“You’re back.” The smile on Zhou Xingyu’s lips vanished completely the instant he laid eyes on Mo Yunyu.
His eyes were red, his nose was red, and his naturally curly hair drooped in a dejected, wilted manner, projecting an image of someone who had suffered monumental grievances.
Unless he had just been home, who could possibly have given the young master such a grievance?
Without missing a beat, Zhou Xingyu adjusted his expression and pulled Mo Yunyu over to sit on the bed. “Have you had dinner? Would you like me to go to the cafeteria and get you something?”
Mo Yunyu shook his head. With a despondent expression, he kicked off his shoes, burrowed under the blankets, and hid himself away. His mind was an absolute mess right now; he just wanted to rest properly and refused to think about anything else.
Seeing this, Zhou Xingyu said nothing further. After glancing at the small, huddled lump on the bed, he turned and headed out the door to track down some sweets for Mo Yunyu.
Once he ate something sweet, his mood ought to improve a little.
Stepping outward step by step, opening and closing the door behind him, Zhou Xingyu finally gave in to his inner self-reproach once he was out in the hallway.
He didn’t even possess the status to ask; he could say nothing at all.
Before he could dwell further on what might have happened, his phone buzzed twice. It was a text message from Zuo Yan.
“Keep an eye on Mo Yunyu. Don’t let anyone else touch him.” “Including you.”
The very person responsible for reducing Mo Yunyu to this state had actively crawled out of the woodwork. Zhou Xingyu’s hand tightened unconsciously around the device, a heavy sinking feeling pooling in his chest as he typed back: “Understood.”
After waking up from a nap and munching on a small cake, Mo Yunyu’s condition improved noticeably.
He had sorted things out in his head. In this world, no one could force him to do something he disliked. Since they were all pressing down on him this aggressively, he would just throw all of them away.
As for Zuo Yan, the worst-case scenario meant dodging him at every turn.
He had already permanently blacklisted the guy in his mind anyway.
Yet, watching Zhou Xingyu bustling about to wait on him hand and foot, Mo Yunyu felt a twinge of guilt, rubbing his nose with a sense of lingering sheepishness.
Still, they had only made a verbal agreement; it wasn’t as though they were in a proper romantic relationship. Refusing him now should be totally fine?
Desperate to untangle himself from this messy web of emotional baggage, Mo Yunyu hardened his heart. Without a second thought, he blurted out the classic fuckboy line: “How about we just go back to how things were before?”
“What?”
Zhou Xingyu froze mid-motion, his pupils spinning blankly until they locked onto Mo Yunyu’s earnest gaze, at which point the full weight of what he had just heard finally registered.
Even though the young master was chronically self-centered and operated under the assumption that the world revolved entirely around him, watching the rare vulnerability flicker across Zhou Xingyu’s face caused his Schrödinger’s conscience to give a sharp, painful throb.
Forcing himself to stay calm, Zhou Xingyu spoke slowly, his tone carrying an unprecedented sincerity: “Is there something I haven’t done well enough? I will definitely change.”
Monitoring from the sidelines, 609 was practically jumping up and down in frustration, if it had feet, that is. Had it not been for the rule against interfering with the host’s performance, it would have roundly chewed out the other party for being an elite-tier simp of the new century.
Zhou Xingyu’s single sentence successfully dragged Mo Yunyu’s conscience out of its Schrödinger state into actual existence, prompting the youth to respond with matching sincerity.
“You haven’t gained any real benefits from me, and you’ve put in way more effort. I can’t give you any good resources right now either, at most just some pocket money.”
“Besides, a relationship like this does your future career zero favors. With your talent, there is no need at all for you to take shortcuts.”
Had Mo Yunyu been addressing someone who only followed him around for the sake of climbing the social ladder, that speech would have caused an instant epiphany, reforming the person into a model citizen.
Instead, he was facing Zhou Xingyu, whose sole motivation for wanting to get ahead was simply to stay by his side forever.
Noticing how serious Mo Yunyu sounded, Zhou Xingyu lowered his head, masking the desperate anxiety bubbling up inside him.
“Did something happen?”
Hearing that question, Mo Yunyu’s mind flew back to that impeccably dressed scoundrel, shifting his focus entirely and making his teeth itch with rage.
“It’s nothing, just think it over for now.” With that, Mo Yunyu scrambled back onto the bed, whipped out his phone, and typed out a massive paragraph at lightning speed in his chat box with his older sister. He was definitely going to tell on him!
Ultimately, that giant wall of text never got sent. After trimming and deleting, it boiled down to a single sentence:
“Sis! Don’t believe a single word Zuo Yan says!”
Mo Yunniang replied: “?”
Staring at that question mark, Mo Yunyu began wavering again over whether to spill the details. While he hesitated, a newly popped-up notification hijacked his attention.
[Image] “Want to come over?”
Staring for a long time at the selfie, where clothes were half-open with zero attempt to conceal obvious seduction, Mo Yunyu forced himself to look away and rejected the offer with spine-straight integrity.
In his view, Shi Jingchi was undoubtedly the easiest problem to resolve. Things hadn’t even started, which meant ending them was even simpler.
“Sorry, we aren’t a good match.”
Firing off the traditional cookie-cutter rejection, Mo Yunyu tossed his phone aside and felt a wave of absolute relief, caring not a whit whether the person on the other end survived or perished.
Perhaps galvanized by Mo Yunyu’s parting descriptor of male siren, Shi Jingchi had spent the entire day diligently researching how to leverage male allure to captivate the person he liked.
