Chapter 33
Yuan Chuyu sat in the car, his seatbelt fastened, head bowed, one hand supporting his chin, the other tapping on his phone screen, which displayed Chi Shu's ID card, which he had just photographed from the front desk.
He glanced down at it for a few minutes, then exited, opened Weibo, thought for a moment, and smoothly typed in that string of garbled characters for his nickname.
The search results popped up quickly, but his index finger remained suspended in the air for a long time without clicking on it. Instead, he carefully read a recent Weibo post displayed on the homepage.
The sunlight in the library was always the best; so good that when she secretly dozed off, her eyelashes seemed to melt into the rosy glow.
[During exam preparation season, I taught her how to solve problems. She drew a heart on the back of my hand, crookedly, like a little flower blooming on a cloud.]
I didn't want to wash it off, but I sweated and it got stained.
Yuan Chuyu frowned more and more as he looked at the timeline; it didn't add up.
He paused briefly, then typed the same few words into the search box—
Another account, seemingly a fake Monkey King, popped up. This Weibo post, with an extremely high plagiarism rate, was actually posted several years ago.
Yuan Chuyu pondered for two seconds, then clicked directly into the album and immediately saw the photo of the ginkgo leaf.
He stared at the photo for a long time, perhaps because it was so beautiful, or perhaps because he dared not look at anything else. His breathing became shallow, like a pebble sinking to the bottom of a pond. He stared at it for so long that the driver was almost at the destination.
A phone call came in, and Yuan Chuyu finally snapped out of his motionless state and answered it.
Cheng Yanjin's voice was still a little hoarse. He lowered his voice, as if afraid of disturbing the person next to him who was sleeping: "Is it resolved?"
Yuan Chuyu looked out the car window and hummed in agreement.
Cheng Yanjin was visibly happy, and couldn't help but hum a few lines of a cheerful song softly. Suddenly remembering that someone was sleeping, he quickly shut his mouth again.
But he was so happy he couldn't hide his emotions, and in his joy he couldn't help but thank heaven and earth: "Brother Yu is reliable! Thanks to you! But I'm not bad either! I was thinking how could I leave her at a time like this? I took a taxi straight to Ying Shan Lake, and I actually caught Lin Xiaozhu there. It's not hard to keep her here, is it? I had a sudden inspiration, and directly—"
He slammed on the brakes halfway through his sentence, his heart pounding. He licked his lips, feeling the lingering, intoxicatingly sweet scent.
He covered the phone's microphone with one hand, crouched down, glanced back at the sleeping person, and whispered, "That way, I won't feel so bad about being locked up at the temple later—"
“But there’s something I need to tell you,” Yuan Chuyu suddenly changed his mind after hearing the second half of Cheng Yanjin’s sentence. He adjusted his posture and saved the photo to his phone. “The college student I met today looks a lot like Lin Langyi’s first love. I did warn him, but I can’t say what will happen next.”
Cheng Yanjin was like a dog happily preparing to fetch its food bowl, full of joy, only to have an iron bowl slammed onto its forehead with a "bang," making its brain buzz.
He paused for two seconds, managing only a hollow "Huh?"
"Go to sleep first," Yuan Chuyu said calmly, recalling the subtle sounds he heard when Chi Shu called Lin Langyi earlier. "Don't overthink it. I'm going home to rest too."
With such a bombshell dropped, how could Cheng Yanjin possibly sleep?
His mind was exceptionally clear, and he wanted to ask more, but Yuan Chuyu had already hung up the phone, clearly unwilling to say anything more.
Cheng Yanjin stood there blankly, holding his phone. His initial happiness seemed to have been doused with a bucket of cold water, leaving him feeling utterly helpless and embarrassed.
He turned his head to look at the sleeping person, feeling a sense of bewilderment, as if he had both won and lost, and remained unresponsive for a long time.
