The two of them stood in the e narrow break room. The space had just been cleared out, leaving behind little more than an old sofa bed and a chair to place their clothes. The furnishings were reminiscent of a "massage parlor" that authorities needed to investigate. It was unnerving.
Both men looked around the room in dismayed silence.
He Yu tossed down his phone carelessly, turned to Xie Qingcheng, and said, "Why don't you go ahead and sleep? You're getting old."
Xie Qingcheng's face darkened. "Am I already at the stage where I need others to give up their seats and beds to me?"
He Yu had been weary for some time by now, so he didn't feel like wasting his energy arguing with Xie Qingcheng. "Whatever. This sofa bed isn't that small, and I'm a quiet sleeper. Do you mind?"
This could be taken as the young man making a graceful concession.
He Yu had never slept with anyone else before; in his memories, a bed was just a place to rest. But Xie Qingcheng wasn't the same. To a man who'd once been married, sharing a bed with someone else would always feel a bit strange.
Xie Qingcheng furrowed his brow slightly. "I'm not tired. I'll just sit."
But his face was pale, and even if he'd been forcing himself to bear with the exhaustion this whole time, his features nevertheless revealed a hint of fatigue.
"I'm not gonna eat you, so what're you so afraid of?" He Yu shot back. "Scared I'll go crazy in the middle of the night and kill you?"
"…What nonsense are you spouting?" Xie Qingcheng retorted. This mentally ill young man was surprisingly sensitive.
However, Xie Qingcheng really was bone-tired. Even a wild beast would have run out of strength after such a rough day. Without the energy to squabble with He Yu any longer, he gave in with a sigh and said, "Fine, let's sleep."
He lay down on the sofa bed, resting on his side and facing the wall. After a while, he felt the other side of the bed dip slightly, then heard He Yu settle down a short distance behind him.
Xie Qingcheng still felt a bit uneasy. He abhorred having someone else sleep on the other side of his bed, especially someone like He Yu, who was young and had a high body temperature. Even if they weren't especially close to each other, Xie Qingcheng was still fully aware of his heat and scent in this narrow little room. Once silence settled over them, he could even hear the faint sound of He Yu's breathing.
Furthermore, Xie Qingcheng's instinct as a patriarch and protector kept him alert and unable to truly relax. When he was very young, it was Xie Xue who had slept by his side; later, it was Li Ruoqiu. The only ones he had been able to allow into his territory—barely so, at that—were the women who were dependent on him.
But the aura of an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boy wasn't the same. Those male hormones put Xie Qingcheng on edge. The sense of encroachment He Yu gave him was too strong and foreign to him.
So, he closed his eyes and furrowed his brow, shifting a bit closer to the edge of the bed.
Just a bit closer.
Just…
"If you keep moving that way, you'll be sleeping on the ground," a cool voice suddenly said from behind him.
He Yu hoisted himself to a sitting position without warning. Before Xie Qingcheng could react, He Yu was already leaning over him, half of his body hovering over his, close enough to touch. The boy's unique scent crashed over Xie Qingcheng in a forceful and impetuous wave.
Xie Qingcheng opened his peach-blossom eyes. "What are you doing?"
He Yu misunderstood Xie Qingcheng's motivations, believing he was moving away out of disgust for his illness. And so, feeling a bit malicious, he leaned even lower, pressing his lips to the side of Xie Qingcheng's neck and letting the tips of his teeth brush against the older man's skin as he spoke quietly. "My illness is acting up. I want to kill you to shut you up. Are you going to run?"
Like hell was his illness acting up!
He Yu didn't act like this at all when it did. Xie Qingcheng could see right through him and knew it was little more than an adult tantrum, so he said in a very cold and hard tone of voice, "Get off me first."
"I'm getting my phone." Not only did He Yu refuse to get off, he leaned down even lower.
Regardless of whether he was really reaching for his phone or not, Xie Qingcheng couldn't take this intrusion into his personal space. He Yu was far too close to him, and for a moment, his every breath was filled with the heat emanating from the other man's body.
Xie Qingcheng turned his face away to endure it, but before long the discomfort became too much to handle. He sat up abruptly and grabbed He Yu's wrists. His back arched like a cheetah's, and his shoulder blades spread like a butterfly's wings as he forcefully flipped over and pinned He Yu under him.
"Why are you throwing yourself at me?" He Yu asked in bemusement. "Aren't you scared of me?"
"Why would I be scared of you? I'm teaching you how to behave."
