nausea
Cheng Xiaorui leaned against the cold concrete wall, drifting into a light sleep. The afterglow of the setting sun filtered through his trembling eyelashes, casting a subtle shadow on his pale face. The collar of his school uniform was askew, revealing the purple and red pinch marks on his neck. The dried blood at the corner of his mouth was like a glaring smear of cinnabar. Lin Wanqing had been sent away by him, leaving him alone on the empty rooftop.
The piercing sound of the iron gate being pushed open startled the sparrows on the rooftop. Lu Ziyi stood at the door, broom in hand, stunned. His gaze shifted from Cheng Xiaorui's bruised wrist to his bleeding knee, finally settling on his scarred yet still delicate face. The broom slipped and fell to the ground.
He slowly approached, his black school pants forming sharp folds as he squatted. His slender fingers grasped Cheng Xiaorui's chin, his thumb stroking the scabbed wound. Cheng Xiaorui gasped softly in his sleep, his warm breath brushing against Lu Ziyi's palm.
"Tsk." Lu Ziyi suddenly chuckled and pulled out his phone. In the camera, the knuckles of his fingers pinching Cheng Xiaorui's chin were distinct, and beneath Cheng Xiaorui's messy bangs, his bruised face had a kind of broken beauty.
When he picked the person up horizontally, his arms suddenly sank.
"So light? I didn't expect you to be so strong normally." Lu Ziyi frowned. The protruding shoulder blades under his school uniform made his chest ache. "Is he still human?"
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Zhao Dakun was throwing smelly socks onto Zhou Mingxuan's bed when the dormitory door was kicked open. Everyone seemed to have paused—Lu Ziyi stood at the door holding the wounded Cheng Xiaorui. The setting sun cast a blood-red shadow on his figure, while Cheng Xiaorui, limp in his arms, rested against his chest.
"Lu...Brother Lu?" Zhao Dakun's socks fell to the ground. "You, you!"
Lu Zi also walked straight to Cheng Xiaorui's bed and lifted the washed-white sheets. He seemed to be putting him down roughly, but he cushioned the back of Cheng Xiaorui's head with his hand just as it was about to hit the wall. He said nothing, but before standing up, he gently brushed the loose hair from Cheng Xiaorui's forehead with his fingers.
Zhou Mingxuan opened his mouth wide enough to fit an egg in it, "What...what's going on?!"
"Holy shit!" Zhao Dakun threw himself in front of the bed, then retracted his hand as if burned. "This...this couldn't be that Brother Lu, you've crippled someone and now you're having a last-ditch effort!"
Lu Ziyi suddenly turned around, and his eyes scared Zhao Dakun so much that he knocked over the washbasin. "Will I lose face if I take action?" He slammed the door and left, making the window frame buzz.
The dormitory was completely silent. The others exchanged glances. Cheng Xiaorui's exposed wrists still bore marks from being bound, but no one dared to ask any further questions.
Cheng Xiaorui was awakened by a burning pain in his throat. He tried to move his fingers, but the pain all over his body immediately caused him to break out in a cold sweat. While Cheng Xiaorui was stunned, he heard Zhao Dakun mumbling in his sleep, "Brother Lu...it's really not us..."
However, where he couldn't see, Lu Ziyi had set that photo as his lock screen.
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As morning arrived, Cheng Xiaorui's opening of the door brought all whispers to a halt. Over thirty gazes pierced him like steel needles—the bruise on his left cheek had already turned yellow, the pinch marks on his neck were barely concealed by his shirt, but the gash at the corner of his mouth still oozed thin traces of blood.
"I heard that last night..."
"Serves him right. Who told him to..."
The scattered chatter twisted into a hollow hum in Cheng Xiaorui's ears. He gripped his backpack strap tightly, his nails digging into the marks left by yesterday's grip, using the pain to force himself to his seat. Amid the scraping of chair legs across the floor, he heard the gasps of the girls in the back row.
As he slumped weakly onto the cold tabletop, the familiar, cold scent of mint cigarettes invaded his nostrils—it was Lu Ziyi's. Whenever he wasn't around, that person would always take his place, as if it were some kind of sovereignty-declaring ritual, along with the laughter and obscenities of Zhao Dakun and the others, polluting the small space he had.
Cheng Xiaorui buried his burning face deeper in his arms, trying to block it all out. However, a steady, yet overwhelming, sound of footsteps approached him with unwavering precision. Shiny black leather shoes stopped beside his desk, their toes spotless. Then, a pair of bony, slender, yet powerful fingers tapped the tabletop next to his temples with their knuckles, a crisp, undeniable sound.
When he looked up, he met Lu Ziyi's deep, unfathomable eyes. On the phone screen held up by the man, a maliciously spliced photo jarred Cheng Xiaorui's pupils. It was the maliciously photoshopped photo of him and Lin Wanqing again.
Will this ever end? A feeling of helplessness mixed with rage surged in his chest.
"Student Cheng," Lu Ziyi's voice was filled with false calmness. He frivolously lifted his chin with the cold metal edge of his phone, forcing him to look up, revealing his fragile neck and the wound at the corner of his mouth, "Can I talk to you for a moment?
Look, he's pretending to be so righteous again.
His wrist was suddenly clamped, and his thumb pressed hard against the wound from yesterday's rope. Cheng Xiaorui's vision went black with pain, and before he could react, he was dragged out of the classroom. The security cameras in the hallway flashed red, and Lu Ziyi chose to walk in blind spots.
Cheng Xiaorui's back slammed hard against the solid wall, shaking his internal organs. Before he could even catch his breath, Lu Ziyi closed in, a hand slamming against the wall beside his ear, completely trapping him in this tiny space. The cold scent of mint smoke mingled with the expensive, yet nauseating, lily perfume.
