Bittersweet

He looked at Philo steadily: "What is the name of that brother?"

Fei Luo lowered his eyes, and his voice was so soft that it seemed that it could be blown away by the wind: "Wei Shao, what's your name?"

Wei Shao's heart was beating heavily in his chest, making him feel uneasy.

He squatted down and pushed aside the messy debris on the ground, picked up the photo inside, and slowly glanced at the boy's short golden hair and sharp profile.

If in non-overlapping time and space, there is a person who looks the same as you, has the same preferences, the same name, and comes from the same place.

The biggest possibility...

You are the same person, not a coincidence.

Philo's hoarse voice sounded above his head: "It has always been only you."

It's always just me.

Wei Shao repeated this sentence in his mind.

"I recognized you on the street that day, so I took you home. I didn't mistake you for someone else." There was no warmth in the storage room. Philo shivered slightly and unconsciously wrapped Wei Shao's coat tighter. "You've been gone for a long time...you don't remember me."

Wei Shao was in a state of confusion, and hurriedly tried to explain: "But I never—"

His voice stopped abruptly.

He suddenly remembered that when he was seventeen, he had a car accident. Although he didn't feel like he had forgotten anything when he woke up, some things seemed to have changed invisibly.

For example, he suddenly seemed to no longer care about the troubles of the previous generation.

For example, when he wanted to smoke, something in his mind seemed to stop him unconsciously.

He abandoned that gray and rebellious time without any regrets, and like all normal students, he attended classes, took exams, and went to higher education.

Even Wei Xia laughed at him, saying that he had tempered himself during his two years in high school.

Wei Shao never thought deeply about the reason, he just thought that his middle period was over.

In addition to Wei Xia, there are teachers, classmates, and his father...

Everyone said that he had changed, but he himself didn't feel that there was anything wrong, as if something had deliberately erased his ability to perceive this change.

He held his head and murmured in pain, "What the hell is going on... Which part did I forget..."

Philo had been observing his expression. Seeing this, he frowned and immediately stepped forward, held his hand, raised his head and kissed him on the lips: "It's not important. Don't think about it if you can't remember it."

He kissed her again: "Wei Shao, do you believe me now?"

Wei Shao's voice stagnated: "I..."

"It's okay." Philo seemed to see his dilemma and was not sad. He just grabbed his hand and stroked the back of his neck. "You can mark me first so that I don't have the chance to betray you, and then slowly decide whether to trust me or not."

Wei Shao felt burned by his gaze and suddenly retracted his hand: "I didn't say I didn't believe it."

Fei Luo refused to retreat. He looked at Wei Shao and said, "Don't you want to mark me?"

This time he asked with much more confidence than he did last night, probably because he was finally sure that Wei Shao liked him.

Wei Shao's face was grim. He said with difficulty: "You know that I, I might——"

"I don't care. I just want the present." Philo pushed him against the cabinet door. Wei Shao's back collided with the cabinet door with a dull sound. Philo repeated, "The future doesn't matter. I just want the present."

Wei Shao took a deep breath, held Fei Luo's shoulders and pushed him ten centimeters away: "That's not what I meant, Fei Luo, I won't leave on my own initiative."

Philo's eyelashes trembled slightly.

Wei Shao tried his best to calm his voice: "I just don't like to do things that I'm not sure of. What's more, there are precedents... I don't want to do it again without knowing what's going on, and I don't want to put you in danger."

He went on to say: "Now is not the time to discuss this - I have a few more points to make clear about what you said."

Wei Shao put on the coat that Philo was wearing and helped him button it up: "Now, you must answer each question I ask truthfully. You can't be vague like before."

Philo's hand tensed for a moment, and he said quickly, "Yeah."

"Are you sure I'm the brother you're talking about?"

"I won't admit my mistake."

"Why is the person in the photo's hair this color?" Wei Shao pointed at the hair in the photo that was between platinum and gold, and asked another question whose answer he had already guessed.

Philo was silent for two seconds, then said, "According to what you said, it was because of the 'washing' of your hair."

"..." Wei Shao frowned and corrected, "That's called a 'Piao' head."

He decided that he would never bleach his hair again in his life.

Philo did not refute that these were the exact words he had said when he was not familiar with the insect language, and he obediently said "Oh".

Wei Shao glanced at Philo in the photo, then looked at the tall young man in front of him, and asked the most incredible question: "Why does my age change look different from yours?"

He clearly looks much older than Philo in the photo, but now the situation is reversed. Could it be that the speed of time flowing on both sides is different?

Philo shook his head: "I don't know... You haven't changed much every time you come."

Wei Shao extracted information from his words: "Every time? How old were you when we first met?"

Philo looked a little reluctant to answer the question, but because of his promise to "answer truthfully", he could only whisper: "Seven years old."