*
After washing up, Yuan Chuyu sat on the edge of the bed and turned off the light strip on the headboard before realizing that there was still a crack in the curtains, which was the only source of light in the room.
He turned his left hand over; he had taken off the watch on his wrist before washing up, but the pearl bracelet was still on his wrist all day and he hadn't taken it off for a moment.
He leaned back, sinking into the soft quilt. After a couple of seconds of silence, he opened his left hand again in front of his eyes, examining it closely by the light of the moon.
He had held her close at night, pressing himself against her tightly.
If Chi Shu hadn't interfered and disrupted the plan tonight, if Cheng Yanjin had just been sleeping soundly on the sofa, unconscious...
Yuan Chuyu clenched his palms, turned around, closed his eyes, and stopped thinking about it.
But everything in the dream felt too real; the clock on the wall sped backward, and he was back in Shajiang Residential Area, back at the kitchen doorway—
He didn't want her to do what was shown in the video, feeding him medicine with her lips and tongue in front of him.
She wouldn't listen to him.
She took the water glass from his palm, took a couple of sips as she walked, then squatted down by the sofa, holding a strip of medicine in front of her eyes and examining it closely.
The foil box rattled as he slowly walked around to the kitchen doorway and silently watched her.
She peeled open a pearl, put it in her mouth, took a sip of water, and slowly leaned down. Before getting close to Cheng Yanjin, she slowly lifted her eyelids and glanced at him as if she were gently fiddling with a seashell.
He must have been provoked by that glance, which is why he suddenly stood up from the kitchen doorway, took a few quick steps over, grabbed her arm before she could feed him, and pulled her up completely.
The glass in her hand was knocked over onto the sofa, and the remaining half glass of water was spilled all over the thin blanket, leaving a large, irregular, dark water stain.
She was roughly pressed onto the sofa, inevitably sitting on Cheng Yanjin's lap. The cup rolled to the floor amidst the subtle movements, but the sound was still completely hidden by the blanket.
He was lost in the embrace of her lips and tongue. The pills were crushed in the chaos, spreading a bitter and astringent taste. But he swallowed them one by one, still wanting more, and sucked on them with unsatisfied desire, trying to snatch the last few pills from her mouth.
Don't feed him, feed him to me.
She seemed to choke, the cough stuck in her throat making her whole body tremble slightly. She leaned back little by little, pushing him away, and even tried to push him away with one hand.
He cupped her cheek in one hand, his thumb pressing firmly on her chin, causing a faint blush to rise to her cheeks. Then, as if to make up for it, he gently rubbed her thin skin back and forth.
She stepped back, but he leaned forward relentlessly, pressing down on her until they were both backed against the sofa with nowhere left to retreat.
Her resisting hand slid down his chest, where he grasped it, interlacing his fingers together, and then pressed them together onto the blanket beside them.
It was wet there; the thin blanket was covered with water spilled from the cup, and beneath the blanket was Cheng Yanjin's burning body temperature.
The person in the deep sleep had slight bobbing movements with each breath, like a time bomb that could wake up at any moment.
She seemed startled by the close proximity after being soaked, and desperately tried to pull her hands away from the damp blanket, at least to avoid touching Cheng Yanjin's warmth.
The rustling of the fabric during the struggle sounded like pieces of paper falling onto a few scattered flames, instantly igniting a fierce fire.
His heart pounded wildly, amplified infinitely in the silent midnight. He took that step, as if pushing a domino, and all reason and morality collapsed instantly. He couldn't go back, nor did he want to.
She struggled to no avail, and finally punched his shoulder twice in frustration. She still had to spare a sliver of consciousness to check on the sleeping man, for fear that the noise would wake her fiancé.
“Go inside…not here.” She finally gave in, pointing an arm over his shoulder toward the bedroom, her eyelashes fluttering.
He turned his head, nuzzling her arm that was draped over his shoulder, and kissed her passionately all the way to her. Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at the tightly closed bedroom door, which seemed like a black hole, as if he were opening a Pandora's box.