He Yu simply stared in response for a while before sighing softly. "Ge, you're hurting me, you know?" It had occurred to He Yu that Xie Qingcheng's aversion had only stemmed from the fact that he was a man, not his mental illness, and so, he stopped resisting Xie Qingcheng's tight grip on his wrists.
In the stillness, Xie Qingcheng could see himself reflected in the younger man's unnervingly apathetic gaze as he spoke in an equally apathetic voice. "Okay, okay. I'll behave." He Yu said. "Could I please trouble you to hand me my phone?"
Xie Qingcheng didn't take well to being coerced at all, but he found it much less intolerable when he was the one looking down at the other young man. He didn't like feeling invaded and suppressed by any other member of his own sex, but the closeness didn't bother him so much when he was in control.
With He Yu sufficiently subdued, Xie Qingcheng got up to search the area off to the side of the sofa bed and, sure enough, found He Yu's phone.
He'd probably carelessly left it there earlier.
He handed the phone to him.
"Thank you." He Yu took it and tilted his head back as he swiped the screen. He remarked casually, "Doctor Xie, we may both be men, but we're secure in our sexuality, wouldn't you agree? So, why are you so nervous? Never shared a bed with a man before?"
"I'm used to being alone," Xie Qingcheng replied, his expression and voice bitterly cold.
He Yu laughed. He was still looking at his phone, and the luminescent glow of the screen made his long eyelashes appear to be covered with a layer of frost. They trembled faintly with each breath he took. In a mocking tone, He Yu asked, "Then, did you and Saozi sleep in separate beds?"
Despite the apathetic front, Xie Qingcheng knew that He Yu was feeling a kind of empathetic pain after seeing those mentally ill patients today, souring his disposition. However, no matter how bad of a mood He Yu was in, Xie Qingcheng had no duty or obligation to become the dumping ground for his anger.
Besides, he was hardly in a better frame of mind himself.
Xie Qingcheng glared at He Yu. "I'm going to sleep, so stop disturbing me," he berated the younger man before turning over to lie back down. Unfortunately, Xie Qingcheng found it difficult to sleep. He Yu, on the other hand, hadn't planned on sleeping at all; he was just lying down to get comfortable. He stared at Xie Qingcheng in silence for a while, wondering how this person could be so paternalistic and give him a tongue-lashing as though he were scolding his own son.
The notion that, given the opportunity, he really ought to get a wedding dress and force Xie Qingcheng into it appealed to He Yu more than ever. If Xie Qingcheng wore it, then he could forget about lifting his head in front of He Yu again for the rest of his life.
With this thought and plenty of time to kill, He Yu opened an online shopping site on his phone and typed "wedding dress" into the search bar.
The styles that popped up were all perfectly normal, each one extremely beautiful and dignified; however, he felt that none of them could achieve the best effect for what he had in mind.
After pondering for a spell, He Yu glanced up at Xie Qingcheng's back. Then, he looked back down and added another keyword.
"Humiliation."
This time, the search results were a gold mine.
Black silk garters, white silk garters, lacy silk garters, bondage kink, sheer skirts… Everything you could think of—a complete collection in a countless variety of styles—was right at his fingertips. As He Yu swiped through page after page, his eyebrows inched higher and higher.
It was quite interesting; the human imagination truly was boundless when it came to seeking pleasure.
Every time he found an interesting item, he would hold his phone up to Xie Qingcheng's back, fantasizing about how Xie Qingcheng would look if he were to one day succumb to He Yu's control and get tied up and stuffed into this kind of attire. As he envisioned Xie Qingcheng's humiliation at his hands, He Yu's weariness faded away without a trace.
When he was young, he had been rather afraid of Xie Qingcheng, but it was simply the nature of boys that the more loftily and oppressively a mountain towered over them when they were young, the more they'd want to conquer it when they grew up. Only once they stood upon those snowcapped peaks and stood even higher than the summit would the young man feel that they had truly matured, that they had finally taken hold of the prize they had long been seeking.
That was why He Yu felt that butting heads with Xie Qingcheng was something that could bring him the most exquisite pleasure.
Perhaps it was because he had become too enthralled by his scrolling, but with a slip of the finger, He Yu ended up accidentally tapping on a livestream link—incredibly, he had forgotten to put his phone to silent mode.
In this cramped little break room with an area of less than ten square meters, the girlishly coy voice of a live streamer rang out. "This sexy wedding dress really is incredibly gorgeous. If you wear this on your wedding night, your husband will definitely lose control…"
He Yu quickly turned off the sound and froze, his eyes on Xie Qingcheng's back.
It was dead silent in the room.
He Yu hoped dearly that Xie Qingcheng had already fallen asleep.