The phone screen in his other hand was almost touching the tip of his nose, and the distorted photo occupied his entire field of vision.
"You..." The warm breath with a dangerous smell sprayed on his ear, causing a shudder, "Are you interested in her?"
Cheng Xiaorui jerked his head away, only to be met with the other hand's hold, which had been waiting there. "Lu Ziyi, I don't understand what you're saying," he said, his voice hoarse and trembling with humiliation. "Please move aside."
Suddenly, cold fingers gripped his chin, forcing him to turn his head. Lu Ziyi's thumb pressed mercilessly against the corner of his cracked mouth. The sharp pain caused Cheng Xiaorui's eyes to instantly turn red. "She and I have nothing!" he practically growled, though his voice was weak from the restraint.
"What is this?" The phone slammed against his cheek. "Why is she staying with you? Huh?"
"Does it hurt?" The voice suddenly took on a twisted, pleasurable tone, as if appreciating his pain. The hand suddenly moved downwards, its jaws fiercely gripping his Adam's apple. The force was controlled just right, bringing a suffocating sense of oppression and fear without truly choking him.
Cheng Xiaorui's pupils contracted violently, and he felt a sense of lack of oxygen and immense humiliation. "I said... no..."
Lies." Lu Ziyi suddenly leaned in again, his nose almost touching his, a paranoid fire surging in his cold eyes, "She bought you a cake?" With each word he spoke, he moved closer, their breaths entwined with each other, with a creepy intimacy.
"Picking a skirt?" A warm breath brushed across his skin. "And holding your arm?" The last few words turned into a scorching airflow, burning directly on Cheng Xiaorui's cracked lips.
All the blood in Cheng Xiaorui's body seemed to rush to his head in an instant. Humiliation and anger finally broke through the dam of reason! He suddenly raised his knee and rammed it into the opponent's abdomen, but Lu Ziyi had anticipated it and used his thigh to press down even harder, holding him back.
"You never learn your lesson."
"What are you going to do now..." Cheng Xiaorui's voice was broken, and his Adam's apple rolled hard under the other's palm.
Lu Ziyi's eyes suddenly fell deeply on his bloodstained, slightly trembling lips, his eyes dark as the deep sea before a storm. There was something crazy and fervent burning in them that Cheng Xiaorui could not understand. "Prove it to me." Lu Ziyi's voice fell hoarse.
"What…"
"Prove that you don't like her." Lu Ziyi's thumb suddenly exerted force, prying open his teeth that were tightly clenched due to tension and resistance, and pressed his fingertips against his teeth, with an unquestionable aggressiveness in his movements.
Cheng Xiaorui's breathing suddenly stopped, and his pupils reflected the road
Zi Yi's face was so close. He saw that the pair of eyes that were always frozen in time seemed to shatter, and underneath there surged a frantic, uncontrollable undercurrent, like the last spark of reason before it collapsed.
His eyelashes trembled violently in extreme fear, like a dying butterfly trapped in a spider web. At the moment when Cheng Xiaorui was fixed by this strange and terrifying gaze——
Lu Ziyi lowered her head suddenly and fiercely grabbed his lips. It was not a kiss, but a one-sided bite and torture.
Punishment. The rusty smell of blood instantly exploded between his lips and teeth. Lu Ziyi's canine teeth deliberately cracked Cheng Xiaorui's injured lower lip, and the fresh blood just oozed out was swept away by the other party's greedy and fiery tongue.
Cheng Xiaorui jerked his head back in shock, but accidentally bumped into the other person's palm that had been placed there.
"Ugh... let go..." Cheng Xiaorui's faint pushes and whimpers were completely swallowed up by the two people's fiercely entangled, bloody breaths. Lu Ziyi's fingertips dug into his sweaty hair, holding him firmly in place, forcing him to raise his head and endure this brutal and possessive plunder.
When the hot tip of the tongue swept across his sensitive
When Cheng Xiaorui felt the pain on his upper jaw, he suddenly trembled violently as if struck by an electric current - the cold tiles, the suffocating pressure, and the touch deep in his throat... instantly overlapped with his memory of the cold tongue depressor and the disgusting examination in the medical clinic.
"What are you shaking about?" Lu Zi retreated slightly, a silver thread tinged with blood lingering between their parted lips, both ambiguously and cruelly. He deliberately thrust his knee forcefully between Cheng Xiaorui's legs, attempting to pin him even more firmly to the wall, his action tinged with humiliation.
The feeling of humiliation surged like a tide, burning away his last bit of sanity. He suddenly bit Lu Ziyi's lower lip fiercely, using all his strength until he tasted a stronger smell of blood.
“Snap!”
The sound of slaps resounded in the confined space. "Is it necessary to humiliate me like this? It's disgusting..." Cheng Xiaorui's voice was shaking and his eyes were red.
“…”
Lu Ziyi's face was knocked sideways by the blow, a few stray strands of hair obscuring his momentarily darkened eyes. He froze for a moment, his tongue slowly and almost absentmindedly licking the rapidly swelling wound at the corner of his lip, tasting the blood oozing from it.
The smell of blood seemed to sober him up for a moment. The madness in his eyes receded, revealing a blank, desolate space that even he couldn't comprehend. He seemed to... not know what he had just done.
Cheng Xiaorui's chest heaved violently, his bitten lips a dazzling crimson. "Don't use your dirty mind... to speculate about everyone..." Cheng Xiaorui felt a wave of nausea and chills in his stomach. He pushed Lu Ziyi away and stumbled back two steps.
"Disgusting..." He gasped, wishing he could escape quickly.
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