CH 42

Fu Ge even dyed his hair before the trip.

His long chestnut hair was now dirty pink, hanging lazily over his shoulders in a curved, rippling arc.

When he lowered his head, his bangs would fall down softly, and he would casually part them in the middle and shove them back. This way his skin looked even more delicate and white, and his face lively and playful.

Like pure white clouds illuminated by colourful light.

While one person’s life force was slowly draining away, the other regained his vitality.

Whether it was five years ago or five years later, it was as if they were forever eating away at each other.

Qi Han felt quite fresh when he saw Fu Ge’s hair colour; he stroked the strands at his temples and looked carefully, and finally gave the most pertinent evaluation from the bottom of his heart: “Beautiful baby, like a little pink elk.”

Fu Ge stood on tiptoe and snuggled up to him, his hair wrapped around the Alpha’s fingers, his whole body as warm and soft as a cup of red bean milk tea, and his voice husky and low: “Is Mr. Bear Cub ready to start a brand new journey with the elk guide?”

Qi Han lowered his head and kissed him: “With pleasure.”

Contrary to five years ago, this journey was solely arranged by Fu Ge.

At ten o’clock in the morning, a green train slowly arrived at Litang. Their first stop was Qianzang Ancient Stronghold.

Qi Han walked down the carriage with the suitcase, his right hand holding the hand of the bouncing little Beta.

Fu Ge’s pink hair was too flashy, and both of them were already eye-catching in the crowd, so when Qi Han helped him tuck his long hair behind his ears, he really looked like a mature Alpha with a playful mate.

It seemed that Fu Ge was indeed suffocated in the hospital. He was so enthusiastic that Qi Han, who was taking a phone call, couldn’t catch up with him.

Turning his head, he was caught off guard by a piece of candy in his mouth.

“Here, try this.” Fu Ge said vaguely with one cheek bulging: “The little sister who sells the candy said that there is barley in it, small grains, and it tastes good to chew.”

Qi Han liked his greedy look; he rubbed the candy hidden in his cheek with his fingers, “Greedy cat, you just got out of the train and already eating.”

Fu Ge glared at him and pushed the candy to the other side, but Qi Han’s hand followed and rubbed again, determined not to let him eat it properly.

Fu Ge pouted and bit his fingers, his tone lazy: “You’re so annoying.”

“Not annoying.” Qi Han leaned to his ear and coaxed: “Knowing that gege likes to eat it so much, I want to give him one too.”

Fu Ge suddenly realised what he had bitten into something and frowned: “This taste… are there any nuts— ah! It’s a walnut!”

The Alpha’s face stiffened. He was allergic to walnuts, and the allergy was very serious.

“Spit it out quickly, you can’t eat this!” Fu Ge searched in his pockets to find some paper for him. Not only did he not find paper, but he didn’t even see a trash can.

Qi Han was a little at a loss with the candy that was already cracked in his mouth. If he was allergic here, their journey for the first five days would be over. “It’s okay, gege, let’s go find a trash can first—”

Before he finished speaking, he was stopped abruptly as a soft tongue suddenly pressed to his lips. Fu Ge leaned to him on tiptoe and rolled the candy in Qi Han’s mouth out with his tongue.

The mellow scent of walnuts suddenly dissipated, and the corners of his lips were moist. The Alpha could clearly feel the soft touch stirring in his mouth, as if his lover’s thick feathery eyelashes were teasing his face.

“I ate it for you.” Fu Ge’s ears were hot, and he hung his head like a little bird, dumb and cute.

Qi Han’s heart collapsed, like a bear falling into a honey jar. Counting the night of dancing, this was the third time Fu Ge took the initiative to kiss him.

No matter if it was “in the needs of the plot” or out of love, it was enough to shake him to his core.

“Gege, is there more?” Qi Han asked.

Fu Ge blinked: “What?”

“Candy.”

“Oh…” He poked the small pocket on the chest of his coat: “Here it is.”

Qi Han snatched the candy, turned around and walked straight into an unfamiliar alley in front of him, holding Fu Ge’s wrist.

“Ah Han? What are we going to do?”

He thought Qi Han was looking for a trash can to throw away the allergic candy and was quite reluctant, muttering: “I quite like eating them…” Leave me a couple, wow.

Qi Han: “I love eating them too.”

Fu Ge: “Hmm? Aren’t you allergic?”

