On the day the entire internet was heatedly discussing the China-U.S. tariff war, Lu Xingyan, who never paid attention to current affairs, discovered an earth-shattering secret.
“My brother likes men.”
Sitting in a café, Lu Xingyan lowered his voice. “Seriously. I heard it with my own ears.”
The person sitting across from him was his childhood friend, Sun Cheng. Lu Xingyan had specifically asked Sun Cheng to meet him at the café today just so he could share this explosive discovery.
Sun Cheng’s mouth fell open. He stared in shock for a long moment. “How did you hear that?”
Lu Xingyan said, “He didn’t get home until after midnight last night. He probably thought we were all asleep, so he didn’t bother avoiding anyone when he took the call. I was on the stairs and heard everything clearly. Some woman confessed to him, and he said, ‘So you didn’t know? I’m gay.’”
Sun Cheng asked curiously, “Couldn’t that have just been an excuse to reject her?”
“How could it be? Would a straight guy make up an excuse like that?” Lu Xingyan said seriously. “Wouldn’t he be worried about word getting out and causing trouble for him?”
“That… I really couldn’t say.”
Sun Cheng thought back on how Jiang Ji—Lu Xingyan’s older brother—usually conducted himself and thought, Actually, that sounds about right. Jiang Ji has always been cold and decisive. When he rejects someone, he does it directly. He wouldn’t need to make up an excuse.
But… Jiang Ji was actually gay?
You really couldn’t tell at all.
Sun Cheng clicked his tongue and took a sip of coffee. Only then did he notice that his friend across the table looked rather haggard, with faint dark circles under his eyes.
Sun Cheng suddenly caught on. “Don’t tell me you didn’t sleep all night?”
“Yeah,” Lu Xingyan said. “How was I supposed to sleep after suddenly finding out something like that?”
Sun Cheng: “…”
Lu Xingyan’s words were easy to misinterpret. Anyone who didn’t know better might think he cared deeply about his brother. In reality, it was exactly the opposite. He absolutely hated Jiang Ji.
He might say “my brother” every other sentence in front of Sun Cheng, but when he was actually facing Jiang Ji, he had never once called him “bro.”
Jiang Ji was not Lu Xingyan’s biological brother.
About ten years ago, Jiang Ji’s divorced mother married Lu Xingyan’s widowed father.
Jiang Ji was fifteen at the time, and Lu Xingyan was twelve.
Blended families were rarely easy to keep harmonious, especially when the children refused to cooperate.
Before his mother passed away, Lu Xingyan had been a fairly well-behaved child. At eight years old, he had a nanny looking after him, was always neatly dressed, fair-skinned and adorable, studied diligently, and took piano lessons. He looked exactly like a little prince and was praised everywhere he went.
But his mother’s death from illness dealt Lu Xingyan an enormous blow. At first, he could still barely manage to console his father while his father consoled him, but less than two years later, he discovered that Lu Yong had already emerged from his grief over losing his wife and had secretly started seeing someone new.
Lu Xingyan was so furious that he went on a rampage at home, smashing many of Lu Yong’s antique collectibles while shouting, “You betrayed Mom!” He even destroyed his beloved piano. Then he protested Lu Yong finding him a stepmother by going on hunger strikes and skipping school.
Lu Yong was a fairly good-tempered man, but he had absolutely no way of handling this little tyrant. When he tried coaxing him gently, Lu Xingyan refused to listen. If Lu Yong lost his temper, Lu Xingyan would lose an even bigger one and run away from home.
And so the turmoil continued for another two years.
When Lu Xingyan was twelve, Lu Yong tried to reason with him. “Son, can you forgive Dad? Give Dad and your Aunt Jiang a chance to be together.”
Lu Xingyan refused.
Then, entirely on his own initiative, Lu Xingyan sought out Jiang Wanyi’s son—Jiang Ji.
It was a drizzly evening when Lu Xingyan arrived at Jiang Ji’s school.
He had never met Jiang Ji before. His phone contained several photos he had bought from a girl who attended the same school as Jiang Ji. The girl was one of Jiang Ji’s admirers and had told him that Jiang Ji was the heartthrob of No. 12 High School and had plenty of people chasing after him. Lu Xingyan had scoffed at that.
But when he bought the photos, Lu Xingyan had pretended that “I like Jiang Ji too.” He had even posed as a girl before the other party agreed to send them. Forced to keep up the act, he had replied in a deliberately catty tone on the messaging app, “Hehe, looks like I have lots of love rivals.”
Then he deleted her immediately afterward.
Lu Xingyan hadn’t brought an umbrella that day. When the rain began to fall, the sun had not yet disappeared, bathing the whole world in an indistinct, ambiguous wash of orange-red.
Lu Xingyan did not notice when Jiang Ji appeared.
