By the time Jiang Cenglan returned to his rented apartment in Manhattan, it was already eleven o’clock in the evening. Surprisingly, it was one of the odd days when his flatmate didn’t go outside and, as soon as Jiang Cenglan opened the door, he shouted and hugged him, pinching his shoulders and looking him up and down.
Then, he hooked the collar of his T-shirt and looked inside.
Jiang Cenglan: “?!”
“I’m checking whether you have slept with that scumbag,” his friend shouted in a strange tone. “Were my eyes crooked or did you just come out of a Lykan HyperSport[mfn]The Lykan HyperSport is a limited-production sports car manufactured by W Motors, a United ArabEmirates-based company, founded in 2012 in Lebanon with the collaboration of Lebanese and Italian engineers. It is the first sports car to be designed indigenously in the MiddleEast, however, the bodywork, chassis, and engine were all produced in Germany and assembled in Italy. The production of the car was limited to a total of seven units worldwide, priced at US$3.4 million[/mfn], eh?! Just how rich is that fucker?!”
In fact, being sent home in such an esthetically pleasing supercar made Jiang Cenglan even more excited than his friend. And… Touching his cheek, it seemed it was impossible to come back to his senses just yet.
His flatmate[mfn]this guy really, really needs a name! And fast! How many synonyms for “flatmate” do you think I know?! None. Zero![/mfn] didn’t find any suspicious traces on Jiang Cenglan, making him breathe a sigh of relief. However, when he looked back up, he saw the previously aggressive and enraged person was now… Holding his cheek, with a dreamy, blush-inducing look on his face.
How could he look like that?!
It was the disgusting look of a little shy sweetheart!
His friend narrowed his eyes and looked at him carefully. Then, on Jiang Cenglan’s cheek, a transparent but shiny and sticky lip print was found. Under the warm ceiling lamp, it looked quite ambiguous.
“…” As Jiang Cenglan’s self-imposed guardian and elder, his friend took a breath of cold air, pinched Jiang Cenglan’s cheek, and raged: “What’s wrong with your face?!”
“Ah?” Jiang Cenglan blinked his eyes and was suddenly hit by divine insight, mumbling: “It smells like roses, ah…”
“FAMILY MEETING! NOW!” Due to the small number of council members and the vacant seat of any sort of secretary, his roommate could only take his own iPad, prepared to take minutes of the meeting. “Jiang Cenglan,” he said. “Confess willingly and I’ll be lenient, but if you refuse, I’ll smack your ass!”
Poor little Jiang was a little confused by his serious posture. However, there was no need for a “confession”. As Jiang Cenglan’s best friend abroad, his roommate knew the entire narrative thread of his relationship with Zhang Ruien, everything except the shameful little episode of unwillingly becoming a damned mistress! However, Jiang Cenglan’s mentality was different now than it was in the morning, no longer scared to accept the truth and openly talking about everything from start to end.
After listening, his friend got up and said: “Why didn’t you tell me in the morning?! You… Jiang Cenglan, you’re so confused! How could you make up with him?!”
“No!” Jiang Cenglan was eager to explain. “What happened is different from what you’re imagining!” This… Kiss… It’s not from Zhang Ruien, and it wasn’t him who sent me back home either!”
“Hmm?!”
“It’s Zhang Ruien’s wife… That person is Richard[mfn]Li Que’s English name[/mfn].”
“Haa?!” For a second, his friend clearly had the illusion of seeing his entire life so far split into a parallel universe right in front of him, opening up a new branch of possibilities, shiny enough to make his eyes burn. Then, he sat down slowly. He was not from the fashion circle, but the name Richard was very famous. In New York, at least there, in Manhattan, everyone knew it.
Watching his friend degenerate into a shell of what he was before made Jiang Cenglan also calm down. In the afternoon, he and Li Que briefly talked about their lives to each other, just like the characters in Desperate Housewives. He wanted to come clear to his friend and tell him everything that happened, but more than that, he wanted to recall it for himself.
After all, it was about Li Que, the gatekeeper of the dream he had for as long as he could remember.
“…Richard didn’t blame me and didn’t say a single heavy word. Instead, he thanked me for telling the truth.”
