Lin Wangye nodded, then set the thermos down on the nightstand and tilted his chin toward him. “Kiss your little puppy.”
Shi Yuan’s lips curved into a smile, the warmth spreading all the way to his eyes.
He leaned down and gave Lin Wangye a soft kiss on the lips. Under the glow of the bedside lamp, he took a closer look, and suddenly, a slight frown formed on his face.
“You’ve got a cut.”
Lin Wangye’s mouth had been numb the whole time, so he hadn’t felt a thing. But when he heard that, he stuck out his tongue and gave it a quick lick. Sure enough, there was a spot that felt rough—not painful, but definitely not smooth.
Still, he made a show of pouting and mumbled a little complaint.
“I told you, you were way too rough.”
“I’ll be more careful next time.” Shi Yuan smiled and gently rubbed his face with the back of his hand. “Does it hurt?”
“Nope.”
Lin Wangye shook his head, then tapped his lips with his finger, smiling.
“You can kiss me a few more times if you want.”
Shi Yuan hadn’t planned to touch the spot that was cut again, but after hearing that, he raised his hand and gently brushed his thumb along Lin Wangye’s lower lip. Then he couldn’t help himself—he bent down and kissed it a few more times, slowly, softly.
Then he glanced at the time. It was still just past 4 a.m. He looked up and said,
“I’m gonna go take a shower. You better not cry again.”
Lin Wangye nodded hard, looking adorably obedient. “Mmm-hmm!”
Seeing that his face looked normal again—eyes bright, relaxed, and happy—Shi Yuan finally felt at ease. He turned around and walked into the bathroom.
Lin Wangye rolled around under the blanket, giggling to himself, then reached into the pillowcase and fished out the long-lost necklace. He held it in his palm, stared at it for a long time with a silly smile, and only after that did it suddenly hit him—he picked up his phone, checked the time, and finally realized where Shi Yuan must have gone earlier.
Not long after the sound of running water stopped, Shi Yuan walked out of the bathroom in his robe.
“Where did you find it?” Lin Wangye, who’d been waiting forever, asked right away. “It’s freezing on the mountain at night, and it’s pitch-black. That’s so dangerous!”
Seeing the necklace in his palm and the worry all over his face, Shi Yuan walked over and explained gently, “I wasn’t dumb enough to go blindly climbing up Yingfu Temple in the middle of the night. I thought about it for a long time and guessed where the necklace might’ve dropped. That’s the only reason I went.”
Lin Wangye sat up straight on the bed. “Where was it?”
“Remember when we came down the mountain, we went to Yingri Pond to see the waterfall? You were squatting by the water, playing around, and got your scarf wet by accident. You took it off and started running and jumping, swinging it around like crazy. I figured the necklace might’ve fallen off then, so I went to try my luck. Didn’t expect to actually find it.”
As he listened, Lin Wangye slowly remembered.
Back then, the bottom part of the scarf—about a palm’s width—got soaked. He didn’t want it to get his clothes wet, so he took it off, wrung it out, and kept swinging it until it stopped dripping before putting it back on.
Yingri Pond wasn’t a hard climb, but the walk was seriously long.
And part of the trail was a narrow wooden walkway built right along the mountainside.
One side was solid rock. The other side? A sheer drop straight into the abyss.
If you went there in the middle of the night, it would be pitch-black down below. You wouldn’t be able to see a thing. No people around either, and everything would be dead quiet.
Lin Wangye didn’t even want to imagine how creepy that must’ve felt.
He looked down at the necklace in his palm and murmured, “Such a huge mountain, and something this tiny… how the hell did you even find it…”
“I borrowed a flashlight from the hotel,” Shi Yuan said as he sat down at the edge of the bed and gently patted his head, smiling. “It wasn’t hard. You’ve got no idea how bright it looked when the light hit it—it caught my eye right away.”
A wave of emotion hit Lin Wangye. He clutched the necklace tightly in his palm, then threw himself into Shi Yuan’s arms, burying his face in his chest.
The warm scent of body wash and steam still lingered faintly around him.
The restlessness in his chest slowly settled. The gentle touch on his head calmed him down without a word.
“By the way, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Shi Yuan said softly.
At that, Lin Wangye sat up to face him, tilted his head a little. “What is it?”
“Where did you get this necklace?” Shi Yuan asked.
“…”
Lin Wangye blinked and swallowed hard, a little awkward. When he finally replied, he stumbled over his words.
