Lan Xi threw himself wholeheartedly into the phone.
After fiddling with it for three seconds, he complained, “What’s the password?”
Fu Hui’s phone was all secretive and guarded, unlike his!
Cheng Yiran sat nearby wearing gloves and peeling shrimp with great enthusiasm. Without stopping, he answered, “It’s my brother’s birthday…”
Lan Xi: “I don’t know it!”
“0903.”
Fang Nianqing sat opposite them, his expression still cold and his guard not lowered in the slightest.
By now he already knew that this “Fu Hui” was Cheng Yiran’s older brother. And the reason Fu Hui had come to know Lan Xi in the first place was not entirely unrelated to him either.
You could say everything had started with Wen Lan harassing him. Cheng Yiran had then come into conflict with Wen Lan, Wen Lan had hidden away, Lan Xi had been mistaken for him, and only after that had everything else happened…
Whenever Fang Nianqing thought about it, he felt an absurdity so ridiculous it was almost laughable.
That feeling threaded back and forth through his heart, leaving a mess behind.
The intensity of it also made it impossible for him to calmly sit by and watch what was happening in front of him.
So Fang Nianqing cut in. “Would someone like Mr. Fu really use his birthday as his phone password?”
To Fang Nianqing, it sounded almost like some sort of trap Mr. Fu had deliberately wrapped up to look harmless.
But Fang Nianqing understood far too little about both Fu Hui and Lan Xi to immediately figure out what the point of doing that might be.
Cheng Yiran’s hands suddenly froze. “Uh, of course he would.” He started making things up. “You know what they say, the darkest place is right under the lamp. Who would expect my brother’s phone password to be that simple?”
Lan Xi paid no attention at all to their conversation.
Unlocking Fu Hui’s phone was extremely exciting to him.
That tiny screen seemed to contain an entirely new world. Lan Xi was so impatient to explore it that he had no attention left to spare for anyone else.
He swiped across the home screen and carefully examined the apps one by one, even more seriously than when he looked through his own phone.
Fu Hui did not play games, and most of the apps on his phone were simple and practical.
Lan Xi poked through a meeting app and an internal messaging app. Everything inside was incomprehensible, so he skipped them.
He recalled the order Wen Yue and the others used when checking his phone… Right, start with the text messages.
Fu Hui’s inbox was extremely crowded, with many unread messages.
But Lan Xi still immediately noticed the pinned conversation labeled [Lan Xi].
Lan Xi tapped it. The conversation was completely empty.
He raised his eyebrows unhappily. Had Fu Hui deleted every message Lan Xi had ever sent him? Fu Hui did not even have an older brother checking his phone!
Still annoyed, Lan Xi opened Fu Hui’s WeChat.
Once again, the pinned chat at the top immediately caught his eye: [Demon].
Lan Xi tapped it. The conversation was still sitting at their very old messages. There was no mistake. This was his WeChat.
Demon. Demon.
Lan Xi stared at those two characters again and again, extremely satisfied.
He continued scrolling downward and discovered that all the contact names Fu Hui had saved were simply people’s actual names, stiff and proper, completely unlike Lan Xi’s phone full of [XX Seller] labels.
[Demon] instead became the one particularly unusual presence among them.
Lan Xi randomly opened two chats. Both contained nothing but formal work reports.
He opened another two. They were full of respectful greetings.
Then another two. Those were people saying they could help Fu Hui search for someone and would come whenever called.
That was it???
Lan Xi felt subtly pleased and subtly displeased at the same time.
It was like opening an Easter egg only to find the inside so blank it could not possibly get any blanker.
Lan Xi was just about to leave WeChat when Cheng Yiran casually stuffed a shrimp into his mouth and said, “Why don’t you check his Moments?”
“I don’t know how. Where?” Lan Xi asked, instinctively chewing twice as he spoke.
Fang Nianqing: “…?”
So this was how you tricked him into eating?
Cheng Yiran took off his gloves. “Tap here.”
Lan Xi: “Oh.”
Lan Xi eagerly opened it. The first pinned post was the missing-person notice.
Lan Xi admired his own excessively beautiful face in the photo several more times before exiting and scrolling down.
Hm?
The very next post was from ten years ago.
There was no caption, only a photograph of Fu Hui.
A teenage Fu Hui stood amid swirling snow, with a massive castle behind him that combined Byzantine and Gothic architecture.
He looked straight toward the camera, his expression cold and his sharpness completely unconcealed.
Beneath his white overcoat, a stretch of long fingers in dark blue gloves showed. In his hand was a booklet with metallic pages. Lan Xi could easily imagine the path of the raised veins across the back of Fu Hui’s hand beneath those gloves.
Lan Xi admired Fu Hui’s photograph the way he admired himself, unable to stop staring at it for a while longer.
Then he backed out again.
And kept scrolling.
The next post was from eleven years ago.
Fu Hui wore academic robes and stood at a podium with his chin slightly lowered. It was impossible to tell whether the camera simply favored him too much, or whether Fu Hui had always been unusually good-looking.
Even with a large patch of shadow covering his face, it only made his features look deeper. The air of someone caught between adolescence and adulthood pulled restraint and abstinence into something almost solemn and holy around him.
He really did fit Lan Xi’s idea of a supreme seraph perfectly.
Lan Xi pursed his lips and backed out.
