The next day, Xie Qingcheng left the hospital and went back to the hostel.
Although Chen Man was with him, he didn't say much and seemed to be in a bit of a state of flux.
When we parted Chen Man stood under the Xie Qingcheng dormitory building and hesitantly called out, "Xie ......"
Xie Qingcheng: "......"
But meeting Xie Qingcheng's sharp eyes, Chen Man eventually mumbled, "You ...... get yourself some rest. If there's anything, you can always call me."
Xie Qingcheng finds Chen Man's mood odd, but he doesn't think that Chen Man might have a crush on him. He thinks Chen Man probably can't accept his one-night stand, which is a lame excuse, but Xie Qingcheng can't think of any more plausible explanation than to use it to get rid of Chen Man.
He was a seven-foot man, but he couldn't possibly admit that he had been slept with by a boy thirteen years younger than himself.
For Xie Qingcheng, this is a case of "dumb and dumber".
Xie Qingcheng was quiet for a moment and said, "Let's go, thank you."
He was heading upstairs.
Chen Man stood frozen in the rain with his umbrella and gave another, "Thank you, brother."
"......"
"No, it's fine, you take care of your rest."
"...... What are you trying to say."
Chen Man bit her lip and held her tongue for a while before asking, "Are you still in touch with that girl?"
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Xie Qingcheng paused for a moment: "Would you have contact with a one-night stand?"
"I ...... I don't do that kind of thing ......"
But when the words came out, I felt as if I was condemning Xie Qingcheng for being unethical, and I quickly waved my hand, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way either."
"You really shouldn't have done such a thing." Xie Qingcheng said indifferently, "I too now regret it on impulse."
Chen Man looks at him.
Xie Qingcheng: "Not anymore. I feel sick."
Chen Man's face, which had been a little pale until he heard Xie Qingcheng's last two words, finally took on some colour.
It took a week for Xie Qingcheng's sickly state to pass, but the hickeys were still fresh, and he had to be careful to keep his cuffs pulled tight when teaching and writing in school, as he still has faint strangulation marks on his wrists.
That was evidence of the wanton intrusion of bound hands at the time.
Xie Qingcheng never contacted He Yu afterwards. He Yu blacked him out and he deleted him.
Just think of it as a bad dream, he thought.
Don't look back.
There are many hopeless and hateful things in this world, and in the end, they often do not get a satisfactory account, and again, they are disgusting, and sometimes just getting out in one piece is the hardest result.
Xie Qingcheng has been through a lot and it's not that he doesn't understand this.
But I still wake up in the middle of the night. The fever has gone down and even the wounds are slowly healing, but Xie Qingcheng's heart, already resistant to lust, has become even sicker.
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He dreamed repeatedly and uncontrollably of He Yu's face, shrouded in hate and desire, of what they had done, and then sat up suddenly from his bed, out of sight, Xie Qingcheng finally looking frightened and vulnerable, panting heavily, burying his face deep in his palms, his shirt drenched in sweat.
He lights one cigarette after another and even takes sleeping pills to sleep.
One day in the shower he saw that all the marks from the tossing and turning were finally gone, as if nothing had ever happened, but he didn't look any easier -
He knew that he had been branded with a skeleton, and his fear and loathing of the bed grew more and more luxuriant. His memory stung him, reminding him that he had lost his temper in front of He Yu, and that he had given vent to a desire that had been repressed, even if not quite there, in that way.
He screamed, shuddered, lost his temper, and these memories were like the whip marks that fell, constantly stabbing him, humiliating him, tormenting him.
He had to turn on his computer and click on the video of the sea and moon jellyfish, watching the ancient beings floating around, trying to divert his attention elsewhere.
He couldn't just go deeper into it, he thought.
.
A few days later.
He House.
"Come back."
"...hmm."
It was a rare occasion that He Yu's house was lit up, and the warm glow made He Yu frown as he walked into the hall, as if he were a vampire who had grown accustomed to the cold, and the silence and darkness of the old castle was what he was familiar with.
Lv Zhishu and He Jiwei were both surprisingly present.
He Yu went back to the villa once after having sex with Xie Qingcheng, the day he followed him to the hospital and found himself with nothing to do.
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At that time he felt uncomfortable and particularly empty. He had just been soaked in the ultimate excitement and was immediately and suddenly alone, so he could not help but feel empty, and in his distraction he went back to the main house, at least accompanied by the housekeeper's maid.