As soon as he said that, Qi Han peeled off a piece of candy and put it in his mouth without changing his face, then lowered his head, “Yes, I’m allergic.”

So I ask gege to help me eat them.

Fu Ge: “……”

Caught off guard by his tricks, the little Beta blinked in disbelief. Half a second later, his cheeks turned scarlet, and he poked Qi Han’s Adam’s apple with his finger: “How can you… Don’t you really bite it, the walnut is inside.”

Qi Han was really, really bad. “If gege doesn’t help me, I’ll really bite it, and swell into a bear from my allergy.”

Fu Ge knocked him on his forehead in embarrassment, looked around guiltily and, after making sure there was no one, rose on tiptoe, warning him: “Just this one.”

Qi Han crushed his lips: “Come and eat by yourself.”

Once again, their lips and tongues entangled on their own accord, and the soft tip of Fu Ge’s tongue was caught in Qi Han’s mouth as soon as it arrived, teasing, touching and entwining…

With the ambiguous humming sound drilling into his eardrums, the little Beta instinctively backed away, but a strong arm suddenly caught his waist.

“Ugh… Ah Han…” He gently pushed the man, but instead he was confined tighter.

Qi Han pinched his chin, forcing him to open his mouth wider and rolled the candy into his mouth, “Don’t escape, I haven’t finished eating yet.”

This wasn’t eating the candy, it was clearly trying to eat him as well.

The sweetness of walnuts was fed into Fu Ge’s mouth together with grains of barley, and the tip of Qi Han’s tongue even touched his teeth and palate, leaving hot traces everywhere it went.

Qi Han kissed him from various angles, those soft lips turning him into jelly. No one would be able to resist tasting and kissing them.

With two soft swallowing sounds, Fu Ge finished the broken candy dutifully, gasped and pushed Qi Han away. “There’s already… no more!”

Qi Han’s chest puffed with laughter, and his hoarse low voice was magnetic: “Okay, don’t run, no more kisses.”

After saying that, he still didn’t hold back and kissed Fu Ge’s lips again, “I’m sorry, gege, your mouth is swollen from my sucking.”

Fu Ge flattened his mouth, his head drooping and his look a little aggrieved: “It used to be swollen every time, and you would still bite when it was swollen. You had to break the skin before you stopped. A little rascal becomes a big rascal…”

Qi Han was lectured into submission, repeatedly said “yes, yes” and put the leftover candy into his own pocket, “In the future I’ll feed gege one every day, okay?”

Fu Ge: “Not okay.”

Qi Han’s kiss had already wandered to the tip of his ear, his mouth hot: “Good boy, I can keep it in my mouth.”

The first intimacy of their honeymoon happened in the alleyway of Qianzang Ancient Stronghold, and Qi Han had already begun the countdown for himself.

At lunchtime they found a local restaurant to eat at, and Fu Ge liked the food here very much.

The milk tea poured out of the tin kettle soaked thick cakes, and dense and creamy curry coated the roasted lamb. Every bite of the rich gravy would explode in your mouth, and the aroma of ghee would slide into your throat along with the sweet tea, like silk over your body.

Fu Ge was really suitable for eating and broadcasting.

Although he didn’t eat much, he ate everything with gusto and treated food with an inexplicable sense of cherishing and seriousness. He would stuff his mouth full when he ate and then chew with both cheeks together like a small hamster.

Qi Han didn’t hold back and took several photos of him, “Is the food in this place so delicious? I used to remember that gege was a very picky eater and didn’t like to eat these stinky things.”

Fu Ge was drinking a bowl of sweet tea in small sips, leaving a circle of milk around his mouth. He said casually: “Not a picky eater now. It was good to have meat in the most difficult two years…”

As soon as these words came out, the little room suddenly became silent. Both of them were taken aback for a moment.

Qi Han’s hand taking pictures stopped abruptly, his eyes instantly reddened, and Fu Ge…

He held the cup awkwardly, looked at Qi Han, then looked at his feet at a loss, and finally put the cup down, “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to say this to make you uncomfortable…”

Qi Han smiled bitterly and looked away. His eyes were blurred with tears. “It’s me who should say I’m sorry…”

So fake is fake, like a flower in the mist and the moon in the water, even worse than a soap bubble.

No matter how hard they tried to play a loving couple and use a false facade to whitewash the situation, the past would be like an arrow in the dark, impossible to defend against, and they wouldn’t know when it would give them a fatal blow.