He was such a despicable, unworthy, and unacceptable person that he was begging for something unjust and immoral that would not be tolerated by the world.
He discovered that the guilt and self-loathing he should have felt had faded to the point of being negligible.
He closed the door again, the room was pitch black, and he began to plunder as if he had lost his mind. Perhaps a long, long time ago, at the Jinsha Mansion, he had usurped Cheng Yanjin's room, and from that moment on, he had been shamelessly waiting for the gears of fate to turn back time to this moment.
He knew the layout of the house; he had been here before, invited to visit by his brothers without any reservations. Yet, he shamelessly took advantage of this to trick her into going inside.
He was in a room that wasn't his, lying on a bed that wasn't his.
And what doesn't belong to him...
The window wasn't closed tightly, and the wind blew in, causing the curtains to flutter slightly and reveal a small gap.
By the fleeting glimmer of light, he could make out the person sitting on his waist. Her legs were slightly bent and crossed, and the birthmark on her thigh was as thick and bright red as blood. It was the only red spot in the entire black and white world, which captivated him completely.
He wanted to greedily grab her ankle and drag her forward, but perhaps even God couldn't stand it at this moment, because he suddenly entered a state like sleep paralysis, unable to move.
He opened his mouth, wanting to coax her affectionately, but his throat was empty and he couldn't make a sound.
He was imprisoned on the bed, unable to move or speak, yet he still refused to give up the candy that was already at his lips, gazing at her with increasingly seductive eyes, enticing her to lean down and kiss him tenderly.
Her long hair slid smoothly down her shoulders, briefly piling up on his ears like swimming little fish, before tickling him and slipping away again.
He wanted to hold her in his hands countless times.
She stared at him for a while, their noses almost touching. As their breaths mingled, she seemed to sense the restless, not-so-pure look in his eyes. So she pulled her legs together, pressed her knee against his abdomen, and, as if to teach him a lesson, slowly and forcefully ground it along the lines of his abdominal muscles.
He felt his body tense from the intermittent, ticklish trampling, unable to make a sound, only able to gasp for breath in his chest. Finally, she moved to his shoulder, and with a turn of her head, he could kiss that small birthmark.
It's stuck in this limbo, driving me crazy.
He gazed at her with a gaze that seemed to pull at her like silk, slowly lowering his chin and mouthing the words, "Sit up a little more."
"Lin Langyi?" A hoarse voice, raspy from being drunk, rang out through the door, followed by the crisp sound of a glass hitting the coffee table leg.
Cheng Yanjin woke up and saw that the light was still on. When he got up, he accidentally kicked a glass that had rolled to the ground.
He was so caught up in his own thoughts that he couldn't pull himself out of his daze, but the noise around him was so clear that he could almost instantly tell what was happening outside the door.
He could hear stumbling footsteps behind the door, each one closer than the last.
The door wasn't locked.
Lin Langyi straightened up and stepped back, seemingly wanting to end this absurd farce.
The weight on his body vanished as she left, his little finger twitched, and he slowly licked the glistening wetness on his lips, his Adam's apple bobbing restlessly.
He seems to have recovered from the sleep paralysis.
The choice was back in his hands: retreat or advance. In his more than twenty years of life, he had never so clearly and recklessly made a wrong choice.
He sat up immediately, grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his arms, holding her firmly as if he wanted to tear down all the pretense of their relationship.
She slumped back onto him, but he unceremoniously threw her off and forcefully pushed her into the bed.
The blanket rustled, and her long hair spread out like a fan on the bed, her whole body sinking deep into the quilt.
In a dizzying moment, he pinned her down, covered her eyes with his left hand, and leaned down to kiss her passionately.
With a "click," the doorknob was turned.
Yuan Chuyu suddenly opened his eyes from his sleep. The curtains were blown up by the wind, and the moonlight dappled in.
He paused for two seconds, then threw back the covers, got out of bed, and went to the bathroom.
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