CH 18

Lu Xingzhe paused, thinking that Xi Nian was pretending to be drunk. He pinched Xi Nian’s chin expressionlessly, forcing him to look at him, but he only met a pair of slack and out-of-focus eyes. It seemed as if the babbling just now was merely an illusion.

“…”

Lu Xingzhe stared at him for a while, his fingertips moving slightly as if thinking about what to do. At this moment, there was a sudden sound of chaotic footsteps outside, as if someone was coming.

Xi Nian could also be considered a public figure now, unlike before when no one was interested in him. Lu Xingzhe subtly glanced at the door, then quickly took off his hat and put it on Xi Nian’s head, and immediately led him out of the restroom.

There were only a few drunken businessmen outside the door, and Lu Xingzhe helped Xi Nian as they passed them without attracting any attention. They walked out of the hotel all the way, and toward the car parked on the side of the road.

During this period, Xi Nian didn’t show any kind of resistance, nor did he seem drunk as he was too quiet and made no sound like a drunkard.

While on the hand, Lu Xingzhe felt that like putting one’s finger into another’s pie.1 He opened the car’s rear door and pushed the person in without mercy, then closed the door with a bang, walked around to the driver’s seat, and started the car.

The street was full of traffic and neon lights were flashing, but the back seat of the car was dark. Xi Nian only felt like something strangling his neck, and his sound of breathing was heavy and troubled. Meanwhile, countless intertwined fragments flashed through his mind, oppressing the crumbling sanity.

Xi Nian had his moments of glory, but it was because he had experienced the glory that he couldn’t bear the ultimate defeat.

Despicable and selfish people would never seek death on their own, because they cherish themselves more than anything else. However, Xi Nian was an exception. He was too temperamental, and when the glory and praise he earned with difficulty one day left him, for him it was even more painful than taking his life.

There were actually many things he cared about, but when he was sober no one would notice it, including himself. Nonetheless, today, in a dark and gloomy corner, with a surge of alcohol, all of them intertwined and bombarded together.

Lu Xingzhe lit a cigarette, and the spark gradually engulfed the tobacco, turning it into ashes. Finally, it was blown by the wind outside the window and fell onto his pants legs. He glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw Xi Nian’s eyebrows furrowed tightly.

The car drove all the way and finally stopped downstairs at Xi Nian’s house.

Lu Xingzhe dragged him out of the back seat of the car, then picked up the hat that had fallen between the seats and put it back on for him. Avoiding a few scattered passers-by on the street in the middle of the night, then they took the elevator upstairs.

Xi Nian seemed to be getting even more intoxicated. He opened his eyes half-drunk and half-awake, his pupils dark and deep. Finally, he could see that the person supporting him was Lu Xingzhe. His cold fingertips pressed hard against the other person’s neck, and the question seemed plausible: “Why did you come….”

Xi Nian’s footsteps were flimsy and he was still swaying, but he couldn’t forget the betrayal and separation of the people in his previous life, everyone had betrayed him and he had nothing.

Lu Xingzhe took out the key from Xi Nian’s pocket and opened the door, only to see that the room was pitch black. He thought Xi Nian was talking in drunkenness so he ignored it, and groped on the wall to turn on the light, but unexpectedly someone held down his wrist.

Xi Nian asked him word by word in a low voice, “Why did you come?”

“To look at your joke?2”

Xi Nian’s breathing was disordered, his fingertips were icy cold, but his palm was hot, and when their breathing intertwined, he seemed to be overly drunk.

Lu Xingzhe didn’t understand what Xi Nian was talking about, but he heard the faint hostility in the words, and a nameless wildfire suddenly ignited in his heart. He grabbed Xi Nian’s collar and smiled coldly: “If you are so capable, how can you still let others take your photograph?”

After finishing speaking, he pushed Xi Nian away: “What am I, how dare I laugh at big stars.”

Lu Xingzhe’s eyebrows and eyes were full of sarcasm, he threw the key on the coffee table with a clang and was about to turn around and leave. But before he could even walk out of the door, he was pulled back, his shoulder was grabbed and was pressed against the wall forcefully.