Fu Ge would never forget the winter four years ago. It was also November, not long after he had recovered his memory.

He had been tortured by his lover to the point of insanity; his memory was disordered; he wasn’t even human. He wandered in the gutter for more than a year before regaining his memory, and his body had long reached its limit.

He had pneumonia at that time and had no money to treat it.

He couldn’t carry anything, he couldn’t lift anything (had no experience with heavy labour) and he couldn’t draw. He finally got a job in the kitchen of a restaurant, washing dishes, cleaning ingredients and scrubbing the kitchen. He had to do all of these things for the probation period of one month.

Fu Ge was not fast on his feet because his body was too weak. He couldn’t work quickly enough and he was always scolded by the boss.

The man hated the rich and knew that he was once the young master of a rich family, so he deliberately embarrassed him in public, calling everyone in the kitchen over to surround Fu Ge as if to watch a monkey show.

“Come on, let Young Master Fu show us how to peel a potato. I heard that he used to be a painter, I wonder what a treasure the hands of rich people are.”

Fu Ge was just nineteen at the time, unable to say beautiful words, not knowing how to find a way for himself. So he finished peeling a pot of potatoes with a smile, cutting his fingers with a small knife, and his hands that used to paint were soaked in the cold water mixed with blood. 

All his dignity was destroyed in that month.

But he couldn’t leave because he needed to take this month’s salary to pay for the first phase of treatment.

But in the end, Fu Ge didn’t get that thousand yuan after all.

Because the major shareholder of the restaurant came to inspect the work. Young Master Qi himself was there and picked a scrawny little kitchen help from the crowd at a glance. Fu Ge still remembered what he said then—

“This guy is so skinny, it makes you lose your appetite. In the future, the restaurant should pay attention to its image when it hires people.”

Fu Ge was wearing a mask at the time, and Qi Han didn’t recognise him.

But because of this sentence, he was fired the day before he received his salary.

He was kicked out through the back door like a beggar asking for food, coughing incessantly and spitting out phlegm laced with blood.

Fu Ge begged the boss to give him a little bit of his salary, half a month would do. He said, “I need treatment… can you give me a little bit of money…”

In the end, the boss only threw a potato at him, “Young Master’s fate is to do odd jobs. I think you are only worthy of peeling potatoes in your life!”

It rained heavily that day, and Fu Ge had nowhere to go, so he hid silently under the eaves of the back door of the restaurant, like a ghost wandering in the sky in broad daylight.

He thought thirty-seven times that he would run out and let the car run him over, so that he could die and be freed, and be done with it.

But just when he was thinking about it for the thirty-eighth time, Qi Han came out.

The Alpha was dressed in a suit, had a bodyguard holding an umbrella over him conscientiously, and the driver opened the door for him carefully. Not a drop of rain fell on him from the door of the restaurant to the car.

He was sitting in a luxury car that was so expensive that a single accessory could help Fu Ge cure his illness. He was truly a noble proud son of heaven.

And Fu Ge, who was like a street rat, hid under the dirty, dilapidated eaves, looked at the rear of the car and thought to himself: My Ah Han is really beautiful…

From that moment on, he didn’t want to be free.

He wanted to take Qi Han to hell together.

“I’m sorry, gege.”

Qi Han caught his fingers, his eyes flushed and wet, “I know that no matter how many times I say I’m sorry, I can’t change anything…”

“Yes, nothing can be changed.”

Fu Ge quietly withdrew his fingers, lowered his eyes and looked at the ripples in the sweet tea. After a long time, he suddenly smiled.

“A life in pieces, a body in tatters, and still fantasising about what I can live like…”

Stop comforting yourself. No matter how you embellish it or what you wish for, my past is terrible and bloody.

What’s there to regret? Isn’t it all thanks to you? What’s there to be sorry for? Just try and taste it for yourself.

Translator’s note: Did I say ten chapters were agony? I was translating Chapter 54 today and still bawling my eyes out. However, it is also Chapter 54 when things finally turn to the better. It’s not like Fu Ge and Qi Han are going to stop suffering but they will suffer on the same side after that, not hurting each other. But before that… I cried “Author, enough!” so many times.

But… if you think about skipping chapters until it gets better… what’s the point? The sweetness is not sweet unless you taste the bitterness, and there are many, many sweet novels full of pampering, no need to get into this pain fest…