He fell asleep
This is a room full of youthfulness. It is a little messy, but very clean, and one can clearly feel that the owner is a person who loves life.
Shi Guang stood at the door and looked at this private space that belonged entirely to Lu Yu. For a moment, he was a little hesitant, not knowing where to put his feet.
Lu Yu walked to the bedside table next to his bed, swept aside the power bank and headphone cable that he had casually placed on it, cleared the half near the door, and then solemnly placed Shi Guang's professional books neatly on it.
"Put the book here. You can read it for a while before going to bed at night," he said.
He then strode over to the room's only small closet and opened the door. Inside hung a few of his own T-shirts and jackets. He reached out and shoved all his hanging clothes to the side, creating a significant space in the closet. He turned back to Shi Guang and said, "Hang your clothes here. They'll get wrinkled if they're always weighed down in your backpack."
Finally, he took Shi Guang's toiletries bag and walked into the small bathroom in the room.
Time's gaze followed uncontrollably.
He saw Lu Yu unzip his toiletry bag and take out his blue toothbrush and white towel. In front of the mirror on the sink was a toothbrush cup with Lu Yu's orange toothbrush in it.
Lu Yu inserted Shi Guang's blue toothbrush into the same cup.
Two toothbrushes, one orange and one blue, were placed tightly side by side. He unfolded Shi Guang's neatly folded white towel and hung it next to his own gray towel.
After doing all this, he clapped his hands as if completing an important ritual, turned around, and smiled brightly at Shi Guang at the door: "Done. Welcome in."
Time's gaze finally slowly shifted away from the two toothbrushes nestled closely together in the bathroom.
The room is not big and is simply furnished with a desk, a chair, a small wardrobe, and a window that offers a view of the courtyard.
And... in the middle of the room, that medium-sized, even a little crowded bed covered with clean white sheets...
A bed.
There is only one bed.
A standard double bed that is no wider than 1.5 meters.
Shi Guang felt as if all the blood in his body had solidified at that moment, and then suddenly rushed to his head uncontrollably.
All his attention had been consumed by Lu Yu's domineering yet gentle arrangements. He passively watched his books being placed by the bed, his clothes being hung in the closet, his toothbrush and towel juxtaposed with another person's... He was so distracted by these suggestive details that he completely ignored the most fundamental reality.
He will sleep in the same bed with Lu Yu tonight.
what to do?
The innocent 1.5-meter-wide double bed lay between the two of them.
Lu Yu raised his hand and scratched his neat short hair unnaturally. "Ahem, that..." He cleared his throat, his eyes wandering for a moment, and finally fell back on Shi Guang. "The rooms in the inn are really too tight. I asked the landlady, and they are all full."
Lu Yu took a step forward and pointed at the wooden chair next to the desk, which didn't look very sturdy. "How about... I sleep on the chair tonight? I can just make do with it."
As he spoke, he solemnly pressed the chair with his hand, and the chair immediately made a fragile creaking groan, as if protesting against this unrealistic proposal.
Shi Guang's gaze finally shifted from the bed to the rickety chair. His brows immediately furrowed tightly, "No."
He glanced at the thin chair, then looked up and quickly measured Lu Yu's height of at least 1.85 meters and his broad shoulders. He couldn't imagine how such a tall man could spend the night curled up in such a small chair like a shrimp.
More importantly, the temperature difference between day and night in Qingwa Town was huge, and the nights in the mountains were bitingly cold. He absolutely couldn't let Lu Yu catch a cold because of him at this critical moment.
"You'll catch a cold," he added.
Lu Yu had anticipated what he would say, and a hint of triumph flashed across his eyes. He immediately went up the stairs and proposed a second, more sincere proposal:
"Then... I'll go ask the boss lady for another quilt and sleep on the floor?"
However, Shi Guang shook his head again almost as quickly. His eyes swept across the cold wooden floor of the room. "The ground is very cold."
He rejected both proposals decisively.
Time passes by every second.
As if after an inner struggle between heaven and man, Shi Guang uttered a few words with difficulty:
"……It doesn't matter."
He paused, as if to muster up his courage, and then added in a lighter voice:
"I...I sleep very well and won't...move around."
Both of them tacitly did not continue the topic, but each took their own toiletries and walked into the small bathroom one after the other.
