The sky was growing brighter and brighter. Wearing a thin jacket, Ke Bu raised his head and stared upward. It wasn’t even summer yet, but the weather had already grown warmer than spring had any right to be. He muttered to himself, “This is bad. It looks like it’s starting to get hot.” Zhi Li’s personality changed with the temperature. Ke Bu desperately wished he could take a saw and cut summer right out of the year.
He had gotten up earlier than usual today. Sleep was something that became harder to control the more a person tried to control it: when you wanted to fall asleep, you couldn’t; when you wanted to wake up, you couldn’t. And sleep wasn’t the only part of the human body that liked working against its owner. Ke Bu stretched and thought, Since I’m awake early and have nothing to do anyway, I might as well go bother Zhi Li. Two minutes later, he regretted that thought beyond words.
The moment Ke Bu pushed open the door, Zhi Li was standing right in front of him, making him jump. “Why are you awake this early?” “You came at the perfect time.” “You needed me for something?” “I suddenly felt like doing it.” Zhi Li yanked Ke Bu into the dorm and shut the door. His pants were pulled down, and Zhi Li’s fingers, slick with lubricant, entered him. Everything happened so quickly that Ke Bu could barely believe it. He braced himself against the door. “Mm… let go of me… respect my personal wishes a little.” Zhi Li’s chest pressed tightly against Ke Bu’s back, his warmth seeping through their clothes. With only one hand, he pinned both of Ke Bu’s wrists against the door. A soft, almost unreal voice sounded behind his ear. “You don’t want to?”
“Hah… don’t touch me in front… I—mm, mm—I don’t want to.”
Zhi Li pressed a knee between Ke Bu’s legs. His arousal, hotter than the rest of his body, pressed against Ke Bu too, making Ke Bu feel as though his resistance wouldn’t last much longer. “I’m going to report you for rape.”
“Ke Bu.” His earlobe was lightly bitten and then released. “Right now, I just want to see the expression you make when you feel good and hear you moan. Everything about you belongs to me. Everything about you is so cute it pisses me off.” Ke Bu clenched his hands. “Do whatever you want—ahh…” Even the speed at which Zhi Li entered him was too much for Ke Bu to keep up with. Why did I walk right into this first thing in the morning, only to end up doing something this embarrassing in the dorm?
“Did you learn more… ridiculous lines somewhere? The things you say to trick me into bed have changed…” Trying to get a complete sentence out under these circumstances was extremely difficult.
“Pay attention.”
“So once you trick me into agreeing, you turn into a completely different person?!”
Zhi Li gripped Ke Bu’s waist with one hand and pressed the other against his back. The next thrust went far too deep. At last, Ke Bu couldn’t produce anything except moans. All he could see was the door in front of him, that plain, monotonous door. More than ten minutes later, after Ke Bu had come once, he finally managed to speak weakly. “I told you I don’t really like this position, didn’t I?”
“It doesn’t feel good?”
“Feeling good is one thing. Liking it is another.” Ke Bu had no idea whether Zhi Li could understand such a strange explanation. Suddenly, he was spun around. Zhi Li lifted him, pressed him against the door, and entered him again, one arm supporting all of Ke Bu’s weight. Finally, he didn’t have to stare at that monotonous door anymore. Ke Bu wrapped his arms around Zhi Li and kissed anywhere his lips could reach.
“Satisfied now, mm?” The hoarseness in Zhi Li’s desire-laced voice seemed to melt straight through Ke Bu’s eardrums. Both his words and his body had become an addiction Ke Bu could never quit. I’m going to go insane. I really am.
“Mm-ah… mm… mm… I… I…”
The sounds of impacts coming from behind the door made everyone passing outside instinctively turn their heads in curiosity.