Wei Shao: “…”

Suddenly I felt like I had turned into a beast.

He said with difficulty: "I...I haven't done anything weird to you, right?"

Philo shook his head: "No, I confessed to you three times after I turned fifteen, and you rejected me every time."

"Ah?!" Wei Shao's face was full of disbelief, "I can actually reject you three--"

"Wait," Wei Shao suddenly raised his voice after coming back to his senses from the shock, "Fifteen years old? How can you confess to someone before you reach adulthood? What if you get cheated?"

What if the one who goes in first is not him, but Ji Peiyan, that old fox with a human face and a beastly heart?

That guy might agree!

Philo was silent for two seconds, then nodded obediently: "I won't do that next time."

Wei Shao: “…” There’s going to be a next time?

After the shock and secret joy passed, Wei Shao felt a sudden chill in his heart.

If Philo had liked him so long ago...then what did his disappearance bring to the other party? Has the thing he fears most now already happened once?

He didn't even dare to think about it.

Fei Luo raised his eyes to look at his expression, and suddenly said: "I didn't think so much at that time. You were my only friend at that time. I was afraid that you would not come to play with me one day. I also heard you say that partners can accompany each other for a lifetime, so I confessed my love."

Hearing him say this, Wei Shao almost suspected that his former self had deliberately had bad intentions. Otherwise, why would he talk about being a partner or not with a minor for no reason?

He felt a little guilty and a little uncomfortable.

He had forgotten all about such a good thing and such a good past... and he even went crazy and asked for a divorce.

Philo grabbed his hand and interlocked their fingers: "Anything else you want to ask?"

Wei Shao did not completely relax because of Philo's words. He asked seriously: "If that's the case, what about the imager? Why did you buy it? Don't lie to me, I already know what it is used for."

Philo glanced at the figurator and said, "At that time, I had some political matters to discuss with that noble... I needed to gain his trust, and this thing happened to be useful to me."

It wasn’t as bad as Wei Shao imagined, but it wasn’t much better either. He pressed on: “What do you mean it just happened to work? Have you used it? And those stimulants and hallucinogens in the cabinet.”

Philo nodded.

Wei Shao's breath was choked.

Fei Luo lowered his eyes and said, "I want to know my life experience, but I can't remember some things from my childhood. I can only use external forces to stimulate my spiritual sea. Later, I found that those things had too many side effects and my body couldn't bear it, so I gave up."

Wei Shao was stunned: "Is this really the case?"

Philo asked back: "What else could it be?"

What he said made sense, but Wei Shao always felt something was wrong.

Philo suddenly smiled faintly, like ice and snow just beginning to melt, and said, "In fact, I wanted to take a look at yours at the beginning."

"Sometimes, I miss you too."

Wei Shao was stunned. These two sentences and the smile on Filo's face made him unable to think, and his soul felt dizzy.

If Philo had kept avoiding this point, he would have become even more uneasy, but Philo looked frank and confident, as if everything was just as he said.

Wei Shao thought that maybe she liked her, but it was not to the point of being unforgettable.

He was not disappointed. This was the best possibility he could think of: they had a not-so-tragic past and a future with unlimited possibilities.

Wei Shao was about to nod when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. His voice suddenly tightened again: "Those tools, I mean the ropes, handcuffs and knives, what are they used for?"

Philo's eyes flashed, and then he walked calmly to the empty wall, fumbled for a while, and then placed his palm on an ordinary-looking area.

The originally normal wall suddenly cracked in the middle and then separated to both sides. Wei Shao realized that there was a storage space here.

——It was filled with cold food that the government had expressly prohibited from being kept privately.

Wei Shao opened his eyes wide. After all, he essentially grew up in a peaceful environment, so he was still shocked to see this scene.

Philo was calm: "Just like these, they are all useless things."

"Is this something I can see?" Wei Shao's attention was successfully diverted. He turned to Philo and asked nervously, "Is it safe for you to put them here? Will they be discovered?"

Philo smiled, as if he thought he was cute, and touched his cheek: "It's safe, and they are all old-fashioned weapons, it's okay."

Wei Shao let out a sigh of relief and finally stopped being suspicious.

He looked at Philo and asked one last question: "Why did you wait until now to tell me?"

He didn't say what it was, but he knew Philo understood.

"I just feel that the most appropriate time has not yet arrived." Philo's smile faded, he lowered his hands, and said slowly, "...I'm sorry for making you sad."

Wei Shao frowned, took his hand into his palm, and rubbed it soothingly: "I won't blame you for this."

He looked at Philo and added seriously: "But you must not lie to me."

Philo put his arm around his waist and rested his forehead on his shoulder: "Well, I won't."