Lu Xingzhe’s pupils shrank, and due to his conditioned reflex, he was about to push that person away. However, in response, he was held down more and more forcefully as that person seemed to know where his weakness was. During the struggle, the injury on his left leg was bumped causing Lu Xingzhe to turn pale and sweat profusely.

The cold moonlight outside the window slanted into the living room, and Xi Nian’s handsome face fell partially into the shadow, appearing blurry. He tightly grabbed Lu Xingzhe, seemingly afraid of other’s person leaving, and asked in his ear, “Why do you want to leave…”

He frowned and asked, “Why are you leaving?”

Xi Nian was the one who asked why he came, and he (Xi Nina) was the one who asked why he (Lu Xinzhe) was leaving. Lu Xingzhe glanced at his grasped shoulders, then looked at Xi Nian, and said in an unclear way: “You despise me for being a paparazzi, but now I’m not even allowed to go. Celebrity Xi, this is not the way one should play.”

The last sentence carried some profound meaning and sounded really poisonous.

Xi Nian said, “You can’t go.”

“You are not allowed to go…”

Xi Nian didn’t know why, but he seemed to be fallen into a trance and repeated this sentence over and over again. Then he whispered Lu Xingzhe’s name and finally clasped the back of his head with his cold fingertips, and started kissing him along the earlobe.

Lu Xingzhe felt the warm breath on the side of his face, and his heart stopped beating. In response, he immediately wanted to push the person away. However, Xi Nian seemed to be very familiar with the sensitive points of his body, his fingertips pressed his spinal vertebrae through his clothes—the itchy feeling suddenly highlighted and the temperature was rising.

Lu Xingzhe felt that he was playing tricks on him, and anger ignited deep in his eyes, he grabbed Xi Nian by the collar, and asked coldly, “Do you know what you are doing?”

Unexpectedly, Xi Nian covered the back of his hand, and then slowly loosen it. His voice was low and sexy, with a bit of drunken seriousness: “Shh, I know…”

He actually didn’t know anything, he only knew that he didn’t want Lu Xingzhe to go.

Xi Nian hugged Lu Xingzhe’s waist, searched all the way to the bedroom in the dark, then stumbled and fell on the bed. Lu Xingzhe couldn’t help groaning because his injured leg was bumped.

In a daze, Xi Nian thought Lu Xingzhe was a cripple and leaned down on his side, his palm silently resting on his knee. He kissed Lu Xingzhe’s sexy collarbone all the way to his lips and asked vaguely, “Does it hurt?”

Lu Xingzhe stared at the ceiling with wide-eyed eyes. He couldn’t understand, he just intended to send Xi Nian home, how did things develop into this state? He wanted to struggle, but he was firmly suppressed by the man’s strong body, and he couldn’t gather his strength.

Lu Xingzhe even lost his voice, trembling all over: “Xi Nian, you fucking…”

He only said a few words, but couldn’t continue to swear the rest of the sentence.

Lu Xingzhe’s pants fell to the ground silently in the darkness.

His left leg injury has already been scarred, but due to his lack of good memory in caring for himself, he always runs out, so the pain was still unbearable.

Xi Nian lowered his body, relying on his instinct to drop dense kisses around his wound, and then went all the way up and found Lu Xingzhe’s bright red lips, kissing them with great skill.

Lu Xingzhe’s legs were not hurting, just numb. His hands were held down by Xi Nian, so he could only tilt his head to avoid the man’s kiss, and then asked him in a hoarse voice, “Who am I?”

Xi Nian didn’t answer, as if he had become addicted to kissing, leaving reddish marks on his delicate and smooth skin.

Lu Xingzhe didn’t cooperate, he stared at Xi Nian and asked again: “Who am I?”

Xi Nian frowned slightly, then stopped kissing for a while. He buried his face on the side of his neck in some discomfort, breathing heavily: “Lu Xingzhe…”

He kissed the end of Lu Xingzhe’s eyes, and repeated again: “Lu Xingzhe.”

Another piece of clothing fell silently to the ground.

