CH 35

Thanks for the Ko-fi! I don’t know which novel you have given it for, so I’ll mention in both novels.

Translation checker: Rin

Editor: Junyans 

The New Year’s bell rang and the crowd erupted in enthusiastic cheers and blessings. The dazzling fireworks burned out, leaving only gray smoke in the sky. Within a few minutes, the people gathered under the Century Clock dispersed in all directions.

Chu Mian reduced the strength in his hands, and he waited for Yu Ran to take the initiative to let go of his hand by himself.

“I saw them,” Yu Ran said. His hand tightened further as he pulled Chu Mian to Fang Zhao’s side. Then, he released his hand naturally as he reached into his pocket to take his phone.

Several people looked at each other, and then asked each other in unison: “Where’s Cui He?” 

“Huh? I thought she was with you.”

“I can’t get in touch with her.”

“She’s not answering her phone right now.”

They started to get anxious. Chu Mian put away his phone, as his call was also unanswered, and said, “Don’t worry, she’s always on guard. Usually, she will always let us know when she goes out of the house. Maybe there’s an emergency at home. We’ll ask her tomorrow morning.”

They managed to stop worrying after much difficulty and looked for free taxis on the road. Fang Zhao and Ye Xi lived in the same direction and took precedence in leaving on the first taxi. Chu Mian’s house was not far away and he could walk back directly, so he stayed to send Yu Ran off.

Chu Mian observed the surrounding traffic conditions clearly and said, “Let’s go to the other side of the road, there are few taxis on this side.”

Yu Ran followed him and asked casually, “Chu Mian, have you ever celebrated the New Year outside before?”

“No.” 

“Neither have I,” Yu Ran said, “In the past, my mother didn’t let me go out at night, but now that I’m in senior high school, she’s not as strict.”

Chu Mian turned to look at him. “So you’re obedient at home?”

“Of course. ‘Of all virtues, filial piety is most important’, don’t you know?” Yu Ran walked up the steps by the bridge, and there was a frozen Lan River under his feet.

His eyes became empty, and his tone suddenly became deep: “Back then, my mother had a fever. She said she wanted to drink fish soup, but there was no fish soup in the market. What could I do? I had to take off my clothes and lie down on the Lan River to melt the ice…” 

Before he could finish speaking, Chu Mian chuckled softly beside him.

Yu Ran turned to face Chu Mian, drew a semicircle in the air with his hands, and smiled brightly: “I fished out such a big carp for her!”

Chu Mian’s smile deepened the corners of his lips, and he couldn’t help but push Yu Ran’s shoulder, not wanting to hear his flimflams anymore.

Yu Ran jumped down the steps, and white fog escaped from his mouth: “Chu Mian, let’s meet next year… No, night of New Year’s Eve of 2013. Come early, I promise I won’t be late.” 

The two looked at each other, and Chu Mian almost blurted out an “Okay”, but after thinking about it rationally, by the end of this year, they would already be in second year of senior high school, and their studies would be even more intense. No one could predict whether they would be able to go out.

But…

“Okay.” After a few seconds of consideration, Chu Mian still simply agreed to Yu Ran.

After all, there were still 365 days until the promise was fulfilled. By then, both of them would definitely have forgotten what they said today, so it was better to just agree now — at least they would be happy about it at the moment. 

The two waited together for a while, and finally a taxi pulled over and stopped. Chu Mian watched Yu Ran get into the taxi, and only when he was far away did he remember to take out his headphones and go home alone while listening to music.

The next morning, after Chu Mian woke up naturally, he squinted his eyes, and grabbed his phone to call Cui He.

This time, the other party picked it up very quickly, and she also took the initiative to explain the reason for her disappearance the night before.

“My dad confiscated my phone and even cut off the internet. He just wouldn’t let me go out at night. That stupid cunt annoyed me to death,” Cui He cursed her father in a low voice over the phone. Soon afterwards, her tone became much relaxed, “It’s okay! We didn’t fight, he just locked me in the house.” 

