“The person with the second-highest dice roll.”
Cen Jin raised his eyebrows, a rare, radiant expression blooming across his face. His voice was soft and delicate, the tail-end lifting slightly as if tipped with a fishhook, instantly hooking the young men and making their lips curl upward in anticipation.
“Come here.”
He decided to keep them in suspense.
Though unsure of what to expect, the young men held their breath collectively, the sound of swallowing nearly imperceptible amidst the surrounding clamor.
Though silent, virtually all of them converged on the exact same thought:
“Boyfriend.”
They exchanged glances, checking one another’s dice scores, and quickly identified who ranked second.
Cen Jin felt Talon shift closer, his voice dropping an octave. “Is that second from the bottom or second from the top?”
“Second highest, counted from the largest to the smallest.”
In an instant, every gaze in the room zeroed in on the man who had remained largely silent the entire evening.
Who could recall that this gathering had initially revolved entirely around Wei Xin? Yet now, Cen Jin, the newcomer, had become the focal point of the boys, reducing Wei Xin to a peripheral figure.
A voice piped up from the crowd, “Should we pick someone else?”
Because Wei Xin’s initial attitude toward Cen Jin had been so overtly frosty, everyone naturally assumed Wei Xin despised him.
Wei Xin stood up, casting a cold sideways glance at the person who had spoken.
The man instantly clamped his hand over his mouth.
Standing at nearly 1.9 meters tall, Wei Xin strode over and stationed himself beside Cen Jin, his tall frame virtually blocking the overhead lights, casting a deep shadow that enveloped the boy’s diminutive figure.
Cen Jin tilted his head back, resting his hands against the sofa cushion as he looked up at Wei Xin. He resembled an innocent white rabbit that had stumbled straight into a hunter’s trap one fateful day yet the trapped little bunny remained entirely oblivious, gazing up at the impure-minded hunter with a nearly naive expression.
An ineffable surge of protective instinct flooded the air.
Wei Xin’s hands trembled slightly as he fought to suppress the morbid desires lurking deep within him.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. He suddenly realized he harbored an intense craving for this type of boy as well.
Wei Xin’s thoughts were a tangled mess; he had believed his grip on these extreme, distorted impulses was ironclad by now.
Yet just a few breezy, careless words had shattered the psychological defenses he had spent years meticulously building.
Talon was growing restless. Though Cen Jin hadn’t called upon him, looking at Wei Xin standing right there made him mentally substitute himself into the scenario.
“Well? What’s next?” Talon urged.
“Why did it have to be you…” Cen Jin forced himself to put on an oblivious act, feigning hesitation.
“How about” Talon barely got two syllables out before Wei Xin’s glare cut him short.
Talon retreated a fraction, voluntarily clearing out the space right in the center.
Wei Xin’s throat felt constricted. “What’s next?”
Cen Jin lifted his eyes to meet Wei Xin’s, then darted his gaze away just as quickly.
Wei Xin suddenly felt an urge to grab the boy’s face, to hold it steady so those eyes could only look at him, shielding him from the lecherous, filthy-minded scoundrels around them.
Cen Jin looked back up. None of them caught the flash of pure mischief that danced across his eyes the fraction of a second before he raised his head.
“Kneel down and bark like a dog.”
At that moment, absolute silence descended upon the entire booth.
Even the blaring music and the restless crowd outside failed to breach the dead, oppressive stillness enveloping their corner.
“Xiaojin…”
Talon’s rationality snapped back instantly, his voice carrying a tremor. His eyes locked onto Wei Xin, reading the other man’s silence as an imminent crisis signal.
Having run with Wei Xin for so long, how could Talon fail to understand what kind of person Wei Xin truly was?
Though outwardly taciturn, aloof, and occasionally prone to deliberately fading into the background, Wei Xin was actually the undisputed center of gravity among their circle of next-generation hunters. Calling him the leader of their clique was no exaggeration.
Wei Xin loathed having his boundaries violated, especially when it came to insults targeting his dignity.
The last person who dared humiliate Wei Xin in such a manner had been dealt with personally by Wei Xin himself; that fool was still lying in a hospital bed with his cognitive functions entirely unrecovered.
Standing with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, Wei Xin uttered not a single word, looking down with a detached, towering stillness at Cen Jin.
Though Cen Jin outwardly maintained a fearless facade, his fingertips were anxiously scratching against the sofa upholstery, tearing frantically at the leather surface.
‘Does he know I’m a vampire…?’
“No, he doesn’t know yet. Rest assured, he won’t make a move against humans.”
