CH 5

Zhou Yan didn’t say why he thought Ning Junyan was scary, and Chen Yuncheng didn’t ask. In comparison, Chen Yuncheng and Ning Junyan had been together for a longer time. He knew Ning Junyan better than Zhou Yan, and he also knew why Zhou Yan was afraid of Ning Junyan.

There was a time when not only Zhou Yan was afraid of Ning Junyan, but even his foster parents were also afraid of him.

After the meal, Zhou Yan had to go to the hospital, and the two parted at the door of the restaurant.

Chen Yuncheng walked back alone for more than ten minutes. Because he had just eaten and drank some wine, his whole body felt warm, and he couldn’t help but slightly open the front of his down jacket when he got there.

Back in the inner room of his small kiosk, Chen Yuncheng lowered his head and smelled the down jacket. He took off his clothes and hung them at the window, and then went to the bathroom to take a shower.

The water took a while to get hot, so Chen Yuncheng took advantage of this time to take off his clothes and stood under the shower until the water was completely heated up.

He habitually picked up the water and washed his face, suddenly recalling the first time he helped Ning Junyan take a bath.

It was the same day that he first met Ning Junyan. After dinner at night, his foster father and foster mother went back to the room to watch TV, while he boiled a pot of boiling water on the gas stove in the kitchen.

It was early summer, and the weather was quite hot but not so hot that he would take a bath with cold water.

After the water was heated up, Chen Yuncheng carried the kettle to the yard. He first took half a bucket of cold water into the bucket and then mixed it with hot water until he felt that the temperature was just right.

Then Chen Yuncheng took off his clothes and used a small aluminium basin to scoop water on himself.

During this process, Ning Junyan squatted by the wall and kept looking at him blankly.

But at that time Chen Yuncheng didn’t know what Ning Junyan’s name was. He rinsed his body with water, wiped it from head to toe with soap, and after rubbing the foam carefully, he washed the foam away with water and felt that he had washed himself clean.

Chen Yuncheng shook the water from his hair, and instead of reaching for the towel, he squatted down and lifted the kettle, and found that there was half a kettle of hot water left.

After hesitating for a while, Chen Yuncheng raised his head to look at Ning Junyan and called him, “Hey!”

Ning Junyan did not respond.

Chen Yuncheng said tentatively, “Mute? Are you a mute?”

Ning Junyan looked at him.

Chen Yuncheng didn’t care that he was still naked, and waved to him calmly, “Do you want to take a bath?”

Ning Junyan didn’t move.

Chen Yuncheng simply walked toward him, grabbed his hand, pulled him up from the wall, and dragged him to the yard.

Ning Junyan’s body was still dirty, Chen Yuncheng stretched out his hand to undress him, but he didn’t resist. Only after he took off Ning Junyan’s shirt did Chen Yuncheng find that Ning Junyan had a large number of scratches on his back, and the colour was still bright red now.

Chen Yuncheng frowned and didn’t ask him how he was hurt. He squatted down and took off his trousers. When he took it off to his feet, he raised his head and said to him, “Lift your feet.”

Ning Junyan looked down at him and raised his feet one after the other, allowing Chen Yuncheng to strip him naked as well.

The two of them stood by the drainage ditch in the corner of the yard, because Ning Junyan was a bit higher than Chen Yuncheng, Chen Yuncheng stood at the edge of the concrete pool and raised the basin in his hand to pour the water over his head.

As the water dripped down, Chen Yuncheng found that Ning Junyan frowned unconsciously.

At that time, it was not completely dark, and Chen Yuncheng subconsciously ruffled the hair on top of Ning Junyan’s head, only to find that he also had injuries on his head.

Chen Yuncheng lowered his head and said to Ning Junyan, “You have a wound on your head, does it hurt?”

Ning Junyan just glanced at him.

Chen Yuncheng thought he was very interesting, and asked again, “Does it hurt? If it hurts, I’ll be more gentle.”

Unexpectedly, Ning Junyan shook his head very lightly at this time.

Chen Yuncheng was a little surprised, and said after a pause, “Then I will continue to wash.”