Then came photographs from twelve years ago, thirteen years ago, fourteen years ago, and even earlier…
As a teenager, Fu Hui had posted to Moments very rarely, maintaining a pace of only about once a year. Sometimes it was a fragment from an important occasion, and sometimes only some scattered moment from everyday life.
Lan Xi saw him sitting on a bench, lowering his head to brew tea, reaching out to turn a page, riding a horse… The farther back in time he went, the cleaner and younger Fu Hui looked. Those older posts also had far more captions, making it easy to know exactly what he had been thinking at the time.
[Waste of time.]
[The buds are thin and flat. The taste is average.]
[The rain is loud.]
[One ghost knifefish died.]
…
Lan Xi suddenly asked, “Can other people see these too?”
Cheng Yiran had just peeled his fourth shrimp. He froze. “What?”
Lan Xi curled his lip. “Can other people see these Moments too?”
Cheng Yiran leaned over to look. “No. See here? It only shows friends the last three days. Nobody can see the older posts. You can only see them if you actually get hold of my brother’s phone.”
Lan Xi was satisfied. It no longer felt as though he had opened an Easter egg and found nothing but blank space inside.
There were all kinds of different Fu Huis in there!
Actually, Cheng Yiran wanted to look a little longer too. He might not even know his brother as well as Lan Xi did.
Unfortunately, this particular door of Fu Hui’s had opened a special passage for Lan Xi alone.
Lan Xi closed WeChat, still a little reluctant to stop.
But he did not know what else he wanted to see…
He swiped back and forth across the screen. Finally, something occurred to him and he immediately opened the photo album. The countless photographs that should have existed in Fu Hui’s text messages, the ones that had all been cleared out, appeared here instead. Dense rows and rows of them.
All at once, Lan Xi saw so many versions of himself.
He finally could not hold back anymore and bowed his head, laughing triumphantly. His shoulders shook with it.
Cheng Yiran was badly startled. He quickly dropped both the shrimp and his gloves and asked, “What happened?” At the same time, he lifted a hand as if to pat Lan Xi’s shoulder, then did not dare actually touch him.
Lan Xi raised his face and shook his head, then conveniently leaned over and snatched a shrimp from the plate with his mouth.
Like a little cat.
If anyone else made a movement like that, it would probably look strange. When Lan Xi did it, it seemed completely natural, unhurried and even effortlessly seductive.
Cheng Yiran was a little stunned.
Because lately, it had been very rare for Lan Xi to actively reach for food like this.
Coming back to himself, Cheng Yiran hurriedly put his gloves on again and continued peeling shrimp for Lan Xi.
Fang Nianqing watched Lan Xi steadily for a moment and finally realized that just now, Lan Xi had been laughing rather than crying.
What had he seen?
Lan Xi was still flipping through the photo album.
He discovered that besides the photos he had sent Fu Hui himself, there were also photographs Fu Hui had taken.
In the cramped washroom, in the cold bathtub, on the bed, beside the desk… None of them were explicit. There were close-ups of Lan Xi’s hand resting on a black marble counter, his ankle held inside Fu Hui’s palm, his eyelashes, and even a close-up of an earlobe that had been kissed until it was slightly rounded and swollen.
Lan Xi could not help lowering his head and laughing again.
“Sister-in-law?” Cheng Yiran held up a shrimp in confusion.
Lan Xi skillfully bit it away. Just then, the phone vibrated. Someone was calling.
Caller ID: Song Qingming.
Who’s that?
Lan Xi did not know him, but he still answered the call without the slightest sense of morality.
“Still haven’t found him?” Song Qingming’s concerned voice came through.
Found who?
Oh. Me.
Does everyone know Fu Hui is looking for me?
Lan Xi blinked.
“Fu Hui?” After waiting a long while without hearing a response, Song Qingming’s voice dropped. “Don’t worry too much. You’ll find him eventually. Once you do, why don’t you bring him straight home for dinner?”
“…”
Song Qingming sighed and tried saying more to comfort Fu Hui. “He left because he heard those things Song Fan said and got angry. That just proves he likes you a lot. He’s young, and once his temper flared up, he couldn’t think about anything else. He’ll be fine once he calms down.”
Is that so?
Of course not. Lan Xi curled his lip.
“Yesterday your aunt was looking through the new season’s jewelry catalog and saw a very pretty diamond ring. I don’t know whether he likes things like that… You’re both men, yes, but there should still be some ceremony. If you propose to him, maybe he won’t get angry so easily over idle gossip anymore.”
“And when it comes to admitting fault and begging for mercy, your uncle has plenty of experience…”
Song Qingming rambled on and on.
Lan Xi suddenly asked, “A diamond ring? What does it look like?”
Song Qingming’s voice instantly jammed in his throat.
When he spoke again, his voice had changed. “Who are you? Why do you have Fu Hui’s phone?”
Song Qingming’s first thought was something terrible.
Fu Hui’s phone would never leave his hand… unless something had happened to Fu Hui!
Lan Xi smacked his lips.
It really did feel wonderful to have Fu Hui under his control.
Without hiding it in the slightest, he said, “I’m Lan Xi.”
He might as well have pasted a note to his own face saying: I’m the demon tormenting Fu Hui.
From the other end of the call came the squeal of a wooden chair being shoved back hard, the long scrape sharp enough to make one’s teeth ache.
Song Qingming’s heart raced. No matter how he had imagined meeting Lan Xi, he had never expected that before seeing him in person, he would first end up talking to him over the phone.