Lu Yu finished washing up first. He walked out of the bathroom and changed into a clean set of gray cotton pajamas. There was still some moisture on his short hair, and he looked refreshed.
He lifted a corner of the quilt and lay down on the outermost side. His tall body almost immediately took up half of the bed.
A few minutes later, Shi Guang also lingered and walked out of the bathroom. His movements seemed a little stiff, like a prisoner about to be executed, each step filled with a heavy sense of ritual.
He walked to the other side of the bed and stood there for several seconds before taking a deep breath. As if he had made up his mind, he lifted the quilt and lay down carefully in an almost horizontal position.
Suddenly, Lu Yu, who was lying down, sat up without any warning.
Shi Guang subconsciously closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
He felt the mattress beside him sink deeply due to Lu Yu's movements, and then he heard a rustling sound. He quietly opened his eyes and looked around in confusion.
Under the dim light of the bedside lamp, he saw Lu Yu reach out and pick up the square pillow that was used to decorate the bed inn.
Under Shi Guang's increasingly puzzled gaze, Lu Yu neatly placed the thick and soft pillow between their bodies.
Lu Yu turned his head and looked at Shi Guang, who was standing beside him with only a pair of eyes visible, with a playful smile on his face. He stretched out his hand like a general inspecting his own defenses, and patted the wall made of pillows with satisfaction.
"Alright," his voice echoed through the quiet room, carrying a soothing force. "The line has been drawn. No one is allowed to cross it tonight. Violators... anyone who violates it will be punished by buying soy milk for the entire team tomorrow morning."
Lu Yu considerately turned off the only light source at the bedside.
With a soft "click," the room was instantly engulfed in boundless darkness. With vision deprived, the other senses began to be infinitely magnified with an unreasonable and frantic amplification.
Silence, at this moment, has a concrete shape and weight.
The crisp sound of keyboard tapping coming faintly from the next room 201 actually further highlights the tranquility in this room.
In this silence, Shi Guang could hear the breathing of the person behind him so clearly.
The sound of his breathing was steady, long, and carried a steady, powerful rhythm. It wasn't the gentle snoring of Jiang Xiaopang, nor was it nearly inaudible like Sun Rui's. It was a sound brimming with life. It seemed as if the sound wasn't coming from behind him, but rather, through the vibrations of the mattress, directly into his eardrums. One sound after another, steady, hammering at his already out-of-beat heart.
He could clearly feel the mattress beneath him tilt slightly, yet not insignificantly, from bearing the weight of another person. It was as if he were sleeping on a slightly sloping hillside, with a strong, attractive heat source on the other side. He had to use all his strength to prevent himself from rolling towards the heat source due to the pull of gravity.
The sense of smell has also become the most loyal traitor.
A complex scent permeated the quilt. There was the clean, soapy scent lingering from the inn's laundry detergent; the cool, herbaceous scent of his own shower gel; and then there was... a more overbearing scent of Lu Yu. It was a scent hard to describe, like clean cotton basked in the sun on a summer afternoon, with a hint of salt, the lingering sweat of a young man after exercise.
This unfamiliar smell, filled with strong male hormones, enveloped him pervasively, invading his every breath and inevitably plunging his brain into chaos.
He felt every nerve in his body tense and on the verge of collapse. He curled himself up in the small space that belonged to him, his body as stiff as a board, not daring to move. He had never shared a bed with anyone so close.
This feeling is so strange, so dangerous.
But at the same time… in the deepest corner of his heart, in that corner that even he himself was unwilling to admit, there was a poisonous attraction quietly growing in the darkness.
He closed his eyes, and his long eyelashes trembled slightly uncontrollably in the darkness.
I am destined to be sleepless tonight.
Time seemed to stretch so long in the darkness that one minute felt like a century.
Shi Guang didn't know how long he remained in that rigid position. He only felt his limbs and bones begin to protest with subtle aches from the excessive tension. His mind was unusually clear, and a chaotic stream of thoughts flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern, from the awe-inspiring wood carvings in the ancestral hall during the day, to the bustling noise of the celebration banquet that evening, to the two toothbrushes side by side in the bathroom mirror... In the end, all the images froze on the steady, powerful breathing behind him.
Gradually, the breathing sounds behind me became longer than before.
He fell asleep.
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