Zhou Xingyu stood quietly to the side, watching the two people in front of him clink glasses and converse with an intimate posture.
A surge of discontent and jealousy bubbled up in his heart, making him want to turn and leave immediately. Yet, he stubbornly rooted himself to the spot, trying to act as an insider in this manner.
Suddenly, a slight tug at his cuff brought Zhou Xingyu back to his senses. He realized that Mo Yunyu had moved closer at some point, his fingers lightly tugging at the sleeve of the matching stage outfit to pull him out of his vinegar-filled thoughts.
“I’m a bit tired. Let’s head back,” Mo Yunyu said in a low voice, his eyelashes drooping as if he were exhausted to his core.
Without overthinking it, Zhou Xingyu raised his hand and naturally took hold of Mo Yunyu’s hand, adopting a posture almost identical to the one they had used on stage.
The skin of the hand he held was delicate, and the texture felt wonderfully surreal.
Zhou Xingyu had actually been afraid that Mo Yunyu would violently shake his hand off, but the other did not. Sweeping away his earlier gloom, a proud look gleamed in his eyes as he glanced at Shi Jingchi. “Then we’ll head back first. Have a good time, Teacher Shi.”
Shi Jingchi nodded in acknowledgment. As he watched the two figures walk away until they almost merged into one and disappeared through the doorway, an expression of deep thought crossed his face. His gaze drifted to the wine glass Mo Yunyu had left on the table, and he frowned almost imperceptibly.
“Are you drunk?” Once they stepped outside the grand hall, Zhou Xingyu, supporting Mo Yunyu, acutely sensed that something was off with him.
“I am not!” Mo Yunyu’s voice immediately piped up with a hint of indignant defensiveness, even though his stride had already begun to wobble out of control.
Zhou Xingyu was thoroughly amused by Mo Yunyu’s stubborn denial. So the young master’s alcohol tolerance was actually this pathetic, getting drunk the moment he touched a drop.
With much difficulty, they finally made it back to the dormitory. Mo Yunyu sat blankly in his chair, watching Zhou Xingyu bustle about.
The person before him seemed exceptionally busy, wiping his face one moment and changing his shoes and clothes the next, driving away any chance of sleep.
“Stop moving around.”
As his clothes were tugged, Zhou Xingyu looked down in confusion to see Mo Yunyu lifting that pretty face and whining softly.
“You’re making my head spin.” Mo Yunyu pointed a single finger accusingly at the double-visioned Zhou Xingyu in front of him. “Stop moving.”
Zhou Xingyu instinctively took a step back, but he hadn’t expected Mo Yunyu to suddenly reach out and grab his belt.
“I said no moving!” Mo Yunyu’s eyes widened in frustration, though a closer look revealed just how muddled and drunk he truly was.
“You’re drunk,” Zhou Xingyu coaxed in a low voice, setting the towel aside and trying to get Mo Yunyu to loosen his grip.
Mo Yunyu’s grip finally relaxed, but the moment he let go, his wobbly stance gave way as he tipped backward toward the bed. Perhaps the fleeting sensation of weightlessness sobered him up by a fraction, because his hands thrashed wildly in the air, trying to grab onto something to slow his fall.
Zhou Xingyu, who had reached out to steady him, was dragged down right along with him. Fortunately, his reflexes kicked in just in time, and he braced both arms above the youth.
The tipsy young master’s gaze drifted aimlessly, looking either into empty space or fixing entirely upon him.
Zhou Xingyu had seen it all along; the young master pinned beneath him right now was already incapable of processing anything rationally.
Therefore, he was essentially at his mercy.
The chaotic thoughts in Zhou Xingyu’s mind wrestled back and forth before finally surrendering to the monster of desire.
His gaze grew even deeper, burning with an intense heat as he stared at Mo Yunyu like a predator locking onto its prey.
Yet the drunken young master remained as willfully capricious as ever, attempting to shove away the source of his danger. “Go away.”
Zhou Xingyu closed his eyes briefly to steady his rapid breathing, then opened them again to begin coaxing the naive young master.
“Don’t move. You have something on your face.”
Mo Yunyu fell for it completely. In his drunken state, he was completely devoid of awareness, having no inkling of what the other was doing or what was about to happen.
