A few minutes later, Ye Xi sat side by side with Li Rui, even stealing a bite of noodles from his bowl.
Ye Xi thought, good thing they were still young with fast metabolisms, or with the way they ate, they’d turn into little pigs sooner or later.
Li Rui, meanwhile, felt vindicated, and moved to tears.
“See? I told you Bai Yue really cares about you. He’s totally different with you than with Zheng Yang. And that night — he did kiss you.”
He emphasized it again.
Don’t even think about questioning his eyesight. He saw it with his own eyes!
Ye Xi nodded with indifference.
To be honest, he was already too shaken up right now. Even if Li Rui hadn’t laid out so much “evidence,” he would have started to believe that Bai Yue really had kissed him.
Not to mention, even if Li Rui had gotten it wrong—so what?
Bai Yue had already drunk too much and called him. What decent person would tell a poor, innocent junior who was supposed to be studying, “I just want to hear your voice”?
There was nothing innocent about that at all!
This was exactly the kind of scene that showed up in all the smutty books he’d read—and the very next step would be the two protagonists rolling into bed together!
At that thought, Ye Xi couldn’t help the redness creeping up his ears. He scooped a few chopsticks’ worth of Li Rui’s instant noodles, then opened up a pack of plum snacks.
When people are under pressure, they unconsciously use food to distract themselves.
“But I really don’t get it.” Ye Xi popped a sour plum into his mouth, wincing at the tang as he frowned, staring blankly at Li Rui. “If Bai Yue really does like me, when did he start? And why? We’ve known each other for years—he practically watched me grow up. There’s no reason I’d suddenly turn so charming now, right?”
Li Rui was just as dumbfounded.
How should he know?
That was a question Bai Yue ought to answer.
Luckily, Ye Xi didn’t really expect him to reply.
Ye Xi found his own “answer.”
Suspicious, he muttered, “Don’t tell me it’s because of those seduction lessons I bought? But I barely studied them. Out of a hundred lessons, I didn’t even watch half, and I never really had a chance to put them into practice.”
The few times he’d managed to try, he’d just made a fool of himself.
Who knew how Bai Yue could’ve gotten hooked so muddle-headedly.
Looking deadly serious, Ye Xi turned to Li Rui and couldn’t help but speculate: “Could it be… that I’m actually a natural-born seduction genius?”
Even though he’d given up halfway.
Even though he’d never really mastered it.
But when it came to seducing someone, he could do it without effort.
God, Ye Xi thought in a panic—was this his real hidden talent?
Li Rui: “……”
He looked at Ye Xi, completely at a loss for words.
In his mind: More likely than you being some seduction genius… is that Bai Yue has actually liked you all along.
But he had no evidence.
So he waved his hand broadly. “Alright, alright, stop overthinking pointless stuff like that. Save it for when you’ve got Bai Yue in bed and you can interrogate him yourself.”
Snatching a few of Ye Xi’s plums, Li Rui popped them into his mouth. The sourness made him shiver so hard his teeth nearly went soft, but he still pushed on: “The real question is, what’s your plan? Are you gonna confess to Bai Yue or not?”
That left Ye Xi stumped.
He stared at an Ultraman sticker on the bookshelf, looking a little lost.
“I don’t know.”
His gaze drifted as he said to Li Rui, “Honestly, my original plan was to get Bai Yue drunk after the college entrance exams, then kill the lights and seize the chance to sleep with him. After that, I’d run off abroad before he could hold me accountable.”
He added seriously, “I’ve worked hard at seducing him all this time, even built up some feelings between us. Even if he was forced into losing his purity, he probably wouldn’t be too angry when he woke up. At least not enough to chase me to the ends of the earth.”
That was his plan.
Detailed. Simple. Practical.
The only problem was… he didn’t really know Bai Yue’s alcohol tolerance.
Li Rui: “……”
What a lawless little criminal.
His plan had already gone that far.
“And now?” Li Rui asked calmly. “If Bai Yue likes you too, then you don’t have to run.”
But Ye Xi didn’t answer. The brightness in his eyes dimmed.
Sleeping with someone was easy—sleep, then flee, and no one could catch him.
But falling in love… was much more complicated.
He had no dating experience, but he had a wealth of smut-reading experience. He’d seen countless quarrels between lovesick men and women, seen the oaths sworn in passion, only to end up as shards of broken glass.
Love never came with an expiration date.
Ye Xi sighed softly. “Now I really don’t know what to do.”