Shi Yuan’s eyes narrowed slightly—he always picked up on the smallest change in Lin Wangye’s expression—but his face didn’t shift, and his voice stayed calm and gentle. “Is there something you can’t tell me?”
Guilt flashed across Lin Wangye’s face. He dropped his eyes and started looking everywhere but at Shi Yuan.
Honestly, he’d already thought about this more than once—whether or not he should just tell Shi Yuan everything. But no matter how many times he thought it over, he always felt like… now just wasn’t the right time.
Coming from twenty years in the future back to this timeline—that kind of thing was just too out there.
If he told anyone, they’d probably think he’d watched one too many sci-fi movies and lost his grip on reality.
That was the same reason he hadn’t told Lin Shen either, not at the beginning.
Even if he did tell everything, whether the other person believed him or not wasn’t the main issue. The problem was—‘even if’ they believed him in the end, he still wouldn’t know how to explain what had happened in those twenty years.
Because once he opened that door, they’d definitely start digging, asking question after question.
And he just couldn’t lie. Not to the person sitting in front of him.
He couldn’t look Shi Yuan in the eye and say, ‘Twenty years from now, you’ll get exactly what you always wanted—money, status, everything.’
‘But in the end, you’ll lose your closest family, your best friend… and even me.’
The past eighteen years hadn’t been easy for Xu Suiyan. Telling him all that ahead of time would just be too cruel.
Lin Wangye didn’t want the people he cared about to spiral into fear or sadness over tragedies that hadn’t even happened yet.
Not Lin Shen, not Shi Yuan.
So, unless he had the power to actually change everything—and knew for sure he could—he couldn’t say a single word.
Everyone had to learn to carry their own burdens eventually.
In his last life, he lived a full eighteen years inside a paradise built by his father and Uncle Shi. This time around, he had to take on what ‘he’ was meant to carry.
And that led to the real problem—
‘How was he supposed to explain the existence of this necklace?’
Lin Wangye rarely ever felt this guilty. But in that silence, while he struggled to find an answer, Shi Yuan just kept quietly watching him. His eyes shifted slightly, then he finally broke the silence.
“The weight and shine… it looks like platinum. And if all those diamonds are real, then it’s probably even more valuable than I thought.”
As he spoke, Shi Yuan reached out and twirled a small lock of Lin Wangye’s hair between his fingers, his voice gentle.
“Is there something you really can’t tell me?”
Lin Wangye racked his brain and finally came up with something that wasn’t ‘technically’ a lie—but also wouldn’t raise too many questions.
“I’ve always carried it with me.”
That one sentence gave away basically nothing. Shi Yuan paused for a few seconds, then said thoughtfully,
“So you mean… this necklace was already on you before you came to the orphanage, and you’re not sure where it came from exactly.”
Lin Wangye nodded like a woodpecker. “Yeah!”
Kids who grew up in orphanages were either abandoned or got lost—and either way, it was rare for them to have something this expensive left behind.
Shi Yuan stared at him for a moment. Deep down, he still felt like something was being kept from him.
But he didn’t press. Instead, he gave a small smile.
“Then why’d you say it was a gift from me back then?”
Lin Wangye was all too familiar with that playful, teasing tone—just like talking to a little kid. Without missing a beat, he leaned in and rested his cheek on Shi Yuan’s shoulder. “I liked you back then already, okay? I just wanted to make you happy.”
Shi Yuan raised an eyebrow slightly. “Then… can I ask you one more question?”
Lin Wangye instantly pulled his head back, on high alert. “What is it?”
“I’ve actually wanted to ask this for a while, but it never really felt like I had the right to.” There wasn’t any suspicion in Shi Yuan’s voice—just a quiet sort of confusion, like there was something he’d never quite been able to figure out. “What exactly is going on between you and Lin Shen? I always felt like your relationship was… not exactly normal. You two seem way too close, to the point where I once thought…”
Before he could finish the sentence, something finally clicked in Lin Wangye’s head.
‘Oh crap.’ He forgot to factor in how things would look from someone else’s point of view.
He and his dad had always been super close—hanging out together all the time, sticking to each other like glue. To them, it all felt totally natural.
But now that he thought about it… he’d never really dialed it back when he was around Shi Yuan!
Lin Wangye’s brain spun into overdrive, and before Shi Yuan could even finish his thought, he jumped in with the full truth:
“He’s my dad!”
Shi Yuan blinked. “Huh?”
“Don’t overthink it,” Lin Wangye said quickly, desperate to clear things up, like he was about to swear a blood oath. “There’s nothing weird between us. We’re solid, 100% father and son!”
