Futile Devices Scans

Xue Bao Tian woke in a room full of the fragrance of noodles. He lay on the hard plank bed and watched Yan Ye, who was cooking noodles with an electric stove, for a while before calling out to him. “Can you fucking turn on an electric fan or something? It’s hot as hell.”

Yan Ye looked toward Xue Bao Tian when he heard him. “You’re awake?” He picked up an old book and fanned Xue Bao Tian with it. “The electric fan is broken. I’ll get you a wet towel to wipe yourself down.”

“Forget it.” When Xue Bao Tian put on his clothes, he lowered his eyes and looked at the cigarette scar below his collarbone. Ointment had already been applied to it, and the cool sensation covered the faint swelling ache.

He mocked, “Last time you said you couldn’t bear to do it. This time you could?”

The noodles were already cooked. Yan Ye used an enamel cup to fill a bowl and brought it to Xue Bao Tian. “This time I was too angry and went a little too crazy.” Although he said that, there was not the slightest hint of apology in his tone. “I don’t regret it much either. Other than being afraid you’d hurt, I really did want to have this kind of connection with you.”

Xue Bao Tian took the enamel cup without much hesitation and scoffed. “If you fucking changed your surname to mine and called me Grandpa, our connection would be even deeper.” Sitting on a small stool padded with a soft cushion, he picked up the noodles. “I’ll count this cigarette scar as me paying you back. Say it, what else do I owe you? I’ll pay it all back today.”

“You’re blaming me.”

Xue Bao Tian swallowed the noodles in his mouth, his eyes sharp and smiling coldly. “I was ambushed by you, knocked unconscious, brought here, and fried like a fish over and over. If I didn’t blame you, I could fucking be buddies with God.”

He turned his still stiff, sore, and swollen neck a little. “How did you take me down?”

“A hand chop.” Yan Ye still showed no guilt. “I held back my strength.”

“Fuck.”

After eating two more bites, Xue Bao Tian set the bowl of noodles aside, wiped his mouth, and lazily bent down. He pulled out the solidly built little wooden stool he had been sitting on, his gaze turning cold and fierce as he raised it high and smashed it hard toward Yan Ye’s head!

“I told you, sooner or later, I’d kill you!”

Yan Ye instinctively wanted to dodge, but halfway through, he gave up and only adjusted the angle of his head, using the spot least likely to be injured to take the force of Xue Bao Tian’s blow.

His vision briefly went black. When he opened his eyes again, Xue Bao Tian was already sitting back on that stool, both arms pressed against his knees as he leaned forward and looked at him.

Holding a cigarette between his lips, the hatred and resentment in his eyes were painfully clear. “Yan Ye, I’m rotten, I’m filthy, but I fucking have my own principles too. I don’t want to interfere in someone else’s relationship, and I don’t want to degrade myself. Today, you disgusted me. In the future, please don’t appear in front of me again. I was really stupid, still wanting to be buddies with you, to be friends with you. Only now have I seen clearly that you fucking aren’t worthy!”

After saying that, Xue Bao Tian stood up, unwilling to spare Yan Ye even another glance, and turned to walk toward the door.

Yan Ye froze slightly, then grabbed Xue Bao Tian. “Didn’t you hear what I said just now?”

Xue Bao Tian looked at the blood slowly trailing down from the corner of the man’s forehead and said coldly, “If you don’t want another hit, let go!”

His body was suddenly pinned tight, his back slamming against the wall of the workers’ shed. Yan Ye’s voice was low and solemn as it slowly entered Xue Bao Tian’s ears. “You didn’t interfere with anyone, and you’re not the third party. From beginning to end, I have only had you. I have only ever kissed you, only ever gone to bed with you. Xue Bao Tian, I only like you!”

Xue Bao Tian’s expression went blank for a long while, the cigarette between his fingers almost snapping in half. He heard his own hollow voice. “What did you say?”

“The one I’ve always liked is you.” Yan Ye pointed at the single bed. “I told you that just now.”

All the blood in his body seemed to have frozen. His sluggish mind was filled only with the two words “like you.” His heart was clenched hard, and after that moment of stillness, it resumed beating. The sound was so loud it was deafening.

Yet it slowly calmed, leaving only cold words. “Lin Zhi Yi.”

“There is no Lin Zhi Yi. We were never in that kind of relationship.”

“No relationship?” Xue Bao Tian grabbed Yan Ye by the collar. “You fucking said it was love at first sight!”

Yan Ye let Xue Bao Tian pull him, following the force as he was slammed against the wall, and glared back angrily. “Xue Bao Tian, I liked you. I wanted to help you catch Wei Hua and then confess to you. I planned it for a long time and rehearsed it many times in my head. I thought that although you were a straight man, maybe… you would give me a chance, however reluctantly, for the sake of my contribution, or because you were in a good mood. But…”

The crimson in Yan Ye’s eyes was even more piercing than the blood slowly sliding downward. “But after you did it with me, you hid under the blanket and watched those goddesses of yours over and over again. You watched in there, and I lay in the dark with my eyes open, listening to your rustling sounds. Xue Bao Tian, do you know what kind of mood I was in then?”

“At the time, I told myself to endure it, to wait a little. Maybe one day you would come around. I also told myself that I had to treat you even better, better still, so you could see my feelings for you.” An indescribable bitterness surged in Yan Ye’s eyes. He used one hand to lock around Xue Bao Tian’s neck. “But videos couldn’t even satisfy you anymore, and you went out to meet someone!”

“I stood in that alley for a very long time. I thought of everything, and yet it seemed like I thought of nothing at all. I don’t know how I stepped into that inn, but after I saw you, I still couldn’t bear to let go.”

