t honest at all, moving downward like a flexible snake to give his waist a firm, moderate pinch.
Hua Sheng was entirely ticklish, his body instantly turning to jelly.
“You fucking pervert, let go…” Hua Sheng frantically thrashed his arms, trying to break free, but Zuo Xingyun held him trapped completely solid. His furious roar laden with curses rang out again, “Damn it, pervert, stinking scumbag, go away, you sick freak who likes guys, ahhh!”
Amidst his flailing, Hua Sheng grabbed Zuo Xingyun’s hand and, throwing all caution to the wind, brought it to his mouth and bit down hard!
Zuo Xingyun’s body shuddered, and a muffled groan escaped his throat.
Hua Sheng put all his lethal strength into this bite. Short of biting through to the bone, it was enough to leave Zuo Xingyun bleeding for half an hour. Mimicking a dog attacking prey, he sank his teeth straight into the web of Zuo Xingyun’s thumb, his tongue tasting a metallic, salty tang.
Zuo Xingyun paused for a few seconds, taking a deep breath. “Let go.”
Hua Sheng加重了力氣 (doubled down on his force), answering with practical action.
Fresh blood flowed along the split wound down to the corner of Hua Sheng’s mouth, presenting a kind of wild beauty imbued with a violent aesthetic from Zuo Xingyun’s angle.
Grinding his back teeth and staying silent for a moment, Zuo Xingyun simply used his uninjured hand to grab Hua Sheng’s jaw.
“Mmph…” Hua Sheng winced as the pain made him squint, dense eyelashes pressing into a cluster. Blood remained smeared at the corner of his mouth, and some of it transferred onto Hua Sheng’s fair cheek via Zuo Xingyun’s fingers.
The best way to handle a cat was to pick it up by the back of its neck, since the scruff was its fatal weakness. The same went for handling Hua Sheng, a diversionary tactic, attacking the enemy’s rear to rescue the front.
Because of Zuo Xingyun’s immense strength, Hua Sheng’s mouth was forced open, and abundant saliva mixed with fresh blood dripped from the corner of his mouth down to his pointed chin. His cheeks were visibly flushed hot with red.
“Hua Sheng, you’re hurting me.” Zuo Xingyun used his thumb to evenly smear the blood across his lips. “My heart feels very sour, and my hand hurts a lot.”
Hua Sheng’s cheeks were flushed bright red from a mixture of shame, anger, and oxygen deprivation.
“So painful… Mmph…”
Zuo Xingyun closed his eyes, pressing a light kiss to his trembling eyelashes.
Terrified out of his wits, Hua Sheng shivered as the overbearing scent of white tea drilled straight into his nasal passages, rendering his legs weak.
Alphas were terrifying.
“Hua Sheng.” Zuo Xingyun pulled him close, his high bridge of the nose pressing tightly against Hua Sheng’s cheek, before sinking his teeth into his earlobe and slowly edging closer to the gland at the back of his neck.
Facing a formidable enemy, Hua Sheng trembled as he covered his gland with his hand. “Get lost…”
Zuo Xingyun closed his eyes, devoutly kissing his pale knuckles, and muttered huskily, “Hua Sheng, can I mark you?”
“N-no way!” Hua Sheng flatly refused. “If you dare… I’ll, I’ll kill you!”
Zuo Xingyun took a deep sniff, then pulled him into a tight embrace, his voice hoarse. “Alright.”
Hua Sheng shrank downward, bumping into the abandoned piano, which emitted a hasty, clattering burst of chords from beneath them.
“Hua Sheng…” Zuo Xingyun lifted his chin and heavily pressed his lips to his.
The taste of rust spread amidst their entwined lips and teeth, accompanied by another wave of lingering, watery sounds like crashing waves against his chest, threatening to completely drown Hua Sheng.
“Mmph…”
Completely at the mercy of another, completely unable to move, once again, he had lost this round.
White tea and sweet orange intertwined and blended together, the crisp sweetness hitting just the right note as it drifted over and enveloped the entire room.
Yet even with his body completely suppressed, Hua Sheng still refused to yield. Struggling to move his mouth while pushing against his chest, he mumbled indistinctly, “Mmph… I’m going to tell my older brother!”