“He’s super nice. He made dinner for me.”
“Richard said that he and Zhang Ruien have been together for seven years and have a certificate, but they got married here, so it’s not recognized back home…” Jiang Cenglan’s words turned into a whisper. In his narrative, Zhang Ruien, the cheating scumbag, was quickly forgotten, with both the wife and the mistress holding hands and deciding to abandon him. It wasn’t because of subjective bias, but rather… After that initial hour of Jiang Cenglan saying everything that was on his heart, the rest of the time simply revolved around Li Que.
Jiang Cenglan suddenly paused. Indeed, he realized that from the time Li Que went upstairs to change clothes, both of them spent the next six or seven hours in private.
Even…
Starting from the root of his ear, Jiang Cenglan’s face began to get hot little by little, and finally, it was red enough that it was about to smoke.
“Wow, so he drove you back in person and gave you a kiss?”, his roommate asked. “If I remember correctly, isn’t Richard a French citizen? So romantic, ne~”
Getting a kiss from a supermodel, of course, your little heart will beat faster. There was no point in thinking any deeply.
“Yes, a kiss on my cheek,” Jiang Cenglan said. “He’s mixed, Chinese and French.”
The two chatted intermittently for a while, with his friend seriously comforting Jiang Cenglan, saying that since it was Richard, then it was Richard. Fortunately, Li Que was very reasonable.
“So you won’t be in any trouble in the future?”
“Well, I don’t think so.”
…………………..
It was already three o’clock in the morning when Jiang Cenglan finally went to bed after taking a shower. Normally, after running around all day and struggling through a rollercoaster of emotions, his body should have been very tired. And indeed, he was tired, but at the same time, he was also extremely excited.
In fact, he was so excited that he did not feel sleepy at all!
The young man’s hair was half dry, soaking his pillowcase while he was busy rubbing around his quilt like a spoiled little cat. To put it plainly, Jiang Cenglan intended to reward himself, and his body slowly curled up into a shrimp.
As Li Que said, good boys should be rewarded.
Jiang Cenglan’s self-awareness might have been 0[mfn]I’m sure you already know, but 0 means bottom, and 1 means top[/mfn], but on that basis, he was a physically healthy man. Stress needed to be relieved, and cultivating to become a wizard would only lead to long-term mental health problems[mfn]apparently and according to the Internet, if you made it to 30 as a virgin, you are elligible to become a wizard :))[/mfn].
But today, it didn’t seem to be fully because of stress.
Jiang Cenglan didn’t think so much. In the end, he simply closed his eyes and relaxed his whole body.
“Later, would you like to see my body?”
The magnetic voice of his goddess suddenly played in Jiang Cenglan’s mind, like a needle falling on a vinyl record player. Young people who indulged in memories lacked moral sense and had zero self-awareness. He also had no time to think about whether what he was doing was right or not, since no one could control their thinking in such a situation.
How did he answer at that time?
……………………….
“I don’t know,” Jiang Cenglan said incisively. “I don’t understand what you mean…” For a brief moment, he even suspected whether he had just cried himself stupid, with his brain turning to liquid and dripping down his nose. Otherwise, how could he have hallucinated Li Que’s words: “Would you like to see my body?” What the hell?!
“Sorry, there may be something wrong with what I said,” Li Que answered. “I wanted to ask, would you like to tailor a suit for me? I like your designs, and I’ll definitely pay for your work.”
“On Christmas Eve, I was invited to a charity dinner, very hard to refuse,” he continued. “If possible, we can go upstairs to take my measurements later.”
At first, that series of explanations made Jiang Cenglan ashamed of the crooked path his thoughts took, but then his eyes became brighter and brighter, bursting into tears of laughter.
“Hmm!” He nodded heavily. Li Que said that he liked his designs and wanted to wear his clothes to a super important occasion! Was that a pie falling from the sky?! Jiang Cenglan thought that forget about getting paid, he was even willing to pay Li Que instead!
Like a gentleman, Li Qhe let go of the young man who was no longer crying, taking the dizzy but still handsome boy to the island platform in his kitchen. Then, he quickly made two steaks and mixed a bowl of salad, inviting him to dinner.