The crushing pressure suffocated Cen Jin, making it feel as though an invisible weight was pressing down on his chest, cutting off his oxygen.
Cen Jin kept his chin lifted for only a moment before his neck began to ache.
Yet dropping his head now would mean losing face completely; others might mistake him for someone easily frightened into submission merely by being stared at.
Not daring to meet Wei Xin’s ferocious glare which looked capable of strangling him the next second Cen Jin unfocused his pupils, letting his gaze drift aimlessly somewhere past Wei Xin’s shoulder.
“Wei Xin…”
“Calm down…”
“Forget it, let’s just drop it.”
Sensing the situation turning volatile, the onlookers hastily chimed in to defuse the tension.
Cen Jin felt as though time had stretched into eternity, his neck aching with soreness and fatigue.
Failing to hold his gaze any longer, he shifted his eyes away and stammered out, “If you don’t dare, then never mind.”
“Why are you looking so fierce?”
The more he spoke, the more aggrieved he felt, the final words practically swallowed whole inside his mouth.
While Wei Xin had initially felt a spike of annoyance at Cen Jin’s demand, the sight of Cen Jin looking as though he had just been bullied instantly dissipated that flash of anger.
What is this? Making himself out to be the bad guy?
He hadn’t even done or said anything yet was the boy actually on the verge of tears from mere intimidation?
Unsure of what bizarre thoughts were spinning through his own head, driven by an inexplicable impulse, Wei Xin dropped to a single knee right beside Cen Jin’s legs.
He figured he must have genuinely lost his mind. Cries of shock from his friends echoed in his ears, but right now, his entire world narrowed down entirely to Cen Jin.
His face aligned precisely with Cen Jin’s knees.
For some inexplicable reason, a sudden, dark urge flared within him to sink his teeth into those smooth, rounded, porcelain-white knees and leave a mark of his own.
Like a dog.
He wanted to drink in every single reaction flickering across Cen Jin’s face, refusing to miss even the most minute expression.
Yet the words that actually left Wei Xin’s lips were: “And then?”
“Th-Then… then…” Though Cen Jin had been the one to issue the demand in the first place, he suddenly found himself stuttering.
What then…?!
He had already told him to kneel and bark like a dog just a moment ago, why keep asking and asking?!
If he forced Cen Jin to repeat those words out loud again, how on earth was he supposed to say them?
To his relief, Cen Jin no longer needed to tilt his head back. Lowering his chin, he still lacked the courage to direct his gaze at Wei Xin.
He muttered under his breath, “Bark like a dog a few times…”
Wei Xin lapsed into silence once more.
Cen Jin lifted his eyes, only to find Wei Xin staring at him unblinkingly.
As if deliberately waiting for Cen Jin to initiate eye contact, Wei Xin spoke up the moment their eyes met: “Teach me.”
Cen Jin wasn’t an idiot; if he actually barked to demonstrate, wouldn’t he be the one acting like a dog?
“No.” He didn’t want to speak to Wei Xin anymore. He realized this man was thoroughly wicked too.
Ever since walking over, he had done nothing but snap at him, and now he was refusing to play the game properly, dodging penalties with every excuse in the book.
Hunters were sworn enemies of vampires, and the old adage held true.
As a baby vampire, Cen Jin found it utterly impossible to cultivate any affection for a hunter.
Yet Wei Xin continued backing him into a corner. “Why not anymore? Aren’t you going to punish me?”
Cen Jin felt something brush against his calf, rubbing friction against his thin crew sock light and ticklish, refusing to stop despite his attempts to shake it off. When he lowered his gaze to glare at Wei Xin, the man wore that exact same impassive expression.
“Go away…”
The man kept leaning against his legs. So hot, so frustrating.
“What?”
Cen Jin felt a sudden pinch on the flesh of his calf, causing him to shudder involuntarily. Without thinking, he lifted his leg and kicked straight at the man’s shoulder.
“Get away!”
If he pulled down his sock, a bruised, reddish fingerprint belonging to a wicked man would undoubtedly stand out against the plump curve of his calf flesh.
Drawing one leg up to rest his foot on the sofa, Cen Jin wrapped his arms around his shins and gently rubbed his calf, glaring down coldly at the man seated on the floor. “Bad dog.”
His skin was blindingly fair, untouched even in the areas shielded from the sun, letting the chaotic neon lights of the bar splatter across his snow-white flesh in a riot of uninhibited colors.