Ke Bu got dressed while grinding his teeth. That bastard had finished with him, dumped him there, and gone straight back to sleep! He felt like an inflatable sex doll. He glanced at the time on his phone. He only had two classes that morning, and there was still more than an hour before the first one. What could he do to kill time? Zhi Li’s phone suddenly rang. Zhi Li didn’t react at all. Ke Bu walked over, picked it up, and saw the caller ID before answering. Before he could say anything, the voice on the other end gave him goose bumps.
“Little baby, you must miss your big sister, don’t you? You miss me so, so much, right? Big Sister misses you too. Say you love me. Say it right now. If you don’t, I’ll torture you to death. Say you love me. Hurry.”
There was only one person in the world who could make the woman on the other end speak in that tone. Ke Bu pinched his nose. “I love—”
“You premature-ejaculating little bastard. Why are you answering Zhi Li’s phone?” The voice on the other end instantly dropped to freezing point and returned to normal.
“Zhi Li’s asleep. I was afraid you’d be kept waiting too long.”
“Tch.” The disgust Lan Yin squeezed through her teeth was so vivid that Ke Bu could practically picture her face. Knowing she was about to hang up, he hurriedly stopped her. “Wait, Your Highness. I have something I want to ask you.”
“What?” The disgust in her voice grew even stronger. Ke Bu glanced at Zhi Li and secretly walked out of the dorm with the phone. Only after getting far enough away that Zhi Li couldn’t hear did he speak. “Your Highness, it’s like this—hello? Hello? You already hung up?!” Ke Bu immediately called her again.
“It really is something serious.”
“So what?”
“It’s about Zhi Li’s grandmother. I know Zhi Li rarely talks about his family, but I’ve never heard Dora or either of you mention her either. Isn’t that strange?” It wasn’t that Zhi Li rarely talked about his family. He simply didn’t talk about them at all. If a conversation happened to reach the subject, then he might mention something. Before meeting Lan Yin and Zhi Zuo Si, Ke Bu had known absolutely nothing about either of them. It had been the same with Zhi Xiao Ke and Zhi Xiao Xun. When those two had suddenly appeared at school, Ke Bu had almost believed they were genuinely Zhi Li’s illegitimate children.
The other end of the phone went silent. Then Ke Bu heard a lighter. He waited patiently. Lan Yin exhaled smoke. “He talked about his grandmother?”
“I think he mentioned her without meaning to.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing much. Just that his grandmother is single and he wanted to introduce her to You Yan.”
“You Yan?” Lan Yin gave a short laugh that lasted barely a second. “That girl likes Zhi Zuo Si, doesn’t she?” Ke Bu had never intended to steer the conversation in that direction, much less expected Lan Yin to have noticed Su You Yan’s feelings. He was just about to explain on You Yan’s behalf when Lan Yin cut him off. “So Zhi Li still refuses to accept it?” Her topic jumped around so quickly that Ke Bu didn’t know how to respond.
“What do you mean? What won’t he accept?”
“That his grandmother died a long time ago.” Lan Yin’s voice was so casual that she might have been discussing an everyday matter. “Zhi Li’s grandmother died when he was very young. It was pretty miserable. She developed dementia or some other illness—anyway, she became confused. She would go outside every day, pick garbage up, and eat it. Eventually, she was hit by a car.”
“Then…” Ke Bu didn’t know what he was supposed to say or what he was supposed to ask.
“He was too young back then to understand what death meant. I thought he’d understand once he grew up. Turns out he still thinks his grandmother is alive.”
Pain seized Ke Bu without warning.
“Just pretend you don’t know anything.”
“Wait. And about You Yan—don’t misunderstand.”
“Misunderstand what? If she genuinely likes him, she can come steal him. I approve. Otherwise, I’ll get bored.”
“Please stop using other people to entertain yourself!”
The call disconnected. Ke Bu stared straight at Zhi Li’s dorm room.
Ke Bu didn’t want to accept the truth that Zhi Li couldn’t accept either.
If that truth would hurt Zhi Li, then Ke Bu would kick it far, far away.
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