Chu Mian got up and poured water to drink, and heard Cui He ask him, “Hey, can you get some autographs of Aceon for me?”

“Who?”

Cui He patiently introduced: “Aceon, just the new boy band from your dad’s company. They were so cool at the New Year’s Eve concert last night!”

Listening to her screaming over the phone, Chu Mian, who had just woken up, was confused and indifferent, and he replied, “I don’t know, I’ll ask him later during the New Year.” 

The two chatted casually for a bit more before hanging up the phone. Chu Mian found out that his aunt was not at home, but had left breakfast for him on the table. He ate it quickly and went back to his room to do his New Year’s holiday homework. He absolutely couldn’t slack off in this final exam, because he had to meet with his parents during the winter vacation and report his exam results of this semester.

After finishing the homework of one subject, Chu Mian took a break, during which he opened the contacts on his phone, found the number that Xu Si had sent him last time, and dialed it once again.

Soon, the other party answered.

Chu Mian politely asked, “Hello, is this Mr. Wen Junying?” 

He had called the other party several times before, all of which had ended with a busy tone. He was finally able to get a response during the holiday today.

The man on the other side of the phone was very cold: “Who is it?”

Chu Mian introduced himself as a reptile enthusiast. He told the other party that he was given the contact information by someone, and now he had the intention to buy, so he specially came to find a reliable seller for consultation.

“Add on QQ to talk.” The man read a string of numbers to him. 

Chu Mian turned on his computer to log in to his account. After his friend request was accepted, he directly clicked into the other party’s QQ Zone photo album. Sure enough, he saw a wide variety of reptile pet photos, mainly snakes and lizards. He clicked back and wanted to enter the next album, but after the webpage was refreshed once, the page displayed “This space is only open to designated friends.”

The other party deliberately blocked him just now, and he could see that the other party was a little wary. Chu Mian had no choice but to take a photo of his student ID card, apply a mosaic, and send it over.

After a few minutes, the man asked him, “What’s your budget?”

Chu Mian replied: “Price doesn’t matter, what matters is whether I feel any connection or not. If I like something, I’ll buy it.” 

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Chu Mian clicked into the photo album and found that there were a lot of photos, covering a wide range of species, which made it obvious that they were not raised by a single person. But he remembered that Xu Si had said that this person still owed money, and if there was a unit specializing in breeding reptile pets, he would not often flee to other places.

After comparing a few photos, Chu Mian judged that most of the images were stolen from the internet. 

Chu Mian was now sure that the person behind the chat box was a fraudster. After all, it was illegal to breed ball pythons in China, and many people who wanted to breed them were unwilling to go to the Forestry Bureau for approval. This gave some black market traders an advantage.

“May I ask if there are those two-headed ones like what Xu Si is raising?” Chu Mian tried to analyze the tone of the text, and tried to make himself appear polite and simple. “I want that kind, it’s so cool.”

The man quickly replied: “The kind won’t survive for long and will die within a few months.”

“It’s fine, I’ll get bored after playing with it for a while. How much do you sell them for?” 

The man said, “Out of stock. The probability of mutating into two heads is too small. I’ve only seen it twice. ”

Chu Mian asked, “What about the other one?”

The other party now treated him as a boy who wanted to experience something new, and said indifferently, “I don’t remember, you can look through the album to find it.”

Chu Mian had just browsed through the ball pythons from two years ago in the album, but did not see the two-headed Honduran milk snake. So he found the picture of Marija on the computer, sent it to the man, and asked, “Is it this one?” 

“Yeah.”

Chu Mian asked again, “Is this one dead too?”

“Long dead.”

The man’s affirmation made Chu Mian’s breathing sink. 

“It’s not in your photo album.” The temperature of Chu Mian’s fingertips dropped sharply. “It was stolen from me at a trade fair two years ago.”