But he left the next day and he hasn't been back since. Until today.
He Yu knew that his parents would be returning to Hu Zhou recently, but he didn't think they would stay long, and it was because he was upset and didn't want to see them that he left again to get away.
Little did he know that when he returned home again, both Lv Zhishu and He Jiwei would still be there. He was so unaccustomed to this kind of welcome that his first reaction to the sight before him was "Maybe this is also a fake, a figment of his imagination."
But then he realised that he had never imagined that his parents would come back to have a nice dinner with him either.
They were not even in his delusions of grandeur.
"Is it cold outside? Mum cooked you soup, mutton belly mushroom and abalone four-item soup ......"
"Mom." He Yu was quiet for a moment, the word that humans first learned seemed a little raw to him, "I'm allergic to this seafood."
The hall became quiet for a moment.
Lv Zhishu, somewhat embarrassed, glanced towards He Jiwei.
He Jiwei coughed, "It's okay, eat something else, I've had cabbage in boiling water made for you, it's been hanging for ages, you used to like it best."
He Jiwei was not very close to He Yu either, but at least he was more reliable than Lv Zhishu and he knew what He Yu liked.
He Yu couldn't say anything else and the three of them sat down together at the table.
The atmosphere stiffened for a moment.
He Yu could not remember the last time the three of them had sat like this as a family, it had been too long. He looks at He Jiwei and Lv Zhishu's faces, which are even unfamiliar.
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To him, his parents seemed more like the two avatars in his WeChat contacts, those flat voices.
"When are you planning to go back to Yan Zhou?" He Yu asked.
"There's no rush." Lv Zhishu said immediately, a sweet smile piled up on his fat face, even a little shaky because it was so full, "Your brother is also living at school now, so we don't have to watch. Besides, He Yu, you're scaring Mum to death, don't do anything that dangerous again, in case something happens to you, we'll-"
She didn't go on, she seemed to choke up.
He Yu looked on coldly, his heart was not the same as before after the TV tower incident, it had become very cold and hard.
But he didn't bother to talk much to them, and finally smiled softly, "It's okay. I'm fine now."
At the dinner table, the conversation is seemingly cosy, but in reality it is dark.
"I've finished eating, can I go upstairs first?"
"Ah, good. You go on, go on." Lv Zhishu was not very comfortable with He Yu, but she was a businesswoman through and through, after all, and could even do a Pili Yangqiu to her son, "Get some rest, and Mum will make you chicken soup tomorrow, okay?"
"...... Whatever." He Yu said lightly, leaving the table and heading upstairs.
Lv Zhishu watched with mixed eyes as his back disappeared into the depths of the upstairs corridor.
He Jiwei: "Why are you so nice to him all of a sudden? Not to mention him, even I'm not used to it."
Lv Zhishu: "What's wrong with me being nice to my son? That's not the natural thing to do, I'm his own mother ......"
He Jiwei wanted to say something but finally got up: "I have something to do in my company, I have to go to Qingdao tomorrow."
"So when are you coming back? Let me tell you, I've thought about it, I owe him too much before, I have to make it up to him, and you don't go out for too long, work, where's the importance of children ......"
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He Jiwei sighed: "...... That's nostalgic coming from you."
"......"
"Like you told me when you were first pregnant with him." He Jiwei smiled, his eyes deep, and he seemed a little sad, "It's been a long time since I've heard that."
Lv Zhishu: "Lao He ......"
He Jiwei had already turned around and walked away.
He Yu lies on his bedroom bed, his eyes a little scattered after not having to make false politeness with Lv Zhishu He Jiwei.
He looked at the ceiling and, as he had done for the past week, ran through the events of the previous day when he was alone and dazed.
"Thud - thud - thud -"
Unexpectedly, the big clock of the old house rang again.
A dull, mellow knock on his heart, like every lonely night, like the night of his thirteenth birthday when he stood for a long time, unable to wait for even one person's company.
Thinking of that birthday night, he couldn't help but think of Xie Xue again.
Not only did his parents never care much for him, but even Xie Xue was only a person he partially imagined in his extreme loneliness and extreme sickness; she was real, but not entirely real, and learning this truth made his feelings towards Xie Xue complicated.
In fact, everything was predicted, wasn't it?
He used to think that Xie Xue had a bad memory, something he remembered clearly, but she said she had no recollection of it.
He even said to her at that time, I really don't know how you got into university with this memory.