And later, in the cloakroom upstairs, the man took off his clothes one by one under the dim, atmospheric light.
Stepping on the wool carpet barefoot, there was only a flimsy piece of underwear covering his body, with his thin muscles looking as attractive as dripping in honey under the ambiguous light. But his skin was clearly pink and white, mixing the delicate texture of his Asian blood with the flawless skin tone of his French heritage.
“The measuring tape is there,” Li Qhe said. “Let’s measure it.”
The distance between the two became very close because of that temporary job. Since it was still summer, Jiang Cenglan didn’t wear much, and Li Que’s body was cool to the touch as if he was used to parading naked. Then, trembling fingertips touched Li Que’s excellent skin, measuring the length of his arms along the blue veins.
His chest circumference was 105 cm, pink.
His abdominal muscles were not exaggerated, and the shape was beautiful.
He had two, very distinctive and deep waist dimples.
………………….
Jiang Cenglan closed his eyes tightly with moist eyelashes, carefully examining the body that was oh-so-vivid in his memories.
Faster and faster…
The air conditioner in the bedroom was very low, but the heat was rising in the quilt.
…………………
After that, Jiang Cenglan stood in the corner, glad that the ceiling light in the cloakroom was dim. Li Que could not see his red face from that distance, right?
As for Li Que, he put on his clothes slowly and orderly, but it was not the home clothes he wore before, but a fashionable, casual suit. “Do you remember my body?”, he asked Jiang Cenglan. “Xiao Yun?”
Jiang Cenglan: “…”
Seeing that he received no answer, Li Que smiled and continued: “I’m sorry, my words are again not very accurate – I mean, have you written down my measurements?” He then picked up a diamond watch and put it on before continuing: “You know, I only speak Chinese with my family, so occasionally, I still make unsatisfactory mistakes.”
Jiang Cenglan’s face was still burning how. How could he even know what Li Que did with his family?! Since his debut, his background has been very mysterious, with even the major media outlets deeply hiding his private information, treating it like some sort of taboo, heavenly secret.
And also, Jiang Cenglan didn’t dare to ask anyway. He could only nod his head indiscriminately and say: “I remember. I have a good memory… Moreover, your proportions are quite perfect.”
He said that last sentence in a low, mumbled voice.
Li Que smiled charmingly again, put on his shoes, and walked out. “Let’s go. I’ll send you home,” he said. “It’s hard to take a taxi here in Long Island.”
No one called a taxi in Long Island, and the garages of the rich were so big that not even a molecule of rain could touch the treasures inside. At night, the whole of New York was beautiful, sparkling like the Milky Way in the sky…
… However, it was only the old streetlight near Jiang Cenglan’s rented apartment that was broken and abandoned. And there it was, a couple of million Lykan HyperSport car, parked underneath it on a dirty, roadside slope.
Li Que hadn’t opened the car door’s lock yet, so Jiang Cenglan sat still. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Li Que turn down the mirror and take something out of his pocket. “The air is a little dry here,” he said.
“Hmm.” Jiang Cenglan nodded.
The super-rich top model was probably used to living on a tropical beach somewhere, so it was logical that he disliked the dryness of the restless city. Therefore, Jiang Cenglan watched Li Que scrub out a small piece of lip balm like hypnotized, slowly taking in the scene of him carefully applying it to his already beautiful and plump lips.
After applying lip balm, Li Que opened the door and Jiang Cenglan unfastened his seatbelt at the same time, unconsciously eager to escape.
“Wait.” Dressed like a man who was going on a date later, Li Que stopped Jiang Cenglan right before he exited the car. Then, little Jiang only had time to subconsciously close his eyes before getting a kiss.
“Good night, Xiao Yun.”
…………………..
It took a while for his breath to finally calm down. Jiang Cenglan lifted his quilt, walking to the bathroom barefoot. When the cold water touched his fingertips, he suddenly remembered that the smell of roses actually acompanied yesterday’s second kiss.
The first one was too light and too gentle, falling on his swollen eyelids. At that time, he was in tears, only carrying about begging for forgiveness wrapped around Li Que’s slender waist, almost forgetting.
But fortunately, he remembered it now.
……………………..
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