He looked at Li Rui. The playful curl at his lips unconsciously flattened.
Quietly, he said, “If I confess to Bai Yue, and he does like me, how long could we actually stay together?”
“Right now I feel calm, because I never expected him to like me back. Every day I’ve spent with him has felt like something stolen—an unexpected blessing.”
“But once it turns into love, it won’t be the same. I’ll become greedy. I’ll want to cling to him. I’ll want forever. I’ll want him to look at me and only me.”
As he spoke, the fire in his chest suddenly cooled.
His feelings for Bai Yue were like a fool’s longing for the moon in the sky—he’d never thought of truly possessing it. Watching from afar was enough.
But one day, the moon fell into his arms—so close, so intimate.
Of course he was happy.
Happier than anyone else in the world.
But he also knew that no one could make the moon their own. One day, it would rise back into the sky.
Leaving him behind in pain.
Ye Xi chuckled softly. Really, he shouldn’t be thinking of his parents right now.
Too negative.
Too pitiful.
But he couldn’t help telling Li Rui: “You know, even my parents had their moments of love. Their relationship didn’t start in any moral way—one was after money, the other after beauty. But even so, when they were drunk on passion, they swore things too. My dad told my mom he’d divorce, he’d marry her, he’d only ever have her. He even said that when they had kids, the child would inherit the Zheng family like Zheng Yang.”
“But he didn’t keep a single promise. My mom couldn’t hate him, so she hated me instead.”
So growing up, he’d heard those stories again and again.
What was love, really?
It wasn’t the pure, clean thing from fairy tales. It was unstable, fragile—collapse could come from the slightest disturbance.
“Honestly, I know these thoughts are too pessimistic…” Ye Xi said softly. “But that’s just who I am. I’m scared that if Bai Yue and I really get together, everything will fall apart. If you’ve never eaten chocolate, you can endure. But once you’ve had a taste, maybe you can’t give it up.”
After all, his feelings for Bai Yue were never exactly normal to begin with.
They were mixed with admiration, dependence, the yearning and possessiveness for the one ray of light in his youth.
It was fine when he hadn’t gotten Bai Yue. But once he did, he was afraid he’d become extreme, like Ye Shuyue—unable to ever let go.
When he finished, the dorm fell silent.
Li Rui didn’t speak either, fiddling with a small steel fork on the table.
Only the ticking of the wall clock filled the room, like a footnote to the heavy quiet.
“…Sorry. I shouldn’t be thinking like this.” Ye Xi murmured, embarrassed. Li Rui had always been cheering him on, and here he was, hesitating and gloomy.
“This is my own issue. I should think it through myself—”
But before he could finish, Li Rui spoke in a low voice.
“Forget everything else. But if you just sleep with Bai Yue once and run abroad—won’t you regret it for life?”
“Won’t you always regret that you could’ve actually dated him, even for a month? At least you’d have experienced it.”
“But if you run… you’ll never know.”
Ye Xi froze.
He looked up at Li Rui. Li Rui propped his head with one hand, calm as ever, just like when they first met—back when they’d been punished to clean the pool, and Li Rui had napped with a magazine covering his face, as if nothing in the world mattered.
Patiently, Li Rui coaxed: “Besides, think about it. If you get Bai Yue drunk, you only sleep with him once. But if you date him, you can sleep with him countless times. And in bed, you can even make requests—uniform play, handcuff play, roleplay, whips and candles, whatever you want.”
He suddenly grabbed Ye Xi’s hand, demanding in a low voice: “Don’t you want that?!”
“I…”
Ye Xi choked.
Damn it. Sometimes having too vivid an imagination wasn’t a good thing.
As Li Rui spoke, images had already begun to unfold in his mind.
Bai Yue, half-naked, wearing a tight black uniform, wrists bound to the headboard, giving him that half-smiling look…
“I…”
Ye Xi’s ears turned red, then his whole face. He stammered, “No—that’s… that’s way too… I mean, me and him…”
Was this right?
Weren’t they supposed to be seriously discussing the essence of love? How did the topic suddenly turn into this?
But after stammering for a while, he still gave in, quietly turning his face away and whispering one word.
“…Want.”
“There you go!”
Li Rui slapped Ye Xi’s thigh. Ye Xi flinched at the sting.
“Stop all that useless melancholy crap. Be practical. Every time you sleep with Bai Yue, you’re winning. Even if one day you break up, at least you’ve gotten your fill. While he’s still willing to date you, hurry up—play everything you want.”