He was looking down at the photos, trying to memorize Jiang Ji’s features more clearly so he could pick him out from the crowd pouring out after school. Just then, Lu Xingyan casually looked up and met a scrutinizing gaze.
“Lu Xingyan?” Jiang Ji actually knew who he was.
Lu Xingyan froze for a second. His first thought was that Jiang Ji looked better in person than in the photos.
Cool, pale skin, pitch-black eyes, a high nose bridge, and beneath it, a pair of thin lips that gave him a slightly heartless appearance. His entire presence warned strangers to stay away.
He really was good-looking.
So good-looking that for a fleeting moment, it felt as though Lu Xingyan had stepped into some school idol drama, where the dusk scenery and every passerby around them existed merely to set off Jiang Ji, the male lead.
Lu Xingyan stared blankly for a full five seconds, until he saw his own dazed reflection in Jiang Ji’s cold eyes.
He snapped back to himself and remembered why he had come.
“Yeah, I’m Lu Xingyan. I want to talk to you.”
“About what?” Jiang Ji was decidedly unfriendly.
“My dad and your mom, obviously.” Young as he was, Lu Xingyan liked to act worldly. Putting on a mature air, he said, “Since you know who I am, you should already know everything. I don’t need to explain, right?”
Jiang Ji gave him a look that confirmed it.
“They want to get married. What do you think?”
In Lu Xingyan’s imagination, Jiang Ji ought to understand him and be willing to join forces with him so they could sabotage the marriage together.
Instead, after he asked, Jiang Ji went silent for several seconds and looked at him the way an adult might look at a child, with unmistakable impatience.
Lu Xingyan was very perceptive. He immediately understood that Jiang Ji was different from him. Jiang Ji agreed with his mother remarrying.
“Don’t tell me you actually want a stepdad?” Lu Xingyan couldn’t understand it. “Blended families aren’t happy. Don’t you know that?”
Jiang Ji said coldly, “As long as you behave yourself, everyone will be happy.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, don’t interfere with my mom getting married.”
“…”
Lu Xingyan’s eyes widened.
That was their first meeting, and neither of them left a good impression on the other.
Even after all these years, Lu Xingyan remembered every word Jiang Ji had said that day, especially one particular keyword.
“Selfish.”
Jiang Ji had said, “You only think about yourself. Don’t you care about how your dad feels at all? If you don’t care, fine, but I don’t want to be that selfish. I want my mom to be happy. I don’t want her to suffer just to accommodate me.”
Lu Xingyan had failed to recruit an ally and instead received a lecture. Full of rage, he went home and cried his eyes out. Then, embarrassed by the fact that he had hidden himself away to cry, he wiped his tears, put on a cold and heartless expression, and called Lu Yong. “Go ahead and get married. If you want to marry her, then marry her. I can’t be bothered with your stupid mess!”
Lu Xingyan stopped protesting and never explained why he had changed his mind.
A few months later, Lu Yong and Jiang Wanyi really did get married. From that day on, Jiang Ji became Lu Xingyan’s older brother.
Lu Xingyan had no idea what an “older brother” was supposed to mean.
He and Jiang Ji had never once behaved like affectionate brothers.
He thought Jiang Ji hated him, just as he hated Jiang Ji.
After that, Lu Xingyan stopped causing trouble. He was determined to clear himself of the accusation of being “selfish.” And when he learned that Jiang Ji ranked first in the entire school on every exam, he picked up the studies he had neglected and began working hard again.
It was not because he had turned over a new leaf. He simply hated Jiang Ji too much. Seeing Jiang Ji act “mature and sensible” and “considerate” made his teeth itch with irritation, and judging Jiang Ji by his own petty standards, Lu Xingyan became convinced that Jiang Ji must talk plenty of trash about him behind his back.
With Jiang Ji as a target, nearly all of Lu Xingyan’s attention became fixed on him. Lu Xingyan stopped caring about how his father and stepmother were getting along and instead spent every day obsessing over competing with Jiang Ji.
For example, if Jiang Ji ranked first, Lu Xingyan had to rank first too. If Jiang Ji joined a basketball tournament, so did he. If Jiang Ji helped an elderly neighbor collect a delivery, Lu Xingyan had to do the same. If Jiang Ji played a game, he played it too. Whatever university Jiang Ji attended, Lu Xingyan had to attend as well…
For ten whole years, Lu Xingyan desperately wanted to outperform Jiang Ji in absolutely everything and grind him mercilessly beneath his heel.
Unfortunately, things never went as he wished. He had never succeeded.
Jiang Ji seemed to have been born an all-round genius, capable of doing everything theoretically “as well as possible.” For instance, he had scored full marks in mathematics on the college entrance exam. Lu Xingyan had scored five points less.