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He had never suspected that those things might be a flower in a mirror, a moon in the water, a rhapsody within his head.
That "she" does not exist, is not entirely real.
Even his subconscious mind, which knew he was engaging in self-preservation and self-deception.
He once wrote an assignment for a choreography class on a boy who returned to his soul on the seventh day of his life. The boy's dead soul knocked on the teacher's door, and he sat down to eat snacks and drink ginger tea ...... However, when the teacher woke up the next day, there was not a single biscuit missing from the table, and the warm ginger tea was frozen into ice.
The boy had never come at all, was a fake, a ghost that did not exist as an entity.
Wasn't his brain capable of making up such a story projecting his own imagination of Xie Xue?
The biscuits that don't move in the story, the birthday cakes that don't exist outside the story.
A warm ginger tea frozen to ice in the story, a heart so cold outside the story that it was too hard to even beat.
His subconscious mind is not unaware of it.
Even, as he looks back carefully now, from the perspective of a dreamer awake, he is able to distinguish between dream and reality.
When he is in a dream, he cannot tell the difference between waking up and dreaming, but once his eyes are open, he can tell what is real and what is not.
As Xie Qingcheng says, Xie Xue was indeed kind to him, but that kindness was not unique, not without borders. She sees him as a close friend, but she has many friends, not just He Yu.
He was never special.
It was a truth more exciting than Xie Xue's love for someone else - that the pillar of his relationship was a mirage.
Even a feeling as normal as fondness for an ordinary person has become a luxury for him.
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He Yu thought randomly, but he hadn't had a good night's rest in a long time, and Xie Qingcheng was no better off after a painful week. The human flesh was simply incapable of receiving continuous stimulation of that intensity, and despite his troubled mood, he took a few pills and slowly closed his eyes, falling into his first deep sleep since the clubhouse night.
That night, He Yu had a dream.
He dreamt of a pair of deep-set peach blossom eyes that had tempted him to fall into them so many times before that he thought at first they were Xie Xue.
He thought he was imagining things again, the humble hopes of his heart taking on the form of Xie Xue to comfort himself.
But as the dream became clearer, he suddenly realised that those were not coquettishly smiling eyes.
Rather, it is cold, sharp, hateful and rigid.
And with some wretchedness and helplessness.
It suddenly dawned on him that those were the eyes of Xie Qingcheng, who had been dosed with 59 degrees of plum in the box.
Dreams are born out of consciousness, and when understood, everything in his dream world begins to materialise.
Once again he saw Xie Qingcheng's body sunken into a black leather couch, its skin pale, almost transparent, like a crystal resting in a black velvet box cushion.
The otherwise clean lapels of the shirt were soaked with red wine, the fabric clinging to the skin, outlining tight pectoral muscles, chests heaving together.
Xie Qingcheng was so tortured by him that his whole body looked like it had been salvaged from the water and was covered in sweat. The lines of that taut, pure yang, humongous, fire-like body ...... struggled in the moist, watery intent.
Xie Qingcheng couldn't stand it any longer and raised his neck in impatience, climbing up on the sofa, leaning back and trying to grasp something, his wrist exposed, a thin line of writing on his left wrist -
Here lies one whose na was written water
The line, which He Yu saw from real to blurred, and finally could not see anything, only felt the words like a magic spell, the soul out of the body, so he went up to ...... in a daze
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Hand snapped by Xie Qingcheng.
The peach blossom eye becomes a peach blossom miasma.
The voice He Yu had never heard before, a moving, raspy cry, thus resounding once again in the dream.
And then the lips open and gasp, the brow dazzles, the veins in the neck tremble like a tempting snake, almost becoming a demon, the snake molts off, revealing mortal lust, tempting the man to bite hard, swallow into the belly and turn his bones into tangles.
A nightmare to the point of not even having any bones or blood left.
He Yu woke up with his whole body still gasping fiercely for breath.
The watch on his wrist stung coldly, calming his sweat-sheen arms. He Yu lies on the cottage's large walnut bed, the fishy sweetness of the grass that characterises the cool mat rushing in between his nostrils.
It was still early, after four in the morning, and the servants in the villa were sleeping soundly, except for him, who floated from his dream until he was awake, the sweat on his back chilled and the man chilled.
With a thin autumn blanket around his waist, he stared at the ceiling embedded with brass lining sheets that looked like bronze mirror after bronze mirror, and he could see himself as he lay in bed.