Li Rui patted Ye Xi’s thigh over and over, spouting nonsense: “I’m telling you, you’ll never get this quality even if you hire a male escort later!”
Ye Xi: “……”
He thought, And you always call me the lewd one. You’re no better yourself!
And besides, it’s not just about Bai Yue’s body for me. I do have real feelings for him.
But he couldn’t help but be amused by Li Rui.
He couldn’t stop himself from imagining the scene Li Rui had described.
Setting everything else aside, just the thought of coming home every day to see a different version of Bai Yue was indeed a huge temptation.
That, at least, was a very real benefit.
Like Li Rui said, if you miss this village, there won’t be another shop—there aren’t even male escorts of this level!
The more Ye Xi thought about it, the harder he laughed.
He collapsed onto the desk, looking at Li Rui—who was baffled by his laughter—his eyes crinkling with amusement.
He thought, it was such a blessing he met Li Rui back in middle school.
That day they were punished to clean the swimming pool, and he accepted Li Rui’s attempt to strike up a conversation, even sharing the bread he’d bought with him—that was truly fortunate.
Li Rui still looked at him with confusion, as if wondering what madness had seized him.
But as Ye Xi looked at Li Rui, he felt that all those tangled, gloomy emotions—like moss growing damp in the shadows—had evaporated into thin air.
“You’re right,” he said seriously to Li Rui. “People like us, lustful to the bone, shouldn’t overthink it. Sleep with him once, count it as once.”
He smiled. “If I never get to experience what it’s like to be in love with Bai Yue, I really would regret it for life.”
“Now that’s more like it.” Li Rui was deeply satisfied.
……
But though he said that, the fact that Ye Xi could make such a quick decision was already a good thing.
Li Rui dragged his feet writing homework, staring at the pile of test papers, feeling a twinge of unease.
He glanced at Ye Xi scribbling furiously under the lamplight, conflicted.
Truth be told, his dear friend was frighteningly diligent now.
There was even the faint shadow of a top student in him.
Unable to hold back, he poked Ye Xi. “Uh… so are you planning to confess before the college entrance exam?”
He’d been fretting over this since earlier.
Breaking up or starting a romance before the college entrance exam was taboo. Ye Xi’s grades had only just begun improving, and it looked like he could actually get into a decent university.
If he, Li Rui, encouraged him into a romance and Ye Xi’s grades plummeted, wouldn’t that make him a sinner for the ages?
With an agonized face, Li Rui looked at Ye Xi, torn, feeling like some meddlesome eunuch in charge of palace affairs.
But Ye Xi simply answered him with two crisp words: “I won’t.”
“Seriously?” Li Rui was stunned. He couldn’t understand—if it were him, he would’ve raced off to lock down Sheng Yuhe in a heartbeat. “Why not?”
Ye Xi set aside his English paper—his weakest subject at the moment.
Just a few days ago, Bai Yue had even arranged an online tutor for him to help with listening practice.
Even thousands of miles away, Bai Yue still supervised his studies, like some strict parent.
Ye Xi sighed softly. “Because I think, given how much Bai Yue cares about my grades, even if I confessed before the exam, he wouldn’t kiss me, hug me, lift me up, let alone sleep with me. He’d just pin me down and make me do more practice papers. How is that any different from not being in a relationship?”
But then he paused, glanced down at the papers in front of him, and said quietly,
“And besides… I also want to work hard and show him.”
His gaze dropped slightly, but his thoughts drifted back to many days ago, to that small town beneath the snowy mountains.
“Remember when we went on that snow mountain trip? There was that wishing pool that was supposed to be really powerful, and we all made wishes there. Bai Yue threw in a coin too. Later I asked him what he wished for.”
“He said he hoped I could have a very good future. That I’d get into the university I wanted. That I’d have a wider world, and be able to achieve everything I wanted to do.”
Even though time had passed since then,
He could still recall the shock he felt in that instant.
He thought, aside from Bai Yue, perhaps no one else had ever wished for him to have such a vast and free future.
“So, I want to work hard—not just for myself, but for Bai Yue too.”
Ye Xi said softly, lifting his gaze toward Li Rui, his eyes bright.
He smiled. “Besides, if I want to confess to Bai Yue, I should prepare a little something as a bride price, shouldn’t I?”
He wanted to make Bai Yue happy too.