Compared to earlier, Lin Wangye sounded way more serious and sincere now.
And once he laid it all out like that, Shi Yuan completely let go of the idea that something was going on between them. Hearing the words ‘father and son’ actually made a lot of sense.
Lin Shen might come off as a jokester, always saying weird things and acting a little offbeat, but anyone could see how much he looked after Lin Wangye.
And now, watching Lin Wangye get all worked up trying to explain himself—clearly scared of being misunderstood—Shi Yuan reached out and pinched his cheek, laughing.
“Alright, alright. I was just curious. It’s late—go to sleep.”
As soon as he said that, Lin Wangye obediently crawled back to his side of the bed and lay down.
Shi Yuan turned off the bedside lamp, then walked around in the dim glow of the night light to the other side, lifted the covers, and got into bed. He reached out to give Lin Wangye’s head a gentle pat.
“Goodnight.”
Two seconds later, Lin Wangye kicked off his blanket, flipped over, and dove straight into Shi Yuan’s bed—arms out, full-on koala hug. All in one smooth move.
Shi Yuan let out a soft laugh from deep in his throat.
“How am I supposed to sleep like this?”
Lin Wangye lifted his head, his eyes dark and clear even in the shadows. He stared at Shi Yuan for a second, then closed his eyes and buried his face into his chest.
“Don’t care. I’m sleeping with my boyfriend.”
“Alright.”
Shi Yuan took a deep breath to steady himself, wrapped his arms around him, gave his back a light pat, then slowly closed his eyes. “Goodnight.”
*
“Holy shit! What the hell, Lu Chengxuan?! What the hell is going on?!”
Just after 8 a.m., Lu Chengxuan, who was enjoying a rare chance to sleep in, got violently shaken awake mid-dream. He sat up groggily, eyes half-closed, and saw Lin Shen standing there looking completely freaked out.
“You need to go look outside right now—did we get robbed or something?!”
Lu Chengxuan clearly hadn’t slept enough, but he wasn’t even cranky about it. He just ran a hand through his messy hair, pulled back the covers, and sat up. After following Lin Shen out to the living room, his face shifted into a rare look of confusion.
Couch cushions tossed everywhere, the rug halfway flipped, decorations scattered around like someone just tossed them in the air…
Yeah, it really did look like they’d been robbed.
Lin Shen had gone to bed early last night and actually woke up earlier than usual, which was rare. He seriously thought he’d been gaming too long and started hallucinating. But once he saw Lu Chengxuan also staring blankly, he was sure this wasn’t some sleepwalking dream.
A hotel getting broken into wasn’t exactly likely.
The two of them stood there, eyeing the wrecked living room, then slowly turned their heads toward the door across the hall.
Without a second thought, Lin Shen stepped forward and knocked gently on the door. He leaned in, listening for a good while, but didn’t hear a single sound from inside.
“Maybe they went to see the sunrise?” Lu Chengxuan suggested.
“They’re that hardcore? Hiked all the way up Yingfu Temple yesterday, and now they’re chasing the sunrise today?”
Saying that, even Lin Shen figured there probably wasn’t anyone inside. So he casually turned the doorknob, and as soon as the door cracked open and he caught a glimpse of the scene inside, he jumped back on one foot like he’d been electrocuted—nearly losing his balance.
“Shit!”
The look on his face was like he’d seen a ghost. Lu Chengxuan thought something had gone seriously wrong and stepped up to take a look inside. But the second he saw the two people wrapped up in the same bed, cuddled up fast asleep, he turned his eyes away immediately and quietly closed the door.
“How could my sweet, innocent Xiao Lin go that far… I just… wait, hey—what are you doing—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Lu Chengxuan had already hoisted him over his shoulder, marched him back to their room, and shut the door behind them. On the way, Lin Shen caught another look at the mess in the living room and suddenly froze, eyes going wide with horror.
“You don’t think they… on the couch…?”
“You’re overthinking it,” Lu Chengxuan cut him off, rubbing his eyes as he headed toward the bathroom. “Last night I did hear something outside. Sounded like…”
Lin Shen’s pupils practically quaked. He jumped up and chased after him.
“You heard something?! Lu Chengxuan, are you insane?!”
Knowing full well that Lin Shen was the impatient type, Lu Chengxuan let out a sigh, set his filled cup of water aside, and squeezed toothpaste onto his brush.