After sifting through tens of thousands of fan comments and factoring in his personal advantages, Shi Jingchi had racked his brain to produce a photo featuring half-exposed clothing and bewitching masculine charm, the kind that, if published publicly, would cause fans to hemorrhage nosebleeds and expire on the spot.
Yet upon receiving that single sentence from Mo Yunyu, Shi Jingchi sank into a prolonged silence, experiencing for the first time the heart-stopping, cardiac-arrest agony his fans always complained about whenever he delayed a release.
Not happy.
The subsequent period remained relatively calm, save for Zhou Xingyu frequently trailing in Mo Yunyu’s shadow like a gloomy, damp ghost, leaving Mo Yunyu with no choice but to force himself to look the other way.
Naturally, Shi Jingchi observed all of this. Refusing to act rashly, he bided his time while treating the puzzle of Mo Yunyu’s exact type with the rigor of solving a world-class mathematical problem.
As for Zuo Yan, he had sent a continuous stream of messages ever since that night, every single one of which Mo Yunyu blocked outright.
By this point, the competition had advanced to the semi-finals. Following the previous rounds of elimination matches, only twelve contestants remained on the stage, and out of those twelve, merely five would successfully debut.
The show’s popularity was nearing its absolute peak, with Mo Yunyu and Zhou Xingyu standing out indisputably as the audience’s top favorites.
For reasons he couldn’t quite pin down, during the preparation phase for the public performance, Mo Yunyu kept experiencing a foreboding sense that a storm was brewing. Yet he had to throw his entire focus into the competition with zero bandwidth left for distractions, leaving him powerless against this innate sixth sense.
Until the day before the live broadcast, when he received a text message.
Fulfilling the appointment, Mo Yunyu arrived at the rooftop garden. There, he spotted the person who had summoned him.
The man radiated an ethereal, pristine aura, appearing gentle and benign on the surface, yet his presence instantly reminded Mo Yunyu of how the other had seduced him that night, whispering expressions of infatuation with fanatical devotion. Naturally, the photo also came to mind.
Shi Jingchi offered a smile that seemed to glow in the dim lighting. He understood well that his appearance served as an inherent advantage in his pursuit of Mo Yunyu.
“You’re here.”
Mo Yunyu gave himself a secret pinch to keep from succumbing to the man’s visual allure.
“Why did you ask me to come up here?”
At that question, Shi Jingchi’s expression turned grave as he pulled Mo Yunyu into a shadowed corner, navigating expertly past the blind spots of the surveillance cameras, clearly demonstrating an intimate familiarity with the layout of the rooftop.
Scanning the perimeter to ensure no one had followed them, Shi Jingchi pulled up an interface on his phone and handed the device over to Mo Yunyu.
“I found this on someone else’s phone. I felt you needed to see it.”
Initially, Mo Yunyu remained nonchalant, but the further down he read, the more shock replaced the rosy warmth of his face, draining it entirely of color.
Meanwhile, Shi Jingchi observed Mo Yunyu’s reactions quietly, his eyes alive with unmistakable, undisguised concern.
“Accidentally touched his hand today, his skin is seriously so soft.” “Snuck a photo while he was drinking water, that mouth is so red and pretty.” [Image] “If only he’d give me a blowjob, that would be amazing.” “Thanks bro, got some good material for tonight.” “Already busted one out.” [Image] “Isn’t that top one gross as hell? Can the admin kick this guy out?”
Line by line, sentence by sentence, the text blurred as Mo Yunyu’s grip on the phone trembled.
The screenshots of this anonymous group chat were flooded entirely with graphic objectification and sexual fantasies directed at him.
The late-summer evening breeze possessed a pleasant temperature, yet it chilled Mo Yunyu to the bone. Even the words on the screen twisted into foul, distorted shapes, churning his stomach with wave after wave of nauseating revulsion.
“So disgusting…”
Shi Jingchi supported Mo Yunyu with a protective arm, harboring a momentary flash of regret for thrusting such brutality directly upon him, yet terrified that Mo Yunyu would remain completely blind to danger while under investigation.
“These people hide too deep. The chat logs in these screenshots are anonymous, so I could only weed out a few individuals based on their remarks; I haven’t managed to track down all of them yet.”
Noticing the youth before him beginning to tremble, Shi Jingchi pulled him into his arms, striving to soothe his fractured composure.
“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid.”
After a long while, Mo Yunyu managed to regain a fragile semblance of calm. He looked up at Shi Jingchi with reddened eyes. “I want to quit the show.”
Shi Jingchi sighed softly. “Then let me walk you back to pack your things.”
Back in the room, Zhou Xingyu had been waiting for Mo Yunyu’s return. The moment he saw the youth walk in and immediately haul out a suitcase to start packing, panic seized his expression.
“Where are you going?” He grabbed Mo Yunyu’s arm, only to catch sight of tear-filled eyes upon meeting his gaze. “What’s wrong?”
Compared to Shi Jingchi, Zhou Xingyu, who had lived alongside him day in and day out for nearly two months, represented the singular source of genuine safety and comfort left to him.
When someone already feeling helpless receives comfort, their facade of stability shatters instantly. Tears spilled down Mo Yunyu’s face almost immediately, choking him so completely that words failed him.
Zhou Xingyu had never witnessed Mo Yunyu cry. Thrown into a state of total panic, he began fumbling awkwardly to offer comfort.
The faint sounds of weeping filtered out into the hallway. Unable to hold back any longer, Shi Jingchi pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Lifting his gaze to spot Shi Jingchi, then glancing back at the grievously weeping youth before him, a realization flashed through Zhou Xingyu’s mind. In an instinctive surge, he lunged forward and grabbed Shi Jingchi by the collar.