With slightly damp palms trembling from tension, Zhou Xingyu gently stroked Mo Yunyu’s cheek. Their breathing intertwined, lingering together like lovers in the honeyed throes of a passionate romance.
However, Mo Yunyu disliked this sticky, clinging contact and turned his face away. “Don’t touch me.”
Even when he’s drunk, he still hates my touch?
Dark, gloomy emotions spread unchecked. Hardening his heart, Zhou Xingyu lowered his head directly and sealed the lips that had just uttered those rejecting words.
Mo Yunyu’s already fuzzy brain was thrown into complete disarray by this kiss. The entirely unfamiliar sensation terrified him, and his hands pushed outward with all his might, which only prompted the other to part his lips and tongue, deepening the kiss ruthlessly and without reservation.
Having tasted the sweetness, Zhou Xingyu felt like a stray dog that had found a delicious bone, desperately wanting to gnaw it down to the very last scrap.
By the end, Mo Yunyu could barely snatch a breath in between, and his defensive pushes had grown entirely feeble. It was only after a long, lingering moment that Zhou Xingyu finally and reluctantly pulled his lips away from Mo Yunyu’s.
A fine silver thread of saliva stretched between them in the air, snapping instantly upon contact.
Mo Yunyu’s entire face was flushed with a soft red hue brought on by the kisses. His breath came in warm, hurried gasps, sweet and heavy, hovering thick in the space between them.
“Hiss.” The moment Mo Yunyu opened his eyes, a vague, lingering soreness pulsed throughout his body.
That was secondary, though. The real question was: why on earth was Zhou Xingyu in his bed?
“You’re awake?” Zhou Xingyu released his arm from around Mo Yunyu’s waist, a flicker of apprehension in his eyes.
Uncertain of what the current situation actually was, Mo Yunyu threw off the blanket and sat straight up. He was dressed neatly in his clothes, looking nothing like a post-drinking disaster scene.
“What happened?” He rubbed his aching head, struggling hard to piece together his memories, only to suddenly notice the figure beside him reaching out an arm to embrace him again. Instinctively, he shoved the other away.
“Don’t touch me!” Mo Yunyu glared at Zhou Xingyu with a mixture of shock and suspicion, itching to kick him right off the bed.
“Are you planning to abandon me after getting what you wanted?” Zhou Xingyu asked, his tone laced with grievance as if he had been despoiled and stripped of his purity for nothing.
Hearing those words, Mo Yunyu bristled like a startled cat, his face turning thoroughly scarlet. “What nonsense are you spewing? What do you mean abandon?”
Yet he never expected Zhou Xingyu to burst into tears right on the spot. The moment his gaze caught the tears pooling on that face, his bravado vanished instantly, and his voice tapered off into a whisper.
“Please don’t cry. I really don’t remember anything from last night.” In a rare display of utter panic, Mo Yunyu found himself half-tempted to believe he really must have done something catastrophic to make a grown man break down in tears.
Zhou Xingyu’s normally ice-cold eyes were rimmed red from crying. Paired with his handsome face, he looked pitiful enough to tug at anyone’s heartstrings, packing a devastating punch. “Forget it then. It doesn’t matter.”
A heavy silence descended between them. Mo Yunyu’s brain went into overdrive as he desperately tried to recall the previous night, though his eyes kept wandering honestly back to Zhou Xingyu’s tear-streaked face.
Sister was right after all. A man’s tears really are uniquely devastating.
Having watched Mo Yunyu squirm in helpless distress enough, Zhou Xingyu finally spoke up slowly. “Yesterday, you…”
As if finding it too embarrassing to voice aloud, he hesitated and stammered, which only drove the recovering Mo Yunyu up the wall with anxiety. “Spit it out! What did I do to you yesterday?”
“Yesterday, you made me help you…” Zhou Xingyu trailed off, shifting his gaze meaningfully toward a certain area on Mo Yunyu. The implication was crystal clear.
Realizing what it meant, no matter how arrogant Mo Yunyu usually was, he was genuinely horrified by his own drunken antics.
“I… you…” Mo Yunyu had no grounds for disbelief, especially since he could indeed sense a strange, unfamiliar sensation lingering. Right now, he had zero clue how to handle the situation unfolding before him, his eyebrows knitted together in sheer panic.