The bitter smile beside Yan Ye’s lips solidified into sorrow that could not be concealed. “Later, I went to discuss business with Lin Zhi Yi. There was no love at first sight. I was in a hurry to come back and eat dinner with you, but on the way, I received a photo.”

Yan Ye took out his phone, tapped it a few times, and handed it to Xue Bao Tian. “The neighborhood security guard sent it to me. He said a package of mine had arrived, but the packaging was damaged. He told me rather embarrassedly that it was a doll.”

A doll? Xue Bao Tian was stunned. He quickly ran through his memories and finally remembered that night before going to Yunnan, when Yan Ye had ordered many restricted adult products online. After discovering them, he had canceled the orders one by one, then maliciously placed an order for a doll.

“I’ll buy you a doll. Don’t fucking touch me from now on.” He remembered saying that to a deeply drunk Yan Ye at the time. But he had clearly ordered the male version, so why had a female doll been sent?

This misunderstanding… fuck!

“Xue Bao Tian, since you already detested me to the point where you’d rather have a doll than me, why should I humiliate myself any further?”

Xue Bao Tian felt somewhat guilty. “So… that’s why there was the excuse of love at first sight?”

Yan Ye laughed self-mockingly and shook his head. “The internet said even simps have dignity.” He slowly buried his head into the hollow of Xue Bao Tian’s neck. “But I don’t. Under the stilt house, I searched Baidu for a long time. They said you should create a love rival, make you jealous, and force you to recognize yourself. That answer had the most likes under the question. I thought there must be some truth to it.”

Xue Bao Tian took a drag of his cigarette, lowered his head to exhale, and chuckled. “So fucking stupid.”

Before the laughter had faded, Xue Bao Tian abruptly grabbed Yan Ye by the hair and pulled him out from the hollow of his neck, saying harshly, “Stop fucking putting gold on your own face. If you and Lin Zhi Yi had nothing at all between you, then why did he repeatedly provoke me?”

Yan Ye pressed his forehead against Xue Bao Tian’s and answered seriously, “Later, Lin Zhi Yi somehow discovered that I was using him to make you jealous. He said there had to be a fee, so he deducted thirty percent from my personal salary. I was the one who handled that matter dishonorably, so naturally I had nothing to say. But then he said that as long as he made even a slight move, he could help me win you back, and deducted another twenty percent. I think his provocations were his ‘moves.’”

Xue Bao Tian grabbed Yan Ye by the collar and said angrily, “Yan Ye, do you only know how to use your abilities on me? You let people trample on you like that outside? Lin Zhi Yi saw that you were stupid and was playing you!”

“I knew, more or less, that what he said wasn’t reliable, but as long as there was even a one percent hope that it could make you return to my side, money didn’t matter.”

Xue Bao Tian took a fierce drag of his cigarette. “Fuck. Lin Zhi Yi.”

Yan Ye hugged him again, looking exactly like a child clutching tightly to someone’s thigh. “He bullied me. Master Xue has to get justice for me.”

Xue Bao Tian’s gaze paused at Yan Ye’s forehead. He pushed him away, looked around, spotted some tissues, walked over, pulled out a few, and handed them to him. “You’re talking like you were so loyal and unwavering, but didn’t you still become friends with me later? You even specially marked it on the postcards.”

Yan Ye took the tissues and wiped the blood from the corner of his forehead. “No method worked. After I got out of detention, I became a little desperate, and I once thought about using forceful methods to make you be with me. Later, Zhou Yi Ming woke me up. He said I had ruined you. Those words hit me hard. I thought I loved you, but I never imagined I had harmed you.”

The smile at the corner of Yan Ye’s lips was thin and desolate, like a fallen leaf on the verge of withering. “So I forced myself to retreat back into the position of a friend, to distance myself from you, not to see you. But it was too difficult.” He took the cigarette from Xue Bao Tian’s hand, put it in his mouth, and took a drag. “I used the same brand of shampoo as you, smoked the same brand of cigarettes, ate mushrooms, drank a Life of Drunken Dreams…”

He raised his eyes to look at Xue Bao Tian and spoke slowly. “But I still missed you very much.”

At last, wind rose on the summer night, streaming in thin strands through the sheet-metal room and making things much more comfortable. Xue Bao Tian took Yan Ye’s cigarette, pinched it dead between his fingers, and tossed it onto the ground. The corner of his mouth half-curled as he looked at Yan Ye. “You let me go be a straight man, but then you saw me kissing another man, so you fucking went crazy?”

The man who had always been steady now had red eyes full of grievance. He pulled Xue Bao Tian tightly into his arms and said through gritted teeth, “Xue Bao Tian, you bully people too much!”

Xue Bao Tian smiled wickedly. “He was pursuing me. I was very helpless too.”

“Master Xue, give me a chance.”

“What?”

“A chance to pursue you.”

“It’s not like I’m lacking people who want to pursue me.”

“One more won’t be too many.” Yan Ye once again hugged the person in his arms tightly, his low murmur like a sigh. “Two Hundred, do you know? I missed you so much. So, so much.”

Xue Bao Tian looked toward the small window of the workers’ shed. Outside the window, the night was still heavy and dark, yet he knew that dawn was almost here.

He gave a soft “Mm” and said, “I know.”

A burning-hot kiss searched for him.

Xue Bao Tian tilted his head and dodged. “Do you fucking understand the rules of pursuing someone?”

“I do. When you’re pursuing someone, kissing is allowed.”

Amid the ragged breathing, a halting voice asked, “What… does reboot mean?”

“It’s from a novel Zhou Yi Ming listened to, Restarting Life. I heard a little of it with him. When I said it last night, didn’t it sound kind of badass?”

Yan Ye, I still fucking wish you belonged to someone else.”

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