But his hopes were not answered. Xie Qingcheng turned over and looked at him with an exceedingly frigid gaze that was exactly the same as the past; like a sharp blade, as if he wanted to cut He Yu's heart open.
"What are you doing?"
There was no point in hiding it. Smiling slightly, he politely replied, "Browsing shopping websites."
"You're buying a wedding dress?"
"What, I'm not even allowed to look?"
Incredibly annoyed at the mere sight of him, Xie Qingcheng sneered as he asked, "Why are you looking at wedding dresses? Who's gonna wear it?"
He Yu's eyes shifted around, as though searching his mind for just the right answer. I wonder if he would just kill me immediately if I told him
"you are"?
A murder in the police station was a terrible idea—the civil servants would be terribly inconvenienced.
So, suppressing his mischievous inclinations, He Yu simply said, "I believe this has nothing to do with you."
"Turn off your phone," Xie Qingcheng ordered with an ice-cold expression. "Stop looking at this trivial nonsense. You're so young and haven't even started dating yet, so what's the point of looking at such things?"
He Yu surprisingly found himself feeling a little upset at Xie Qingcheng's incredibly frosty tone and his disgust-flecked eyes.
What right did he have to interfere so much in his business?
What was their relationship, anyway?
He Yu's urge to provoke him welled up again.
He took a moment to stare at those peach-blossom eyes in silence before letting a mocking, meaningful smile slowly spread across his lips. "There's no need for you to worry about me, Xie-ge. I'll be dating very soon."
He paused briefly, then continued, "When the time comes, I'll ask you for guidance. You're older than I am and have a lot of experience, seeing as you've gotten married and even divorced already. With all that experience, you're sure to know how to treat girls well too. So, Professor Xie, when I come to ask you for advice, please remember to give me lots of tips."
He Yu's eyes flashed as the roguishness and malice in his smile intensified.
"But I'm curious about one thing. You and Li-sao were married for so long, so why didn't she have any kids?"
Xie Qingcheng's expression clouded over. He didn't reply.
This schoolboy, who pretended to be cultured and refined, and practiced great self-restraint in front of everyone but Xie Qingcheng, was, in this moment, a malicious beast that had returned to his cave and stripped off his human mask.
He Yu cast his almond eyes lazily downward, and, with a hint of ridicule in his voice, asked, "Was it because you couldn't get it up?"
Silence filled the room for but a few seconds before Xie Qingcheng grabbed the brat by his collar and threw him heavily onto the ground, followed by his pillow and blanket, burying He Yu in bedding.
Although He Yu wanted to provoke him, he hadn't expected he'd elicit such a huge reaction. Xie Qingcheng seethed. Sure, he wasn't keen on sex—quite indifferent to it, actually—but that little brat was spouting nothing but nonsense!
"He Yu." Xie Qingcheng stared at him, his gaze and voice peppered with shards of ice. "Just how fucking immature are you?"
He got up, adjusted his clothes, and left the break room, the loud slamming of the door betraying his anger.
Xie Qingcheng stepped out onto the station's portico, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag.
He despised the mere mention of Li Ruoqiu's name, but He Yu always knew just how to twist a knife into his weak point for maximum pain.
Xie Qingcheng leaned against a pillar and took another long drag. His clothes and hair were in disarray, a far cry from his usual meticulous and stern appearance. As dark clouds closed in again, the distance between his eyebrows narrowed above his bloodshot eyes. He bit the cigarette filter with rough, chapped lips, as he stared vacantly into the night, a picture of decadent beauty despite his disheveled state.
The police officers who passed by couldn't help but steal glances at him. After a while, a young male officer dashed over and handed him a cold can of beer. "Comrade, one of those days, huh? I get it. What happened tonight was—eh? Xie-ge? Why're you here?"
Suddenly recognizing the voice, Xie Qingcheng snapped out of his brooding and looked over at the police officer.
"…Chen Man?"
Chen Man was Xie Qingcheng's acquaintance through his older brother, who had also been a police officer and a mentee of Xie Qingcheng's father, no less. Unfortunately, Chen Man's brother had died in the line of duty.
Chen Man followed in his brother's footsteps by attending university to become a police officer and was now slowly rising through the ranks. Xie Qingcheng had even bumped into him on several occasions at the local police station before now.
Chen Man's name was actually Chen Yan, but because he always did
things a little too quickly, his family gave him the nickname "Chen Man" in hopes that he would slow down a bit. Over time, everyone came to prefer calling him Chen Man, and the name stuck.
"Xie-ge, how did you get pulled into this case?"