The chat box fell silent. Within five seconds, Chu Mian saw that the person’s chat profile picture had turned gray and messages couldn’t be sent out. The other party should have directly blocked Chu Mian.

Chu Mian called the other party, and as expected, there was a busy tone.

Despite the room being silent, Chu Mian couldn’t hear even his own breathing. He emptied his mind, held his mobile phone, got up slowly, and walked to the side of the bed to lie down. 

Chu Mian actually hadn’t had the energy to hate and loathe those poachers for a long time. The more he grew up, the more he could accept the fact that there were many bad people in this world, and he would no longer have any intense reactions.

But even as he grew up older, one thing he couldn’t do was to openly accept partings.

Even though he had guessed many times in the past that Marija had reached the end of her life, Chu Mian had still vaguely expected a miracle to fall on her, hoping that she would be treated gently by a patient owner where he couldn’t see her and die without pain.

— Sure enough, such small probability events as “miracles” would not be related to him. 

Chu Mian buried his head in the pillow and closed his eyes, wanting to fall asleep quickly.

He suddenly discovered that when people were depressed, relying on sleep was a pretty good way to escape reality, and he could lose consciousness within a few seconds… It was actually quite convenient.

He laughed self-deprecatingly.

This time, he slept for a full twenty hours. 

When he woke up in the early morning, Chu Mian found a few packs of snacks to eat, then turned on the computer and played games to relieve boredom. He decided to indulge himself appropriately during the New Year’s Day Holiday. He watched movies and entertainment programs, and concentrated on his studies only after he felt better.

The sky turned from dark to bright, and the sun also peeked over the horizon.

When Yu Ran got up and turned on the computer, he was surprised to find that Chu Mian was playing “League of Legends”, and when he asked, he learned that the other party had been playing for four or five hours already.

“Fuck, you are so addicted to the Internet.” Yu Ran sighed. “Do you usually have another face when you are alone at home? Are you holding a cigarette in your mouth right now?” 

Chu Mian laughed and his chest didn’t feel as tight as before. He said, “You got up too late.”

[The Wolf Character Hides the Dog Radical]: Why, were you waiting for me?

Chu Mian didn’t know how to respond for a while. He hadn’t specially waited for Yu Ran to come online before playing, but after each game had ended, he just wanted to click on the friend list to confirm whether the other person had finally come online or not.

So when Yu Ran took the initiative to send a message to him just now, it was indeed a small surprise for him. 

Yu Ran asked: “Did you set me as a special concern?”

“No.”

[The Wolf Character Hides the Dog Radical]: “Then set me as one now.”

[The Wolf Character Hides the Dog Radical]: “Set.” 

“Why?”

The other party replied: “Because I set you as one! You have to do the same!”

Before Chu Mian could find out where the “special concern” function was, Yu Ran made a new request: “And your status is set as invisible, remember to appear online to me.”

Chu Mian did as he said and sent the screenshot, which made Yu Ran very satisfied. Now, he wanted to play games with him. 

The two of them connected to the QQ voice, and Yu Ran was noisy as soon as he opened his mouth, shouting: “Come on! Chu Mian! Let’s become stronger together! Accept the baptism! Accept the training!”

Chu Mian hurriedly turned down the volume of his headphones. He opened his mouth, wanting to talk to Yu Ran, so the corners of his mouth that were initially arched upwards turned down naturally.

It was at this time that Chu Mian realized that he had been… smiling all the time when he had been interacting with Yu Ran.

Without much hesitation, he asked, “Yu Ran, when will you go offline?” 

“When it’s time to eat, it’s still early, why?”

“I’m going to play until I sleep at night.”

Yu Ran sounded very happy: “Okay, I’m not doing my homework anyway, I’ll keep you company.”

So after Yu Ran said this, Chu Mian felt hungry, his long-awaited appetite had finally arrived. He had to put down the mouse first and go out to buy breakfast. Yu Ran remained seated in front of the computer the whole time, waiting for him to come back. 