Those five points practically made Lu Xingyan’s world collapse. For a long period afterward, the number “five” was forbidden from appearing in his life.
Once, Sun Cheng called out to him, “Bro, wanna play? We need one more for a five-stack.”
Lu Xingyan’s face immediately darkened. “Are you mocking me?”
Sun Cheng: “…”
Everyone around Lu Xingyan knew that he hated his brother to the point of near obsession.
Sun Cheng had believed the same thing at first, but eventually he began sensing that something was slightly off and couldn’t resist commenting, “Lu Xingyan, don’t you care about him a little too much? You can hate someone, sure, but there’s no need to act like you’re deep in the closet for him.”
“Oh please. What do you know?” Lu Xingyan denied it. “I just need one victory.”
Today, Lu Xingyan had finally found his chance to win.
Sun Cheng, however, could not understand why this counted as an opportunity.
As Lu Xingyan continued muttering, just like always, about exactly how detestable his brother was, Sun Cheng boredly finished two cups of coffee and absentmindedly scrolled through news about the China-U.S. tariff war on his phone.
Suddenly, Sun Cheng raised his voice with a “Holy shit!” “Trump posted again!”
Lu Xingyan’s face immediately darkened. “What does Trump posting have to do with you?”
Sun Cheng replied, “What does your brother liking men have to do with you?”
Lu Xingyan: “…”
Silence.
Lu Xingyan’s silence was strangely suspicious.
He lowered his head and started looking at his phone too, drinking the latte in front of him after it had already gone cold. About five minutes later, Lu Xingyan spoke again in a deep voice. “I have a plan.”
“Go on.” Sun Cheng dutifully played the supportive sidekick.
Lu Xingyan said, “I want to date him.”
Sun Cheng: “?”
Sun Cheng: “What did you just say?”
“What I mean is,” Lu Xingyan explained, “since he likes men, I’ll put in some effort, make him fall for me, and then dump him. When he’s completely heartbroken, I’ll humiliate him mercilessly. Then I’ll have won, right?”
“…”
Hardcore straight guy Sun Cheng’s pupils practically shook.
Lu Xingyan looked smug. “What do you think of the plan?”
Sun Cheng thought, Is this a plan a normal human being could come up with? So this bastard stayed awake all night thinking about this?
“Wait, I have a question.” Sun Cheng finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you absolutely sure you’re not deep in the closet for your brother?”
“You don’t know shit.” Lu Xingyan was expressionless. “When you hate somebody enough, you’ll do whatever it takes. How could I be closeted? I’m straight.”
“Fine. Straight.”
Sun Cheng was getting a little scared. He decided he should go traveling with his girlfriend for a while and stay far away from this pair of deranged brothers.
＊
That afternoon, Lu Xingyan drove home in an excellent mood.
The entire way, he thought about how he should pursue Jiang Ji.
Lu Xingyan knew he was fairly good-looking. Modestly speaking, fairly good-looking. Objectively speaking, extremely good-looking. On top of that, he was 185 centimeters tall.
He had never dated anyone before, but that did nothing to diminish Lu Xingyan’s confidence that he had what it took to be a scumbag.
Just imagining the day when he finally won Jiang Ji over and then ruthlessly dumped him filled Lu Xingyan with unprecedented satisfaction.
Would Jiang Ji be heartbroken? What would his expression look like?
Lu Xingyan could hardly wait.
He parked the car, humming as he opened the front door.
His family lived in a three-story villa. During the day, apart from him and the housekeeper, the other three members of the family were normally away. But for some reason, as soon as he entered today, he saw Jiang Ji standing in the living room with his back to the entrance, talking on the phone.
Jiang Ji had been building a startup for the past two years and was an extremely busy man, appearing and disappearing like a dragon whose tail could barely be glimpsed. Lu Xingyan could not even remember the last time they had spoken.
Of course, Lu Xingyan had no interest in speaking to him either.
Out of habit, Lu Xingyan immediately put on a cold expression, as if Jiang Ji had eyes in the back of his head and could see him.
But after Lu Xingyan maintained that pose for five full minutes, Jiang Ji still did not turn around. He had clearly heard the door open.
Lu Xingyan grew irritated and deliberately threw his car keys onto the coffee table with a sharp clack!
Jiang Ji finally turned around.
A perfectly tailored black suit wrapped Jiang Ji from head to toe. He looked mature, composed, and elegant. At fifteen, he had resembled the male lead of a school idol drama; at twenty-five, he resembled the male lead of an urban romance drama. He was always impossibly eye-catching.
After silently complaining about him, Lu Xingyan saw Jiang Ji frown in his direction, and a strangely familiar opening line automatically formed in his mind.
“Jiang Ji, I need to talk to you.”
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