"It's a long story." Xie Qingcheng sighed with the cigarette still in his mouth and opened his beer. He bowed slightly in Chen Man's direction as a gesture of thanks, then went back to leaning glumly against the pillar and gazing into the darkness.
Chen Man stood silently with him for a while, but realizing that he had no intention of elaborating, decided to change the subject. "Xie-ge, aren't you cold? Why don't I give you my jacket…"
"It's fine, I'm not cold. How could I be on such a hot day?"
"According to the calendar, it's already fall…"
Xie Qingcheng was already quite vexed, and this kid blabbering on about nothing of consequence wasn't doing his mood any favors. "You can go," he said without looking back at Chen Man. "I don't really have anything to talk about. Thanks for the beer, though."
"You're sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine."
It was only then that Chen Man reluctantly walked away, glancing back every couple of steps.
"Wait," Xie Qingcheng suddenly called after him. "Come back."
Chen Man rushed back over without hesitation.
To his surprise, Xie Qingcheng grabbed him by his police uniform. Given their familiarity, Xie Qingcheng wasn't too concerned about politeness as he reached into Chen Man's pocket and fished out a pack of cigarettes.
Although Chen Man didn't smoke, most of the other officers did, so it was convenient to have a pack of cigarettes in his pocket while working with different units.
Cigarettes successfully acquired, Xie Qingcheng straightened out Chen Man's uniform and patted him on the shoulder. "Now you can go."
"…Oh. Don't smoke too much, Ge. You've been smoking way too much these days."
Chen Man's concern fell on deaf ears as Xie Qingcheng simply leaned back against the pillar to finish his cigarette, taking no notice as the police officer took his leave.
His reprieve would not last long, however, as the sound of footsteps came from behind him once again.
"Don't you have work to do tonight?" Xie Qingcheng growled without a hint of patience.
"What work do I have to do?"
It was not Chen Man's voice. Xie Qingcheng turned his head to confirm that his latest disturbance was He Yu. Seeing that it was indeed him, Xie Qingcheng's expression became even more ruthlessly cold, and he looked away again without a word.
He Yu quietly stood next to him for a while before reluctantly breaking the silence. "Doctor Xie, I'm sorry. About you and Saozi, I'm very sorry…"
This was the final straw for Xie Qingcheng. He Yu was truly far too tactless and had pushed him past his limit. Xie Qingcheng was dispassionate by nature on the surface, but that only meant that he was constantly holding back.
This apology felt no different than mere mockery, which only served to enrage him even more. He could deal with He Yu's impudence, but his anger flared the moment he heard He Yu apologize in this pretentiously fake manner. He Yu's lack of sincerity was just like his parents, people who treated personal and business relationships the same, who just went through the motions for the sake of harmony. It was as if his very apology were modeled on The Capitalist Manifesto.
That apology cracked his stoic mask, and his pent-up irritation rushed into his heart, propelling his arm to throw the beer Chen Man had given him in He Yu's face.
"What are you apologizing for?" The beer dripped from He Yu's hair and slid down his face, the liquid bone-chillingly cold. But Xie Qingcheng's tone was even colder. "There wasn't a shred of sincerity in your apology. That pretense of yours may serve you in front of others, but it's useless on me. Don't you realize I know all your tricks?"
He Yu didn't utter a word. This was the first time someone had ever dared to throw a drink in his face. He was still processing it when Xie Qingcheng continued his verbal attack.
"Also, stop saying 'Saozi.' We've already divorced, and even if we hadn't, I'm not your biological brother, so she wouldn't be your Saozi. Just the sight of you irritates me right now, so don't let me see you again tonight!"
He Yu considered Xie Qingcheng's words for a short while, then said, with deliberate emphasis, "Then what do you want me to do? Take back what I said?"
He Yu was truly unhinged. Droplets of beer rolled down between his dark brows as a smile slowly formed on his lips, a smile so gentle it was terrifying. "Or… Perhaps I should get down on my knees and say sorry? In order to show my sincerity, that is."
"You don't need to do anything." Xie Qingcheng stiffly crushed the empty beer can in his hand as he spoke. He stared into He Yu's eyes as he tossed the can into the rubbish bin.
"He Yu, just remember: even though I'm a failure when it comes to my love life, you're in no position to mock me. With the deceitful and sick way you treat others, no one is ever going to sincerely like you either. Didn't you say just now that you're going to tell someone your feelings soon? Just try it and see."
He Yu simply stared back.
"I don't care who it is that you like—if she can stay with you for more than a month, I'll take your fucking surname."