Although the sun was not warm enough in winter, it was bright and precious. Chu Mian loosened the zipper of his jacket to make it easier for him to take deep breaths and let clean air circulate in his lungs.

The street hadn’t changed, and as he walked, he remembered: It is already a new year.

Then… I should also be a brand new

Miēmiē.

He breathed heavily, and took out his hands from his pockets. Thinking that Yu Ran was still waiting for him to go back to play the game, he quickened his pace as he walked towards the sun. 

The homework during the three-day holiday on New Year’s Day was not less than that during the National Day. However, since the final exam was approaching, the teachers had no time to check the homework, and they only corrected the answers in class and explained it quickly once.

Yu Ran forgot to bring several notebooks, so he turned to read with Chu Mian, only to find that the other party hadn’t actually written any of them.

“Damn it, I at least finished writing the Language, you didn’t write even one?”

Yu Ran couldn’t believe it, and at the same time, a sense of superiority also emerged inside him, and he hurriedly imitated the teacher’s tone and reprimanded: “What have you been doing for the past three days of vacation? Are you going to rebel? You only know how to play! Not only did you degenerate yourself, you’ve also dragged Yu Ran along with you. You’ve led Yu Ran astray!” 

Chu Mian sneered.

The teacher was lecturing on the podium and Yu Ran was quietly pretending to be a teacher below. He found that Chu Mian had written a simple question wrong, so he turned around and he brought his own homework over and placed it properly “Look, you two are in the same classroom, so how come Yu Ran can write it and you can’t?”

Chu Mian raised his eyebrows. “So you brought your paper.”

“Yes.” Yu Ran stuffed his copy back into the bookcase as if nothing had happened. “But I just want to read it with you.” 

He leaned on the back of the chair and raised his eyes to look at Chu Mian.

As a result, the two of them looked at each other in silence for several seconds. They noticed at the same time how weird the atmosphere felt and hastily averted their eyes.

Chu Mian looked down at the question absent-mindedly, and occasionally glanced at Yu Ran, noticing that this angle seemed familiar.

Then he recalled… that on the night of New Year’s Eve, he had looked at Yu Ran the same way. 

“Chu Mian.”

“Hmm?”

When Yu Ran suddenly called his name, Chu Mian’s heart beat faster.

Yu Ran tilted his head and said, “It seems that the teacher is not talking about this page.” 

“…Oh.”

Chu Mian hurriedly flipped over the page.

After the last two days of classes, everyone finally ushered in the final exam. According to past experience, in order to let the students have a good year, the teachers would not set the question to be too difficult, and many students believed that. As a result, when the exam papers were in their hands, they realized that they had overestimated the kindness of the teachers. After a few subjects, everyone in the class was crying and howling.

Yu Ran didn’t care about his grades. For him, the winter vacation was the most important thing. He pulled Fang Zhao aside and whispered, “Should we do something meaningful during the Chinese New Year? For example, con Chu Mian or something…” 

“You really refuse to give up on your evil plans.” Fang Zhao grabbed Yu Ran’s shoulder and pushed him to Chu Mian’s side. “Chu Mian! Yu Ran is plotting against you again! Let’s go to KTV and con him on the TV!”

In order to prevent Yu Ran from doing anything to him, Chu Mian lightly wrapped his arms around his neck and led him outside the classroom.

Today was the class’ first formal gathering. More than a dozen people were willing to attend. The class president Xiang Xuehua booked a KTV luxury private room and went to a nearby KFC to buy a lot of family buckets. Soon, another boy went to a supermarket and brought back a box of beer, and the atmosphere suddenly became high.

Yu Ran was racing against time to eat french fries, for fear that they would soften in a while. But Cui He couldn’t gather enough people to play a game, so he was called to participate. 

He saw a silver hemisphere placed in the middle of the drinks table, which had a depression on it that looked like a fingerprint. When he asked, he learned that this thing was a simple version of the “lie detector”, which was not expensive to buy online.