“Let me finish. Last night, after you fell asleep, I kept hearing movement outside for a while, but I didn’t think too much of it. Then I heard the two of them talking—it sounded like Lin Wangye had lost something really important.”
Lin Shen let out a breath of relief. “Oh, okay. Did you ask them about it?”
“No.” Lu Chengxuan shook his head. “He sounded like he was crying. I figured he probably didn’t want anyone to see him like that, so I didn’t go out. If they needed help, he would’ve knocked.”
Lin Shen clearly wanted to keep asking, but Lu Chengxuan had already shoved the toothbrush in his mouth and started brushing. With no choice, Lin Shen stayed quiet and shifted all his weight onto the foot that wasn’t twisted, then grabbed some water to brush his teeth and wash up.
But his mouth could never stay shut for long. The second it was free, he jumped right back in.
“What’d he lose?”
“No clue,” Lu Chengxuan said, bending down to wash his face. “You can ask him once he wakes up.”
The sink only had enough space for one person to wash up at a time.
Lin Shen finished brushing, set his cup down, foam still clinging to the corners of his mouth. As the image from earlier replayed in his head, his thoughts spiraled again, and he stood next to Lu Chengxuan mumbling nonstop.
“Losing something is one thing. What I can’t get over is how that bastard Xu could actually make a move like that! That’s my precious Xiao Lin we’re talking about—my baby, my pride and joy! He’s still so young! I swear to god, I must’ve been out of my mind when I fell into that damn ditch with Xu Suinian. And now look—just like that, my grown son’s gone! Poof! Vanished!”
Lu Chengxuan silently kept washing his face as Lin Shen went on his rant. When he was done, he straightened up, wiped the water off his face, and calmly replied,
“Two adults falling in love—it’s their choice. You don’t need to overthink it.”
Lin Shen stared at him for a moment, then commented,
“You know, I’m starting to realize you’ve got that whole ‘dad vibe’ going on too.”
“Can’t help what you think,” Lu Chengxuan said as he put the towel back and made space at the sink.
“I’m telling you, Lu Chengxuan,” Lin Shen turned on the tap and leaned down to splash water on his face, muttering non-stop, “I take partial responsibility for this, but your part in it is even bigger.”
Lu Chengxuan raised an eyebrow. “And what responsibility do I have?”
Washing his face, Lin Shen shot back, “Why the hell was there a king bed in the suite you booked? Did you even think about that? Honestly, I’m starting to suspect that certain class officers had ulterior motives from the very beginning. I’m talking serious personal conduct issues.”
“You were the one who asked for a suite so we could all hang out together instead of being split into two standard rooms. This hotel’s two-bedroom suites come like this by default. It wasn’t something I arranged on purpose,” Lu Chengxuan said flatly.
Lin Shen knew he was in the wrong, but still insisted on putting up a fight.
“Don’t even try to talk your way out of it.”
“Then wait till they wake up and switch rooms,” Lu Chengxuan said coolly. “You’ve twisted your ankle—you’ll need to rest here for a few days. You’re the injured one. No matter what you ask for, they’ll agree.”
“That’s a king bed, are you out of your mind, Lu Chengxuan?!”
Lin Shen shot up, eyes wide, water dripping from his chin, yelling in disbelief, “You want me to sleep with you?!”
Right after the words left his mouth, there was a loud bang from the doorway.
Lu Chengxuan turned to open the door. Lin Shen whipped around just in time to see Lin Wangye standing there, holding a cup lid. His empty thermos had fallen to the floor by his feet, and he was frozen in place, staring at them with a completely stunned expression.
As soon as their eyes met, Lin Wangye visibly jolted, bent down at lightning speed to grab the thermos, bowed over and over, then turned and bolted.
“I-I-I was just passing by! I didn’t hear anything! Swear I didn’t hear anything!”
*
Author’s Note:
Lin Wangye: ‘See?! I told you they were up to something!’
Shi Yuan: ‘Still doesn’t really seem like that kind of situation to me.’
Lin Wangye: ‘You don’t get it. That’s exactly how my dad is—he looks all serious on the outside, but his brain’s full of tricks. Guys like Brother Lu, honest and proper? Super easy to fall into his trap. Schemes. All of it’s a setup!’
Lin Shen (slowly walking over): “What are you two whispering about?”
Lu Chengxuan: “Don’t listen. It’s slander.”
Hello, everyone ヾ(＾∇＾). I hope you enjoyed the story! If you’re feeling generous, please buy me a coffee, share/comment on my translated works! Check out the link below for early chapters. (๑>ᴗ<๑)
