Chapter 46

"Because you saved me." He answered quickly with a high-spirited tone, "At the edge of that long river, it was you, brother, who saved me." Before Wenwen Momo's answer could be explained in detail, Xiang Mingqi pursed his lips and glanced to the upper corner.

He is reminiscing.

The moment he saw more useful details from the other person's facial changes, Pei Huai's wrist was pinched and a brute force pushed him headfirst onto the sofa. Xiang Mingqi leaped forward, pressing his arm against the side of his senior's head, blinking frequently.

"But I know you don't remember me. Because you saved so many people twelve years ago. I'm just one of them, just one-fifth of you whose names you can't even remember. And then, I fell in love with you without knowing what I was doing."

...It's still too abstract.

A thin layer of frost appeared in Pei Huai's eyes.

On that rainy night trapped in the mountains, he had indeed saved many lives, just as Xiang Mingqi had promised. He carried every child he could find, exerting all his might to cross a mountain threatening to collapse, carrying each one to safety. However, even after saving these people, his father remained dissatisfied with his actions, and he left Coal Valley with regret, unsure of what would happen next.

If Xiang Mingqi was one of them, then he really wouldn't have any special memories.

"Brother, in your opinion, this isn't something worth remembering." He spread out his five fingers, pressing them against Pei Huai's fingers in different places, "but it's everything in my life. It's the sunshine of my entire summer."

“…is a source of worship, admiration, and fanaticism.”

"Brother." Xiang Mingqi seemed to notice something was wrong with his senior's expression. He leaned close to his ear and bit his earlobe, saying, "Defiled you, monopolized you, and every second you were imprisoned by my side was like pulling the faith in my heart down from the altar. You are supreme in my heart. But my methods are despicable. I can even become the ugliest animal in the world."

Pei Huai glanced at him sideways.

"I want you, brother." The latter bit his lip, and the arm around his waist slowly tightened. "But you have always been admired by others, not just by me."

"So you won't let me go."

"Yeah." Xiang Mingqi smiled, "But I have confidence that I will take good care of you."

"Then there's nothing to talk about between us."

In this calm tone, Xiang Mingqi lowered his eyelashes: "I thought you would make a big fuss, brother. It seems that you already know that I will never let you go easily."

Pei Huai no longer responded to him.

"Brother, don't even think about leaving. Don't even think about stepping out of this room. Please." He blinked innocently and chuckled in my ear, "Don't even think about it."

He was hit by Pei Huai's elbow and bit his tongue.

"I can do this with you." He pressed his four fingers together against the lower edge of Xiang Mingqi's ribs, ready to exert force at any moment. A layer of coldness covered his obsidian eyes. "Password." He bent his index finger and gradually unbuttoned Xiang Mingqi's shirt, saying word by word, "Do this once, and I want you to tell me a password."

-

When the rope was folded into a loop and passed through the lower end, further around his lower back, Pei Huai turned his face away with a slight sense of discomfort. The fibers were fixed and sank into his tailbone, giving him a slight sense of flesh.

The rope was draped upwards, passed from the shoulders to the chest, and then slanted through the section of rope that was tightening around the lower abdomen. That small section was stuck horizontally between the lower abdominal muscles, and when it was pulled, the thin muscles bulged outwards.

Pei Huai bit his lips patiently.

The rope ends at the other shoulder, repeat the previous steps, forming a triangular area on the abdomen. Then go around under the arm and reach under the other arm.

At this point, the newly tied section just happened to fit neatly across the upper edge of the chest, and the squeeze in that triangular area made the firm chest muscles more noticeable.

Pei Huai blushed all the way to his neck and turned his head away.

He was so horrified by the erotic technique that he didn't want to look directly at it, but Xiang Mingqi played the instructional video while practicing on him. His head was buried in his chest, concentrating intently on learning the technique.

"Sure enough, being tied up through a shirt makes the flesh showing through more attractive." He reached out and caressed the chest muscles before his eyes, smiling and saying, "Brother, your muscles are perfect for this. Although the shirt always covers half of it, which is a bit of a hindrance. But from the chest to the stomach, there is always a kind of half-covered attraction."

Pei Huai ignored him, but the binding did not end there.

The rope passed through the back, circled around the upper arm and wrapped around the wrist, making the sleeves tighter. Then, he used a knot to tie the senior's hands together.

Pei Huai was pushed back by his shoulder bones, stretching his knees. There was still about two-thirds of the rope left to be tied, so the end was tied down from his hips and wrapped around each side of his groin.

But in this case, the feeling of flesh that was more obvious than chest muscles made Pei Huai's ears boil.

The hips are harder to train than the waist or chest muscles. No matter how thin you are, there is always a small part of softness. So when they are tightened, the overflowing feeling of the edge is even more wanton.