Yu Ran immediately sat down with enthusiasm, and rolled up his sleeves. “It’s so fun, why didn’t you call Chu Mian over?”

Cui He rolled her eyes. “Why call him? He’s so duplicitous, it’s boring.”

Yu Ran was still familiar with the other students who were playing the game. Everyone took turns putting their hands on the instrument and the last person to put their hands on asked questions. The drinks table soon became lively. 

At the beginning, the questions were relatively common like “How many times have you been in love?” “Do you have someone you like now?” Yu Ran answered “no” honestly every time, and smoothly escaped getting electrocuted by the instrument.

If the participant was not electrocuted, then the questioner would be punished with a drink. Among them, Yu Ran was the only participant who escaped all punishment.

“Damn, aren’t you nervous about lying? You have the nerve to say that with that face of yours you have never been in a relationship?” Cui He drank another glass of wine. “Forget it, let’s not play the lie detector, let’s play ‘Different hand and mouth’, you guys know how to play right? You can only say numbers from one to five, hands and mouths can’t be the same, I’ll go first.”

Although Yu Ran understood the rules of the game, his brain’s reaction speed couldn’t keep up with their rhythm. After a few rounds, he had failed the most times, and the third can of beer had been pushed in front of him. 

He pulled open the pull ring, and as soon as he put the cold jar on his lips, his attention quickly shifted elsewhere.

While Cui He and the others were playing the game, the other classmates had been taking turns singing next to them, and they unknowingly cut to Chu Mian’s song.

In fact, Chu Mian hadn’t taken the initiative by himself. He had only gone to order songs because of the pleas of several female classmates. When the microphone was handed over to him, even those who were addicted to playing on the phone couldn’t help but look.

Yu Ran raised his head after he spoke. 

Everyone already knew that Chu Mian was fluent in English, but they didn’t expect that his voice would be two degrees higher than usual when he sang, becoming more refreshing and pleasing to the ear. In addition, the style of the song he chose was very relaxed and lively, which made others enjoy it very much, and the mood was unconsciously happy.

Yu Ran stared straight ahead, forgetting the taste of beer in his mouth and kept holding it in his mouth after drinking.

He saw Chu Mian standing in the light, with the sleeves of his gray sweater rolled up halfway, showing his slender and clean arms. The light was yellowish and shone at an oblique angle, highlighting Chu Mian’s tall figure and perfect bones. When he lowered his eyes to look at the teleprompter, the shadow of his eyelashes covered the bottom of his eyes.

After the song ended, the classmates on the sofa applauded and praised him. 

Yu Ran drank too much beer, there seemed to be fire burning under his skin, and he felt dizzy and hot.

He put down the can and kept fanning near his cheek with his palm, but the heat did not dissipate at all, but continued to rise.

Cui He looked at him a little strangely, and asked with a smile, “Are you drunk?”

He took a while to reply: “Huh?” 

“You’re weak, Yu Ran.” Cui He laughed.

Yu Ran’s thinking was slow, and he didn’t realize what Cui He meant by what she had just said.

Not only that, he also called the beer “can”, the dice “eraser”, and even called Cui He’s name as “Chu Mian” several times.

“Why, do you miss him so much?” Cui He shook Yu Ran’s shoulder. “How about I call him over?” 

Yu Ran didn’t respond. He lowered his head and rubbed the tip of his fingers. Cui He turned her head and wanted to call Chu Mian, but found that he was chatting with the classmates, so she didn’t interrupt him.

After all, Chu Mian was usually too slow to open up to others, and now that he had the opportunity to get acquainted with other classmates, Cui He thought that it was a good thing.

Everyone played until nine o’clock in the evening. For safety reasons, everyone unanimously decided not to renew the booth and come out for a get-together after the winter vacation.

“Let’s go, Yu Ran.” Cui He reached out and grabbed Yu Ran’s ear, and found that it was terrifyingly hot. “Hey, don’t lie on your stomach, go and wash your face with cold water.” 