He Yu's throat rolled and his eyes blinked as if he were a shell of a man who had just been spat out of a nightmare.
But there is no desire for the shell to boil over, and the teenager knows that under the thin blanket lies his unresolved rolling debt of sin, overdue from the dream of the land and light to reality.
Urgent request for some wet, soft, warm town comfort.
His fingertips twitched slightly on the bed, thinking he was really mad.
How could I have dreamt of Xie Qingcheng that night?
He had slept with Xie Qingcheng and thought he had no desire to do so, he just knew that this was the best way to make Xie Qingcheng lose face, and he was so mad at the time that he had no sense, he would rather fall into the mud with him than to wrap Xie Qingcheng in mud and see him in a mess.
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He had intended to put a stop to their relationship with that wild revenge over alcohol.
He even blacked out Xie Qingcheng's WeChat after that night together, like a dating scumbag, with no intention of contacting him again.
But why was he dreaming of Xie Qingcheng again, of that hoarse cry that made his loins tingle? He wasn't gay, so how could he have fallen into it?
He Yu closed his eyes and raised his hand to cover his forehead. The more he didn't want to go near any of the memories, the more they came up unwillingly, and the lust hidden under the thin blanket was stimulated and began to tell him what his primal nature meant.
He held back.
Sweat, however, oozed out bit by bit and his breathing became muddy and ragged as he tried his best to avoid this male instinct that disgusted him so much, but he was still pounced on.
He was originally very bloodthirsty, but that night he became addicted to male lust.
Before that he had not kissed anyone, hugged anyone, let alone delved into the land of tenderness and tasted the waters of burning love.
It's deadly for a virgin in his twenties to get laid, a time when boys are at the peak of their physical strength, curious and heavy, and still have plenty of free time, which is somewhat indicated by the number of hotels around the university town. He Yu, though exceptional in many ways, is really only a nineteen-year-old who cannot resist the kind of lust that humans have been tempted to serve by vipers since the Garden of Eden.
When boys have eaten and had it, they -
It's hard not to think.
It's hard not to want to.
Eventually he couldn't take the excitement and leapt off the thin blanket, grabbing the phone roughly.
The screen unlocks with a soft tapping sound.
It penetrates the ears, but it is like a drumbeat.
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He Yu froze for a long time before stiffly moving his fingers and, in a violent struggle with himself, clicking on the album.
The album contains several photos he took of Xie Qingcheng's sleeping bed, and as he looks at the screen, his dreams instantly overlap with reality.
The details of the photograph were so clear that even the faint hickeys on Xie Qingcheng's collarbone could be seen. He Yu was instantly reminded of the heat they had felt when they had been tangled up in each other's arms, and the sticky sounds of their lips and tongues ringing in his ears.
He Yu never opened these photos after he left the clubhouse that day.
He didn't want to end the relationship and still have some desire for Xie Qingcheng, so he didn't look any further.
But at this point, with some bizarre thought in mind, he had the heavily protected encrypted file open, and on the big bed in the villa with the blackout curtains, He Yu held his phone up as if he had been thrown down by something heavy, crushing his chest, and the damp, burning images held him down between the seats, tearing away his masculine nature.
Xie Qingcheng is shown without a stitch on her forehead, her hair in disarray and a bruise on the corner of her mouth from He Yu's bite when they kissed ......
With a single glance, He Yu closed his eyes and switched off his mobile phone at once.
The teenager's hot sweat instantly dripped all over ......
Is he crazy?
......
Heart thumping.
The dancing was getting ridiculous and he was getting nauseous.
That's crazy ...... He's not gay!
Yes, one must have not slept well and be sick and crazy again.
He Yu dropped his phone, got out of bed with an iron face, went into the bathroom with his bare feet covered in heat, the cold water kept ringing, and rinsed for most of an hour before he came out.
Once out he exited his phone from the photos page and lay on his bed with his forehead wet and swiped through social media sites for a while, trying to distract himself as quickly as possible.
The Internet is not lonely at night, and sleepless people are still releasing the flowers of their souls on it.
He Yu swiped for a while and found that he had subconsciously searched for the words " Xie Qingcheng" in the search bar at some point.
"......"
Sometimes people do this when they're empty, subconsciously scribbling names that echo in their minds in their notebooks, and typing the same thing.
However, the unconscious typing of Xie Qingcheng's name was still too much for He Yu to accept, and he found it really unbelievable.
He Yu looked back and tried to log out, but before he did, he suddenly noticed a message.