Even though Pei Huai is thin, his leg flesh will still react to the tightening.

"Brother, once your legs are tightened, it feels even more..." Xiang Mingqi smiled hesitantly, realizing that he had almost said a word the other party didn't like. "I want to touch it even more, brother."

Pei Huai didn't look at him: "Don't talk too much."

"You want me to solve it quickly? That way, you can get the first digit of the password." He shook his head and laughed, "No, I don't want to do that. That would be too fast. I still want to be intimate with you for a long time."

The latter's expression was not very good, and he turned his face away again: "...pervert."

Hearing this, Xiang Mingqi smiled, put his hand on Pei Huai's knee, and leaned closer.

"Brother, you don't think cursing like that is powerful, do you?" He swayed his body and laughed. "Brother, you only curse like that when you're angry or pushed to the limit. This won't work. What if we can't win the argument?"

"……Shut up."

"Okay, don't be angry. I won't talk about this anymore. Since you don't like to hear gossip, then I have to be blunt." He raised his body slightly and rummaged through the drawer beside the sofa to pull out a marker. The pen cap opened with a twist, he licked his lips and said with a smile, "Brother, I'm going to start."

When the brush head approached the skin on his thigh, Pei Huai's back stiffened.

"Wait..." Before he could open his mouth, a cool feeling slightly scratched the inside, bringing a very slight itchy sensation.

-

This is how many times they have done it.

After finishing, Xiang Mingqi seemed to have more ideas. He stretched his knees outward, humming a song, and drew a heart pierced by an arrow on his other leg. Pei Huai observed his hands and realized that he was ambidextrous.

The right hand writes the characters steadily, and the left hand does the same. The heart shape is symmetrical, and the strokes of the arrow are also neat, without a single stroke being crooked.

"That's how you forged the letter." Pei Huai tried to close his legs, but the noose kept him frozen in place. This forced, open position made his knees tremble slightly.

"Looks a lot like it, doesn't it?" Xiang Mingqi rubbed the font with his hypothenar, looked at the unresponsive ink, and sighed, "I was thinking of using this to clear myself. He's left-handed, so I use his too. I'll use the font he prefers."

"But that name..." He half-closed his eyes and thought for a moment. Suddenly, as if realizing something, a hint of surprise flashed across his eyes. "You, didn't mean to put the blame on him."

"Of course. If your cousin called you 'brother' like me, wouldn't you get goosebumps?"

Seeing that his senior ignored him, he nudged his head against his neck again and said, "But you're amazing, brother. You guessed everything after I said just a few words. It's a pity that you were so alert before and never fell for it. It's so hard."

Pei Huai didn't respond.

"My goal isn't to frame him, but to confuse you." He crossed his index fingers in mid-air. "Think of it this way: mixing up so many clues, like multiple layers of encryption. This will rob you of your ability to make correct judgments, but it can also delay things."

His eyes narrowed into slits as he smiled: "I can't always let my cousin have his way, right?"

After this exchange, Pei Huai no longer wanted to endure his writing. Xiang Mingqi, however, was still tracing his legs with great interest, his hands pushing his knees further apart.

He painted the snake's scales, body, and head, letting the pattern extend toward the inside of his knee. Perhaps unaccustomed to the brush, Pei Huai couldn't help but twitch at the touch of his skin. However, not only was he unable to move, his ankle was also captured, used as a vehicle for expressing his affection.

A black and white snake coiled around his thigh like a leg ring, and even its scales were depicted in great detail, stroke by stroke.

When drawing the body, the snake's tail just slides under the rope and into the red part that was tightened, like an inexplicable possession.

"During those days in the sanatorium, I had nothing to do. Every day, after taking medicine, completing physical rehabilitation, and checking various indicators, I would choose to write and draw in picture books in my free time." Xiang Mingqi was still bent over his knees, his snake body twisting inwards, wrapping around the skin that was compressed by the fibers. Every time there was a touch, Pei Huai's legs would subconsciously tremble. "Because I used to run to paint walls when I had nothing to do, I was scolded by the director many times. My uncle felt that I was embarrassed, so he occasionally gave me some picture books. So, drawing these animals in picture books was my only entertainment at the time."

Pei Huai still didn't want to give him a look.

"But the one I drew the most was you. Brother, it was you at that time, it was you who hugged me at that time."

He lifted Pei Huai's knees, and slowly pressed his lower abdominal muscles against the rope. He didn't care even if his stomach was stained with ink.

"Brother, when you were little, your hair wasn't even shoulder-length, and you hadn't dyed it yet. I remember you used to smile at others." He used his fingers to push back strands of his hair and said, "But you don't do that now. You're deeply hurt."