“Let’s just pretend nothing ever happened.” Zhou Xingyu dropped his eyelashes in a simulated display of heartbreak. In reality, he was placing a high-stakes gamble, wagering on whether the young master possessed even a shred of pity for him.
Fortunately, the heavens still favored him. He had won the bet.
“I’ll take responsibility.” Mo Yunyu let out a long sigh of resignation, reaching up to tug irritably at his sleep-fluffed curls.
Zhou Xingyu lifted his gaze toward the young master, tears still clinging undried to his lashes. “Then can you keep me as your sugar baby?”
Hearing that phrase, Mo Yunyu’s eyebrows knitted together once more. “Keep you?”
Zhou Xingyu immediately slipped off the bed, kneeling on one knee on the floor, wagging an invisible tail like an eager puppy. “You know my family situation isn’t good. If I want to establish a foothold in the entertainment industry, I need someone to back me up.”
He reached out and pulled Mo Yunyu’s hand over, pressing it against his own cheek. Looking up at him from below, his eyes displayed undisguised vulnerability.
Having willingly surrendered the upper hand to Mo Yunyu, he waited simply for his sentence to be passed.
Mo Yunyu’s emotional state could only be described as intensely complicated. Above all, his greatest fear was what would happen if his sister ever found out he was keeping a male sugar baby.
Externally, however, he managed to regain his composure. Reverting to his usual imperious expression since he was now calling the shots, he replied, “If you want to get anything from me, you have to put in the work.”
Displaying an eerily docile attitude, Zhou Xingyu rubbed his cheek further against Mo Yunyu’s palm, mimicking a pet rubbing affectionately against its master’s hand. “I understand.”
At that single action, heat rushed back into Mo Yunyu’s face. Heaven knows he had originally only intended to make the guy his personal errand boy; who could have predicted things would spiral into this mess?
“Next time, no matter what happens, don’t… just stay by my side, that’s enough.” The flush on Mo Yunyu’s face refused to fade, making his delicate features look as radiant as peach blossoms.
Any outside observer would never have guessed that Mo Yunyu was the one taking advantage of Zhou Xingyu; instead, it looked very much like Zhou Xingyu had done something unspeakable to Mo Yunyu.
“It’s fine, I’m willing.” A genuine smile finally broke across Zhou Xingyu’s face as he gazed earnestly at Mo Yunyu.
Mo Yunyu found himself growing increasingly flustered under that gaze, feeling his resolve to keep him as a sugar baby starting to waver.
Acutely sensing the shift in Mo Yunyu’s mood, Zhou Xingyu pulled him straight into his arms. “I really am willing. Let me stay by your side, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Next time you aren’t allowed to just hug me like this!” Realizing his momentum was slipping, Mo Yunyu unceremoniously shoved himself out of Zhou Xingyu’s embrace with a huff. “I’m going to wash up!”
Watching Mo Yunyu’s retreating back, Zhou Xingyu narrowed his eyes in quiet, triumphant satisfaction.
Seeming unaccustomed to their new dynamic, Mo Yunyu kept an intentional, cautious distance from Zhou Xingyu for the remainder of the day. Fortunately, the production team had given everyone the day off, and neither of them intended to go home.
Thus, no matter how much distance he tried to put between them, they remained cooped up in the exact same room.
As night fell, Zhou Xingyu slipped quietly onto Mo Yunyu’s bed. Just as Mo Yunyu was drifting off to sleep, Zhou Xingyu startled him so badly that his drowsiness vanished entirely.
“What are you doing?” Mo Yunyu kicked out at him, attempting to halt Zhou Xingyu’s advance and ideally punt him straight off the mattress.
Zhou Xingyu’s hand easily looped around Mo Yunyu’s bare ankle, his fingers tracing a lazy, ambiguous path across the skin.
“I’m fulfilling my duties as a kept man.”
The room was pitch black save for the moonlight squeezing in through the corner of the curtains. Using that sliver of light, Mo Yunyu could vaguely make out Zhou Xingyu’s silhouette, alongside a gaze that felt hot enough to scorch him.
His sense of crisis skyrocketed. He felt like a leopard hunting in the night, while he himself was merely prey whose leg had already been clamped in its jaws, locked in a dying struggle.
There was nowhere left to run.