The next day, Xie Qingcheng left the hospital and went back to the hostel.
Although Chen Man was with him, he didn't say much and seemed to be in a bit of a state of flux.
When we parted Chen Man stood under the Xie Qingcheng dormitory building and hesitantly called out, "Xie ......"
Xie Qingcheng: "......"
But meeting Xie Qingcheng's sharp eyes, Chen Man eventually mumbled, "You ...... get yourself some rest. If there's anything, you can always call me."
Xie Qingcheng finds Chen Man's mood odd, but he doesn't think that Chen Man might have a crush on him. He thinks Chen Man probably can't accept his one-night stand, which is a lame excuse, but Xie Qingcheng can't think of any more plausible explanation than to use it to get rid of Chen Man.
He was a seven-foot man, but he couldn't possibly admit that he had been slept with by a boy thirteen years younger than himself.
For Xie Qingcheng, this is a case of "dumb and dumber".
Xie Qingcheng was quiet for a moment and said, "Let's go, thank you."
He was heading upstairs.
Chen Man stood frozen in the rain with his umbrella and gave another, "Thank you, brother."
"......"
"No, it's fine, you take care of your rest."
"...... What are you trying to say."
Chen Man bit her lip and held her tongue for a while before asking, "Are you still in touch with that girl?"
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Xie Qingcheng paused for a moment: "Would you have contact with a one-night stand?"
"I ...... I don't do that kind of thing ......"
But when the words came out, I felt as if I was condemning Xie Qingcheng for being unethical, and I quickly waved my hand, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way either."
"You really shouldn't have done such a thing." Xie Qingcheng said indifferently, "I too now regret it on impulse."
Chen Man looks at him.
Xie Qingcheng: "Not anymore. I feel sick."
Chen Man's face, which had been a little pale until he heard Xie Qingcheng's last two words, finally took on some colour.
It took a week for Xie Qingcheng's sickly state to pass, but the hickeys were still fresh, and he had to be careful to keep his cuffs pulled tight when teaching and writing in school, as he still has faint strangulation marks on his wrists.
That was evidence of the wanton intrusion of bound hands at the time.
Xie Qingcheng never contacted He Yu afterwards. He Yu blacked him out and he deleted him.
Just think of it as a bad dream, he thought.
Don't look back.
There are many hopeless and hateful things in this world, and in the end, they often do not get a satisfactory account, and again, they are disgusting, and sometimes just getting out in one piece is the hardest result.
Xie Qingcheng has been through a lot and it's not that he doesn't understand this.
But I still wake up in the middle of the night. The fever has gone down and even the wounds are slowly healing, but Xie Qingcheng's heart, already resistant to lust, has become even sicker.
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He dreamed repeatedly and uncontrollably of He Yu's face, shrouded in hate and desire, of what they had done, and then sat up suddenly from his bed, out of sight, Xie Qingcheng finally looking frightened and vulnerable, panting heavily, burying his face deep in his palms, his shirt drenched in sweat.
He lights one cigarette after another and even takes sleeping pills to sleep.
One day in the shower he saw that all the marks from the tossing and turning were finally gone, as if nothing had ever happened, but he didn't look any easier -
He knew that he had been branded with a skeleton, and his fear and loathing of the bed grew more and more luxuriant. His memory stung him, reminding him that he had lost his temper in front of He Yu, and that he had given vent to a desire that had been repressed, even if not quite there, in that way.
He screamed, shuddered, lost his temper, and these memories were like the whip marks that fell, constantly stabbing him, humiliating him, tormenting him.
He had to turn on his computer and click on the video of the sea and moon jellyfish, watching the ancient beings floating around, trying to divert his attention elsewhere.
He couldn't just go deeper into it, he thought.
.
A few days later.
He House.
"Come back."
"...hmm."
It was a rare occasion that He Yu's house was lit up, and the warm glow made He Yu frown as he walked into the hall, as if he were a vampire who had grown accustomed to the cold, and the silence and darkness of the old castle was what he was familiar with.
Lv Zhishu and He Jiwei were both surprisingly present.
He Yu went back to the villa once after having sex with Xie Qingcheng, the day he followed him to the hospital and found himself with nothing to do.
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At that time he felt uncomfortable and particularly empty. He had just been soaked in the ultimate excitement and was immediately and suddenly alone, so he could not help but feel empty, and in his distraction he went back to the main house, at least accompanied by the housekeeper's maid.