She couldn’t pull Yu Ran, so she called Fang Zhao over, and the two of them pulled him together, but Yu Ran started to fight with them. Chu Mian slowly and methodically put on his jacket and approached them, only to find Yu Ran with a sluggish expression on his face.

Without saying a word, he put up Yu Ran’s arms, trying to pull the person straight up.

This time, Yu Ran didn’t exert any effort, and stood upright obediently—

Then he hooked his arms directly around Chu Mian’s neck, raised his legs and jumped on the other party, shouting, “Sneak attack!” 

After a completely frontal “sneak attack”, Chu Mian was caught off guard, and could only subconsciously hold Yu Ran’s legs.

Cui He grasped her coat and turned around to see Yu Ran hanging in Chu Mian’s arms, and was instantly stunned.

As a boy, Fang Zhao was not sensitive to this kind of scene, and was still beside him to persuade Yu Ran to hurry down and not make Chu Mian angry.

In fact, Chu Mian was not angry. 

His whole face was hotter than Yu Ran’s.

In order to prevent Yu Ran from falling off his body, Chu Mian leaned against the wall and lifted a leg, held Yu Ran’s buttocks and lifted him up, and supported him with both hands.

Yu Ran buried his face on Chu Mian’s shoulder, and muttered something in a low voice, but Chu Mian couldn’t hear it clearly.

Chu Mian knew that he should put him down now, pinch his face, or take him to wash his face with cold water. But the moment Yu Ran’s breath touched his neck, Chu Mian reflexively tightened his strength. 

Unexpectedly, he even said to Fang Zhao, “Help him put on his clothes.”

Fang Zhao responded and found Yu Ran’s jacket to cover him, and put on the down jacket’s hat to prevent the cloth from falling off.

Cui He watched Chu Mian walk out of the private room with Yu Ran in his arms, and couldn’t help but say, “Fuck.”

The other students in the class were standing at the door of the elevator, talking about the party just now. They turned to see Yu Ran hanging on Chu Mian and being carried by him. Everyone couldn’t help but say, “Fuck.” 

Chu Mian turned his face away in embarrassment and explained, “He drank too much.”

Everyone nodded hesitantly, not knowing whether to help Yu Ran down, or to turn their attention away from disturbing the two of them sticking together.

The elevator door slowly opened, and the classmates invariably made way for Chu Mian before they entered.

In the small space, everyone was silent. Everyone felt that the atmosphere was unusual, but no one was willing to speak to ease up the atmosphere. 

Just when the atmosphere had turned stiff, Yu Ran, who had been burying his face on Chu Mian’s shoulders, suddenly raised his head and shouted towards the sky, “Ow—”

The students around him shivered with fright.

“Don’t yell.” Chu Mian turned his face and bumped Yu Ran’s head.

Ye Xi couldn’t help but stretch out a finger to poke Yu Ran’s temple, before asking in a low voice curiously, “Yu Ran, are you going to turn into a wolf?” 

Yu Ran pressed his face on Chu Mian’s shoulder again, and then nodded at her and said, “Ao ao”.

The classmates laughed softly, but Chu Mian’s mind went blank.

When the elevator went down to the first floor, Chu Mian hugged Yu Ran and went out, and then urged him to get off his body.

Yu Ran turned a deaf ear, but instead his legs clamped Chu Mian’s waist and squeezed Chu Mian’s waist even harder. 

“If you don’t go down… I’m going to have a cataplectic attack.” Chu Mian felt his heart rate soaring. “Yu Ran, are you listening?”

“Listening.” Yu Ran’s chin rested on Chu Mian’s shoulder. After a moment of silence, he finally tilted his neck back and looked at Chu Mian.

He said seriously, “Chu Mian, you look really handsome today.”

The faces of the two were close to each other, and Chu Mian’s breathing was about to stop. 

“Did you secretly get a facelift?”