Despite that, Chen Yuncheng carefully avoided the wound on Ning Junyan’s head, and when applying soap to him, he gently wiped his back, trying not to hurt him.

After they took a shower, Chen Yuncheng found a set of old clothes for Ning Junyan to put on.

This set of clothes was too big for Chen Yuncheng. It wasn’t his clothes at first. It was old clothes that his foster mother had gotten for him. After she washed it, she kept it in Chen Yuncheng’s cabinet.

After that, Chen Yuncheng threw the dirty clothes that the two of them had changed into the basin and washed them together. While he was doing the laundry, Ning Junyan sat on the small stool under the eaves and looked at Chen Yuncheng intently.

Chen Yuncheng occasionally raised his head to talk to him, Ning Junyan would not respond to him, but Chen Yuncheng didn’t mind talking to himself.

It was completely dark by this time. An incandescent lamp was lit in the yard, and a few moths circled constantly around the light.

There were four rooms around the yard; one was the kitchen where they ate, and only one of the other three rooms was lit. It was their foster parent’s room where they were watching TV.

After Chen Yuncheng finished washing his clothes, he turned off the lights in the yard and took Ning Junyan’s hand to his room.

The room had a worn wooden bed and an old-fashioned wooden wardrobe.

Chen Yuncheng asked him to sit down beside the bed, turned on a small lamp, and then opened the cabinet and rummaged in the drawers below. He found a few Band-Aids, and then returned to the bed. He said to Ning Junyan, “I’ll help you deal with it. Is the wound on the head okay?” He knew that the foster father and foster mother wouldn’t care about it.

Ning Junyan looked at the Band-Aid in his hand and did not speak.

Chen Yuncheng took it as his silent agreement. He raised his hand and brushed Ning Junyan’s hair to take a closer look at the wound on the top of the head. The wound on Ning Junyan’s head was not very deep, and it didn’t look too serious, but there was a big bulge next to the wound. Chen Yuncheng pressed it down with his hand and found that it was soft but not bleeding.

Chen Yuncheng didn’t understand what was going on. He held the Band-Aid in his hand for a long time and felt that he was blocked by Ning Junyan’s hair. He hesitated, and asked Ning Junyan, “Can I cut your hair short?”

Ning Junyan did not answer.

Chen Yuncheng made his own decision, picked up the scissors on the bedside table, and cut the hair on the top of Ning Junyan’s head mercilessly. In the end, only a thin layer was left to stick to the scalp, before he put the Band-Aid on.

After he put on the Band-Aid, Chen Yuncheng saw that Ning Junyan’s hair was messed up as if it had been bitten by a dog, so he cut all the hair around him short.

During this process, Ning Junyan sat motionless by the bed.

Chen Yuncheng didn’t care whether the cut was good or not. After the cut, he called him to get up, brushed all the hair that has been cut off on the sheets to the ground, and said to Ning Junyan, “Go and bring in the broom for me.”

Ning Junyan didn’t respond.

Chen Yuncheng was not angry, he went out and took a broom to clean all the hair on the ground. Afterwards, he returned to his room, turned over on the bed, pulled out an old comic from under the pillow, lay down and read it intently.

Ning Junyan stood by the bed and watched him for a while, then quietly climbed onto the bed and lay down beside Chen Yuncheng.

———

After he turn off the hot water, Chen Yuncheng reached out and picked up the towel hanging on the wall to wipe his body, and wiped the mist on the mirror.

In the mirror, there was no longer the flimsy and thin boy at that time. The twenty eight year old Chen Yuncheng was well-proportioned, with a thin layer of muscles covering his chest and abdomen, and his legs were slender.

He hadn’t thought about those things in the past for a long time. Maybe it was Ning Junyan’s sudden appearance that made him remember again.

As he put on his pyjamas, Chen Yuncheng left the bathroom and went back to the bed in the room to lie down. Strictly speaking, the conditions here were not very good, but this bed was much softer and warmer than the one he slept with Ning Junyan before.

Chen Yuncheng pulled the quilt to cover half of his face. The alcohol made his heart beat faster, he was a little irritable, and he was reluctant to recall those pasts.

Notes:

I totally forgot to schedule the chapter.. I will give more chapters to compensate, kek