But he left the next day and he hasn't been back since. Until today.
He Yu knew that his parents would be returning to Hu Zhou recently, but he didn't think they would stay long, and it was because he was upset and didn't want to see them that he left again to get away.
Little did he know that when he returned home again, both Lv Zhishu and He Jiwei would still be there. He was so unaccustomed to this kind of welcome that his first reaction to the sight before him was "Maybe this is also a fake, a figment of his imagination."
But then he realised that he had never imagined that his parents would come back to have a nice dinner with him either.
They were not even in his delusions of grandeur.
"Is it cold outside? Mum cooked you soup, mutton belly mushroom and abalone four-item soup ......"
"Mom." He Yu was quiet for a moment, the word that humans first learned seemed a little raw to him, "I'm allergic to this seafood."
The hall became quiet for a moment.
Lv Zhishu, somewhat embarrassed, glanced towards He Jiwei.
He Jiwei coughed, "It's okay, eat something else, I've had cabbage in boiling water made for you, it's been hanging for ages, you used to like it best."
He Jiwei was not very close to He Yu either, but at least he was more reliable than Lv Zhishu and he knew what He Yu liked.
He Yu couldn't say anything else and the three of them sat down together at the table.
The atmosphere stiffened for a moment.
He Yu could not remember the last time the three of them had sat like this as a family, it had been too long. He looks at He Jiwei and Lv Zhishu's faces, which are even unfamiliar.
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To him, his parents seemed more like the two avatars in his WeChat contacts, those flat voices.
"When are you planning to go back to Yan Zhou?" He Yu asked.
"There's no rush." Lv Zhishu said immediately, a sweet smile piled up on his fat face, even a little shaky because it was so full, "Your brother is also living at school now, so we don't have to watch. Besides, He Yu, you're scaring Mum to death, don't do anything that dangerous again, in case something happens to you, we'll-"
She didn't go on, she seemed to choke up.
He Yu looked on coldly, his heart was not the same as before after the TV tower incident, it had become very cold and hard.
But he didn't bother to talk much to them, and finally smiled softly, "It's okay. I'm fine now."
At the dinner table, the conversation is seemingly cosy, but in reality it is dark.
"I've finished eating, can I go upstairs first?"
"Ah, good. You go on, go on." Lv Zhishu was not very comfortable with He Yu, but she was a businesswoman through and through, after all, and could even do a Pili Yangqiu to her son, "Get some rest, and Mum will make you chicken soup tomorrow, okay?"
"...... Whatever." He Yu said lightly, leaving the table and heading upstairs.
Lv Zhishu watched with mixed eyes as his back disappeared into the depths of the upstairs corridor.
He Jiwei: "Why are you so nice to him all of a sudden? Not to mention him, even I'm not used to it."
Lv Zhishu: "What's wrong with me being nice to my son? That's not the natural thing to do, I'm his own mother ......"
He Jiwei wanted to say something but finally got up: "I have something to do in my company, I have to go to Qingdao tomorrow."
"So when are you coming back? Let me tell you, I've thought about it, I owe him too much before, I have to make it up to him, and you don't go out for too long, work, where's the importance of children ......"
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He Jiwei sighed: "...... That's nostalgic coming from you."
"......"
"Like you told me when you were first pregnant with him." He Jiwei smiled, his eyes deep, and he seemed a little sad, "It's been a long time since I've heard that."
Lv Zhishu: "Lao He ......"
He Jiwei had already turned around and walked away.
He Yu lies on his bedroom bed, his eyes a little scattered after not having to make false politeness with Lv Zhishu He Jiwei.
He looked at the ceiling and, as he had done for the past week, ran through the events of the previous day when he was alone and dazed.
"Thud - thud - thud -"
Unexpectedly, the big clock of the old house rang again.
A dull, mellow knock on his heart, like every lonely night, like the night of his thirteenth birthday when he stood for a long time, unable to wait for even one person's company.
Thinking of that birthday night, he couldn't help but think of Xie Xue again.
Not only did his parents never care much for him, but even Xie Xue was only a person he partially imagined in his extreme loneliness and extreme sickness; she was real, but not entirely real, and learning this truth made his feelings towards Xie Xue complicated.
In fact, everything was predicted, wasn't it?
He used to think that Xie Xue had a bad memory, something he remembered clearly, but she said she had no recollection of it.
He even said to her at that time, I really don't know how you got into university with this memory.