Lu Xingzhe stared at the ceiling with wide eyes, and suddenly lost his strength, his whole body trembled. His fingertips clenched the bed sheet under his body tightly, twisting it into a pile of wrinkled marks. He thought it would hurt a lot, but it didn’t hurt much, and he couldn’t tell what it felt like.

He knew that Xi Nian was drunk

Xi Nian consciously avoided Lu Xingzhe’s injured leg, but seemed particularly fond of touching it, slowly rubbing and kissing, causing Lu Xingzhe’s eyes to turn red. Finally, he kissed his lips and asked him in a low, vague voice if it hurt.

Lu Xingzhe had never been asked about this, so he didn’t know how to answer it, but when Xi Nian changed his posture one after another, he swore with red eyes and said, “You, fuck you…”

The voices were trembling.

Tears fell without knowing why.

Lu Xingzhe’s shoulders were covered in tooth marks, and his lips became darker and more magnificent. Xi Nian pressed tightly against his back, leaving a feeling of pain or itching. Finally, he clasped his fingers tightly with Lu Xingzhe, and after a long time when he felt a little less drunk, he asked, “Why…”

What why? Xi Nian didn’t say anything, and Lu Xingzhe didn’t ask either. Both of them were exhausted from this careless intimacy, in the end, they were so tired that they couldn’t even lift their fingers, and fell asleep.

The system once hesitated whether to stop it, but when it saw them kissing each other its eyes couldn’t bear the dazzling sight so simply ran away like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand.3

The sky outside the window changed from dark to bright, and the dazzling morning light gently passed through the bed curtain. Xi Nian habitually wanted to open his eyes because of his biological clock, but the pain from his head after a hangover made him unconsciously frown and want to cover his head with a quilt. Who would have thought that at this moment just as he turned over, he would touch a warm body, and Xi Nians’ whole body froze——

Xi Nian almost immediately opened his eyes and sat up from the bed in a daze. When he saw who was lying next to him, his nerves relaxed at first and then tightened again. While trying to recall yesterday’s events, his face was uncertain, and was pulled in a frown.

Yesterday, Lu Xingzhe was tormented to the point of exhaustion, when he felt the moment beside him, he frowned slowly and opened his eyes, feeling as if he had been run over. His throat was burning with pain, and when he saw Xi Nian already awaken next to him, he was imperceptibly frozen.

“Yo, are you awake?”

Lu Xingzhe didn’t seem to be embarrassed at all, he slowly sat up straight, the thin quilt slid down and his body was exposed to the air. The bruises and red marks could be seen at a glance, then he stretched his arms to pick up the clothes from the ground and put them on one by one.

Xi Nian looked at him without saying a word.

It was uncertain but probably because he was tortured hard yesterday, Lu Xingzhe’s face was a bit abnormally pale. He tilted his head and glanced at Xi Nian, his voice was lazily hoarse, and he pursed his lips and said, “Don’t look at me like that, yesterday it was you who started it yourself.”

Xi Nian still didn’t move, his eyes were dark, and it was unknown what he was thinking.

Lu Xingzhe glanced at him for a moment, then withdrew his gaze. The movement of putting on clothes was much faster than before, and he asked in an emotionless tone, “Why, don’t you believe me? Do you think this paparazzi is deliberately taking advantage of you?”

Xi Nian: “…”

The author has something to say:

System: I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see anything.

[duō guǎn xián shì]: This Chinese Idiom means to meddle in other people’s affairs without necessity, and similar to sticking [poke] one’s nose into other people’s business.

It is a way of saying, watching my/your joke means watching a person experience setbacks, misfortunes, or any bad things, not only do not help, but also take pleasure in other people’s misfortune.

[dùn dàng tuó niǎo]: This translates to escape as an ostrich, which is a short form of the idiom ‘an ostrich with its head buried in the sand.’ This idiom means to ignore or deny the existence of a problem in the hope it will eventually go away. To refer to this idiom sometimes a single word, ostrich mentality, is also used. In other words, when an ostrich encounters danger, it buries its head in the grass or sand, thinking that it is safe because it cannot see the problem with its eyes.