His shorts rode up higher with that posture, exposing an intensely alluring curve. The shorts were slightly loose, and from a lower angle, one could even catch sight of the delicate white drawstring hidden inside a thin cord dangling perilously close to the hem of his shorts, completely unnoticed by its owner.
It planted an overwhelming impulse in the viewer to reach out and pull that knot loose.
Wei Xin sat frozen in a daze, temporarily abandoning any concern for how pathetic his current posture looked. He raised a hand toward the spot where he had just been kicked, though his palm ended up pressing flat against his chest instead, feeling the frantic, hammering rhythm of the heart pounding beneath his palm.
Ultimately, Wei Xin never barked like a dog. Enduring the weight of several burning gazes, he retreated to his own seat and drank in silence.
To coax a smile back onto Cen Jin’s face, Talon barked a few times right beside his ear.
He even grabbed Cen Jin’s hand, attempting to lick his fingers.
Talon was a bad dog too a dog in heat.
It wasn’t until Cen Jin gave him a hard slap across the face that Talon finally reined himself in and stopped wagging his tongue around.
‘I suppose this counts as bullying them, right?’
Cen Jin checked in on his task progress.
“Still not vicious enough.”
‘Didn’t the malice points go up?’
“They did.”
‘Well, there you go! That means the bad deeds I pulled off were quite successful and effective.’
‘Do you think Wei Xin hates me? If he finds out I’m a vampire, will he kill me with a silver dagger or a silver bullet?’
Malice points could be harvested through three distinct pathways: people’s malice, negative emotions, and extreme desires. Even though this round had taken a rather bizarre detour, it had successfully accumulated the targeted quota of malice points.
Faced with that reality, the voice in his head wisely chose to say no more.
Cen Jin hadn’t touched a single drop of alcohol, yet the rest of the young men were thoroughly plastered. Believing these guys had genuinely reached the limits of intoxication, they began treating Cen Jin either as Talon or as Mann who had consumed relatively little and kept keeling over to lean against his body.
Naturally, Cen Jin’s fragile little physique lacked the strength to prop them up.
Still strictly adhering to his duties as a villain, whenever those alcohol-laden boys slumped against him, he would ruthlessly shove them away or dodge out of the way entirely.
Watching them collapse across the sofa, Cen Jin curled his lip.
I want to leave.
As for Talon’s whereabouts, he had presumably gone to the restroom.
Mann was likely the same; looking distinctly uncomfortable throughout the latter half, he had probably slipped away to the washroom too.
Cen Jin hugged his small schoolbag and curled up in the corner of the sofa.
He rested his chin on the top of his bag, his eyelids fluttering shut as sleepiness crept over him.
The cushion beside him sank. Thinking Talon had returned, Cen Jin didn’t react until a voice murmured right against his ear, delivering a string of ambiguous statements:
“You know what? Everyone says you’re a fickle little ghost who loves collecting boyfriends.”
The steady, unyielding timbre of that voice snapped Cen Jin wide awake. Keeping his chin planted firmly on his schoolbag, he turned his head sideways and caught sight of Wei Xin’s jawline.
He spared him a single glance before turning his head straight back, dismissing him entirely.
He despised this hunter.
“But he’s your boyfriend.”
He certainly is not.
Cen Jin preferred obedient dogs.
(Fine then.)
The voice sounded rather helpless. Truth is, you don’t actually have to date him for real; you can just trick him. After all, you’re supposed to be a fickle little swindler.
Little swindler Cen Jin currently had zero interest in paying attention to Wei Xin.
Yet Wei Xin refused to drop the subject, even reaching out to pinch Cen Jin’s chin, forcing the boy into an inescapable direct eye contact.
“Don’t you like me?”
Wei Xin remained entirely expressionless. Had he not spent the latter half of the evening guzzling alcohol, one might have assumed he hadn’t touched a drop at all.
Cen Jin bit his lower lip, desperately wanting to swat Wei Xin’s hand away, but ultimately held back, mirroring Wei Xin’s words right back at him: “Don’t you hate me?”
The moment he finished speaking, he felt the pressure of Wei Xin’s grip ease slightly. He violently wrenched his face away, pressing his cheek back against his schoolbag as he adopted a posture that screamed absolute distance.
“What are you mad about?”
“I’m not mad, I just don’t want to talk to you.”
“Just because I pinched you earlier?”
Wei Xin actually had the nerve to bring that up.
Cen Jin could hardly believe Wei Xin was this kind of person clearly acting so cold and aloof whenever a crowd was around, yet turning into this.
At that moment, Talon returned, and their conversation was forcibly cut short.