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He had never suspected that those things might be a flower in a mirror, a moon in the water, a rhapsody within his head.
That "she" does not exist, is not entirely real.
Even his subconscious mind, which knew he was engaging in self-preservation and self-deception.
He once wrote an assignment for a choreography class on a boy who returned to his soul on the seventh day of his life. The boy's dead soul knocked on the teacher's door, and he sat down to eat snacks and drink ginger tea ...... However, when the teacher woke up the next day, there was not a single biscuit missing from the table, and the warm ginger tea was frozen into ice.
The boy had never come at all, was a fake, a ghost that did not exist as an entity.
Wasn't his brain capable of making up such a story projecting his own imagination of Xie Xue?
The biscuits that don't move in the story, the birthday cakes that don't exist outside the story.
A warm ginger tea frozen to ice in the story, a heart so cold outside the story that it was too hard to even beat.
His subconscious mind is not unaware of it.
Even, as he looks back carefully now, from the perspective of a dreamer awake, he is able to distinguish between dream and reality.
When he is in a dream, he cannot tell the difference between waking up and dreaming, but once his eyes are open, he can tell what is real and what is not.
As Xie Qingcheng says, Xie Xue was indeed kind to him, but that kindness was not unique, not without borders. She sees him as a close friend, but she has many friends, not just He Yu.
He was never special.
It was a truth more exciting than Xie Xue's love for someone else - that the pillar of his relationship was a mirage.
Even a feeling as normal as fondness for an ordinary person has become a luxury for him.
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He Yu thought randomly, but he hadn't had a good night's rest in a long time, and Xie Qingcheng was no better off after a painful week. The human flesh was simply incapable of receiving continuous stimulation of that intensity, and despite his troubled mood, he took a few pills and slowly closed his eyes, falling into his first deep sleep since the clubhouse night.
That night, He Yu had a dream.
He dreamt of a pair of deep-set peach blossom eyes that had tempted him to fall into them so many times before that he thought at first they were Xie Xue.
He thought he was imagining things again, the humble hopes of his heart taking on the form of Xie Xue to comfort himself.
But as the dream became clearer, he suddenly realised that those were not coquettishly smiling eyes.
Rather, it is cold, sharp, hateful and rigid.
And with some wretchedness and helplessness.
It suddenly dawned on him that those were the eyes of Xie Qingcheng, who had been dosed with 59 degrees of plum in the box.
Dreams are born out of consciousness, and when understood, everything in his dream world begins to materialise.
Once again he saw Xie Qingcheng's body sunken into a black leather couch, its skin pale, almost transparent, like a crystal resting in a black velvet box cushion.
The otherwise clean lapels of the shirt were soaked with red wine, the fabric clinging to the skin, outlining tight pectoral muscles, chests heaving together.
Xie Qingcheng was so tortured by him that his whole body looked like it had been salvaged from the water and was covered in sweat. The lines of that taut, pure yang, humongous, fire-like body ...... struggled in the moist, watery intent.
Xie Qingcheng couldn't stand it any longer and raised his neck in impatience, climbing up on the sofa, leaning back and trying to grasp something, his wrist exposed, a thin line of writing on his left wrist -
Here lies one whose na was written water
The line, which He Yu saw from real to blurred, and finally could not see anything, only felt the words like a magic spell, the soul out of the body, so he went up to ...... in a daze
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Hand snapped by Xie Qingcheng.
The peach blossom eye becomes a peach blossom miasma.
The voice He Yu had never heard before, a moving, raspy cry, thus resounding once again in the dream.
And then the lips open and gasp, the brow dazzles, the veins in the neck tremble like a tempting snake, almost becoming a demon, the snake molts off, revealing mortal lust, tempting the man to bite hard, swallow into the belly and turn his bones into tangles.
A nightmare to the point of not even having any bones or blood left.
He Yu woke up with his whole body still gasping fiercely for breath.
The watch on his wrist stung coldly, calming his sweat-sheen arms. He Yu lies on the cottage's large walnut bed, the fishy sweetness of the grass that characterises the cool mat rushing in between his nostrils.
It was still early, after four in the morning, and the servants in the villa were sleeping soundly, except for him, who floated from his dream until he was awake, the sweat on his back chilled and the man chilled.
With a thin autumn blanket around his waist, he stared at the ceiling embedded with brass lining sheets that looked like bronze mirror after bronze mirror, and he could see himself as he lay in bed.
He Yu's throat rolled and his eyes blinked as if he were a shell of a man who had just been spat out of a nightmare.
But there is no desire for the shell to boil over, and the teenager knows that under the thin blanket lies his unresolved rolling debt of sin, overdue from the dream of the land and light to reality.
Urgent request for some wet, soft, warm town comfort.
His fingertips twitched slightly on the bed, thinking he was really mad.
How could I have dreamt of Xie Qingcheng that night?
He had slept with Xie Qingcheng and thought he had no desire to do so, he just knew that this was the best way to make Xie Qingcheng lose face, and he was so mad at the time that he had no sense, he would rather fall into the mud with him than to wrap Xie Qingcheng in mud and see him in a mess.
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He had intended to put a stop to their relationship with that wild revenge over alcohol.
He even blacked out Xie Qingcheng's WeChat after that night together, like a dating scumbag, with no intention of contacting him again.
But why was he dreaming of Xie Qingcheng again, of that hoarse cry that made his loins tingle? He wasn't gay, so how could he have fallen into it?
He Yu closed his eyes and raised his hand to cover his forehead. The more he didn't want to go near any of the memories, the more they came up unwillingly, and the lust hidden under the thin blanket was stimulated and began to tell him what his primal nature meant.
He held back.
Sweat, however, oozed out bit by bit and his breathing became muddy and ragged as he tried his best to avoid this male instinct that disgusted him so much, but he was still pounced on.
He was originally very bloodthirsty, but that night he became addicted to male lust.
Before that he had not kissed anyone, hugged anyone, let alone delved into the land of tenderness and tasted the waters of burning love.
It's deadly for a virgin in his twenties to get laid, a time when boys are at the peak of their physical strength, curious and heavy, and still have plenty of free time, which is somewhat indicated by the number of hotels around the university town. He Yu, though exceptional in many ways, is really only a nineteen-year-old who cannot resist the kind of lust that humans have been tempted to serve by vipers since the Garden of Eden.
When boys have eaten and had it, they -
It's hard not to think.
It's hard not to want to.
Eventually he couldn't take the excitement and leapt off the thin blanket, grabbing the phone roughly.
The screen unlocks with a soft tapping sound.
It penetrates the ears, but it is like a drumbeat.
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He Yu froze for a long time before stiffly moving his fingers and, in a violent struggle with himself, clicking on the album.
The album contains several photos he took of Xie Qingcheng's sleeping bed, and as he looks at the screen, his dreams instantly overlap with reality.
The details of the photograph were so clear that even the faint hickeys on Xie Qingcheng's collarbone could be seen. He Yu was instantly reminded of the heat they had felt when they had been tangled up in each other's arms, and the sticky sounds of their lips and tongues ringing in his ears.
He Yu never opened these photos after he left the clubhouse that day.
He didn't want to end the relationship and still have some desire for Xie Qingcheng, so he didn't look any further.
But at this point, with some bizarre thought in mind, he had the heavily protected encrypted file open, and on the big bed in the villa with the blackout curtains, He Yu held his phone up as if he had been thrown down by something heavy, crushing his chest, and the damp, burning images held him down between the seats, tearing away his masculine nature.
Xie Qingcheng is shown without a stitch on her forehead, her hair in disarray and a bruise on the corner of her mouth from He Yu's bite when they kissed ......
With a single glance, He Yu closed his eyes and switched off his mobile phone at once.
The teenager's hot sweat instantly dripped all over ......
Is he crazy?
......
Heart thumping.
The dancing was getting ridiculous and he was getting nauseous.
That's crazy ...... He's not gay!
Yes, one must have not slept well and be sick and crazy again.
He Yu dropped his phone, got out of bed with an iron face, went into the bathroom with his bare feet covered in heat, the cold water kept ringing, and rinsed for most of an hour before he came out.
Once out he exited his phone from the photos page and lay on his bed with his forehead wet and swiped through social media sites for a while, trying to distract himself as quickly as possible.
The Internet is not lonely at night, and sleepless people are still releasing the flowers of their souls on it.
He Yu swiped for a while and found that he had subconsciously searched for the words " Xie Qingcheng" in the search bar at some point.
"......"
Sometimes people do this when they're empty, subconsciously scribbling names that echo in their minds in their notebooks, and typing the same thing.
However, the unconscious typing of Xie Qingcheng's name was still too much for He Yu to accept, and he found it really unbelievable.
He Yu looked back and tried to log out, but before he did, he suddenly noticed a message.
